House to Home

Buying a house and converting it into a home is not an easy task. The process starts with choosing the right location, size of the house, working out a budget of the house and other external factors.

Then, after you have decided all the points above, your fun really starts. Begin with a down payment process and the Sales And Purchase Agreement between you and the seller. Here, the lawyer will make you sign pages after pages of documents where you have only a few minutes to browse thru before signing and it comes in four copies.

After having done that comes the loan. Here, again lots of points of considerations, e.g. interest rate, type of loan - flexi, fixed, term etc., with or without insurance / MRTA, the bank's reputation, the after sales services of the banks etc. After deciding on the bank, comes the loan agreement, again, the lawyer will make you sign pages after pages of documents.

When all of it had been sorted, comes the real fun part where you can let your creativity and imaginative cells goes wild. Of course, being an engineer by training and professional and this fact is not only limited to myself, but also my other half, practicality plays a major role.

Being an engineer, I have drawn the floor plan in the AutoCAD. With this software, I can fiddle around with the layout and arrangements and take a view before and after the modification and then knowing the exact space available and where to everything before we go to the store to purchase them. Also, one plus point that we are able to give the contractor the plan to reduce the abortive work for miscommunication.

I can foresee there will be lots of argument and disagreement over the months to come for the interior design. Being an engineer myself and facing another engineer sparks will fly, but I'm sure we will finally come to one best option and get a win - win situation.

If you look at this whole process as a roller coater ride, where I am right now is basically I have bought the tickets and still standing in queue for my turn to board the ride. Have not even decided if I want to sit on the first seat or way to the back. Lets see how everything goes.

One thing for sure, we will definitely have lots of fun doing this... converting House to Home... be assured, there will be more to come in weeks / months / years to come for this topic. Stay tuned....