Home Tour: $108,000 Rustic renovation for a family’s 4-room HDB in Bishan
By Shannon Osztonits -
Share this article
Brooklyn, New York City, or Singapore? It takes finding the precise interior designer to bring such a one-of-a-kind vision to life, especially in a city like Singapore, where most home interior styles favour Japandi, Scandi, Minimalist, Modern vibes.
Words like ‘Kampong’ and ‘nostalgic’ were part of the core vision. Interior designer Chris from Morphosis Studio had many ideas running through his mind when he first met the homeowners, Siva and Fongling. Set on creating a home where memories are treasured, this interior designer added subtle elements like Peranakan features to help enhance this concept.
Every crevice is intentional, with thought, care, and a lot of attention to detail put into this family home. It almost feels as if you’re walking through an art gallery space of eclectic memorabilia.
Raw textures greet you (a requisite of the homeowners), plants add life, and pops of colour are exuded through finishings, furniture, collectibles, and handcrafted decor.
“We love the outdoors and are very hands-on,” tell the owners. “We spend our free days going for nature walks, attending to our plants and our pet, and doing DIY stuff.”
Who Lives Here: An operations coordinator and an accounts administrator couple in their late 40s with their kids and dog
Home: A 4-room HDB in Bishan
Size: 1,119 sq ft
Interior designer: Chris Lee from Morphosis Studio
This area is where the family spend most of them time, dripping in delicious personal touches and plants.
4-Room HDB in Bishan
This 4-room family HDB is a place for the homeowners to “retire and expire.” It comprises three bedrooms and two bathrooms, as well as an open-concept kitchen and living room.
Striking the perfect balance between doing a brand new home renovation, but aiming to create a nostalgic-feeling space was one of the biggest challenges for the designer. Yet it was one that interior designer Chris was certainly up for. The interior designer and homeowners worked hand-in-hand to achieve the final magical product…An extraordinary home design you certainly won’t find elsewhere.
“Looking at the home now, it was the best decision to use Chris,” says homeowner Siva, “as the home we had as a concept came to life with him and his team of skilled contractors.”
The interior designer had to hunt down materials that bring out a rustic feeling for this full gut renovation. However, nowadays, not a lot of these finishes are readily available. It took quite an immense amount of sourcing, as well as employing specific artisans to recreate many parts of the home.
Furniture sourcing started in the early stages when the homeowners first decided to buy the unit. Another hurdle altogether; vintage-esque furniture is not the easiest to come by in Singapore, nor the cheapest. But determination proves otherwise, as one can see the moment you step inside this home.
The textured wall hides doorways in this home.
Textured Raw Wall Design
One of the family home’s highlight features is the raw walls, specifically in the living room. They were set on this from the initial design renovation stage.
“We wanted to have the walls looking as though they have aged in time,” says homeowner Siva.
Yet to achieve this specific raw, textured wall design, much creativity and work went into obtaining this result, and finding the right artist who could create the desired effect.
At first, interior designer Chris posed using brick-style tiles, but even this was “too perfect” for the family. Eventually, they created the living room wall texture using a plastered effect — albeit it exceeded the original budget. The exposed bricks are done with a whitewash.
Another standout feature that tied in with the raw walls is the lack of visible doorways. This design element is not overly done in Singapore. The owners wanted the hidden doors to “really be hidden without showing the doors’ outline.”
Chris added beams to the raw wall to cover the visible lines.
“Most workers who came in mid-reno always assumed the walls were not finished as they were raw,” recall the owners. “They always gave you a crazy look when we explained that’s the final look.”
Indoor plants and herbs add more life to the kitchen and gel with its green colour palette.
Kitchen Design
As one of the family’s favourite gathering spaces in the house, the kitchen was also a focus area for them.
The property’s original layout was one where the kitchen and living room were detached from each other. But the owners wanted these two zones to be connected. Chris proposed to hack the wall between the living room and kitchen, allowing the space to look and feel a lot bigger, as well as brighter.
It’s the kind of kitchen you want to be in. Natural light flitters through the kitchen windows — a rare find in HDB apartments. (The original windows were replaced.) As a family that loves to cook, the kids enjoy home-cooked meals, and one can tell the kitchen is an important area.
Homeowner Fongling is a huge fan of large porcelain sinks, commonly seen in Old English countryside manors. It was the deep basin (from Taobao) that inspired the rest of the kitchen carpentry and countertops.
Retro nodes decorate the kitchen. The island is where the family enjoy breakfast.
Green Kitchen Island
Green was a colour homeowner Fongling loved for the overall kitchen design. The island matches the countertops, constructed using sintered stone tops. Once Fongling was happy with the exact moss green colourway, Chris had the idea to add in the Perankan-style blocks below the island, bringing in that nostalgic element once more. The blocks just happened to match the rest of the kitchen. Kitchen floor tiles are Renaissance Decor Frame from Hafary.
Surprisingly, the textured kitchen walls were a spontaneous decision.
“The initial idea was to tile up the walls with subway tiles,” explains Siva, “but as the workers were hacking the kitchen, and I happened to be there, I saw how the walls looked raw. I immediately told Chris to leave the top half of the wall bare, no plastering, smoothing it, or tiling. At most, we painted to seal the wall.”
Exposed pipes are purposeful.
“Nothing was to be concealed unless it’s very necessary,” explains the homeowners.
The living room is full of character.
Living Room Design
Flowing from the kitchen and dining area, screeded floors lead the way to the living room, with random Peranakan tiles here and there adding some pizazz.
Between the kitchen island and the caramel leather sofa is a massage chair — because everyone deserves a bit of home pampering.
The exposed black pipes were redone by Chris for a touch of industrial-meets-retroism.
At the far end of the room, a living planter wall (constructed from wire mesh) was added for the family’s indoor plant collection, bringing in an element of nature.
“We like nature and try our best to bring in as much as possible to bring nature into the house,” say Siva and Fongling.
A hidden doorway is concealed next to this plant wall feature, disguised by the living room’s textured walls. Wooden lizards purchased from Bali remind the owners of the first trip overseas after a very long break.
A custom bed with storage was built by the design team.
Master Bedroom Design
The master bedroom is “where the magic happens.” The space is kept simple and minimal, and the set of windows across the back bedroom wall allows plenty of natural sunlight to enter.
Most of the home is devoid of storage, and so the custom-built raised platform bed design was specifically requested for these purposes.
“There is no store room in the house,” says the homeowner. “We actually hacked down the storeroom to make space for the wardrobe for the master and the adjacent room, which my daughter uses.”
It’s constructed using a laminate that relates to the traditional Kampong style of wood.
Mixed materials are used throughout the bathroom.
Master Bathroom Design
Apart from the common bathroom off the living area, there is an en suite in the master bedroom.
Contrary to what you may think, the whitewashed-looking “bricks” in the shower are tiles from Hafary - part of Carmen Tile’s Grunge Oxid range. It matches perfectly with the copper shower head and taps.
Interior designer Chris wanted to make this zone the main bathroom feature. So, he purposefully chose a contrasting, cleaner cement-looking tile for the rest of the bathroom walls. This was so as not to detract the eye from this section.
Two wooden shelves hold up the singular blue and white Chinese porcelain sink bowl. Sporting dragon design, this reflects Siva’s Chinese zodiac sign. (The common bathroom boasts the same sink; however, it has a koi fish design.)
More collectible and vintage items are used as decor across the house, like the old-school calendar and tin lavatory sign.
2.5 Months Renovation
The timeline was quite a tight one, and the entire interior design and renovation process took an (impressive) two and a half months!
Most of the carpentry, panels, and doors were custom-made for the family. “None of the work done in the house existed until it was made for us,” tells Siva.
For the family’s first major home renovation project, the majority of the costs went into gutting the property, masonry works, bespoke carpentry, and redoing the entire electrical wiring.
“The areas that we wanted to concentrate on were the living area and kitchen, and the idea was to create a home back in time and not current or with futuristic looks,” explain homeowners Fongling and Siva. “We wanted to build a home that is from the past, and we feel that this design in 10 years will still have the same nostalgic feel as it does now.”
One takeaway that both these homeowners and interior designer share is that learning to replicate “perfect imperfection” isn’t as easy as it looks. And that authenticity is always key!