A Creative Duo Built Their Cosy Home With DIY Furniture | Singapore

When we first started thinking about the design of our home, we were very clear that we wanted it to be a combination of a creative space, where we would both feel inspired to pursue our own projects, but also a place where we would feel very comfortable. Just like our friends always say, we are full of creative energy, but also total homebodies. In her free time, Rachel is a freelance illustrator known as Rachel Doodles. Outside of work, I enjoy building physical things with my own hands. Since our lives revolve mainly around our own creative work, it has heavily influenced how we decided to layout and design our home. We have been living here for almost a year, and we really enjoy the convenience of being in close vicinity to the city and nature, with both being a short walk or bus ride away. It's a 4-room BTO apartment in Kallang, which spans about 93 square metres. Hi, I'm Rachel. And hi, I'm Adil. And welcome to Half-Baked Home. We were very certain that we wanted strong pops of colours, as well as a mishmash of materials used throughout the house to bring that energy. We chose two main colours, a very dark green and a yellow called Appealing Potato, because Rachel is obsessed over potatoes, to hold everything together. Living in a unit that's not that high up, a key consideration was also to maximise the amount of sunlight and wind that would be able to filter through the home during the day. We also love being out in nature, and we've been slowly collecting an ever-growing collection of plants in the home. We thought about getting furry friends, specifically myself, but Adil has a fear of four-legged pets. So in the end, I ended up drawing little pets around the corners of the house instead. We intentionally went with very few built-ins across the home. Our two workrooms and living room were left practically empty during the renovation process, except for the floor tiling. We really wanted the freedom to move things around to add our own touch. So a lot of what you see are either things that we made with our own hands, thrifted or collected slowly over time. Given the layout of the home, we decided to focus more on using the outside of the house to serve as an entryway and give people a sense of the home that they would be entering into. So I built this plant and coffee bench. Here's where we sort of keep most of our so-called tier 2 plants, and also plants that are too big to be inside the home. It also serves as a place for our guests to put on their shoes, and where I sometimes have my coffee in the morning while spending time with the plants. Inside, we kept things pretty simple, and we love this super cute thrifted hay ikea mirror, which looks like a bottle into another world. To make it more functional, we designed and built these custom hooks to hold our frequently used items, and also built our own little stool to complete the space. We wanted our living room to be a cozy space for relaxing, reading, hanging out with friends, or even doing our respective projects and work. Surprisingly, Rachel actually spends a lot of time working in the living room, even though she has her own workroom. We also really like this default layout here, where the dining and kitchen directly flows into the living room. It makes both spaces feel much more spacious. We also knocked down half of the room wall here to help let more sunlight into the living room. We were really uncertain about the unconventional layout, but over time, it has really grown on us. The living room is also where you will find most of the furniture that Adil built himself from scratch, like this TV console, our plant bench, bricks, and also our record player stand. Some of these items that we built as we had a very specific idea of what we wanted, while some others, we did so because we wanted something to be in a very specific and custom size to fit a space. This is the part of the home that gets the most consistent sunlight, so we took advantage of that by housing most of our indoor plants here. Adil built both the bench itself along with casting his own bricks, which is honestly still crazy to me, and he put together this whole setup. Half of the plants here were either from cuttings from friends, or self-propagated by ourselves. One of our personal highlights is this blind spot mirror, which is always the selfie area with family and friends. But secretly, I think Adil uses it to spy on me and to make sure that I don't doze off on the sofa when I'm actually supposed to be working in the living room. Thanks for enjoying our home tour so far. So, some of you might have spotted something in all of some products in our home features. Today, we're right here in Scott Square in Singapore to share more about V&O's world of innovative design. Their flagship store offers the full assortment of televisions, speakers, and headphones, including seasonal collections and limited editions. And what we like about this is that each product showcases its unique place in the brand's legacy. Since 1925, Bang & Olufsen has created iconic audio and home entertainment products to the highest standards of sound, craft, and design. Some key pieces in this showroom include The motorised speakers fold out like wings, and its sculpted design makes it a standout centrepiece for any space. The Beolab 50s are designed to be both elegant and functional. Their sculptural form also makes them the perfect addition to any design-conscious home. I also had the chance to try out the Beoplay H100, their most luxurious, comfortable, and smart headphones to date. It truly stands out, not just for its exceptional sound quality, but also as an accessory that elevates any look and style. And it's not just all talk, we're real fans and regular users of Bang & Olufsen products like the Beosound A5, featured in our very own Stack Store. If you're captivated by the blend of historical depth and modern aesthetics that Bang & Olufsen has to offer, you could consider adding these exceptional items into your next living space. So feel free to visit their showroom to hear, see, and feel it for yourself. While we enjoy cooking, we are both not great cooks. So we designed our kitchen more around our coffee addiction. We have a coffee corner here in the kitchen. Then I also built out a series of custom countertops and shelves in the yard to use as a secondary coffee bar and also to display all of our different coffee gear that we've collected over time, which we really like the aesthetic of. We have a small induction stove just for simple meals. We also grouted the backsplash in yellow to match the rest of the colours in the home as well. When we have a small group of guests over, this island is also usually the place where we hang out and gather around. When looking at where we wanted to add a pop of colour to the home, we thought that this small corridor would be a good place to do so. To head to the other rooms in the house, you have to pass through this yellow corridor, which I would say is one of the more iconic parts of our house. Since we didn't include any built-ins in our studies, we both styled and created our own spaces using mostly loose furniture, which keeps both rooms flexible. These spaces are really important to us since we spend a lot of time working and pursuing our own creative projects. I am an illustrator, so my room and many parts of the house are covered with my favourite art that I've collected from my favourite local illustrators as well as from our travels. This is the current state of the art wall, but it's always changing. I've come to realise that ideas also come to me at random times, so Ido very sweetly mounted this for me onto the wall for spontaneous doodles and scribbles. When designing my own room, I took inspiration from many industrial design studios. Given the glass partition that exposes the room to the rest of the house, when designing the room, I was constantly reminded by Rachel to ensure that it was not only functional to what I wanted to do but also aesthetic since everyone else would be able to see it from the rest of the home. I decided to go with a series of black anodised metal shelves that would house most of my tools, 3D printers and storage boxes with different prototypes and even managed to sneak in a little plant nook so that I can have some nature without even having to leave the room. Here, I also built and designed my own pegboard out of birch plywood. It looks simple but was probably among the hardest things I had to hand make in the home given that I had to hand drill 1,369 holes which I did over a couple of days. This table is also my latest completed project. It's actually an IKEA sit-stand desk designed and disguised to look like a more classic vintage plywood desk. This room is also where I built and worked on some of my smaller projects for the home. I decided to use a more industrial looking hanging lamp that would better suit the look and feel of the room. I also used the room to display items that might be more suited to my own taste so you'll see a lot of space, Star Wars or Apple-themed items throughout the room as well. We chose to be much more experimental with this guest bathroom. While tile shopping, Rachel mostly did not have strong opinions but suddenly when she saw these Mutina tiles her eyes lit up and it was love at first sight. We then got a matching orange mirror and sink to go along with it. Our designers also came up with this pairing of blue tiles and cement squeed to go with the orange which we thought was a perfect match. We were initially very doubtful about this blue acrylic panelling for the boxed up lights when we first saw it but we really like how it does give the bathroom a whole different vibe when the lights are turned on. We kept our bedroom simple and minimal. On one side, we have a four-door wardrobe and we chose a solid wood bed frame. We used the platform at our headboard to specifically display some art and knickknacks. For the softer vibe, we also laminated the floors so you get this distinct texture change going from the outside to the inside of the bedroom. The main bathroom also takes the same approach as our bedroom. Simple and functional for us to relax and be calm much more like a spa. I really love keeping all my countertops really neat which explains why all our toiletries are hidden behind this mirror. Maybe I can speak for both of us but we really love our home and probably fall a little more in love with it every single day. To us, a home is where every square metre of it is being used and loved. The best thing to hear when our friends first see our space is this house is so you guys. To me, that is the highest compliment for what we were trying to achieve in this home. In just one year, our home has evolved so much. Each plant, trinket, art that we collect or furniture that we make is a story on its own. And this home is a treasure chest of memories that we love more and more each day.