Living the High Life...Literally

Now that the Dean penthouse is coming together, I thought I'd give you a tour of the place. My best guess is that our condo is about 2,300 sq ft. We have 4 bedrooms and 3 full baths with the majority of our home on the 10th floor -- only the master bedroom and bath are upstairs. When you enter the Dean home, we have a small entry area with a console table and then you see our dining and living rooms. Next to the entry we have a closet that holds a shoe rack. Asian folks don't wear shoes in their homes so that's our area to properly store them. I'm quite fond of that idea and will be happier going barefoot in our house when we have a housekeeper to keep the floors clean! The floors in our living areas and kitchen are marble and the bedrooms are wood. I don't have a vacuum cleaner yet so I'm constantly going around with a broom and dustpan.

Looking at these pictures, you'll notice the blank walls. The reason is that the walls are made of concrete so it's not as simple as nailing picture hangers into the wall for artwork. Concrete walls are the standard in Singapore so most people hire someone to hang their pieces for them. As soon as I find some pictures for the living/dining area, we'll make that call and get it all done at once. In the meantime, we're doing the "minimalist" thing.

From the dining room, there is a door leading to the kitchen, which I would say is slightly larger than my Southlake closet. It's a small kitchen but it's at least square in shape instead of a skinny galley like I had in Germany and Paris. I really only have one small counter top to prepare meals but they're granite so that's one upgrade over my kitchen at home! We have a small oven, a fairly large microwave and a refrigerator that seems small when trying to cram a weeks' worth of food for our family. It has a separate freezer and a drawer at the bottom for drinks so that's handy. And contrary to what we thought, we do indeed have hot water in the kitchen. It's scalding hot water to be exact. But you have to make sure you have the heater button on in the hall bath or it won't work. Every bathroom has a "heater" button that you switch when you want hot water. I suppose it's more efficient since it's only heating the water when you need it.

The second door in the kitchen is where our current home departs from the typical US place. We have an area known as "the yard" that functions like a utility room. My favorite part of it is the trash chute. Words cannot express how much I love the trash chute. Its existence has ended my need for a diaper pail and I never have to worry about "taking out the trash." Just toss a plastic bag of garbage in it and it's gone forever. Our yard is technically outdoors because at one end is a wall that goes up about 4 feet and then above that, it's open to the great outdoors. Our washer and dryer are in the yard, as well as the dishwasher that they added at our request. So, now we have to walk about 15 feet from the kitchen sink to load our dirty dishes. It's inconvenient but much better than not having one at all! In the midst of this domestic space is our maid quarters. Our future housekeeper will have a tiny room (more like a closet if you ask me) that fits a small bed. If she's taller than about 5'2" she'll have to bend to fit on it and she has a shower stall and a one-burner stove for cooking. I'm still getting used to the idea that we'll have another person living in our laundry room.

From the front living area, we have a long hall that leads back to the girls' bedrooms and the stairs to the master suite. Along the way is a "family room" that we've filled with a small sofa, toy storage and a bookcase. We doubt that the girls will play much in the room because they prefer to play in the bedrooms. I'm just happy that we have a common area to store toys away from the living room. Emily's room is large and she has plenty of floor space for playing - most important for our busy girl! I'm still looking for an area rug for her room. The quilt that Gran made for her looks great in her new room and I'm happy to finally have a big comfy chair for reading books. Her windows look out over the river and the colorful bridge that leads to Robertson Walk and she must like that because when I open her curtains every morning, she points out the window and tells me all about what she sees in her cute, babbling baby talk.

Elizabeth's room will also serve as a guest room since it has a queen bed and an adjoining bath with shower. Even with the larger bed, there's still plenty of room for the dollhouse and a ball pit. I was pleasantly surprised at the size of the downstairs bedrooms and the amount of closet space they each had. I assumed we would need dressers to store the large amount of clothing (and diapers!) that we shipped but everything fits in the closets easily. Megan's room is the smallest of the three and she chose it because she wanted a view of the pool. We put a desk in her room and she likes having her own space to do her artwork. Upstairs is the master suite. We have a queen bed, a pair of nightstands, another tv and a dresser that Brian quickly claimed. Our clothes situation was out of control until the dresser arrived AND we discovered another closet a few days after we moved in. Talk about a nice surprise! It's right behind the bedroom door so we didn't even see it. The master bath seems substantially larger than the kitchen! I like that it is all marble and has a large jacuzzi tub. The downside is that the deep bathtub makes it more difficult to bathe the girls (it's the only tub in the house). Since Brian is generally in charge of bath time these days, I can't really complain about the tub.

So that's the "virtual tour" of our Singapore home. Brian did a good job of finding a place for us and I think we'll be happy here for the next 18 months. I love the pools on the property because they are designed for all ages. I also like that we have a playground right across from us on the 11th floor of our building. If you can't have a backyard, it's the next best thing. Of course, I'll be excited to get back to our spacious Texas home in the future but in the meantime, we'll appreciate a different kind of living, not to mention the view from my kitchen sink. High-rise living does have its advantages...did I mention the trash chute? :)