If you are not a DIY type of person, the market or economy will make you one

I read an article that trigger my thoughts to share this, well let’s put home décor topics aside for a while, I’m going to talk about home design in business perspective as a start.

Even though you've heard about the New Economy that coming our way or ALREADY happening that is EXPECTATION ECONOMY. Capturing the essence of 2008's demanding consumer arena, it is—surprise, surprise—all about those pesky, demanding consumers:
"The EXPECTATION ECONOMY is an economy inhabited by experienced, well-informed consumers from Canada to South Korea who have a long list of high expectations that they apply to each and every good, service and experience on offer.

Their expectations are based on years of self-training in hyperconsumption, and on the biblical flood of new-style, readily available information sources, curators and BS filters. Which all help them track down and expect not just basic standards of quality, but the 'best of the best'."
True enough, with this EXPECTATION ECONOMY has been building slowly in the background, with nowadays peoples that are well educated, readily available information sources around; Word of mouth now travels the world in a flash, making product launches instantly global, turning every new brand—big or small—into a potential 'player', and most importantly, rewarding exceptional performance with immediate interest and approval from consumers. Basically, your competitor could be anyone.

Talks about ID, from a professional career as an ID designer or consultant move to now freelancers that attacking the market. Guess what the next trend, anyone could be an ID! In fact, it’s happening now. Well, IKEA was a very successful example who masters the market trends who lend the decision to consumers to choose freely with options. You want a rack with maroon color; well buy a rack and paint it with maroon. If you want to make it England-country style a bit, you can even paint it with flowers and pattern that you wanted. You want your house various items range from lights, carpet, chairs, tables, cabinet or even dining set and curtain with Zen style, there is already a set of Zen style items of all you wanted ready for you. They offer range of products for you to mix & match freely, whether you want according to a theme/style or into specific properties of the items, you can choose freely. Flexibility is the key of their success in this EXPECTATION ECONOMY or I called it “free-will” market, lending the control in consumer hands. Believe it or not if you are not a DIY type of person, the market or economy will make you one, the difference just lied between the results of each individual get, does it match your objective of what you wish your house to be! To achieve your objective, all you have to do just to know how, as I mentioned before the “steps”! Drop me an email if you keen to know the steps and checklist to help you.

Define your home design style

This is a far most important step that you MUST do before everything else. Lots of malaysian they often skip this step, straight away proceed to items shopping (e.g. paint color picking, lights and furniture shopping) and fits all stuff into the house and stay. Some who has a little passion on home décor, prior to start their home décor project, they often visit lots of show houses and referred many designing home magazines but end of the day they may find their house with many combination and thus didn’t portrays your own style. Try to imagine a house with a country cortage sofa mixed with modern contemporary design of dining set with steel and glass, plus another multi-partition of teak wood TV console. Country cortege + Balinese + modern contemporary? It is so odd. Reason is each style has its own color, material and structure combination that will creates an harmonies feeling if matching right, imagine wrong matching could creates awkward feelings.

Another types of Malaysian are often brought the things that looks nice in other people house, but after putting into own house doesn't looks or feels good. You may still not regreting of buying such a beautiful items but in fact it’s a total mistakes that put it in your house as it not matching. As a conclusion, do not sees only to the item perspective but to see your entire house as a whole will never be wrong. Because if you see only the items, then you may realize at the end it is not matching to other items may be too late.

Well, all you need to do is just plan ahead and prior to that defining your style first. But how? You may stuck in defining your own style, may be you not even know what style you like or design that you want. That is why IDs are here to help you. But have you ever imagined you can be an ID of your own too? Everyone owns creativity and style, only yourself able to portray the style out to maximum because only you yourself know what you want, what kind of feeling you wish to perceive in your house. Hire an ID may not be the best solution if you do not know to communicate your needs well or the ID not able to master your needs well. Everybody is gifted with sense of creativity and style, all you have to do is to know how to do it – the steps. Once you know how + your sense of creativity and style, I believe you could own a styling home you ever wanted with better budget control. Everything is possible provided you believe it so…. :)

My home picture to share....

Posted with a few more pictures of my house, designer that is myself and 100% DIY; my carpenter, wiring man, painter, plumber cum gardener is my fiancé. hahaha... we got the lightings, furniture, wallpapers, electronics and other decor items from various places, and prices are very reasonable. Ultimately we are overwhelm with the outcome and enjoying throughout the progress that we develop from scratch piece by piece to the end result, the joy of involving in every single details, putting in ideas and effort are really satisfying… :)

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Dream home in affordable price? It is possible....

My fiancé and I brought a double storey house in year 2006 and was completed on Sept 07. Both of us are so excited after we brought the house and always looking forward for the house completion. Almost every weekend, we will be there to see the progress of the development; Visit show houses around in different area; Visit all home expo; book that we will read when we step into bookstore are "Home decor magazines!"; Topics that we talk about was always about house, house, house…. Hahaha, think we are over too excited about owning our first house…

When I share with friends and relatives about the house we brought and things we plan to do, pool of ideas will start inputting from fellow friends and relatives that you should do like this, you shouldn’t do like that… Well, its good to have lots of ideas as a reference and good advice to avoid making the same mistakes as them again, but I think when comes to sharing it is more appropriate to use the word “you may or you could” that will be sounds more appropriate than “you should” because it sounds like an order or spell like it’s a fact which indeed it's not ;P

And when I told them of my plan and budget, they seems given me a common response that is “nuh, you need lots of money to do that” or “its impossible” or “you can if you are lucky enough” or “you need a lots of effort and long time to achieve that”… They may not have intention to stop my plan or idea but this was really their perceptions which think “it is impossible to have a designer home with limited budget”

Well of course to this advice, I absolutely cannot accept because my thinking was “Everything is possible, things are impossible because you do not choose to believe the other side”. So, without trying to argue, I decided to start action to prove them wrong. And guess what the result is? I better not to tell you the result now of whether I am succeeded or not. ;P Perhaps you can guess how much do I spent on décor itself first and you judge whether is reasonable price or affordable to implement the same to yourself or not. See the pics and make a wild guess and stay tuned for the answer in next post! ^_<