By persevering with a tricky DIY renovation project, a couple saw their creativity reach new heights.
Hiring an interior designer may be the solution for those wanting their homes to look just so. Professionals can relieve you of the sometimes troublesome tasks of sourcing a sofa or finding the right angle for spotlights. Gary Tam and wife Rebecca Tsui, however, preferred to undertake the work themselves.
'We think it's a waste of money to hire a designer,' says Tsui, a mother of two and a part-time Putonghua tutor. 'Other people may not get exactly what we want. And we've seen too many show flats that have more or less the same style. We don't want to fork out a large amount of money in return for a generic show flat.'
Such staunch opposition to outside help meant the pair had to be their own designers when they renovated their Kowloon Tong home two years ago. The task, they say, was testing but rewarding.
The overhaul was aimed at creating a room for the couple's four-year-old daughter, Chloe, without making the 1,300 sq ft flat look much smaller. This proved a challenging undertaking because Tam and Tsui are self-confessed hoarders who own, among other things, a colossal collection of books. And they wanted to part with none of them. As the complexity of the project gradually emerged, they began to believe moving to a bigger flat would be a better option. So they went flat hunting - which proved even more daunting.
'We searched for almost a year but couldn't find anything we liked more than our own flat,' Tsui says. The crux of the problem was that the couple had been spoiled by the 3.5-metre-high ceilings of their apartment, which is in an old Chinese building. 'In Hong Kong today, it's very hard to find a flat with such a high ceiling. We really love it,' Tsui says. 'We also had problems finding a flat as airy as this one. In summer, we don't need to have the air-conditioner on all the time because it's so breezy.'