A Hong Kong flat gets a French farmhouse makeover, courtesy of Taobao
Mandy Lee, of the food blog Lady and Pups, and husband Jason Tsang, transformed their Happy Valley walk-up with a lot of imagination, hard work and a tight budget
“I wanted to fool myself that I was living in France. I once went on a road trip around Burgundy and stayed in a chateau and have never felt so peaceful,” says Lee, the brains behind food blog Lady and Pups.
This was the second time the couple had redone their flat, which they bought in 2000. Three months after finishing the first makeover, in the style of an industrial New York loft, Lee and Tsang, who works in finance, relocated to Beijing. When they returned to Hong Kong six years later, their lifestyle and mindset had evolved.
“We’d adopted two big dogs and needed more open space,” recalls Lee, who was born in Taiwan, raised in Canada and spent time in New York before moving back to Asia 20 years ago. “Our apartment originally had three bedrooms and we initially thought that if we ever wanted to sell it, it would be best to keep them but it was such a waste. Two of the bedrooms just became somewhere to store stuff we never touched so we went for a purely selfish design this time, with only one bedroom.”
On a budget, Lee and Tsang, who was born in Hong Kong and raised in Taiwan, decided to do most of the renovating themselves, with intervention by a contractor kept to a minimum. Lee was inspired by Instagram pictures by the Jersey Ice Cream Co, an interior design studio that has nothing to do with frozen desserts. It also helped that she had studied architecture and design – although she has never practised – and had a steadfast sense of what she wanted to accomplish.