Inside A 1930s Walk-Up Apartment In The Middle Of Nature | Singapore

Hi, I'm Michael. Come on in, I'd be happy to show you around. My wife Mabel and I live on the top floor of a three-story walk-up built in the 1930s. We love being surrounded by nature and we appreciate older buildings and styles. Moving here one year ago has allowed us to match our living environment with our lifestyle. The location is very campon, a row of small apartment blocks and duplex houses built before the war. The residents here love it. Some have been here for 20 years or more. The apartment is a two-bedroom, two-bathroom unit of about 1,340 square feet. It has big storage closets and a full-sized pantry. High ceilings and the large windows and balcony really open up the space and make it seem even bigger than it is. We've put a great deal of effort into setting up our flat. I've never spent this much time or energy on a rental unit, but it's been a pleasure because we both enjoy the work and have very similar eyes for design and how we want to use the space. Mabel coined the phrase mid-century campon to describe our aesthetic. It was intended as a joke, but as we collected items and put the apartment together, the phrase did define the look and feel of our apartment. In terms of how we use the space, lounging around is very important to us, so we've included multiple areas where we can relax. In the main living room, but also on the balcony and in the main bedroom. To be honest, it's the cats that use these lounging areas most often and most effectively. The living and dining areas are in one large main room. We like the social aspect of combining these spaces. In the living room area, there's no TV. This is intentional as we wanted a living space for conversation, free from distractions. Instead, we have a big mirror that brings in more light and opens the space up further. As this is a rental unit, we couldn't change much with the overall design. We focused on collecting furniture pieces that reflect our style and how we want to use the space. I'm a treasure hunt junkie, so almost everything in the apartment is vintage or secondhand, which means carousel is my best friend. We have two old acorns chairs that we had reupholstered to bring them back to life. We love to lounge around on them and the cats do as well. The cats and I definitely have a little bit of a disagreement about claws on sofas and chairs, but we're happy to see them enjoying the space. The coffee table is built from a set of legs that I found on Carousel, which I refinished and joined together with the help of one of our woodworking neighbors. The glass top was another secondhand find. Among the only new items of furniture in the house are three very cool stools that we sourced from Bali. We use them as flexible seating and as small tables, and we think they're amazing. Artwork is very important to us. We love to travel, and visiting the art galleries of cities around the world is one of our true passions. We've brought home art from these travels and from our efforts to envision or reflect on our life stories. This painting from Myanmar was a gift for Mabel in the months after the military coup there, reflecting the difficult reality that we might not visit the tea stalls of Miangon for many years to come. The balcony is where we really fell in love with this apartment. We're right at the tree line, so it feels more like we're in a forest than in central Singapore. We enjoy our morning coffee from this spot every day, and we have the squirrels and the birds and the lizards that keep us entertained. It's a really lovely way to start the day. The balcony is a great place to host parties, and we often start an evening here before heading inside. We also made the somewhat unusual decision to carpet the balcony, which makes it a really warm and inviting space. As you can see, the cats certainly enjoy to lounge out here as well. Our dining area sits in between the living room and the kitchen to maintain conversation or a sense of togetherness throughout the home. We've taken inspiration from mid-century classics, but only to find a look that merges well with the building and the kampong feel around us. I would say that the true mid-century furniture icons would definitely look a little too atas or precious in our apartment, so we've kept things a little bit more rustic, like blending a thick mango wood dining table with kopitiam chairs. The walls were all white when we moved in, which made it seem a little bit like a cave, so we painted the top part a dark taupe to bring the ceiling down a little bit and make it a little bit more intimate. And then, just for fun, we painted one wall kind of a bright red to just make it a little bit more interesting and intimate and to match some of the artwork pieces that we had. And then, just by chance, there was an old film poster that I liked that matched it as well. We actually use that space sort of interchangeably. Sometimes we have a poster of New York that we hang there and we'll probably add more film posters in the future. The kitchen is notable mainly for its size. We enjoy cooking together and we have a lot of room here to move around without bumping into each other. A mud hornet is currently nesting on one of our power cables, which is definitely something you might not have in a modern condo kitchen. There's a long hallway that connects to the bedrooms and bathrooms. We won't show all the rooms to maintain a little privacy. We've hung some art in the hallway. Most of our art is collected from travel. These are pieces from Japan from an artist that focuses on cats named Yuko Higuchi, which we really like. The hallway is a little dark, but the doors have frosted glass that help bring in a little bit of light to keep it warm and livable still. The master bedroom is probably the nicest room in the house. We have windows on three sides, all facing the trees, which is really nice. And with the double doors of the balcony open, we can sleep with the sound of the forest coming right into the room. And it's very cooling. We can sleep most nights without air conditioning. The bedroom is even big enough that I can put my home office here in the room and then have a nice view of the trees as I'm working. I think you've reached a sort of residential nirvana when you feel blessed by your living space every single day. When we enjoy our morning coffee on the balcony, we have a great sense of calm and peace, and this feeling persists throughout the day, making the rigors of nine-to-five working life much more bearable. We're not certain how much longer we'll be able to live in our mid-century kampong home. We understand the pressures for more high-density housing in Singapore, but would like to see some of these old residential buildings preserved. Above all, we hope the forest remains standing. As for us, we moved in knowing it would be a temporary resting stop, a kind of a forest staycation, after which we'll purchase or rent a normal apartment. It will have been worth it. Setting up this home has been our first big adventure together, and one that has brought us immense joy and satisfaction, and the cats love it here.