Before decoration or... the first day of "construction" Apartment or houses in China are sold in many cases in a "cement box" status. Wall are rough, electric wires are brought just to the main switchboard box, water just to the main general valve and so on. The happy new owner than dispose and install the stuff in the fashion he likes. Which is a large task. Therefore buying a house is not like buying some appliance that works right out of the box. There's some assembly required. When we got the keys of the apartment we corraled some construction companies to bid for the decoration job. We visited a few, looked at their designs and ideas, visited apartments they have in the works or have finished decoration. Finally we narrowed to one, and together we worked out a plan of decoration. Here are some pictures of the apartment on the first day we took the decoration crew there. There were the Feng Shui ceremony of putting auspicious signs at the door, and on the correct day chosen by the Feng Shui the construction symbolically started. It means they hammer down a piece of one of the walls that was coming down to please the gods, or whoever had to be pleased on that particular day to make sure the construction would have good omen. Here are the pictures, click on them to see them enlarged. |
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 | Auspicious signs Those signs indicate a new work on a house and are here to make sure all goes all right in the works. |
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 | "The start of the "construction A piece of the wall is broken off to signal the start of the construction. Although it really started many days later. |
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 | The first day of "construction" is finished |
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 | Happy owner is jumping around the new apartment |
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 | This one day will be the living room |
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 | The dining room will be here |
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 | Going up the stairs to the second floor |
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 | Master bedroom toalet Walls need to be broken and modified to adapt to our plan |
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 | This will be the master bedroom |
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 | Going back downstairs |
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