Bradley S. Brennan

This blog post will document our remodeling journey for our Haustory property in Cheongna International City, in S. Korea. We purchased this tenant-occupied SE-facing apartment on the 10th floor in 2017 but are now renovating it from December 26th, 2022, when our tenants moved out. We plan to move into the finished apartment on January 20th, 2023, after the total remodel is completed.

Cheongna is a new city, and our Haustory APT finished building in 2009 (like most of the city) faces the central canal (see the image below-our unit is circled in red).

Cheongna is a beautiful city and a great place to live for families. It has a lake park, a canal system, and wide sidewalks like back home.

It is only four subway stops to Incheon airport and about twelve stops to Seoul station (central Seoul), which only takes 36 minutes and costs about $1.50.

Cheongna has a massive central Lake Park that hosts the Cheongna International Wine Festival and many concerts in the park. Cheongna is also a part of the Incheon IFEZ special international economic zone for foreign investment.

We decided to use an interior designer Yumi found in the Cheongna Mom's cafe from a few posts about APT renovations. The photos were commented on over 500+ times by moms who liked the design of the remodeled APT, so Yumi could message the owner, and they let her know who the designer was. Coincidentally, the design studio is located ten feet from my parents-in-law's house in Bucheon (about 25 minutes from Cheongna by car). We had already visited 3-4 large renovation companies (Liveart, Hansem, etc.), so after speaking with our designers in our introductory meeting, we were pretty set on using them.

Haustory Unit 355-1001 (355 is the Dong, 1001 is floor '10' and the unit number "1".

Here is a floor plan to see what the APT looks like.

The unit has four bedrooms, two bathrooms, and is 46 pyung (1,637 square feet). Our unit originally had six terraces, but five were built to add to the living space. The one remaining terrace (veranda) is where the AV main unit and the W/D room will be located. The master bedroom has a large walk-in closet and a master bathroom. The end bedroom also has built-in closets.

12.26.22

Our tenants were almost moved out by 1 PM when we visited our unit. I took a few videos to document the state of the APT, and I did a walk-through while I filmed. This is the entrance into the foyer.

The next video is walking through the 2nd and 3rd bedrooms that face East. One of the rooms has a glass wall, which will be Yumi's office. There is a reading nook, then the 3rd bedroom, which will be Jae's room.

The next video will be Jae's room.

The next video is the shared bathroom off the main hallway.

The next video is the master bedroom, walk-in closet, and master bathroom.

The last video is the kitchen, living room, and veranda.

12.20.22

We had a long meeting with our designers and went over different design themes, and reviewed many of their previous projects to get an idea of what we liked. After discussing, the designers sent us a rendering of their proposed theme for our unit based on what we said we liked. These were the 1st renderings. These were based on porcelain tile floors, wallpaper, with clean and modern lines.

After some feedback from us, I asked to see what it would look like with oak floors.

Yumi decided on the tile floors after discussions with other moms. We also asked to move the oven and hood to behind the wall in the kitchen and also move the sink over. We asked the living room to change shelves in the built-in wall to be changed into an art space with lighting.

12.26.22 Tile Store in Bucheon

We met the designer and his assistant at a 6-story tile shop to choose the times for the floors and bathrooms. The bedrooms will have hardwood-style laminate flooring.

We went with a warm beige (Lily-bottom tile) tile for the floors in the living areas and the shared bathroom. This tile will be used in the hallway, shared bathroom, kitchen, and living room.

We chose the grey foyer tile (62052 "Soo" on the right) that will match but contrasts with the Lilly (on the left) warm beige tile.

Master Bathroom tile (VG TR6002) because of the look and because the tile absorbs the light instead of shining off of it.

Here, the light seems to be absorbed into the tile (VG TR6002). The grout will be a dark grey color.

Bathroom Fixtures

We will go with the same toilets in both bathrooms but different levels of sinks, faucets, and fixtures. The master bathroom will be higher-end, and the faucets will come out of the wall instead of the sink.

12.27.22 Demo Continued

The designer and his assistant showed us a few demo pictures when we chose tiles. They were almost finished demoing the kitchen just a few hours after our tenants had moved out at 1 PM.

Master Bathroom

Living room entrance to the master bedroom

Kitchen

Living room

Main bathroom

Nook room

Hallway

1st Bedroom (Bradley's Office)

12.28.22 Demo Update

The floors are now gone, and both bathrooms have been gutted. Next, they will demo the ceilings. After the ceilings are demoed, they will work with the airconditioning company (Samsung or LG-not decided yet) to install five ceiling air conditioning units (4 bedrooms and one between the kitchen and living room). There is a big price difference in buying 6 instead of 5 AC units. All of them will be central air, with the large air conditioning unit in a particular room at the end of the veranda.

The doors have been demoed, and they will install new doors, plugs, switches, etc.

12.28.22 Bathroom Renderings

Main Bathroom

Master Bathroom

We showed a sample photo from another bathroom designer (Remian), and the designer updated our renderings to include similar glass doors.

This bathroom has glass doors with a handle, so the designer modified their rendering and added glass doors to their design.

Main Bathroom (updated rendering)

Master Bathroom (updated rendering)

We asked to see the master bathroom with a different bowl sink like one of their previous jobs we saw from their examples. This is the same warm beige tile we will use in our living areas and our main shared bathroom.

They sent this update to review.

12.28.22 Demo Continued

All the floors and the kitchen and bathrooms are now out. The next step is to install the 5 ceiling AC units and then start tile work.

Master bedroom walk-in closet

Master bedroom

Hallway from kitchen

Living room

The Nook

Brad's Office

Yumi's Office

Jae's room

We asked to see the ceiling design since we asked to have a blowdryer/heater installed in the ceiling that blows down to help dry off quickly and heated bathroom floors.

12.29.22 Tile Work Starts

12.29.22 Continued (laying tile)

12.30.22

Met with the designer and his assistant at our unit. The floor tiles are almost done and work has started on both bathrooms.

Shared bathroom

They have built a participant wall for the shower booth.

Foyer

The designer suggested installing a large mirror in the closet so when you open the closet before you leave you can check yourself.

Master Bathroom

The designer suggested a sunk-in medicine cabinet, so they are building out the wall. They will also build a tile basin sink.

01.02.23

They are framing different areas (today), and they worked on the electrical over the weekend. The large window is being changed from a frame to a seamless look. The designer wants to add an accent wall with tile in the living room and use film on one wall instead of wallpaper since he thinks it will have a more dramatic look.

Brad's office and hallway

Yumi's office-creating a seamless look.

Jae's room

Front door/foyer

Master bedroom walk-in closet

Living room TV wall. They will build it to make the TV look like a picture frame by building the wall out and sinking the wall mount into the wall. We will purchase an 85' Samsung QLED 4k TV. They will also make a space for the soundbar (1200cm).

The old intercom system has to stay...:(

TV wall and intercom system

Glasswall-seamless

01.03.23

The designer asked us to pick the accent walls in the bathrooms, and he suggested two samples (see below).

Top right corner (Black Sand)

Here is the "Black sand" sample (Highlighted in red)

The 2nd sample he suggested was (Sophia)

Here is the "Sophia" sample (outlined in red)

01.03.23 Day two of carpentry

Today they worked on the ceiling and walls.

Master bedroom

Living room

Living Room

Hallway

Nook

Foyer

Hallway

01.04.23 Day Three of Carpentry

Master Bathroom-Creating sunk-in walls for the medicine cabnets.

Master bathroom- wall tiles

Living room and kitchen-installing AC

Built-in for sunk-in TV and soundbar

Living room

Hallway

Nook

The hallway

Shared Bathroom

01.04.23

We met with our design team to finalize the kitchen colors/patterns/countertops (quartz), etc. We also decided on the wallpaper, film, and final bathroom designs. I will add more info about this. We were delighted with our chosen theme and the suggested textures, colors, and materials.

01.05.23

Shared bathroom-tile work continued.

Nook

Foyer

Kitchen/living room- Tile walls

Master bathroom.

Hallway

Master bathroom

Master Bedroom Doorjam

Hallway to Brad's office

Foyer

Hallway

01.06.23

We met the project manager for our remodeling at our unit at 10 AM today. We went over the current updates, and we went over the bathrooms, and to finalize the kitchen and foyer areas for where appliances will go, shelves, etc.

The contractor sketched out for us the foyer area and showed us where shelves, shoes, coats, etc, would go. They asked for our input on how to configure the shelving areas.

A tile worker finishing up the floor tiles in the foyer with a laser level.

They finished the ceiling carpentry with the AC installer. The AC installer from Samsung will install the main compressor and the 5 AC ceiling mounted units in the next few days.

The project manager (left) and the main contractor discussing the placement of things.

Yumi discussed the kitchen back wall placement (with 1+1+1 refrigerators), hidden microwave, and Dyson wall-mounted vacuum placement.

Discussing stove, induction range top, DW, sink, stove hood, rice cooker, and counter space.

The shared bathroom tile is almost finished.They are finished with the shower stall

Yumi's office. The AC electrical is finished.

Brad's Office AC/electrical is finished.

They have finished carpentry work on the large window in Yumi's office/Jae's study area.

They have almost finished the large tile on the dining area and kitchen walls. They also finished the veranda tile work, but they still have to do the washing area tile and built-in shelving for the new W/D.

The channels are for the track-lighting that will go down the hallway, kitchen, and living room. All of the wiring for the lighting was completed last weekend.

The TV wall carpentry is finished. They created two accent areas with lighting as well as the area for the wall-mount for the TV and a 1200cm space for the soundbar.

The walls are finished, and now they are just finishing the seams. You can see on the ceiling the track-lighting channels and also three spot-light built-in lighting.

The living room.

The kitchen, dining area wall tile

The arch doorframe carpentry is finished.

The Master Bathroom- The project manager explained that the two sunk-in mirror areas are too big to have one piece of glass to lift up, so they suggest a 2 or 3-compartment medicine cabinet.

The Master Bedroom AC has to be positioned above where the bed will go because there are three sprinklers built into the ceiling that we have to avoid.

The AC electrical is finished and ready to be installed.

The dining room tile wall will go to the door frame later.

Discussing the kitchen and the island.

The TV and soundbar wall is finished but needs to be detailed and then wallpapered.

01.07.23

A lot of work was done today, on a Saturday. I'm impressed. Some walls have wallpaper and others have a film on them.

You can see the sliding door in the back. It was brown before. They cut the cocking out, then did a white film over the brown to make them look new.

The kitchen window was also brown before, and now it is white. They have finished the whole large wall tile too. The pipes against the wall are the ondol heated water floor controls. That is where the convection stove top will be with a hood.

You can see the new concrete-style wallpaper on the wall to the left, and they also put a white film on the inside of the old grey front door. They have also finished the carpentry work around the doors. They also finished the foyer tile work.

They finished the large wall window carpentry work and the tile floors up to the rooms. We will have wood floors for the four bedrooms. We chose Oxford Cream wood floors.

The ceiling work (carpentry) is finished, and now they are finalizing and finishing the work before they add the wallpaper.

Transitions on the wallpaper.

Hallway wallpaper and the finished shared bathroom tilework.

The master bathroom tilework is almost finished. We have a custom-built cabinet made with a custom-made tile sink that they will install this week.

The master bathroom shower stall tile work is almost finished. They made built-in shelf for shampoo, soaps, etc.

We will have a double vanity sunk-in medicine cabinet.

They have finished the arch doorway to the walk-in closet. They will re-do the walk-in closet with film and new hardware for the fixtures.

They are prepping the master bedroom walls for wallpaper

The master bedroom wall are being prepped for wallpaper.

We decided to use a concrete-looking film for one of the accent walls. It is well-textured and has a very modern feel to it.

The living room wall has a concrete-looking film (wallpaper) on it.

01.08.23

I visited our unit to see the above wallpaper, which looks good. Two different teams were working. One team was a four-person wallpaper team, and they were lining the ceilings. The other two-person team was a film team, putting film onto the walk-in closet doors. They were working on Sunday, so I bought them all Americanos.

The wallpaper crew putting wallpaper on the ceiling in my office.

Yumi's office

The TV wall

The living room

They finished the tile in the washroom. This room will be the hardest to make look nice since the huge ceiling compressor can't be moved since it is a part of the fire protection system.

The walk-in closet area is being updated using film on top of the doors, cabinets, etc.

The walk-in closet doors have a lot of space for clothes.

01.09.23

The cabinet builder sent us renderings of the kitchen today. The oven and the dishwasher are generic in the rendering, but they will be Samsung Bespoke, but we haven't chosen the colors yet. The dimensions, design, and color scheme are to scale and correct.

We chose Luna Grey (instead of Luna White) for the Quartz countertops. We will also get a second water faucet that will be a water filter (not pictured), but it will be placed under the sink and out of sight.

We haven't chosen the Samsung Bespoke colors yet, but we are leaning toward Glam White (all three) or Glam NavyBlue, instead of the Satin color, a matt color that makes the refrigerators look like shelves and are non-reflective. Our refrigerators (two) and the freezer (one) will not have handles.

We decided to have the two cabinets to the right of the freezer with windows highlighting wine glasses, etc. The cabinet on the far left will have our Dyson vacuum installed. Now we just need to buy nice glasses, etc...:)

01.10.23

There is only a week until they finish on the 17th, with the 18th as the cleaning day and our move-in day on the 19th. We will also have the appliances start being delivered from the 19th.

Today we were asked to choose the bathroom, the walk-in closet fixtures, and the door handles.

Door Handles-we went with the 2nd option below (711NI).

The next two were suggested to us because of the wall and the size, so we just accepted their suggestions. The larger toilet paper dispenser is for the master bathroom, and the seller one is for the shared bathroom.

The next options were the shower fixtures. We went with options 2, 4, and 5.

Option 1

Option 2

Option 3

Option 4

Option 5

The next decisions were about the bathroom wall hooks for towels. We chose option 2.

Option 1

Option 2

The next options were the towel hangers. We chose option 2.

Option 1

The next options were the sink faucets. We chose option 1 for the shared bathroom and option 2 for the master bathroom. The master bathroom faucet is wall mounted, and the shared bathroom is sink mounted.

Option 1

01.11.23-11.13.23

A lot was done during this time, but we could only visit a few times. Most of the kitchen and foyer cabinets were laid on 01.12.23

The kitchen cabinets are Satin Grey, but they are not visible with the protective film in the photos. They also have to add the end piece on the island, which is 700 cm long.

The foyer cabinets are Fogel Grey (check). You can see that they are installing two "spotlights" in the ceiling and also soft lighting under the back hanging cabinets.

01.14.23

A lot of the lighting was installed today! The electrician is installing one of the spotlights.

The lighting looks great!

The spotlight lighting looks great!

The new Foge Grey doors were all installed.

Installing the spotlights in the foyer.

The Designer's signature artwork for our place. They will also make one for our wall to highlight. We can see a signature artwork in all of the examples that they have shown us of their past projects.

They finished the film on the doors of my office's built-in closet and all of the windows.

They installed the hood above where the induction range will go. You can also see the opening for where the oven will go (Samsung 50L Bespoke oven).

They will add a 700 cm section to the current island. The quartz countertops will arrive in three sections and will be laid on Thursday.

The shared bathroom had the toilet, sink, and shower installed. Waiting to install the shower door and the medicine cabinet.

The ceiling lighting was installed as well as a heat lamp/hairdryer.

The shower fixtures were installed. The medicine cabinet is waiting to be installed.

The lighting looks good.

The cabinets are satin grey.

They finished the tile in the AC main unit room.

The kitchen cabinets look good and we like the color.

One of the electricians is installing the ceiling lighting.

The film has been added to all of the doors and cabinets. This made

Discussing the sink and countertop in the master bathroom.

We will have custom cabinets installed in the master bathroom. they will be 30 cm.

The master bathroom toilet.

The master bathroom will have two medicine cabinets.

The kitchen lighting has been installed, and so has the accent glass lighting.

The accent glass cabinet doors and lighting.

01.15.23

The accent artwork and lighting in the livingroom wall is finished.

01.14.23 Continued

We first went to HiMart (similar to Best Buy in the USA) to check products and prices for the appliances and for the TV. We then checked prices online, which were similar to or a bit cheaper than HiMart. We then went to Hyundai Department Store in Bucheon. The sales rep at the Hyundai department store showed us the difference in the internal electronic components in the TV. There were three skew codes, with the lowest model being the online/HiMart models. There were two higher levels for each of the TV categories, which were the department store quality. The processors are different, with the lowest being a Neural Quantum Processor "lite" version, the middle being the normal processor, and the highest-level model.

After getting quotes for all of the items, we decided to try The Hyundai in Yeoido. We got a better deal here and bought items here. We choose the Samsung QNB95 4k model instead of the HiMart version (QNB85) 85" Neo QELD with the Samsung AI Neural Quantum Processor 4K because when watching the two models next to each other, you can see the difference, especially in low light, definition, color brightness, and crispness.

We decided on the Samsung AC ceiling units (5-four bedrooms and the living room) and the Samsung Bespoke kitchen appliances. We chose the 1+1+1 refrigerator (refrigerator, freezer, and refrigerator-Kota Charcoal), 50L oven (white), induction (grey-infinity line), and dishwasher (Kota Charcoal). We also decided to buy the Samsung stackable front-loading W/D (green). The washer is 25L, and the dryer is 20L. Below, you can see the two colors we were considering. The top one is shimmer charcoal (glass finish) and the bottom one is what we chose (Kota Charcoal).

Since we made one big purchase, the Hyundai Department store sales rep gave us two gifts for buying the TV. The first is a large rice cooker (we didn't have one, so this is great).

The second gift was a Samsung projector, which is excellent for projecting movies or lights on walls or ceilings.

01.15.23

The designer made a signature art piece for display on our wall.

01.16.23

Mr. Park, the Project Manager, only sent us one photo today. They finished installing the wood floors in the four bedrooms.

01.17.23

Today they finished the bathrooms, except for installing the glass shower doors.

They also finished installing the quartz countertop. They will finish minor things tomorrow morning, like installing the glass shower doors and the film on the front of the kitchen island. Tomorrow morning the cleaning team will come in for five to six hours for industrial cleaning.

01.18.23

We visited our unit today, but a few things are still left to finish. We had to push back the cleaning to tomorrow (the 19th). They finished installing the wood floors but still need to add silicon to the floor edges. The floors look great but dirty.

Brad's Office

Master Bedroom

The Nook

Yumi's Office

The Shared Bathroom-the glass shower doors will be installed tomorrow.

The Master Bathroom

Above Yumi's head is the ceiling heater-blowdryer.

Half of the appliances and the TV w/surround system will be installed on 01.20.23. On the 25th, the two refrigerators, one freezer, and the stackable W/D. We will move in on 01.25.23, but we leave the next day for vacation on Boracay. The next update will be after everything is installed and cleaned.

01.19.23

We visited the unit a few times today to inspect the cleaner's work and see the minor work completed yesterday. The project manager changed one of the large old windows handles to a modern one, then showed us the difference. Of course, the new handles look much better, so we agreed to change them for an extra 1M KRW (about $900). It will be worth it to change the handles on the windows.

01.20.23

The induction range, 50L oven, dishwasher, and TV will be delivered by four separate delivery trucks tomorrow, so we have to run over to our place many times tomorrow. I'm most excited about the TV, sound bar/surround speakers/bass. The TV will be a focal point in the living room.

There was a miscalculation in the design because the hole for the bracket wall mount is about an inch too deep. The project manager said they would fix the issue, and then the Samsung servicemen could return to finish the installation. The installers put the TV on a stand for now.

The W/D was installed without issue.

The induction range is the Samsung Bespoke Infinity line and is charcoal grey.

The dishwasher is also Kota Charcoal grey, and our refrigerators.

This is the real color after peeling off the plastic.

The Kimchi refrigerator was installed today, but we must wait until the 25th to get the freezer and refrigerator.

Today they finished installing the shower door in the master bathroom. They also finished adding silicone to cover the gaps between the floors and the walls.

I brought over a few fragile items for the kitchen