Amongst the things that I love at the farm is the bounty of nature’s beauty. I also love a lot of light – I think it is a shame when during the day, you would have to turn on the light indoors. At the same time, since it is at the farm, the house needs to be built functionally, allowing me to carry out my farm activities with ease without having to worry about spending a lot of time organizing and cleaning the house. I want to be able to spend the majority of my time on farm activities and not housekeeping chores.
To start with, I made the decision to use tiles for the floor and for the walls as this will make it easy for me to clean. Here I exercise my uncommon style – I use many different types of tiles and colors to delineate the different areas. I also use the tiles to create a frame for my treasured pieces such as in my surau. The tiles are used to frame the two beautiful, Belgian wall hangings that are of great meaning to me – the Al-Fatihah and Ayat Kursi.
I also like lots of fresh air and prefer natural cooling to air-conditioners. As such, the external walls are topped with lattice to allow for air to circulate with fresh air coming in constantly from the outside, even with all the doors closed.
In my bedroom, to allow for lots of natural light, I have a door leading to the outdoors, that when completed will have 14 glass panes and two panes will be a swinging “cat’s door” to enable my cats to go in and out at will. The door size is also larger than the standard size at 42in. by 72 in.
On the roof, are skylights and there is a lot of glass tiles on the exterior wall, to further allow light in. As a result, I do not have to turn on the lights from around 0630 until 1900, contributing to less electricity consumption and being earth-friendly. I opt to use glass tiles because I didn’t want to be bothered with having to install curtains – this way, light comes in but you cannot see inside, only able to see fuzzy shapes. My bedroom is divided into 4 areas, the solat area, sleeping area, storage area and bathroom. It has an open concept and I use entryways to define the areas.

I have still got quite a lot of work ahead but I am having fun in this adventure. I can’t wait to have it completed because it is a distraction from my main activity, farming.