Finally, after over a year of blood, sweat and tears, we have completed the construction of The Asia House and moved in!  We still don’t have a telephone, cable TV, or an internet connection (which doesn’t do much for this blog), but we’re happy anyway.

There have been a few mishaps in the past couple of weeks. The wires for the uplights in the staircase melted due to excessive heat and fused together. The drain in the guest room shower got clogged up. The pond filter overflows and needs redesigning. And I’m still not sure if the sump pump is working. But I guess these things happen; nothing we can’t fix, and overall we’re ok. Let me show you what the ground floor looks like at night, now that all the electrical wiring is in place:

The porch looks quite nice at night, with its uplights, wooden door, pond, and stone column. Inside the large window is the dining room, and at the end on the left-hand side you see the exterior light above the staircase leading down to the basement patio under the deck.

Here’s the dining room from the inside, looking towards the same window by the porch. The ten-seater dining table is made of a single slice of a tree. The large windows, the hardwood flooring and the raised ceiling enhance the "outdoorsy" feeling.

Beyond the dining room is the outdoor deck, with two sliding doors; one towards the dining room in the rear, and one towards the living room on the left. The deck will have a great view past the glass railing towards Laguna de Bay and Mount Makiling, as soon as we’ve gotten around to trimming the surrounding shrubs…

The living room is unfortunately still quite bare, and in need of some art. Speaking of "need", now that the house is finally finished, I need to get started on the real fun - the design and installation of the home control system!