Porch cum Patio Makeover

We are finally giving our porch / patio a makeover it desperately needs. The space has been untouched since we bought the house. We should have done it earlier when we renovated the house. But we thought we could saved money by doing something with it with my magic wand. Well, the wand didn't work.

This is how the space looks like... well now with a huge pile of red earth on the driveway.  

    

Being an intermediate house, we don't have much planting space. Unlike our previous house which was really a LUXURY with its big garden. This space is really multi-purpose. What I hate the most is there is no division between car porch and the 'garden' (or tanah sekangkang kera).  Car, laundry line, shoes, water filter, cat toilet, etc. all dumped in one place. 

So, it is quite a challenge to design the tiny space which can meet all our (crazy) expectations. My hub designed the space. Mr Yap is the contractor. And me is the client (really). 

This is our design board. 

There will be a pond (filled with blackish stones at the bottom and fat gold fishes) with a fountain. The floor will use black tiles (Niro Granite) for the porch area and darkish wood-grained tiles (Niro Granite) with greyish pebble wash stones as the borders. We are thinking to erect a screen to divide the car porch from the 'garden' area, probably square boxes and painted in black or white. The screen will be planted with ivy. We hope to squeeze in a small, slow-growing tree in the lawn, possibly a guava tree. I love the color and texture of guava tree branches. We are going to put a bench (free from my mom-in-law's house) at the end of the garden. I am also going to revamp my old antique chairs, sew new cushion covers, and fill the chairs up with lots of colorful, fluffy pillows. We wanted to change our sliding door to french door but unfortunately  we don't have the budget for it. That would easily cost us another 8 thousands, I think. As it is, the bill is already piling. And Mr Yap has not yet provided us with the quotation. The most expensive stuff we have bought so far is the tiles for the car porch - they cost us RM1500! But the tiles are really nice and they've got tiny, subtle sparkly bits....  Bloody hell, they will be hidden under the car anyway... 

I am quite worried about how the transformation will turn out because I can't imagine it yet. The renovation is expensive and the scariest part is that all the fixtures are permanent. It is not easy to undo if I don't like it.  Especially the pond. What am I going to do with a huge, 2-foot deep hole in my patio? Turning it into a trench, so that my kids can play soldiers?

Wish me luck!