Chill Out Sessions of The Urban Grooves Girls -13 Jun 2010

The Urban Grooves teacher planned a chillout session for her students and manage to get hold of THE MANSION. Enough to accommodate more than 10 girls inside. I was not there, but feels like the girls are reluctant to leave at the end of the day. From what I heard, they had great time in the house, which is great new as this is one of the purpose of THE MANSION.

THE 'AFTER' TO THE "BEFORE' OF THE MANSION

It is actually just an extended double storey house that has been abandoned for quite some time. Used to be owned by HVD (those days), it was used as a staff accomodation house with surprisingly 11 rooms and 9 toilets! But why nobody bought it? Renovation cost will be extremely high to create it back into a suitable home. Its a great place, worth as a commercial centre, but of course, that will need licencing to operate businesses in a house.

Why we purchased the house? We used to operate from a 2nd floor office nearby (which belong to us also) but it was a hassle moving about with all the heavy equipments and stocks. Cost is high but not fully utilized. Plus, we personally like the idea of working from home. After a couple of months searching for the right house that fits work and home space together, this house happen to be the most suitable.

Puchased on July 2008, we only started renovation at Feb 2009 and took one-painstaking-year to recreate the entire house. The renovation of the house works with few principles in mind:

• To create and renovate with both practical and artistic value together BUT with minimal budget to work on. (Although the final cost is more than 80% of the available budget, the estimated cost of hiring a contractor is 200% more than the actual renovation cost now. The contractor? WILLIAM LIM.)
  
  
• To create a working space that is comfortable, fun-filled, easily moved and tranformed and yet is still a great place for home. We want the house the be extremely flexible to change anytime we want.


• To build a house as a centre of business activity, not just purely photographic studio but also a place to allow diversification of our business in the future.


• Most important of all- to show the transformation of 'after' to 'before', which is our core value of business. Everything is possible! Difficult but it's possible. With no experience in house renovation at all, we have actually transformed the entire house. Who says photographer can't build a house?
  

90% completed on April 2010, we still have a long way to go to create it a perfect office space - THE MANSION.

PROJECT: THE MANSION

AfterBefore believes in the magic of transformation, notonly through the work of art but in every aspect of life. We seek fulfillment in transformation, to constantly improving ourselves and to prove our ability in creating new interest and ideas.

Photographic work has always been the core service of AfterBefore and at the end of the day, a picture is only a pcture if it doesn't create values or impact to poeple's life. Our success ideology is very simple. We don't just stop in creating great images for our clients, but we strive to provide solutions that are more than just photography. Our ultimate 'picture' is to help sustain and build businesses and poeple.

Started simple as just 'click and snap' 4 years ago, we have come a long way and now we are creating a new project called THE MANSION.