Fengshui Master

5 Apr 2014 Sat
Oh yes, we believe in Fengshui audit. My family has moved house 4 times, with this being our 5th house. We really see and feel the difference in a fengshui-ed and not fengshui-ed house. The first 3 houses were not fengshui-ed and funny things went on. I'm glad that they decided to see fengshui for the 4th and 5th house and we are now having smoother paths and happier times together.

Chen Jun Rong did our 4th house. (the 5th one was done by my friend's brother). All of us loved the house that he audited very much and stayed there for about 11 years. He is a very popular fengshui master and is considered a 'premium' in the fengshui industry. Others usually charge $600-$800 for a 5-room flat but he charges $3000+! Because of the cost, we didn't engage him for our BTO.

In search of a good FS master, I went to renotalk. There is a widely discussed master called Zhang Tian from http://www.fengshuiyinyang.com/. Most of the forumers recommend him for his reasonable price, the change they observe after FS, and that he does not ask you to buy things from him for better FS. However, they do say that some of the suggestions made by him would result in an awkward layout or additional cost to renovate the house. His favourite remedy is to ask people to tilt the main door to a certain angle, putting salt bowls at corners of the room, not use some of the toilets in the house, relocate the kitchen sink or stove and putting plants at some place. Encouraged by the good reviews online, I decided to contact him for a quote. You can search for 'Master Chang' at renotalk and you can see a thread about him all the way back to I think 2008.

He charges $683 for a 5-room FS audit. It includes a 2-3 hour FS audit, choosing of open door date, dong tu date and move in date. As what forumers say, he only replies to your email but never picks up your call. His style is a chop chop kind. During the 2-3 hour, he first started asking us if we had anything to ask him. After that, he took out his ba gua plate and started walking around the house. He told us that he needed 1 hour and we could go out for a walk if we want. We did and when we were back 30 min later, we saw him drawing on our floor plan. He is not like others who would go back to the office and produce a nicely typed report for you 2 weeks later. He just draws on the floorplan, write down the essential things and pass it to you at the end of the appointment. Things that he pointed out to us include the dining and living room arrangement, sink and stove arrangement, bedroom arrangement, study room arrangement, various rooms and living area colours to use, colours to avoid and aircon position. However, the thing about him is that he doesn't really explain why some things should be done the recommended way. His general answer is that 'it is good for you'. I guess it is because you cant really reveal these secrets.

At the end of the audit, we were quite headach-fied because there were a few things which he suggested which we did not really like:

1. Put 4 plants in front of our main door (it would be quite an obstruction as you need to detour to the main door. note that it is not placement along the corridor, it is in front of the main door.)

2. Install a light in between the metal gate and main door and on it 24 hour (we have not really seen anything like that before?!)

3. Build a partition wall at the main door so that the main door would not directly face the living room's window (oh man, we wanted our living room to be as spacious as possible)

4. Relocate the sink and stove to be 1.5-2 ft apart on the opposite side of the kitchen (we wanted only 1 row of cabinet, but this arrangement requires 2 rows of cabinet which is extra cost and reduced kitchen space)

5. Paint one wall in the master bedroom red (red?! our design was a neutral tone and it was more soothing that way)

6. Put 8 plants along the windows at the living room, if not at least 3 (so many plants? I'm not a plant person.)

So, we thought about it, discussed quite a bit, grumbled quite a bit before we went back to our ID again to change his design. He originally already did up a design for us and we loved it lots. But no, re-work was needed. After much consideration, we decided to go with most of Master Chang's recommendations. Our revised ID design is in the next post.