Interior designer at 19Trees

A house in a row of houses grows upwards, not outwards. At 19Trees, SDB Properties built 222 terrace houses off Jalan Melawati 7, in Ulu Kelang. Both published plans stack three floors on a front of seven metres. So begin with where breakfast happens.

In a Type F, the ground floor is only the way in: the entrance, the stair and a utility room. Breakfast, homework and the evening news all happen one flight up, on a living floor some 15.4 metres deep. Sofa and table come first; the kitchen keeps to the back wall, with the helper's room and the yard beyond. A guest room keeps its bathroom alongside, and a 3.1-metre terrace gives the floor some sky. Upstairs, the stair opens into a family area, then three bedrooms, yours among them.

A Type C Garden turns that round, and the day stays at street level: living, dining and kitchen, a breakfast counter, and the terrace. The guest room and its bathroom are down here too, with the helper's room at the back. The middle floor holds the main bedroom, a second bedroom and a family area. The top floor is the quiet one, with two more bedrooms and a study area where the stair ends.

On a seven-metre front, every floor is long and narrow. Furniture runs along its length and leaves a clear way through, front to back. A long table usually sits better than a round one.

There are six more types, but their plans and blocks haven't been published. For those, your sale plan comes first, and the visit checks each point against it. One stair joins all three floors. Who climbs it, and how often, shapes everything after.

From SDB's leaflet plans and specification table.

Three floors and one stair decide most things in a 19Trees house, so placing everyone comes first. Who sleeps where now, and who may need the guest room later. Cupboards, lamps and the kitchen follow from there.

Perhaps a Type C Garden will hold a couple, two teenagers, and a grandmother downstairs in the guest room. Or a Type F, a young family still growing. SDB planned 19Trees as a home for several generations. Whether yours becomes one is for you to decide, and we draw to match.

If your mother or father moves in. Both plans set the guest room beside a bathroom: downstairs in a Type C Garden, and on the living floor in a Type F. In a Type C Garden, it's the one bedroom nobody climbs to, and it opens onto the terrace. It's drawn as a bedroom first, not a room kept for visitors. A bed facing the light, a wardrobe with nothing to stretch for, and a seat built into the shower next door.

If someone works or studies at home. In a Type C Garden, the study area sits by the stair, two floors above the living room: quiet enough for a call at ten, or revision at midnight. Open to the stair, it still catches some sound from below. A rug underfoot and a bookcase set as a screen soften it.

If the family area could be more than a landing. Both plans put one where the bedrooms meet the stair: the top floor in a Type F, the middle floor in a Type C Garden. It can be a snug, where a deep sofa faces a screen for Friday films. With a partition and a door, it can also close into a proper room, so long as light and fresh air can still get in. The study area can close the same way.

If a nursery comes first. In a Type F, two bedrooms share the top floor with yours. Plan them to change: a cot by the window now, a desk under it in five years, and a wardrobe whose shelves move as the clothes grow longer.

In both plans, SDB left the kitchen open to the table, with no wet kitchen drawn. It runs along the back of a Type F's living floor, and sits downstairs in a Type C Garden, beside a breakfast counter.

Open works well for tea and talk across the counter. It's harder on the nights the wok goes on: sambal spitting in the pan, and the smell settling into the sofa cushions.

So your cooking decides it. If you fry most days, there are three good answers. A glass screen on the dining side holds the smoke back, and keeps the cook in the conversation. A stronger hood draws the smoke off at the hob. Or turn a corner of the back yard into a wet kitchen, and keep the open one for the kettle and the toast.

In a Type C Garden, the breakfast counter takes the quick meals: kaya toast before school, noodles after a late meeting. The table keeps the long ones.

When there are two cooks, or a helper alongside, plan for both: the sink on one side, the hob on the other, and room to pass with a hot pan.

With the cabinets yet to be chosen, each cupboard can be drawn for what it holds: a deep drawer for the wok, a tall slot for the trays, an airy cupboard for the shallots and garlic. Sockets go in with them, so the steamer and the air fryer can stay plugged in.

Cook the way you always have. The house should smell of dinner for an evening, not a week.

A Type F lives one flight up. Its ground floor is just the entrance and a utility room, so everything you carry in climbs the stair: the groceries, the parcels, a child asleep on a shoulder.

So the way in works hard. The entrance is long and slim, about 5.75 by 1.8 metres: room for a bench, with the shoes behind closed doors. A shelf by the stair holds parcels waiting to go up. A pantry where the first flight ends saves a great many trips.

Beside the washing machine downstairs, there's space for the golf clubs, the camping chairs and a cool box for weekends away.

In a Type C Garden, the kitchen is at street level, and the climb waits until bedtime.

SDB planned a jogging path, a trekking trail and a 25-metre pool for laps inside the gate. So shoes come home muddy, and towels come home wet. A boot tray and a drying rail by the door keep both off the stair.

Washing begins downstairs and ends in bedrooms one or two floors up, so the basket's route matters. A linen cupboard on each bedroom floor, and somewhere for the vacuum on every level, spare the stair a great deal of traffic. The space under each flight is worth drawing too, for the step-ladder, the spare fan and an ironing board.

Each house has at least three covered parking bays, handy when the furniture arrives. Long pieces still go up a single stair, though. So we measure its turns before a sofa or wardrobe is ordered.

Give every floor its own storage, and the stair stays a stair.

SDB turned the houses north and south, so the light arrives soft and the air moves through. The blocks run roughly east to west. In rows like these, the low sun of early morning and late afternoon falls mostly on the walls between houses. If yours ends a row, we look at its open side on the visit.

So curtains here are less about the sun than about the houses across the estate road. A blind that rises from the sill keeps the lower half of the window private, and leaves the top open to the sky.

In a house between two others, daylight reaches each floor at its two ends. The middle of a deep plan is where the lamps do their work: a pendant dropped low above the table, light washed along one long wall, and one good reading lamp.

When an evening shower clears, open the windows at both ends. The cooler air comes straight through, smelling of rain on the planting. Insect screens let the windows stay open into the dusk. On still days, a ceiling fan turns slowly over the table, and another over the family area.

A Type C Garden opens its living room and guest room onto a terrace and, where there's one, a private garden. Garden sizes vary from house to house, and a small one still counts: plant the terrace's edge, and the green reaches the doors. Floors that meet the terrace cleanly, and fabrics that dry fast after rain, keep those doors open more often. When the cousins come, throw them open, and sofa, table and terrace become one long room.

In a Type F, the terrace shares the living floor with the kitchen. Keep the drying rack in the yard, and supper can go outside.

Light from both ends, a breeze down the middle, and lamps after dark.

A 19Trees renovation runs in order. Defects go to SDB first. MPAJ and the estate's management approve the works next. Only then does a contractor lift a tool.

A new house comes with a defect period, set by its sale agreement: anything that shows within it is SDB's to put right. So walk all three floors slowly, before any contractor arrives. Fill each basin and watch it drain, and try every door, window and switch. After a heavy shower, look for stains at the window frames and on the ceilings. Note each fault, photograph it, and number the photographs to match your list. Send it to SDB in writing, and keep a copy for yourself.

SDB's repairs needn't hold up the design. Once the list is in, we start drawing, and the quotes and MPAJ's permit follow alongside.

At the house, we measure every floor and walk the stair as a parent would. We look over the garden or terrace side too, and anything that looks like a defect goes on your list for SDB.

Every trade and every lorry passes one guarded gate, shared by all 222 houses. We settle the arrangements with the estate's management well ahead. Three floors mean more trips for every trade, and the new floors stay covered throughout.

We keep SDB, MPAJ, the estate's management and every contractor in step. Chasing them is our job, not yours.

Then the dust sheets are lifted, and the house is ready for its people.

SDB named 19Trees after its planting: nineteen species of trees, shrubs and herbs, set out in three tiers the way a rainforest grows. A quartz ridge runs along the neighbourhood's edge, and the road climbs before you arrive. Planting like that takes years to fill out, and so, usually, does a house.

Indoors, the green can carry on, quietly. Wood you can touch, curtains of plain linen, a tall plant on the landing, and perhaps one wall the colour of wet leaves. Choose one green and repeat it softly: a cushion, the glaze on a pot, the spine of a book. A little is enough when the real thing is just outside.

In a new 19Trees house, most of what makes it home is still to come. The houses were specified with their floors and ceilings in place: tiles on the living floors, and tiles or laminated timber in the bedrooms, the family area and the study area. Central hot water was specified too, so there's no heater to box in above each shower. Points wait for the air-conditioners, the oven and the hood, with a switch for charging an electric car.

Everything you'll use daily is for you to choose: the kitchen itself, hob and hood included, the wardrobes, and every air-conditioner unit. The budget goes there first, and to the storage by the stair. SDB's new tiles rarely need touching, and its new bathrooms can usually be left alone. The rest of the house can follow at your own pace.

A 19Trees bedroom comes with its floor laid and its wardrobes still to choose. Each is planned for the one who opens it: more shelf than rail for a teenager, full-length hanging for the one who irons, and doors that close without a sound where a baby sleeps.

From SDB's leaflet and specification sheet; we check yours against them in person.

Our closest guides are The Reya, a tower in Desa Melawati, and Sierra Hijauan, a gated estate in Ukay Perdana. Further in, towards the city, our Ampang page goes building by building through the condominiums of Ampang Hilir.