Here's a brief account of the renovation process, which started a couple of months ago.
Mischievous Mrs Kho decided to vandalize the place before the contractor starts their work, just for the fun of it... so I took a couple of spray paint from Maria to work on our short-lived graffiti wall.
The following week, all that were not supposed to be around weren't around anymore. They include the Master bathroom toilet wall, separating wall between Master and bedroom 1, Store wall, kitchen wall and windows... Now that I've listed them down, we really did some major hacking work!
After that we started to add the little nibs here and there, as well as some tiling works. The short little wall separates the wardrobe from the master bathroom vanity counter... Above, the kitchen tiles were removed (and later to be made level with the living room, then re-tiled)
450x900 homogeneous floor tiles, to be used in the kitchen and bedrooms in a running bond pattern which I later learnt to regret due to the inherent warping in the tile (which is more common for large pieces beyond 300x600). There's some unevenness and somewhat larger grout lines in between. Still, I prefer the pattern to a normal stack bond :)
We bought our sanitary wares / fittings from Adamas, along Jalan Besar. Space constraint in the bathrooms really limited our choices for WCs. We need one with minimum length, and preferably one where the cover conceals the seat entirely cause we had to keep the WC within the shower area prone to wetness. This one we found comes with soft closing for the toilet seat cover...
Shifting the main door outward to the recess area, which the previous owner bought but did nothing with. So we built up a brick wall on both sides. The contractor also gotten a permit to saw away the hollow pipe railing that extends into the recess area. We'll then seal the gap with a simple casement window.
Kitchen and bathroom tiles are being laid. We bought our tiles from the clearance section from Builders Shop. The contractor did mention to us Stile is really quite a higher end brand... we visited the tile shops lining Balestier road but we didn't really like any of the tiles there. So...
Lights we took from Lightcraft. Great service!!! The person we liaised with was very obliging and gave us a very good price. Below is the entrance light that we chose, one of the shortest but most expensive... but there remaining lights we chose were mostly T5s and simple fluorescents.
The niche at the entrance. There was a bulge in the existing concrete wall, which we originally wanted to expose, with all the services pipes that were coming into the unit from the corridor. So... we then decided to box them all up, and did a little niche for framed photographs and a ledge to be filled with loose pebbles for our keys. Below: the opposite side of the entrance area, painted "Maldives Sand" by Nippon. We're doing some shoe cabinets there, shelves for the hamsters and a low seating with a short planter...
Above: Living room, also in Maldives Sand, where we will do a TV console... I like how the light strips turned out in the ceiling... I guess it was the right move to do a ceiling in the living area, so that we can conceal all the services and incorporate the lighting within it... They run parallel to the stainless steel joint lines that were embedded on the ground for the screed flooring.
Also quite glad with how the a/c in the living room turned out. Originally I wanted to squeeze the FCU into the corner of the feature wall above the door, but we were later told by the a/c supplier it was not possible. I was having a tough time trying to run the services properly without showing too much a/c drainage pipes, etc. And the only people who were keen on having an a/c in living room were Chet and YQ >.<>
Below: Chet chose the colour "Love" from the Nippon catalogue. We're gonna turn it into a feature wall for some of our photos.
Common bathroom, with grey tiles and painted blue.
Master Bathroom, with grey tiles painted lime green >.<>
Lastly, Bobby from Wah Sheng... we're extremely glad he's our contractor... He's got a major part to play for how the house has turned out, as far as wet works are concerned... Cabinetry works are in progress starting with the Kitchen. Hopefully it complements the spaces nicely...*fingers crossed
Shoot... guess i kinda neglected the blog for a couple of months.
Cleared my 6th ICT shortly after New Year. Who would've thought that going back to reservist will be such an enjoyable experience... It was great to be able to take a 2 weeks paid leave from work. Won't say my it was a happening one, but i particularly enjoyed the slower pace. There were even some rare moments when I was bored >.<
It was a good opportunity to catch up with peers that're undergoing / underwent the same phase in life that I'm going through now... 1st HDB, and marriage. Learnt what to look out for when tackling these two hurdles. One thing common: subjects were more than glad with the completion of renovation / banquet. I'm looking forward to mine too... Come May I'm going to enjoy more free time... I hope... These days weekends are mostly occupied with home-related errands. It's getting Nippon & Dulux catalogues and choosing the colours one week, and then settling the solid surface and lamintes the other. Not to mention furniture hunting, tiles hunting, sanitary wares hunting, light fittings hunting, etc etc etc...
International Furniture Centre (IFC) is overrated. And so is Lush. The two salesperson at the latter were truely the epitome of slackdom. When we reached the showroom in the evening, it was locked with an "we're open" sign. After wondering for 15min what could the salesperson(s) possibly be doing in private by himself (or to each other), the elevator bell rang and the salesmen emerged. Alas, They've went to get dinner. Upon seeing that there customers were kept waiting, it opened the door, and went in itself. No apologies offered. It was his god-given right to go out and buy dinner. While inside, 100% self-service. Truly, why employ this kind of people? Their purpose is to sit, stare, consume air, and occassionally glance at the customer to make sure they aren't doing anything funny. The most unsohpisticated machine can replace its role IMO. Pui! More on the house later...
Made a wkend trip down to KL to attend Guobao and Sihai's ROM reception. Was happy to be invited, to see how things were done in Malaysia. The similarities reminded me of what we went through a little less than a year ago...
It's great to have a friend who lives in KL. We bunked over at Guoli's place for the wkend, and he was a great host. Made us feel bad for the times when he was in Singapore and we were too busy with our own lives :P Anyway, Chet demanded that we made a stop at her primary school, so we went visiting. It was a Saturday so there weren't any people there, minus the guard and a couple of kids running around. The school compound was way retro... So, this was where my wife got her education before Singapore.
