Rasp

Updates: The main door is scheduled to install last friday. We have to install the main door first so that the main gate can be installed and the lock be changed to the new gate before dismantling the existing main door frame. Hb was around to monitor it but alas, the installer still knocked onto the water pipes and cause some minor leaking. Hb phoned Henry immediately and Henry said he will get someone to look at it and fix it asap. I went up in the evening and surprised to find that the bedroom doors were also installed. Here's the pics taken by hb during installation~~ My bedroom door before fixing them to the frame. The top part of the doors. Ummm.. the part is 'exposed'. Is it normal? Here's the door after being fixed to the frame, before installing the lock. The door handle and lock. We asked for lever kind instead of round ones. The holes drilled on the doors for the installation of lock.

Hey beany, I agree with forkie. If they cant remove the scratch by polishing, how about cutting that piece out and replace a new piece? I did a portion of my mbr with new marble tiles as the orientation was done differently and very obvious after I removed the wall inbetween them. Can explore this option. See what your id suggests.

Hi beany, Good to see your place all up. You guys really love teak furnitures. Almost everything in teak. hee.. The shoe cabinet feature wall also seems to match the teak furniture colour too. Hee.. My carpentry will be up next week and will be polishing the mbr floor first as we are using pole system for our wiw area. Very worried about deep scratches during carpentry. My hb will be there to monitor but still cant help to worry. By the way, where's the scratch? Are they at those very 'eye-catching' place? Maybe see if can put something over it to cover. A teak furniture/ rag / carpet etc... Hope your id can come up with some good resolutions for your side.

Yes, there's a mini rectangle light here. We also selected a whitish tile for the flooring, hoping to brighten it up. If daylight also need to on the light, then abit sian and waste electricity.

hee.. true loh.. if only there are some designer who can design practicality together. Mine all quite common type, nothing fanciful. You can see them at my t-blog. I just saw your tiles selection... very hee.. after spending so much on the tiles.. you might want to go for the pretty vanity look. Otherwise, would it be abit wasteful?

I try to search for the picture. Yes, can see the white water pipe below the basin. Infact, both my bathrooms didnt have any vanity. Though having a vanity is very nice, we felt that its a hassle to maintain it. Our experience with it was.. the water splashed on the top + dust/dirt tends to dirty the top very easily with those dark/black spots, need to regularly wipe and clean them out. And its tough to clean the underneath of the vanity and to repair the water pipe below the basin if there is any water blockage/ seepage. hee.. All my pipes and wire casing are not concealed. Hee.. think my house going to be the ugly one. Our thinkings abit different from others. While most are thinking of ways to conceal the casing, pipes, switches etc.. we are thinking of ways not to conceal any. Hee.. we belong to those ai mia mai swee type.. so our motto going for easy maintenance and ease of future repairs.

Hiya Princessdella, U finally got your account. Can start your blog already. Hee.. Have you guys managed to sort out the layout? We also looking forward to your reno. My reno so far ok. It's been a week since I last went over. Now my hb's turn to monitor. Hee.. According to hb, the main door is coming today and carpentry will be up next week. Last part will be the marble polishing. But I seriously have no idea where to shift my stuff for the polishing. Hee.. sure sure.. you can just pop over when the place is ready. But I don't have much to show cause mine all simple simple stuff.

Erm.. I also got a super longish common bathroom. We changed the entrance of it to open at the middle and now it look so much better. We didn't do a vanity at the common as mine is super longish + narrow. So we just mount a wall-hung basin so as not to make the space even narrower. Look quite ok to us. Wow.. then you must really start the chasing. According to my hb, my carpentry will be up next week. Is yours fabricating at the factory already? Must chase chase.

Good Morning Seashell, Welcome~~ Your layout is really very challenging. Both your bathrooms look pretty big. My reno started on 29/July. Quite close to your date. We also hoping that the reno will end soon, cant wait to move in. But thinking of the cleaning before that, make me think otherwise.

Hey Newnyew, Welcome back~!! Your bling bling pebble wash look great. How did you do it? Do you have to hack of the top? Really very d-i-y. Your photoshop-ed front door..... er.. is the 4th one on bottom row showing a 8? Hee.. huat huat door. The last 2 gave me the cny mood. hee.. I like the design of the 1st doors on both the top and bottom row. The 2nd design on the bottom row also quite nice. My personal preference la.

Hi Alamak, Welcome!! For layout 1, on the wiw area, I would prefer to have the wardrobe to cover the whole stretch on the left and then L-shaped, instead of face to face which narrow the space. Meaning all on 1 side of the room. For the layout 2, is there any window in your study room? I think it might be quite stuffy/ dark if there isn't any. You might want to take note of the beams locations while planning the layout.

No problem. Just to share, my hb chose to get the package that include w.c. + basin. According to him, its much cheaper to go for the package. You might want to check out if they have package. During our shopping for the bathroom stuff, we asked about the price of each individual item and then ask if the price can be cheaper, e.g. the tap is $65, they give us $60. Then when we confirm all the items, ask for further discount off the final amount. And usually the shop will give this 'round-up' discount from the whole amount, provided you get quite a number of stuff from them. We found that its easier to get discount if we consolidate the items and get from a single place. By the way, I left out the handspray in the last post. You might want to consider if you want to have handspray cause I found that if we get the 2-way tap (for instant heater), there is usually a outlet for those plastic tubes. Hence, can skip the handspray and use this outlet for washing if you want to cut the cost. But there isn't much saving by doing so as 1 handspray is around 20bucks only.

Hihi Merryman, We bought 2 taps for the 2 bathrooms, 1 tap for the kitchen sink. Total 3 taps. For the showerheads, we only bought 1 which is for our storage heater as it doesn't come with it. For those instant heater, the shower head set are usually include in the heater set. Apart from these, those other essential stuffs that we bought are 2 w.c.s for each bathrooms, 2 wash basins for each bathrooms and 1 kitchen sink. The accessories like mirror, glass shelfs, soap holder/dispenser, towel bars etc... are optional. You might want to check how many bathrooms are you renovating (as some people recycled their common bathroom stuff or combine the 2 bathrooms, hence only need 1 set of bathroom stuffs).

Updates on electrical works: We noticed that they had installed some of the powerpoints at the kitchen as well as tidy up the casing at the recess area. Here's the pics! These are the double double points at the cabinet next to my fridge. We have specifically told them not to go under the beam as its super ugly. Hee.. didnt want to take risk as any mistake will means redo-ing the wall tiles. This is for my washing machine. The same casing cover 2 lines, the other one went into the common bathroom. They have removed all the 3 casing that previously go into the house through here. Its ugly as its cutting across my recess area. We told the electrician to tidy this up and not to have any casing above my old door frame as that's the first place that visitor will see when they enter my place. All the casing now runs behind the water pipes before entering the flat through the hole at the top right. My new db box. The svc and telephone box will be next to it.

Hi Adidas78, We got ours from gain city. Quite happy with the technician service. You can look at my blog for the details. My new place is quite close to AMK. I guess you might get the same technician as ours. We bought the system with the saleman at Marina Sq branch. Very responsible, knowledgeable and helpful to arrange the dismantling and installation schedule. Let me know if you want their names.

Hi natgw, Seems like HDB is quite firm on this. You might want to get your id to try to design around it. On another note, actually having a store is quite good, can keep those bulky stuff which cant be hidden in cabinet, such as mahjong table, bed frames, foldable table and those plastic stackable stools. We're also building a tiny store as my previous owner had hacked it off.

Hi Takomi, Nice 3Ds design. I was looking forward to your reno so that I can show my mum how their house can transform 'modernly'. Heehee.. personally I thought its quite tough to design for this layout after staying in it for like 20+yrs. The big challenge with this layout is probably the living room as it is not big enough to accomodate the dinning table and quite exposed to the outside through the main door. My mum ever thought of building the shoe cabinet as a 'partition' to the outside but then the space behind the partition is very tight. I see that your id had the same idea and infact she incorporated the tv console with it as well. Seems good and neat. But i wonder where will your scv box be? My parent's svc box is on the wall directly opposite the entrance, at the corner near the window. The good pt about this layout is the big and longish kitchen. Hee.. very for those who loves cooking. Is your dining table in the kitchen? From your 3Ds, I am guessing that you 'divided' the kitchen into 2 portion using the glass door?

Updates on Recess area: The recess area have been tiled. This is how the entrance look like from infront. The tiling at recess area. There are actually faint horizontal lines patterns on the tiles but cant see clearly as the tiles are quite dusty now. The shoe cabinet area seems slightly brighter with the white-ish floor tiles. hee.. maybe its psychological. Hee.. this is how the outside look like from my old door frame. After the lift upgrading, the lift landing will be on the right of the space infront now and the lift next to my opposite neighbour.

Hi Ivy1981, Thanks for reply. I guess all the units at my level will face this issue as the HDB corridoor stretches through the whole stretch of the block (lift landing above). I went to my neighbour unit (we are door-to-door facing), their unit also have such step-down ceiling for their rooms. We are in a fix now as our carpentry designs are already sent to factory for fabrication. Hence, we cant swap the furniture placing. So we are considering building false ceiling just above the bed to cover it. But there is also alot of issue with this as the current ceiling drop-down is only 4inches, we don't know if the contractor can build just a 4inches false ceiling to flush with it. If not, the usual false ceiling height is 6-8inches and building that the ceiling will be very low after adding in the current 4inches. And it's going to look very weird. In addition, the aircon and its trucking is already up. We will have to build the false ceiling over them and we are worried on the condensation issues. Goosh... headache...

Hi felixwong & jc77, Thanks for the advice. But the dropdown area is not big enough to house my entire king size bed below it. Even if we push the bed all the way to the window, it will still be out by 20-30cm. We are 'recycling' the old bed. And the area without the dropdown area is for my customise table and wardrobe which is fabricating now. The wardrobe is placed infront of an uneven wall (there's a 10cm pillar in the middle of it, meaning the back is L-shaped to contain the pillar) so I cant move them to elsewhere. May I check if I were to do false ceiling just above my bed area. Does it helps? Or do you have some suggestions to counter such situations? Many Thanks.

Hi All, The ceiling of my mbr is uneven as the block corridoor / passageway is just above my unit. I am concerned whether this constitute as a beam. From what I know, the width of a beam is usually around 24cm. But this drop-down at my room is quite wide (around 1m). I read some articles off the net where they consider the drop-down a beam only if the height (or drop-down) is more than 13-15inches. My drop-down is around 4-5 inches. My bed postition will be underneath this area. May I check with you all, whether this is consider a beam? I have attached the picture below for clearer understanding. Thanks!

Updates on Recess area: They had cemented the newly built walls already. Looks ok to us. Guess the main door & grills will be up soon, so that the old one can be dismantle. But I am slightly worried that the workers might dirty the new door. Hee.. start worrying even before I see the door. My shoe cabinet area.... seems dark.. The flooring had been leveled up slightly. In fact, it was slightly higher that what I expected as the regulation states that we cant level it too high, so we set a real low expectation for it. And hb was previously quite worried about water coming in from the regular monthly block washing. But the current 'height' seems quite decent for the wash.

Hee.. Though cant detect, its quite a neat design as the panel are kept inside the console even when opened. And the design is really sleek. Too bad, we cant go for it.

Good Morning beany0811, You guys are cute, cant recall your selection. Hee.. Anyway, I think the black stones looked pretty coolz. The stone surface is shiny, right? Guess like what you mentioned, the shine will show under different lighting angle. My floor is still covered except for the new mbr as the workers removed the previous sheets during their cleaning/tiding up. Now its quite exposed. We thought should be ok since just waiting for carpentry and painting. Think got to ask Hb to check with the contractor on the protection again. hee.. thanks for sharing.

We also think its nice. My Hb thinks need to flip open for the sensors to detect as the black mirror should be pasted on a wood plank or something. Hee.. got to wait for luckable to review the answer.