erickoh75

Bought a rega and 2 elmarks about 2 years ago. One of the fan blades of the Rega just broke. The elmarks are still doing fine.

[rant] A certain chain of kopitiam makes jugs of kopi and teh in advance, and use that jug to make ice kopi/teh whenever somebody places in an order. This method of making iced kopi and teh produces super flat and bad tasting kopi/teh. This process has been going on for years. Please stop doing this, it is a retarded way of making my favourite drink. [/rant]

Thanks! It's a Marks lockset.. I must say it didnt age gracefully, all the little dots makes it look like skin disease :X I guess no harm trying with autosol/brasso to see if it helps, thanks!

My main door handle and lockset is in bad condition, and it will cost in excess of $800 to replace such a mortise lockset. Any ideas on how to salvage?

Well did you guys pay lockslocks in advance?

That's a lie! I also tried to use sketchup to do some space planning/visualization but got nowhere as far as you You must be a very talented designer Anyway good luck with your reno, I'm sure the project will go smoothly in your very capable hands

Hmm should be fine bah, can hide wires if the LCD TV is standing on the console, if wall mounted, may need to get a cable management tubing/pipe. If i'm not wrong, it is around $799 for the console and $499 for the coffee table before discount. They have very uniform pricing (ie. all coffee table designs have same price), so best is just call them (look for Martin at sugei kadut branch) and ask with the model no. He gave us free delivery, GST absorbed, free glass top, every other item 50% off (some restrictions), and 5% further discount for full upfront payment. Hope that helps!

I'm looking for such service as well... please share contacts if anyone has good experience? thanks!

Hey sorry, I didnt take down the model numbers because our PM handled it. I think both tile companies carry our plain and mosaic tiles. The plain one is around $2.50-$3.50psf, the mosaic ones are around $12-15psf.

Progress Update Kitchen tiling and flooring. Common bathroom, with mosaic accent. Lowrise single piece WC for the commoners... MBR bathroom, with throne WC for the king and queen of the house... Parquet & skirting, we opted for mixed length parquet with matte finish Using MK sockets/switches for entire house

Chapter 7: You Led Up My Life I'm a geek, and I just love LEDs.. they are efficient, long lasting and totally cool... It was a no brainer for me to get LED downlights for the new house, and then I found out how ridiculously expensive home LED lightings are. But as usual, the internet comes to the rescue. Some searching led me to a led supplier in china who gave me an excellent quote. High Power LEDs: 5W, 7W, 12W, tiltable, comes in daylight and warmwhite For the quantity I ordered, each 5W LED downlight cost me around $30 nett. That's even cheaper than some PLC downlight holders! I also got a 5meter reel of flexible LED which I intend to use for our kitchens under cabinet lighting, and perhaps for my wife's dressing mirror as well... Note: I am hesistant to list the contact whom I bought the LEDs from. I do not really know him, and will not endorse any internet sellers, since many things can go wrong when dealing with online transactions. Problems with shipping, product quality, after-sales service, even non-receipt of items bought after paying in full. If you have to know, I found my seller on ebay, just search for 'recessed led downlights' and browse. I negotiated with him outside of the ebay system to get a better price.

Chapter 6: Table Consoles Chairs "You may need to kiss asses everyday, but at least you don't get peesai stuck under you..." Next comes the buying of other furniture. This is of some urgency as well because some pieces may take 3-4 weeks or even longer to arrive after order confirmation. Our hunt for matching Modern themed furniture takes us to IMM, Park Mall, Furniture Mall, TradeHub 21, International Furniture Center and others in Sungei Kadut. With exception of a few shops, they all look pretty similar after a while. We eventually settled on a coordinated set of furniture from Mode Studio in Sungei Kadut. The main selling points are 1) Good workmanship 2) They allow customisation to the designs 3) The salesperson gives good customer service 4) Got a good package discount and for paying in full upfront These are the items we got (all in high gloss white, SS legs and black glass top) 1) Dining Table + 4 Chairs + 1 Bench 2) Dining Console 3) TV Console 4) Entrance Console 5) Coffee Table Table, bench and chairs, changed the table stand to another design Dining console, changed the configuration of drawers TV console, made it slimmer, changed to groveless drawers, wire hole moved to back Entrance console, changed to high gloss white, SS legs and made taller Coffee table, I'm sure we customised something... Damage $3880

Thanks, it is $2400 nett for both the sofa and armchair

Chapter 5: Sofa So Good And then my wife got the wind about the International Furniture Fair event held at Singapore Expo from Mar 9-12. She had this seemingly crazy idea that we could perhaps get some furniture from there. The reasoning is that it would not make sense for the international exhibitors to ship their bulky wares back to their countries. Nevermind that the event was only meant for trade visitors, or that we had no idea how the logistics of such a scheme would work (how to move the furniture out after the event? where to store? etc). At any rate, we decided to head down and take a look, if only to get some inspiration on the latest furniture trends and ideas. To our surprise, there were a few exhibitors who are actually selling their wares to the trade visitors. Mainly soft furnishing like cushions and rugs etc. We enquired about the larger furniture pieces like sofa sets and cabinets, and found that they too are for sale, but they can only be taken away after the event has closed on the final day. Looking around, we saw quite a few pieces of furniture and sofa sets that could work for us. The design & build quality for most of the furniture are top-notch, since they were made for display in an international trade show. Quite excited, my wife decided to head down again on the last day of the event. She got there around noon, but everything was already completely sold out. Apparently, the local furniture retailers would usually snap up everything in such trade shows to resell them in their own stores. Unfazed, she hunted down the local retailer who bought our shortlisted sofa set (turned out to be Castila) and asked to buy the furniture from them. And guess what, the deal really went through, at a very reasonable price. Our logistics problems are also solved because the Castila could deliver the sofa set to our place when we are ready, and even slap on a warranty on the item. And that's how we got our very first piece of furniture, a luxurious sofa set wrapped fully in top quality italian cowhide. It is of significance because it set the design and colour tone for all our following living room furniture (ie. modern, white with metal). La pièce de résistance In other news, my cute wife also snagged another full-leather reading chair. Ok, so the two items don't really match, but what the heck, the price was right. It could go into the study room.

Chapter 4: Bathroom & Kitchen Fittings And then comes the shopping for our bathrooms and kitchens. For us, it was most helpful to browse and get a rough price indication of the bathroom & kitchen stuff in IMM, there are plenty of showrooms there. Of course, megastores like Courts, Harvey Norman, Best Denki etc are very useful for getting prices as well (tip: bargaining actually works if you buy from these places)! For me, I found Asia Excel in IMM to have friendly staff and they can give quite competitive quotes for anything bathroom and kitchen if you have decided on the models. We got our induction hob and hood from them. As for bathroom fittings, I never shopped for these before, and never thought they could be so sexy and expensive. I guess the super polished chrome and rich handling of some of the faucets really got to me. The sleek smooth curves of some WCs are very attractive as well. (Wives beware, budgets may be busted if you let your men walk into high-end bathroom showrooms) So after some basic research, our contractor brought us to Royal Fanco at Jalan Besar to do the actual shopping. I must say they give excellent customer service. Prices wise, I know our contractor would get a cut, but then I think it is worth it since he will then have the responsibility to make sure everything fits and works. Other than bathroom and kitchen fittings, you could shop for your lights and fans from a number of such shops along Jalan Besar as well.