ayazumi

Magic clean is laminate's best friend. Nowadays magic wipes are cheap; $1 per pack, that is imitiation of magic clean. I bought the imitation wipes and stick. The tissues are wet, but too thin to clean the floor. I need to use two pieces to wipe the floor. The stick is filmsy too. Conclusion: don't buy imitation.

piknik: We also like the idea to decide how many light tubes we want to on during the night. Some lights have 3 light tubes, but they don't have the flexibility to switch off 1 or 2 light tubes, leaving 2 or 1 light tubes on. We like the flexibility of this light. getzski: Possible to do the on/off remote to control two, but the special feature you mentioned, e.g. the brightness control, may not work. It is still possible to install the diming mechanism, but the light bulbs or the light mechanism might not be able to accept. Previously my parents' house installed the diming mechanism for normal wall light. It worked perfectly fine at first, can dim down and brighten up, but after a few times later, the bulb burnt out, the light also spoilt, couldn't use anymore. beluga: You are right. If the living hall is too big, L-box is not bright enough for the hall. The centre will be dark, but the sides will be bright.

Valerie: The model is 4201. They have quite a few light color and designs with remote control. Though the price put remote control is sold separately, but no harm asking for FOC. If I'm not wrong, the remote control costs $30-40 per piece. The con for this type of light is that the mechanism is unique by its own. You cannot use one remote control to control all the lights. The sales person can be right, but I would like to try to ask my electrician if he can make one control remote to control the two living room lights.

ISO reminds me of my lunch today. Me n hubby went Macpherson for lunch, and we saw the wet tissues are ISO certified. Hahaha... My colleague told me that his uncle got all his lightings for his big house (I don't know how big, maybe really very big) from Guangzhou at SGD300. He suggested me to go Guangzhou to buy other things such as furnitures, but I don't have so much time to go overseas shopping at this moment.

piknik: We got our lights from Pan Tech Lighting @ Jln Besar. I think the price is almost the same. I got the light at $200 each. I would prefer one big light in the centre of the living room, than having two lights. Didn't choose one big light is because I thought I could have a ceiling fan in between the lights, but too bad, I can't have a ceiling fan at home. Maybe what you saw was a designer light, that's why it costs $400?

People with sweaty feet best not to do wood floorings. I don't like the floor to feel sticky

There is a better quality grade of laminate, I think it is called rubber laminate. I am not saying about the rubber floorings that our granny used in old 1-room flat, they are actually wood laminates. This type of floor laminate are water resistant, but more expensive than normal laminate. Though it is water resistant floor laminate, I don't expect you to pour water or wash the floor. I can't inagine what will happen to the flooring. Valerie, you can consider about this. Got contractor told me that you cannot use vacuum and mop on laminate floorings but you can use vacuum and mop on parquet.

Laminate is more difficult to maintain than parquet. If you still prefer wood floorings, there is cheaper option, a grade lower than parquet - use wood engineer floorings. It is more expensive than laminate, cheaper than parquet, but last longer than laminate. Actually homogeneous tiles are not expensive, the labor cost is quite standard. I know why your contractor said labor more expensive because tiles are standard price, they cant earn from tiles, so they "name" you "Robert" to chop you on labor costs.

If the windows are in good condition, I suggest not to change the windows. You may consider using bright color paints to brighten the house, or choose light colors furnitures to improve the condition. Parquet is nice, I also like to have parquet for the whole house, but you need to do proper maintenance for the flooring. Then you need to change a lighter tone parquet so your house will not look dark.

My contractor said 14-18" (355mm to 457mm) wide for top cabinet, bottom is 600mm

Valerie: We saved the false ceiling cost to buy better lightings for the living hall. We bought two square lightings for the living room. The light casing is quite big; three light tubes are required. This light comes with a remote control, to allow us to control the brightness of the lightings we want, to allow us to switch off two tubes, leaving one tube of lighting for the room, or switch off one tube, and leave two tubes on. We have requested for two white light and one warm light. If we need warm light for romantic ambience, we can switch off the two white lights, leaving the warm light on. I did not take pictures for the lightings that day, if not can show you. There are other nice lightings that you can choose to make your living hall look nicer without false ceiling. For us, we prefer to save the costs and use the money to buy other items for the house. NeoBy: We also did still life painting at this moment. What we learnt in class was that we were given a photograph, and were asked to paint on the canvas what we saw in the photos. Our "teacher" (the artist) told us that for beginners, it is better to start with still life. Try not to do portraits, because it is not easy for beginners to draw a human face. The difficult part is not the painting or outline, it is the mixing of colors. Have to catch the correct tone colors, and sometimes this confuse me too. Sometimes still life is not easy to paint too, for example, trees. There are many different color tones for the leaves. Need to be observant and practice makes prefect.

Ahhh... too bad my house ceiling height is too low. If not we can install ceiling fan at home. Is KDK baby fan wind power strong?

Wow... that is a piece of good info on the triangle kitchen. I hope my kitchen layout can achieve the triangle effect. What I am worry is, does the sink and hob has to be 90cm away? Will it be a bit too close? Chinese always has this saying that water and fire cannot place too close with each other.

It is progressing very fast. Efficiency is high

Relax piknik. Not easy for you to take care of child and renovation at same time, but I believe you can do it.

piknik: So glad to know many people like yourself, May, NeoBy, etc, who like oil/arcylic painting. Actually, my hubby can paint better than me. He can mix colors very well. I am still learning from him, and looking at color chart. Hahahaha... As you mentioned, the house is in good condition, so we have already cancelled some renovation works, not doing false ceilings and windows saved quite a bit. Most important now is do up the wall and floor tiles, electrical and toilets (ie. A&E). Other works can do later when we saved enough. Valerie: Yes, a little pity, but we saw the wood at bottom of the doors are starting to peel and crack. One of the door bottom side has chipped off. Bedroom 3 door is worst. Our house is quite windy, and maybe because of the wind, the ex owner probably did not put door stopper, so the door constantly bang too hard, the side of the door has cracked on both sides. We still opt for solid classic door. Cost is definitely the main factor. We initially wanted semi-solid veneer doors, because a solid veneer door is very expensive. I thought of just "for decoration", so any veneer door is okay. But come to think about it, compare solid to solid, a veneer door costs 40-50% more than classic door. So we decided to get something more practical and best material at lower cost - get a solid classic door.

Thank you piknik

You see, the top cabinet and bottom cabinet seem to align the same width. By right, the bottom cabinet should be wider than top cabinet. I see that the sink and the top cabinet width align together. You may hit your head while washing plates.

Ahhh...you made us happy for awhile. Thought you have the lamps at home.

NeoBy, your kitchen cabinet looks squeezy. Do you have another cabinet at the other side of the wall? Not sure if it's the camera angle again, the width (from wall to table top) of the bottom cabinet looks narrow too.

Oh, that was based on our calculation. Initially, he quoted us a lump sum, but we divided into the number of wardrobes we have, so estimate one wardrobe is $180. That was how we derived to $180 per wardrobe. Sorry for the confusion. When we asked how much to dispose the wardrobes, he told us $150 per wardrobe. To be fair, he did say that if the items are small, he can ask his workers to help us throw. But given to the situation now, the items are not small at all - All bulky items.

These are the bulky items we need to think how to dispose away. Our contractor quoted us dismantle/disposable of wardrobe is $180/pc, and $30/pc for dismantle/dispose the woods. We cannot use his debris bin too. No dismantle, yes dispose is $150. Looking at the price quoted, I would rather ask them to dismantle/dispose for me, than to ask for disposable, right? Anyways, we will use my father's lorry and bangala workers to throw these things away. Like that we saved $540 on dismantle 3 wardrobes, and $120 for dispose wooden doors. All these you can do it yourself, don't waste money to ask someone else to do. If you are not sure where to throw, you can go Defu lane to throw the debris. Most importantly, if you can rent a lorry from your friends or relatives, then you can save some money on transport. My father told me it's about $200-300 to throw debris in Defu lane (not confirm yet because this weekend we will go to Defu lane to throw the debris, after complete dismantling). To our surprise, we realised the wood doors are SOLID classic doors. No wonder so heavy.

A day of hardwork. My hubby dismantled about 60-70% of the carpentry. We can't tear off the built-ins without a crowbar as the wardrobes stick to the walls, hence we stop for the day. My father will bring a crowbar tonight, so we can try if we can tear the wardrobes out. Hope will not damage the walls. My contractor said he will meet us this Sunday to see the damage. Sounds like hinting me something (again). MBR Future study room Hubby managed to take down one side of the wall mounted shelf. (Don't mind about the bed, tv, and console. It's my idea, to ask to leave the bed. Now we are thinking how to throw these bulky items away. May need to call town council come and take away - if got enough time to inform them. Or else, get bangalah to do it) Last bedroom. This wardrobe is so...so... difficult to tear. It is simply glued n nailed into the wall. Don't know what the past installers were thinking.

Hoo8899: I always believe, as long as one's happy with our houses, whether renovate or not, nothing matters. 开心就好！You won't find anything fanciful in my blog, just basic renovation, nothing else. We are cutting costs, save money, and use the money wisely on other things. We may not have money to do palace-kind of renovation, but we will use furnitures and other decorations to make-up for the imperfections. Hands-on work is something that we should enjoy during the process, and we did enjoy today. Show you the "fruits" we reap today. getzski: We never engage FSM. No money for $888 ang bao. The date and time was chosen by my parents' friend, and this morning, while eating breakfast my mum's friend was at the coffee shop. My mum asked her what we should do for the ceremony, so this friend of my mum's gave us the instructions what to do. I'm not sure how to explain in english who or what these 2 persons do, but in hokkien, they are those people from "tiao dang" or "dang ki". They are the "temple's employees". They never charge us ang bao money too.

getzski: Yes yes. The ex owner specifically said that they purposely place the stove facing away from the sink due to their fengshui requirement. They also placed a big mirror in front of the common toilet for fengshui purposes too. If you realised, the living hall tiles were slanted one side, also because of fengshui requirement. Basically, this house is fengshui good, but might not do good for us. So, hack all and redo according to our "fengshui"