jaykr

Living Room : To be continued.....

View from Entrance steps into Dining & Living / Service Yard. View from Dining to entrance :

View from house entrance doorway : View from house entrance doorway - 2 Shoe Cabinet next to Doorway :

Continued...kitchen The kitchen Tabletop - Quartz Extreme White. The brand of Quartz : Our top cabinet door & bottom drawers. Our Tall Cabinet aka Space Tower. Our "Wet Kitchen" area.

Our Stove / Backsplash Our Stove / Backsplash 2 / Quartz Our Stove in view : Our Oven More photos coming soon.....

Hi everyone, I will post photos of my completed renovation bit by bit as these are amateur photos taken by me and my wife. About the renovation : We didn't do any fancy design for the house. ;P The house was designed by us taking in consideration the large extended family I have and the type of people who will be visiting my house regularly especially my cousins notti kids who will be running all over the house as well the elderly and other folks. We made sure that with people visiting and staying in our place , our work office, bedrooms etc have privacy of the walls, doors etc... The major area where most of the cost went too was the kitchen as we and our extended family would be cooking, baking etc in the kitchen, plus it would heavily used by lots of people. So all the items the kitchen area need to be durable. We tried to keep our design clean and simple. During the decoration phase, we will be adding a lot of things in terms of furniture, decorative art pieces from asian countries like Indonesia, India, China, Thailand etc... a bit of greenery by creating our own D.I.Y. greenwall etc...etc... We will be mixing and matching to get the feel we want. Another goal was to reduce the energy cost of the home, so all the appliances, lighting , services were bought making sure they are not energy hogs. Lighting were mostly T5 and we made sure the cove lighting design allows to turn all lights or just a couple of lights so that most of the time we will only be using at max 30 - 42 watts. The final goal of the renovation was to make sure we are able to do renovation at the lowest cost possible but with quality product and materials. Our benchmark was the ID's & contractors who quote us. An example was Mr K. who quoted us 85K for the entire house renovation. I still need to calculate what is final cost but I think I was able to reach this successfully. If you are still reading this, wow! thank you for been so patient.... . Please find the 1st set of photos below : The Kitchen : Entrance from Dining into Kitchen : Second entrance from service balcony : Looking from the front of the kitchen with the Deco Light on. Looking from the front with T8 lights on. Looking from the back to the front of kitchen

Hi Project H, Thank you for the vote of confidence! =)

Hi Everyone, So we finally decided to just continue painting. We are currently reducing the intensity of paint color until it is near to the original brick and then try to give that weathered look. Lets see how it turns out. Thanx to everyone for your comments, opinions and advice. Much appreciated.

HI Rnj, The problem with this is that you need to 1st apply the acid and brush very hard over and over again to remove it . Next you will need to wash the brick with water , lots of water. I saw when they were washing other areas , the smoke and fumes coming out. I feel along the process, if anything goes wrong, the marble flooring is gone. So didn't want to attempt it .

Hi Retch, Thank You for the suggestion. Any suggestion is a good suggestion. Appreciate you taking time to search and provide a solution. Much appreciated. Regards,

That is a great question especially when I was asking for solution to remove the cement. Laquer is also glossy and that is not want I wanted.

Hi Tessina, Care to tell me more about whitewashing? Would it make the bricks all white? or what would the look be like? Thank you for the suggestion.

HI Project H, That would be my thinking too, but when I showed it to him, he said nothing can be done unless I want to use lacquer. That would make the craft brick glossy and definitely not what I wanted to do.

HI Mr E, Thank you for the advice, am trying to reduce intensity of red to be more like the original brick color. Hopefully it works. If not would have to change the entire color.

Hi Retch, That was similar to what I was going for. I was going for this actually : I actually gave this photo to Alan and told him exactly how it needs to look like. But you saw the outcome. I've tried every solution possible but non works and Alan actually joked about it saying, " why don't use it as a DIY project and fix the wall...." The only solution that seems to work is painting it but the paint color mix is too reddish so rectifying it now.

Hi Everyone, Thank you for your replies. They are all appreciated and gave us an idea of what most people think when they see the brick wall. We had no intention to paint the craft bricks as our plan was to use them as is. However, now with the cement overpowering the original color and look and feel of the brick, we had no choice but to paint. It really looks bad with cement all over the brick. The red brick was to complement the rest of furniture in the room but now that is not possible. We have tried every possible solution to remove the cement as well as asked hardware shops, the brick factory itself, the contractor, the tiler etc...etc...etc... We got all kinds of suggestions from using cooking oil, to using vinegar, sand papering, ammonia etc...etc... None of these actually worked to remove the cement. When they are wet, it seems they are gone but when dry, they reappear. Sanding them just spoils the bricks and at the same time, the cement still remains there. The last opinion was to paint it and that is what we are doing.

Hi Tessina, If there slight traces of cement it is fine, it goes well with the brick, but let me give you a close up look of what most of the bricks look like as it is not so obvious in the earlier photos. This was not what I was going for. On the left, you see a brick that is not all white, that is me sandpapering that areas for nearly 30 mins on 1 brick.

Update on my brick wall in my study room ( We want your help / opinion, please read below. thanx!) : When Alan & company did the red brick wall in my study room, they used white concrete to spread all over and they said it is a standard practice and the remainder will be removed when they do acid wash. They replied that when I asked, shouldn't they wipe off the white cement of the brick. However, when the time to do acid waste came, they did not do it . They said cannot do it as I have marble flooring and if the acid touches the marble floor it will damage the marble. So in the end my red brick is not what I wanted it to look like. The is how the brick wall looks. Whitish and smeared all over the wall. When I highlighted this to Alan, Alan suggested to fix it by using Shalex or lacquer. I didn't want to do both as I seen before that it gets very glossy and shiny when you do it , especially if the workmanship is bad. The original look and feel of the brick would be gone. So there was no other solution they offered and have to live with it. So after much thinking , we decided to do some DIY work in the brick wall and see what is the outcome. ME & Mr E. provided some a great idea on how you can paint using acrylic paint so decided to try that. --------------------------------- Here are couple of pics of an area of the wall that has been painted. We stopped at this because, there is a disagreement between me and my wife on the outcome. One feels that it looks good, the other feels its just too reddish and the color needs to be toned down to be look more like the original brick color. SO, we want YOUR opinion. Can you please look at the photos below and provide your honest comments on what do you think? I Does it look good and goes along with the study room table and bookshelf ? or is it too reddish and has lost its original look and feel and thus does not look good? Based on your views and ours we will make a decision on what to do. We appreciate your honest comments, thank you!! The picture are below. The pictures were taken at night and thus not natural light. Taken with T5 fluorescent light on : Taken with T5 fluorescent light on : Taken with deco light on : Contrast between current brick look vs painted wall close up look

hi Spyder, msged you.!

HI Rtch! Sorry for the late reply, super busy at work. Will post pictures tomorrow . thanx for reading my blog. its nice to know people still read my blog....;p

If you know how to install the pole for the shower curtain, then definitely you can DIY. Normally what I do is talk to my hardware shop fellas and ask them how to install and ask them to get for me the necessary items. Since I guy from them, they often tell me what are materials I need and how to install it. Hope this helps.

Fan Installation update : Due to the low ceiling of my flat 8ft, and the people in the house are most taller 1.79 and some even taller than that, we need to get a low ceiling fan. After looking through so many fan brands and models, decided on the Relite low ceiling fan. Please see picture below. Hope it works well and last long. Just got to wait and see. I am hoping to do some D.I.Y. work and paint the overlapping short panels on the blade with black color. hopefully it turns out well.

HI mukcid, Wahhh.....I'm honored....your 1st post and you made it in my T-blog.....heh.... ;p My renovation has ended, just getting some third party folks to do some installations and then I am done. Next will be furnishing the house. ;p

Hi ProjectH, Sorry, didn't get to my thread for some time. ;p I don't think I have a handover date. ;p Most of the work from my contractor is completed. I just need them to throw some of the floor coverings and I am done. I still have the City Gas appointment to fix the gas piping to the stove and turn in the gas as well as fan and tv fixture to be done by third party people. Everything should be completed by this week. =)

Congrats MK! Your house is certainly unique! like edd said! So many unique things from retro, to colors, mario style brick wall, but the one thing that I thing that makes your whole house very homely is photos of you and Mr E. everywhere in different poses! Both you and Mr. E must be collectors, your Hello Kitty probably cost more than some of your house renovation stuff! ;p Enjoy! your great home! hope to see your D.I.Y. projects soon...=) Take Care. =)