mishmish

Hi all, I seldom write bad reviews on anything, preferring to say nothing when i have nothing good to say. In this case, I've received such horrible serivce that I feel like i have to say something even though its going to be a long story. Its been a long time since i've come into T-Blog, but I used to update regularly on my T-blog Journey Home. Which i should really update again now that my home is quite lived in. So at the end of november, I went to a furniture shop at Jalan Besar that was owned by Lush. And there i bought two stools, (called Fortune Cookie Stools by a brand they carry called Matzform). Each stool was about 300 bucks, which I think most people can agree is not exactly cheap, but once in a while, we do indulge. The sales person, Dino, said he would try his best to deliver it before Christmas and said we would probably get it by then. The invoice wrote that delivery would be in 4 to 6 weeks. 1 week before Christmas, nobody has called, so i call to inquire when i would see the stools. They said oh, its not gonna arrive before Christmas, but it would be in by 15th January. Definitely before Chinese New Year. I said okay, do you promise by 15th Jan I will see the stools? They say yes, for sure. I tell them to please keep me updated if there the stools come earlier or there will be more delays. They said, yes, we will. Fast forward to Jan. I call around 15th Jan to ask, where my stools are. Again, no apology or anything for not calling me, just a "Oh, its delayed. But definitely before Chinese New Year you will get those stools." At this point, I'm getting frustrated. Nobody has called to tell me of delays, every step of the way, I've had to call and ask, nobody at Lush has taken any initiative to call me to inform me of delays. In fact, apologies for the repeated delays were also not forthcoming. All I kept hearing was, delay in shipping. So, 2 weeks before Chinese New Year, I am in full Panic Mode. I call and ask, where are the stools, I have guests coming during CNY, and the extra seating would really be important. The person calls me back after a day or so to say, we can deliver those stools tomorrow. I say fantastic, and i arrange for delivery. Day of delivery, my mother in law is at home waiting for it, as they are delivering during office hours. The stools come, and my MIL calls me saying "Its all scratched and there are dents." I talk to the delivery people who tell me, "You mean you dont know? these are the show room pieces, your new ones are in bad condition, so we cannot send you your new ones, we lend you the showroom ones for CNY." Since I had no idea of this arrangement, I called the office to ask what was going on. The office also expressed no surprise that i didnt know i was getting showroom pieces, which made me suspect they were hoping i wouldnt realise. They then said that my stools were still in shipping, and that they would be in Singapore 27th Jan but they were afraid it would be too short a time to ensure delivery so they decided not to risk it. At this point, i was getting really mad. First I had to call myself to find out where my stools were, secondly nobody told me they were sending me showroom pieces until it arrived at my door, and they followed this up by giving me different stories. Delivery guy says new stools arrived but in bad condition, office says they are not in Singapore yet. The office people then tell me i should be MORE UNDERSTANDING. As its CNY and these stools are called Fortune Cookie stools so they are very popular. But i ordered them in NOVEMBER. its not like i ordered in Jan right? All the while, they were completely unapologetic about it until i called a customer service officer to complain. When they delayed it the second round, I asked them to compensate me for the delay and they offered me $50 vouchers at their store. This time, after i REPEATEDLY said that they should compensate me, they said okay how about 88 dollars of vouchers. To which I said I would not be purchasing anything from them again, so i would have no use of vouchers. So after many tos and fros, they said 88 dollars in cash. Fine. And they said they would TRY to send my stools before CNY as I wanted to have new stools and not old ones for CNY. When i asked what would happen if they could not send me new stools before CNY? They said then they will refund me and take back the show room pieces. Take it or leave it. No compensation. This was basically the attitude they took throughout the entire episode. In the end i got so frustrated i said just take your stools back and refund me, forget compensation. And they did. But the entire episode has left a sour taste in my mouth and I will never buy anything from them again. Thanks for reading.

Hehe.. i can use wood top because i know i hardly cook. LOL

Moving in Sept 8th i think.. at least.. thats the date that some internet site threw up as suitable for me and htb... Well, I'll be walking my dog around, so if you see a brown long haired dachshund... the owner is likely to be me or my family.

Hello neighbor! You've started a blog finally!! Now I can camp here to read. Hehehhehe.. Good luck with your renovations ahead, wonder if we'll see each other around since we live so near by.

Hmm.. fine cracks, there are definitely some. If you cannot accept fine cracks, then cement screed is definitely not for you. I love the look of it.. with the almost marble like veining (which is ironic because i dont like marble) It does have a layer of dusty feeling right now, which my ID said should go away with mopping about 5 or 6mths. We did consider putting a layer of epoxy, but my ID didn't like the glossiness of it aesthetically because it feels very commercial, and also he says with a layer of epoxy, the cement screed wont have room to breathe. 0.o I dont honestly know if it needs to breathe.. but so far I'm liking the look of it. He did buff it down abit, which i gather is a more industrial way of sandpapering. So its not as dusty feeling as it may have been.

Talat Rot Fai/ Talad rod fi.. alot of ways to pronounce it.. I took a BTS to somewhere near Seacon Mall, n then took a cab from there..

Yeah, luckily it's my least fav chair from that set. Although definitely still heart pain but what to do. Maybe cuz it's vintage-y looking so they assumed it was an old work chair. Haha

No worries, am using Ikea wooden countertop in Oak! 15 years guarantee! ID say if any serious stains or after a few years can sand down to make it look new. He also bought a bottle of oil/moisturiser from Ikea for us to maintain the counter top.

Haha, you and my ID would get along really well. He also said it feels like a culling exercise.

Yes! It's at talat rot fai, now besides Seacon Square Mall. But be warned that there're no money changers there so bring enough money! Also go for dinner, lots of little food stalls inside. Don't be like me, blur blur, eat outside when a walk into the market proper there're tons if small food stalls and deeper inside there're cool cafes and bars that are beautifully decorated.

Went to bangkok recently.. and saw lotsa cool vintage stuff at the night market cinema seats!! there were lotsa them... But they were in need of refurbishment for sure. Lotsa old radios... and most of them in working conditions.. prices were around 240 bucks or so. I saw similar ones in Lorgan's, but i didnt check out the Lorgan's pricing. Was very tempted to get them but they were rather large.. i dont think they would fit well into my cargo bag at all.. They had alot of the industrial style factory lamps.. but it wasn't that cheap.. for bangkok. Was around Singapore prices, oddly enough.

Haha nah.. just to neaten the top and so i can put stuff like plates, etc on the top.

Kitchen island and kitchen... The switch board door and border is waiting for chalk board paint... ID say the place he usually get his chalkboard paint from is out of the black one, only have green.. so now we waiting for black to be back in stock.

My tiny kitchen.. I know there're alot of renotalk forumers who are serious about their kitchens.. and I drool over their ovens n state of the art kitchen appliances.. But i'm very practical, I dont really cook, so I just told the ID go for simple and clean looking please. my big sink.. took up more space than i thought. and the tap finally installed.

Seems like a lot of problems pop out end of project.. one day i went and found that one of the chairs i shipped back from bali was broken. I asked ID about it.. he said he checked with his workers.. it was the tilers who thought they could use it to step on and ended up breaking it. He's gonna try to fix it at a metal workshop.. if not, the tilers will look at replacing it. Now its all bandaged up... waiting to go to Chair Hospital.. or Heaven..

so there were some problems .. ID wanted to hand over the house today, but last week, when we looked through.. we saw this in the master bathroom When i first saw it, my heart sank abit and i asked my ID.. why ah? He said.. looks like wolverine came around. 0_o Later he explained that its a natural formation for lava stone, every piece of lava stone is different. He went on to say its very beautiful and that people pay alot for this kinda natural formation and look. -_- The lighting that he installed above just showed it up instead. I said.. but i dont like. End up, we called Stone Tec ourselves to ask if can choose the lava stone tiles, cuz our ID said the only way of getting the tiles we want to replace those is to go n choose ourselves. Stone Tec said, can choose.. but instead of 5plus per tile, will become 7plus per tile.. zzzzzzz Htb went down.. went through 100 plus tiles to choose 40 that we liked. End up his back hurt for 5 days after that. Sigh.... Now in the midst of redo-ing and it looks fine. Yay!

Congrats on your beautiful beautiful home! And that smeg fridge makes me drool. I've kinda resigned myself to a non smeg cuz of size. But now.... Drools

Thanks woodywood!

Prefer it unpainted.. the painted parts makes the bricks look abit unnatural..

Thanks Vanessa.. I like the look of the relite fans.. and mine has 4 or 5 settings if I remember correctly. I found it cooling enough at number 3. The speed controller is up to you to buy, my ID bought mine and its same size as my light dimmers. I didn't take a picture of the fan dialers but i have a picture of the dimmers. I think my ID mentioned he purposely bought this particular set of light switches and dimmers because their fan control dialers were nice looking, he didnt like any others.

Thanks! Haha yeah.. it was after it rained I think...

Blinds have to be installed for that window naturally. But part of the window frame comes under the lighting box up beam so the blinds specialist who came to look at my place said errr, either u will have one exposed white frame on one side which looks weird or unjust expose both sides. Which may also look very weird cuz we are using wooden slat blinds. Zzzz. Need to discuss with ID. A bit dark but can see the led down lights on top in front of the mirror. Again we were afraid the area may be too dark but as usual our ID did good here. He isn't very reassuring sometimes cuz he doesn't say what he is gonna do in details but everything usually turns out alright. Also the t5 tube lights are up and he ran some along the wall though out most of the house.

Wall lamp on the patio dining area wall. We also have track lights but forgot to take a picture. At first we were afraid the area would be dark. Because our ID kept mentioning putting candles. He said ntg beats candles for ambience. Luckily he was still made the area pretty bright. We used the same wall light for the master bathroom. Most of our lights come with a dimmer, in fact the electrician said he never installed so many dimmers in one house before! Installed against marine ply, my ID has marine ply in his bathroom as well and it's held up well so when he suggested mixing marine ply and lava stone for our master bath we agreed. And now we're loving it! Still very dirty, the area. Don't mind ah... My bravat taps are bit too close together... Zzzzz I'm irritated by it but the silestone counter is made alrdy, holes for tap also carved out alrdy,now ask them to change they may not and also it'll take a while. So I guess I'll live with it. Htb says abit close but he is okay with it. We all have different things we find a huge irritation. He keeps grumbling the walls not smooth enough. Oh well. That one easier to correct

Next stop.... Le fans. I only have two ceiling fans, 1 for the living and 1 for the patio dining area. We still may need to get a couple of standing fans or fans that can be installed on the wall but so far we haven't seen any we liked. As we face a busy road our master bedroom is gonna be air conditioned every night. the walk in wardrobe is also air conditioned since more than one wall is full glass and we obviously can't change with the windows opened. Lol The original electrical point for the fan/lighting point we did not move since we did not do a false ceiling in the living. We like the exposed cords look so we just got the ID to pull out the cord from the original pt to the position we wanted for the fan. Oh yes, it's a relite fan. We saw it in our ID's house n liked it do told him to get the same for us. He said its ard 100 plus so it seemed like an ok price and we figured we weren't gonna go hunting for a bargain ourselves. It's cooling! Wish the stem cld be longer dropped from the ceiling but my htb is tall so had to make sure he cld stretch and all without the blades cutting him. Wish my ceiling were 5m tall instead of 3m. Patio dining fan. ID made a cantilever to hang the fan from the wall so the awning didn't hafta take the weight. Hope we can have lotsa happy dinners n lunches out there!

Common bathroom. We bought tons of Edison light bulbs so the electrician just put up some random ones but we're gonna change to another kind. These are the vintage green industrial factory lamps. Seems a little big for having two in my common bathroom but ID said 1 not bright enough.