inthechouse

Cool! Where did you order your laminates from? We're sorta deciding between wall laminates and wallpaper.

One more thing... The worker also advised that we should paint the kitchen walls instead of leaving them in the cement screed state, because the latter is porous and it would be hard to clean/maintain. We have read on RT that light cookers should not be worried about having cement screed kitchen walls. We're neither heavy nor light cookers. So what should we do? We have also read about cracks but that's not as bad as if the walls were to have uneven patches all over, due to whatever reason....

Some pix taken Saturday evening... Saw that the 3D subway tiles for the kitchen are up. We had stuck a note on the wall requesting for black grouting. No problems here. The hollow block sink support. The tiling guys asked if we wanted to tile the top of the wall and we casually said yes. Didn't matter to us. But it mattered that we were there for them to ask us such things. We noticed that because we were dropping by the flat every other day, the workers had a chance to ask us questions directly. These are things that didn't cross our minds at all. We wonder what would they have done if we were seldom seen. I doubt they would ask Alan to ask us. Maybe they would just go with the "default" or common choices. So, our advice is, be there as often as you can. Chat with the workers and get whatever advice you need from them. Alan's workers are pretty easy-going. Here's the common bathroom. As mentioned in my earlier post, the extra drain hole has been built in. Note: WC will be to your left and the water heater will be installed to your right. No glass panel required at this point. #1 A little added height to the kerb. This came after the worker advised that it should be built higher if we don't want water coming out. I'm not sure how it works with bifold or PD doors as the bathrooms in my current home have separate, wet and dry areas. Let's just hope what the guy said is true. #2 This was proposed by him as well. It's sort of a semi step to prevent water from coming out. I couldn't grasp his Mandarin very well so I can't repeat the theory here.

Looks good! We decided not to go with a brick wall too. Similarly, we're using wooden tiles (but different ones) and 3d white subway tiles with black grout (for kitchen backsplash). We had two guys do the tiling for us (entire 4-room flat) and they seem to have finished in slightly under two weeks. They work on Saturdays too, but not sure if it's a full-day or half-day for them.

Hi guys, Today we went down to Hupfarri to get our toilet hardware and accessories. Decided to go with a stainless steel sink instead of the granite ones we saw at Hoe Kee, as a couple of our friends using the Blanco granite sinks gave the feedback that it was hard to maintain (oily layer that just couldn't be cleaned off, water couldn't drain properly etc). We went to look at fridges and realised that having an 800 x 800 fridge base by a corner doesn't translate into buying a fridge that's 800, or even 750. This is as the door needs space to swing more than 90 degrees open so that the shelvings within the fridge can be taken out to be cleaned. Trying hard to look for a fridge that's big for us- we cook often and like to stock up on groceries. We also purchased the water heaters and brought them down to the flat. It appears that all the floor tiles are laid but we couldn't really see them as they were covered by protective cardboard sheets. Still feel very disappointed that the living room was laid higher than what we thought it would be. Another thing is the last few times when we met Alan at the flat, he would speak to us shortly after arguing with his other clients/workers over the phone. Once, when we reminded Alan about the promised handover within Feb, he insinuated that we were slowing down the progress by being hesitant about things. But we felt that this was uncalled for as we have been pretty fast- we didn't even need him to go down tile-shopping with us, but had them all ready even before we signed with him. The slight delay with the tile grout was due to the fact that they didn't consult us about the colour before going ahead to lay one room- though we actually made a visit to discuss the laying of tiles with Alan and his tile guy. (See earlier posts.) He also didn't give us the paint and door catalogs until we asked for them straight after he told us that we needed to make a decision soon. Anyway, plastering will commence the coming week. Let's see how it goes.

Yup, do share the price of your new gate and door?

Are you keeping the main gate? I want to keep mine but I was charged quite a lot to rejuvenate it (sand, paint and new lock).

Sharing some gems I came across @ Sungei Kadut. Can't remember the prices but you can ring Natural Living to check.

Congrats and welcome! Using an iPhone, I upload photos via the Photo Bucket app, after which I still have to use the PC to post and embed the image links.

Will have to see what they show me tomorrow. Not a high chance of going ahead with it...

Here's a photo of the kitchen in its current state. New rubbish chute installed, and cabinet + washing machine base constructed. Not pictured: Fridge base. One bugbear: The steep step from the living room to the kitchen. Previously, Alan and every other ID and contractor who saw the flat in its original state commented that the kerb can be reduced slightly as it was a little too high. We were told that it was illegal to level it, but there was a way to reduce the drop. Today, we saw that the kerb is as high as it was before. The workers said that this was due to the "water level" of the flat. A call to Alan resulted in a similar explanation: That they had levelled the living room outwards from the bedrooms, and for the latter they had filled minimal cement. In other words, this drop was inevitable. I guess we had assumed that Alan would 1) lower the living room as agreed 2) apply for a permit to "bring up" the kitchen floor. None of that happened. -.- Personally, we're fine with the drop. The living room and kitchen tiles are vastly different anyway. But we will have frequent visitors who are very young and kinda old. We don't want anyone to be falling over. Alan suggested that they could do a ramp. We can't visualize it (and to be honest, we're thinking it could look hideous) so Alan said his workers will show and explain to me when we meet tomorrow. What do you guys think? Ramp or no ramp?

Update on the extra drain hole: Alan's workers have agreed to create an extra drain hole for the common bathroom, whether or not a glass panel will be installed. It will be done in the far right corner, as marked in the image above. They will do a drop for the right half of the bathroom, and the left half will be one-tile higher. Have a look at the photo below. It's an old flat so for both bathrooms, the WC is situated inside. One has to step across the wet area to get to the dry area. For the master bathroom, we will install a glass panel to separate the shower area from the WC. The option of a shower screen was dropped due to lack of space (and for safety reasons). For the common bathroom, we had the option of sealing up the existing entrance and create one to the left, but we did not go ahead with it because we don't wanna have to manouvere our bikes too much whenever we have to give them a bath. It was also extra costs that we could do without. We may not install a glass panel so we can keep it as spacious as we can.

As promised, here's a close-up of my tiles. You can see that the circled parts on the top tile has some indents, compared to the bottom tile. This, apparently, will result in thicker, more obvious grout. Dropped by the site this morning to meet the workers again and played around with the grout colours. One of them was rather nice and said that he would lay all the tiles without the grout today, so we can meet up again tomorrow to confirm the colours. He said it's better to see a "bigger picture", so he will apply the grout across one area. If we don't like it, he will clean it all up and reapply a different colour.

Congrats and welcome!

So there was a bit of a situation with the tiling works. On the day we met Alan and his worker to confirm where to tile using what, we somehow did not discuss grouting. We assumed that the woodgrain tiles would have thin, matching colour grout, and for everything else we didn't really have a preference. Last evening, we dropped by after work and saw, to our horror, that the tiling for 1 bedroom is completed - and it has thick white lines. The entire look was unnatural, and the purpose of using woodgrain tiles was defeated. So I texted Alan and he explained that the tiles had "round edges" hence resulting in big gaps. It took a while for us to realise what he meant by round edges. Will post a photo of that later. It's a pity we didn't know about this before, or we would have chosen something with flatter sides so that they can sit closer together. Nobody told us, and we didn't ask. Period. Next, we asked Alan if we could have coloured grouting for the other floor tiles. He then went on and on about how they can't match the colours 100%. Next, he asked me to meet his workers at my flat this morning, which I gladly did. One of the workers demo-ed the mixing to me, and the next thing I knew, I was having a bit of fun playing with it. I decided to communicate directly with the workers and I took down a mobile number. So there you go. If you're ordering woodgrain tiles for your place, please take note of the edges. Photo 1 - Top photo shows a friend's living room tiles. Bottom photo shows the tiles of 1 of my bedrooms. Quite a big difference. Sian. Photo 2 - Living room tiles, which have better edges than that of the bedroom tiles. Still deciding between the matching grout (left) and a grey grout (right) for the raw, unfinished look.

Hi saintinity! Thanks for the well wishes. Good luck to you too! Just read your blog. We've asked for move-in after CNY too, but it has to be within Feb. Also, we're going to have to plaster the walls, because I can't stand the measles effect. LOL.

By the way, I had forgotten to highlight this. The original common bathroom kerb wasn't straight and we had requested from the beginning for Alan to get his workers to hack it off and rebuild it. He replied that they were not allowed to do it. So we were pleasantly surprised to see that they did it afterall. Hope it's legal.

I see. Maybe we'll chat with him again. He wasn't in the best of moods yesterday.

Hi jayque, mind if I ask what kind of mistakes? We are using Alan too and we're just 2 weeks into our reno. Thanks.

Approximately 1.8m x 2.3m. The master bathroom floor tiles is cream, while the common bathroom floor tiles is light grey. Would light or dark tiles be better for the slant?

Thanks Hariette. Now it's up to us to counter his argument of uneven flooring.

Thanks greglhc. That was what we had in mind, but our contractor said it would be strange to have a "mountain" in the middle of the floor - I am assuming he meant having two slopes - 1 downwards to the left (original hole) and 1 downwards to the right (proposed new hole). Would it really be that hideous?

Here's a photo of our common bathroom. Apologies for the overexposure. We asked Alan if we could have an extra drainage hole where the star is positioned, but he said there is no point for it, because we are not installing a shower screen or glass panel. We don't really need a glass panel here because of the bicycles and whatever other bulky items we may haul into this bathroom for washing. We thought it would be weird to have the water drained from right to left - behind the person who is showering. Besides, wouldn't be better to have drainage close to the shower area? What do you guys think? Should we insist on having that extra draining hole?

Here's a panoramic view of our kitchen at this point. We've yet to decide if we are having cement screed walls or not. Finally... door frames of equal height. The gaps above the new frames were patched up as agreed. New doorway between 2 bedrooms made good after hacking. Broom spotted. Hope they sweep up all the cigarette butts and what not before cementing the floors!

So we met up with Alan and his tiling guy, Ah Leong, this morning. In case you're wondering, this meeting was arranged by Alan. Here's a collage of photos taken during our discussion. The 3D subway tiles pictured will be used for kitchen cabinet backsplash. Kitchen floor tiles not pictured. Different bright-coloured wall tiles for both bathrooms. The rest are woodgrain porcelain floor tiles for living room, storeroom and the 3 bedrooms. Just wish to share that Alan, being a contractor and not an ID, is unlikely to offer unsolicited advice on how to tile the walls and floors. You will have to tell him what you want. We did, however, ask him a few questions just to get his "expert opinion", to which he answered in a "matter of fact" manner. Our discussion was interrupted by a few brief phone calls which led to semi-heated arguments between Alan and the callers (possibly his workers). He's no doubt a busy guy, and with CNY coming up, I think he's neck-up with projects.