Catt

Wednesday 13 Jul'16 Update: Went to the house and spoke to the electrician (husband and wife team). Was quoted $60 for a double socket. I think that's fairly reasonable since my colleague's ID quoted her 70-90 for double sockets. Total for electricals scared me a little, but I have to absorb the impact since Darkling Half wants plenty of sockets (again, we have been deprived of substantial sockets for 7 years..so what can I say) in the kitchen for her use. I hear her saying things like...oh but I need a socket at the prep area for blender (which we do not own one of..so..err...trying to tell me something?)...oh TV area better have more, one socket for each appliance...etc. Friends, I did convince her that there would NEVER be enough sockets, sooner or later you will find a multi- extension plug growing out of the wall. So electricals came up to about $3k +. I"m not saying it's expensive as we did have more sockets than I estimated, and installing things like 2 ventilation fans and a lighted medicine cabinet did add to it as well. She also made a duckface when the electrician's wife (the sharper and smarter one of the pair) told her that it was illegal to have outlets placed 30cm above floor level. Apparently HDB requires 50cm above ground. She mentioned it could be done, but we have to bear the risk. Law-abiding me persuaded Darkling to stay with 50 cm (but seriously half the homes I've lived in and been to are 30 cm above floor ) and she was NOT happy. Too bad! Also met the windows/ sliding door/ door gate guy. I forgot that unit numbers can be built into the gate. So now I'm lazy to convey that message to my contractor and halfheartedly thinking about buying my own sign instead. My unit has two unit # signs, one given by HDB (old and yellow sign) and one that the previous owner stuck to the current gate. Not nice! The contractor also handed me a binder book of laminates (Arova brand) to review. Here are some pics: Toilet tiling half-done. Grouting not done. Mixed reviews from friends and colleagues. Older colleagues dislike the tiles. Feedback is that it looks like a badly-done paint job. Younger colleagues love the tiles for the swirls and the variation patters. Nevermind, the people living in the house like can already. From a side view with the light halfway down the wall, the tiles look uneven (yeah I made a duckface to the tiler on this), and I was already told beforehand that this could happen due to the type of tile used (long). After grouting it might look less obvious. I may have the same issue with the subway tiles (short but plentiful). So basically they are telling me tiling is uneven no matter what is selected. Errr...let's see what happens after grouting. My pathetic attempt at matching kitchen cabinet laminates with the countertop and my peculiar floor tiles. I like "Ground" but am worried it will make the kitchen look very dark. "Gainsboro" is a warm grey which might counter the darkness. Not too sure about our wardrobe. It's sliding doors and I'm afraid of big panels of solid colour. Maybe something woody and light (Laricina) ? There's texture on this, so I'm still deciding if it will be a hassle to clean. Tried my powers of Manja to get the contractor to change white laminates within the wardrobe to grey or black. I"m not very good at the skill of Manja but it seems to have worked some. since the contractor sort of grunted in a 'I give up' manner. Thank you daddy for allowing me to practice on you for 35 years. Ok, will update with more pics and less words next time. Hopefully everything is tiled up by Saturday! PS: They managed to 'realign' the annoying pipe in the toilet. So now there is more walking space between the WC and the wash basin in the shower room.

Nice flooring trcd.. looks clean and bright and the wood tiles are really pretty! Mine is progressing slowly as well. Went to take a look on Tuesday and they only did up part of the toilet wall tiles. I'm rushing to buy lights and accessories but the contractor is telling me to take it easy. I don't even know when to apply for NetLink! (ex Open Net).

Yesterday I went down to take a peek at the house to see what further works had been done. Contractor T's didi was there quietly doing some clean up and I was glad since we took the time to discuss the way the tiles should be laid, location of drains, and I took more measurements for a pedestal sink. Gotta live with a pedestal sink due to space constraints. I have not bought any other stuff yet!!!! Very slow...I'm not sure when I should buy the fridge and washer since everyone keeps advising me to wait till the final weeks of the reno due to the warranty start period. New bedroom wall and door relocation done. I forgot to take photos so I only have this one from Darkling Half. Today I went down to Universal Union to look at taps, shower stuff, toilet bowls, heaters, hobs, chimney and oven. To be honest I have no idea if I'm getting a good deal purchasing from them, but after discount they do cost less than what I can find online. For the 3 items below they promised to sell for below $2200. I can't recall the exact amount but the chimney was originally priced at $1000++ and the Teka hob was approx $680 at the Teka boutique. As I intend to get my toilet sink, shower set, taps, mixers and heater from Universal, I think i should be able to bargain for further discounts. Hob Teka CGW LUX 60 3G AI AL TR CI Oven Bosch HBN331E1K 66L Hood Brandt AD1189X Since I'd budgeted for more per item, the pricing feels reasonable to me I guess. I had to leave quickly as the heat in Geylang was getting to me. Spent only a minute in Wasserbath (next door) because they are nuts... weak airconditioning and they tied their main door open. Toodleloooo!!

Hacking Pics With Bedroom 2 (old room demarcated by the purple wall) knocked down to form my new living room, and the wall for Bedroom 1 (where I will sleep- Green Wall) demolished to build a new wall. The new bedroom wardrobe will start at the end of the green wall where the Bedroom 2's wardrobe used to be and extended to where the old BD2 door used to be. View from the windows. The tiles and bags of sand arrived yesterday. I think that's the contractor's brother squatting there. A very serious and practical man, so it's nice when I make him laugh. I call him Contractor T's didi... I think he likes it. The hacked up kitchen and floor of the utility room. Aiyah I forgot to take a picture from a different angle to show the gas pipe. Next up, the hacked-through 2 toilets. So tiny I don't even know what to do. The evil pipes. At this point, the "standing horse stance" air vent pipe has been removed. Now the contractor is trying to figure out how he can re-run the smaller pipe (the one closer to us in the picture) so that it creates more room for walking through. I have to have the basin on the new wall (old doorway to shower room will be sealed up) so that it's next to the shower, as the shower cannot be on the same side as the windows, otherwise the shower 'pole' will be running across the center of the window (which can NEVER be opened). Stupid right?! He asked me to make a rain shower and that earned him a withering duckface look from me. That's it for now. Next is wetworks and all that tiling other stuff. I will sit tight till the contractor calls me again.

Yay, long post time!! Recently I've been told that I need to have a more positive outlook as negativity affects everyone around me (seriously the point is not negativity, the point is fear. FEAR muahahahha) . I don't know why I've received that feedback as I'm a very very optimistic person. Perhaps they have translated my pragmatism as negativity. So anyway, I've been on my Zen wagon for at least 2 weeks, smiling nicely at people and melting them with my big doe eyes and I was doing really well. Till I fell off the wagon at work because some people are just so idiotic that it's hard to believe we come from the same planet. Hi everyone, my name is Catt and I'm a crabby cantankerous old fart. I am having problems climbing back up my zen wagon. I know I should be nice to my neighbours. My parents aren't the type to mingle with neighbours as it took them over a decade to speak to one auntie on the same floor. I also have a fear of people ringing my doorbell because I don't like dealing with fervently religious people. These days I am better because I've started online shopping . So the zen wagon- I received my first love note from one of my neighbours living below me. I've been warned by the seller that this one is the most complain-y of the lot. So what do I do? I feel quite 'hot' because they wrote me to "Call ME (them)" which smacks of my school days "See Me, Mrs Chua". I've decided to ignore them in order to stay on my Zen wagon. The contractor told me that they orange heart -shaped love note was there since Day 1. Same as how people need time to adjust and show their neighbourliness, people also have to accept that not everyone is willing to make friends immediately. Everything takes time. Mr Quite-Forgetful contractor said he would speak to them. Today I went down to visit the new house and to check out the hacking works which are supposed to have ended yesterday. I also met the aircon contractor (told my contractor to introduce his contact to me so they can work together) and discussed with him the number of air-conditioning units I should have and how to run the trunking. I didn't want the aircon trunking to run along the bottom of the wall, but as usual, due to my everlasting CEILING BEAM problem, I had to run the trunking that was passing from the living room to the bedroom downwards near the skirting. In the end I have a sys 3 compressor generator thingy supporting my sys 2 Panasonic Econavi (I think it's 22000 btu for living room & hall, and a 12000 btu for bedroom). Asked the aircon contractor to please give me better armaflex stuff (sorry again I'm not good at technical stuff, but at the back of my readings I know they gave me the thicker tubing). The toilet is still my biggest headache. The ground for the WC room is lower than the shower room and that cannot be levelled out as WC room's ceiling is much lower. Peeing 101 for midgets is something I've yet to master. The contractor's brother came today and he helped to solve the problem of me wanting a sink-in shower stall. So that was good. I have to try and get a pedestal basin not wider than 45 cm and the contractor is going to try and figure out if the 2nd pipe in the shower room can be moved. I also have to box up the gas pipe and meter in the kitchen which means now I will have this ugly thing blocking my lower-counter-only kitchen from the old living room/new dining area. My upper top half of the wardrobe will house a beam and renders that portion utterly useless. Luckily I'm used to a short Ikea wardrobe. Time to throw away more stuff!! I've also decided to change all the casement with top hung casement windows, into just casement windows, as they make the house look squat and dark and The Darkling Half HATES them. She thinks I cry tears of pearls (see what I did there?! Zen wagon!) and can sell them when I feel like it. Pics to follow.

Hi Cazfaith, the internal is not gold orange (I feel kena cheated about that), it is the same colour as the outside. The difference in colour is due to the light effect from the bulb. After shipping everything, it cost me a nose and ear bleed. Kidding. It came to approx. $946USD for all 4 sconces including shipping and tax. I probably didn't need that many, but that beam in the middle of my kitchen ceiling says yes I do.

ricepapergirl: The pipes still look pretty new from the HIP/MUP from a few years back, so I won't be changing them. The only pipe I'm removing is an air vent one that passes through the walls housing the WC into the shower room. Thank goodness they could get rid of it as it is in an awkward "standing horse" stance and takes up a corner of the shower room. brightz: I guess the neighbours probably opted out of it then, I heard from the sellers that the ones downstairs had the most complaints about everything. I'm fine with the exposed pipes in the kitchen, I can't imagine having them boxed up in all sorts of funny shapes like what the sellers did. Just have to paint them in some nice glossy paints!

I just remembered that I wanted to share this in case anyone who buys an old resale house ever encounters this. I've not heard of it before, but then I'm quite oblivious to technical stuff. One day I went to the seller's place to get a reno indemnity form signed so that the contractor could start hacking the moment I received the keys. Before I left, the seller suddenly showed me this pipe that was hidden under the joint of the Lshape cabinet where the sink and box-up of pipes met. To be honest, I felt quite fed-up, because understandably the seller wouldn't be alerting me to this when I was viewing and buying the house, but still, it was quite annoying to learn about new problems owning an old house would entail. I'm quite suaku, so I didn't know what I was looking at. Apparently, when HDB undergoes MUP/HIP (one of these) and they change the cast iron sewage pipes to PVC ones, they do not change the entire pipe. The joints of the iron pipes are embedded in the ceiling and the floors, and those are the original cast iron bits that are left in our entire sewage piping system. HDB replaces only the parts of the pipes that can be seen above ground and below ceiling. When the seller was renovating the kitchen, his contractors were given this PVC joint by HDB and they did not know how to fix it properly as it is meant to fit into the cast iron parts left behind. It leaked from the ceiling joint, and since it was in a box-up cupboard, no one noticed until water seeped from the ceiling, exited the bottom of the box-up, dripped down the walls and leaked into the neighbour's home below. The neighbour lodged a complaint with HDB and both house-owners had to partially pay for the damage and rectification. So now I'm praying that my contractor is very very careful when hacking around this pipe, or fixing new extensions to it.

Thanks JohnJohn. By the way I love your feature wall, very stylish and somehow I imagine your place very relaxing to come home to after a long day.

28 June 2016- Key Collection Day! I'm now ready to be in debt for a long long time... Hacking will commence tomorrow (apparently it's a good day to "touch soil", so it was a good thing for me that the seller moved his altar out on a different auspicious day. My dad generously helped to 'cleanse' the house with a special ritual since I made noise about superstitions that one should not renovate during the Hungry Ghost Festival. He didn't have to since he gave me The Look of "what the...". Anyway, I'm good to go apparently. Here are some house pictures to keep you entertained until more exciting changes take place. View of the current living room from the kitchen doorway. The windows are quite crappy but my contractor says he will look at them to assess if they can be salvaged. The grills will be removed though my dad again warned me that I would get robbed. The wall under the first window is f***ed, which I had not noticed as the sellers kept the main door open all the time. The paint is at least 6 layers thick, the plaster is crumbling and the mortar is leaking water. Yay. View from the living room. Happy to see so much greenery: Two views of the kitchen. Spot that evil beam in the middle of the ceiling! Sellers tiled it up, contractor advised not to. The horrifically small bathroom that is giving me a major headache now. Those pipes! That narrow space! That claustrophobic WC space! I'm hacking down 3/4 of the wall between the two toilet spaces. Utility room. I find this the most pleasant place in the entire house as it has no beams, no trunking, no pipes. This will be our bedroom. There's this suspended cabinet/ drawer that's located halfway up my head on one of the walls. I have no idea why they had it. Hack! The 2nd bedroom. This is a big room, which will be our future living room and I'm expanding the master bedroom into this room for the wardrobe space. Look at the huge double deck/ wardrobe bed and desks that have to be removed... Views from utility room and kitchen windows. So one side looks towards Cantonment, and the other side looks towards just the tips of Mt Faber park. I was in a state of panic last weekend since my agent first alerted me that my contractor had applied for hacking starting on the day I collect the keys (late afternoon/evening). The contractor assured me during my Happy Hour that it would be done in 2 days (key collection day ate up 1 day, we were given 3 days to complete demolition) and I had no choice but to let him and the beer convince me. He also had to convince me that it would be fine hacking around the gas meter located in the kitchen, since SP Services called me at 5.40pm ON A FRIDAY AND TOLD ME IT'S AFTER WORKING HOURS AND BTW MA'AM WE NEED TO REMOVE YOUR GAS METER AND WE DON'T KNOW WHEN WE CAN MAKE AN APPOINTMENT AND YOU CAN'T HACK WITHOUT US REMOVING IT. I was trying not to scream in the bus and long story short, after a few minor heart attacks and reciting to myself that the sky is blue and grass is green, Citigas techs are coming tomorrow morning to remove the gas meter for god knows what nonsense reason. The logic is from them is too long and I know I can stop the gas temporarily...but seriously let's not get into that. I just needed to vent.

Hi trcd! Glad to see everything is progressing well on your end. I see you've bought the Rubine heater (with pump). Did you have a chance to do a dry run with it yet? I'm thinking of either getting this one or another black one (I think it is Rinnai as it is the only other that I found was sleek, black and had a pump), but so far all the reviews I could find on heaters with pump was that it would make a humming noise. Going to make Universal Union my one stop shop for toilet stuff, hood and oven, as I'm not diligent enough to run everywhere.

That's why I decided not to get drawers with handles as I have a tendency to either knock into them (ouch!) or graze my knuckles and cuticles when I'm cleaning. trcd & Ricepaperdoll: I think I really need to make lifestyle changes (start using kitchen towels!).

Thanks for the tip @ricepapergirl ! Aiyah it didn't occur to me as I'm currently pulling utensils out of the dish-rack only (lazy rental household habits, my chopsticks and spoons have a permanent home in the dish rack). Dang!! If I insist, maybe I have to learn how to use my foot to open drawers. Ooh I'm so annoyed with myself now.

Yesterday I received a call from my contractor who was happy to announce to me that my renovation permit was approved, and all hacking works were approved as well. So that means I can start in the first week after completion if my father finishes his 'cleansing' ritual the day after key collection. I'm still timing my buys (sink for last week of June, the rest in 1st week of July, before end of GSS) because if there is delivery right now to my current home, I will be scratching my head on how to move all the heavy items over to the new place without a car. Plus I live in a walk-up so it is not ideal for me or anyone else to be lugging stuff up and down the stairs. The contractor also told me that I didn't need a HDB permit to change the pipes. I checked the HDB site, and I guess I don't need one if I'm only changing the "roots" dangling out of the main (straight) sewerage pipes. I really really want to remove that U-shaped pipe growing down into the middle of one of the toilet windows. In the meantime, here are some of the pictures I've collected from Pinterest which are helping me in my design and colour-scheme. Living Room Colour Scheme It's proving rather difficult to find an orange-y tan sofa in the shade that I've shortlisted, so I think just getting the majority of the colours into one picture helps me to visualize what I think would go with it. Initially I wanted to paint my walls grey or greige or taupe, but after serious late night 2 am brain-mauling, I'm going to stay with cream. I'm not great with matching subtle colours, so if I went with what I feel like doing, the house would look really psychedelic. I'll try to stick with the colour scheme of orange, grey and blue if possible. (Anything red will probably make it look very CNY... better not cos Darkling Half will kill me with a spoon). Actually I rather like this orange and grey theme with dark furniture as it reminds me of Hermes' theme colours. The scheme below is the closest to what I have in mind as it matches my floor tiles. Kitchen Colour Scheme and Cabinet Design Most of my pinterest pictures are of kitchens. Because it's for Darkling Half, I feel a great pressure to ensure the kitchen is the nicest part of the house (and of course I indirectly benefit from her staying in the kitchen I'm aiming for cabinets with indented handles so I hope the contractor won't let me down. If he is not able to do them (whether it's cost or skills), then my alternative would be handle-less, to go for a streamlined look, since the Darkling-selected floortiles, and the countertop are very busy-looking. I've also saved some sub-way tile kitchen pictures for the colour of the grout. My kitchen would be warm grey floors, white subway walls, black/ brown (hard to describe, look up Vanilla Noir Caeserstone) countertop, and lighter warm grey for the cabinets. No handles. I think these indented ones look kind of neat but Darkling Half says it looks like something in an office. This is closest in representing the colour scheme: Finally the bathroom. My inspiration had always been this washroom. I like the stone-like tiles, but not the vanity because when I see wooden stuff like this in the washroom, I think of rot and mold. It's really contradictory and probably all in my head, since the vanity I'm planning for in real life would be made of laminated wood. Bathroom Colour Scheme Here's another. My tiles are the same for floors and walls, so I'm trying to imagine that using these pictures. Bedroom I'm not too fussed about my bedroom as long as my wardrobe looks simple and subtle and my bed is comfortable. There's only one window in my room, so it's not the brightest place. I've decided to keep my bedroom flooring same as that for the living room since I think I will be hopeless maintaining parquet. Maybe one day I will have parquet when I grow up. This is my inspiration picture, but I haven't decided if I wanted to taup-ify one of my bedroom walls as it will become very dark.

Ohhh my wall sconces have arrived late last night! It was not a heavy box as I could carry it up the stairs, and the light fixtures were all swaddled in tons of smooth thin paper. The funniest thing was that they packed latex gloves in with the box with an advisory that I should get the electrician to use the gloves while installing the lights, since they were of some 'artisan' finish that would develop a 'rich patina' over the years...yada yada yada hipster-stuff language. They are bigger than I imagined (think mini cone-shaped loudspeakers), so these babies will go all the way up to the ceiling where I can kinda see them and kinda not have these big black things in the way, and now and then I can climb up there with microcrystalline wax polish ( I kid you not, they actually advise using this stuff and you can purchase it on their website or Amazon) and polish my g*d**n kitchen lights in my Martha Stewart outfit. By the way I've been quiet here because my key collection is still 2 more weeks away and I'm super chill with the contractor (though now and I then I remind him I exist by asking him for random pictures of things he said he would supply for the house). Riding on the GSS to do the following: bought and warehoused the TV console from Grafunkt and the coffee table from Crate & Barrel. I will be back to Crate & B after I collect the keys and measure the wall in the hall so I can chose the size of bookcase I want. If I hit a total of $2k for my purchases, my delivery of $150 will be waived. Still pending the sofa, other lights, blowers, kitchen white goods (my sink! Not ordered yet), all toilet accessories and fixtures. All this will be ordered only after I collect the keys. Early days man...early days...

trcd: Yes I intend to put my dining table in between the kitchen and 'new' living room! At the moment it's my least planned area for some reason. Maybe I haven't been using a dining table everyday for 13 years since I moved out, so it's probably my area of least concern. BTW I really envy your kitchen not having a beam across the center of the ceiling like mine. It really opens up the space! The octagonal light you posted... my colleague bought the black one from TB. She loves it (think she chose the '3 colour' one so can adjust from white to warm yellow). I was inspired by Ricepapergirl after reading her blog...maybe I should take a trip to Chan Huat to 'touch' things haha! Ricepapergirl: I really like your pendant lights! Another option for me!

Very useful information trcd. Especially when I'm planning for the kitchen. The wall sconces were supposed to serve the purpose of task lighting if I track light my kitchen (I think track lighting creates pools of darkness where the bulb is not focused on). There will definitely be trunking, but don't think it will be noticeable as I plan to have the sconces higher up on the wall near the ceiling due to the size. Not sure If it's an overkill since I've bought 4, one for the sink, one for the prep area and 2 for my opposite counter which serves as a pseudo-table. They should hopefully be arriving in these 2 weeks. Actually when I mentioned 3-in-1 lights, I meant lights with the ability to change from white light to warm daylight to yellow. Not disco lights (those days are over for me :p)! This is one of the lights I shortlisted on TB. Still not sure if I want to bite the bullet and buy from TB, I really like touching and looking at things in real life before deciding! https://detail.tmall.com/item.htm?id=524848884751&toSite=main

I'm so happy you're posting! Was hoping to see pics soon and here you are! I've been scratching my head over the lighting plan of my entire house as well since I'm not building in false ceiling nor l-boxes due to ceiling height. Based on my own lifestyle and habit, my rental homes usually have those old-skool fluorescent tube lightings which I hardly turn on. I normally use my standing floor lamps (2 in my living room, 2 in the dining, 2 in the bedroom) for the ambient look as white lights remind me of my workplace and are hard on my eyes. However, for practical reasons, I need 'cockroach-seeking' lights on those occasions when I need to find and kill roaches, iron clothes, or just to find that missing contact lens on the floor. My colleague suggested getting those 3 in 1 lights (meaning I can change the colour of the light). I am hesitating over pendant lamps for my dining area because I move my dining table a lot depending on occasion (e.g. extra 10 people dropping over for shabu shabu) and I think it's weird to have a light dangling over nothing if I move the table. Let me know what type of lighting plan you decide... Can learn from each other!

Pm-ed. Sorry for the late reply as I've been flooded with work this entire week and hadn't been checking my mails.

Yah I was so impressed by the uncle's choice and sorry that I wasn't able to use his suggestion. The bathroom tiles are from Hup Kiong. I realize that these are the lighter ones n the picture when I actually selected the ones that were a shade darker. I was so happy whenever sales people mentioned that there were pattern variations! I think people have different preferences. When I showed this picture to my colleague she told me that I could get the contractor to hide the swirly patterns as they didn't match with the ones with lines. I told her that I chose the tiles for the irregular swirls and would be upset if there were none in the carton!

Actually my uncle contractor is quite stylo. He sent me a picture of these black subway tiles because I told him I was subway-tiling the kitchen. I have this preconceived notion that all uncle contractors are practical, and aesthetics always come in second. I thanked him for the suggestion, though I was already set on white subways since the kitchen would be quite dark with my black countertops and grey floors. Anyhoos, so on Sunday, I packed the Darkling Half full of food from maccas (her brain stops working if she's hungry), and armed with a bottle of Oolong tea from NTUC, we went to SBH in Changi. For some stupid reason that I can't recall, I had a perception that it was one of the largest tiling stores and I would be able to do a one-stop there for all my tiles. It was a wasted trip since we selected some tiles we were kinda meh about (afraid there wouldn't be other choices in other stores...very kiasu, very ganjiong..and we also wasted time amusing ourselves with turnip design/ pimpley-looking tiles). We finally followed the contractor's advise and went to Balestier where there was a row of 3 tile shops (HK, LH and Hafary). These were smaller shops but they had a a better selection of tiles. We managed to find everything we needed within 2 hours (4 stores 2 hours =cabfare down the drain). HK: We found these really gorgeous tiles we wanted to use for the bathroom walls and floors. Rough enough to exfoliate dead skin off my feet, and to provide assurance to the Darkling Half that I wouldn't slip and fall and break my skull (yah I'm the clumsy one). Customer Service was poo...because we served ourselves. The two assistants were busy catching up on VoC or some nonsense. We filled in our own forms and guided ourselves through the store. Here's a picture of how a full wall would look. We both liked these as they looked like natural stone and had pattern variations for every tile. LH: We didn't get anything here as we hit Hafary first. However, since the living room tiles were the last on our list, we were only looking for those and came to the conclusion that everyone had their tiles from the same distributor. At this point I was also getting a bit antsy and overwhelmed by all the choices ... I was only drawn to one leopard print toilet tile that had leopard heads on it. Leopard heads! OMG! Turnips and leopards!! Weeee!! Hafary: A more 'updated' selection from my perspective. It's a place where you could find all the concrete-lookalike tiles (and more affordable than I thought 'speciality' tiles would cost), stone-like tiles, wood-like tiles (if that's your thing), travertine tiles etc etc etc. The salesman was able to provide us with more information on how the tiles should be laid, though I was disappointed that he discouraged me from having rectangular tiles in the living room since the style had dived in popularity. APPARENTLY now everyone uses 60X60 cm tiles as they produce less grout lines- BORING AND I ALLOWED a 60X60cm into my life cos i was too weak from hunger to argue (obviously my stamina is worse than Darkling's and my sanity had gone to ****s by then). Anyway the Darkling Half chose the living room/ bedroom and kitchen floor tiles. A very innocuous and unobtrusive floor tile selection since we will be buying 'personality' furniture and didn't want the house to look too busy. We chose beige as we find that white is very glaring to the eyes. We spent 15 mins debating whether the tile next to it had more dots or swirls or lines vs the one we were choosing. I think the sales man wanted to throw us out or pick his nose from annoyance. It's 'beige-r' IRL than it looks here due to the lighting. Darkling Half also chose the floor tiles for the kitchen (upper Left hand corner). It is supposed to have a concrete-like look. I've my doubts about how this will look as a whole since it is more yellow than I like it to be. But she likes it very much so I expect her to live out of the kitchen 70% of the time. I've my work cut out for me because I'm going to have problems choosing the right shade of grey to match the floor and countertop. Finally, we picked these subway tiles. There weren't many choices for 3D white subway tiles. We either went with a 10X30 or a 7.5X15. After 2 stores, we finally found a 7.5X15, which was short and cute! I'm happy because we stuck to the budget that the contractor gave us! My apologies if this was a long post again.... but it didn't make sense breaking it up into a few posts.

I found these wall sconces while surfing away and I'm so in love with them. I had tried tb-ing for them with the help of my 2 TB Queens from work but it just wasn't happening. I was meant to spent obscene amounts of money for no good practical reasons. I'm half-caving in. Base on my half -assed logic, I need 4 of these to install as fixtures in the kitchen so that I could get some task lighting in for the sink, prep and counter area. I won't be installing upper cabinets with built-in lights so extra wall lights are a must. These sconces also come with cute switches that the manufacturer can install into the Base of the sconce (I'm not getting them since these lights will go halfway up near the ceiling). OK I'm up, coffee time! Edit: These are from Cedar & Moss. http://www.cedarandmoss.com/lighting/tilt-cone

I'm meeting the contractor this afternoon at the new house and I'm nervous. I'm nervous about the pipes in the toilet because a mass in the middle of the wall I'm intending to demolish will mean that I have to keep at least half of that wall and my bathroom will remain tiny. Seriously I was too dazzled or possessed when I bought this place because I didn't even look at the frigging toilet properly (seriously wtf Catt!). I drew up some instructions for the contractor which I hope will help him understand. I took away any L shape built-ins because the space restrictions meant I spent hours agonising over measurements and whatnot. The Darkling half and myself will just have to make do with 3m of wardrobe space. I'm also stumped at what I'd do about the shoe cupboard.

Yup I will be clearing stuff today. I just found out that I hoard stuff that I've no idea why I'd bought in the first place. Like unused bento making tools and still- sealed Cluedo board games. Did I think I could play by myself?!!

OceanEleven...yes that's my internal debate. But I also think that I might have enough space for another row of bottom cabinets which works out to having one wall of top and bottom cabinets. I can't wait to go back in with a contractor as all the guessing is driving me crazy.