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It is more or less the same reaction I get from my wife if I suggest going for a browse around Sim Lim . It is only half the reaction I get when talking about going for a walk in a muddy forest on our trip to the UK at the end of Oct to visit my family there. You recall the painting by Edvard Munch called 'The Scream'... you know, the one that is a bit like . Well times it by 10 and that is close to my wifes' expression . They are both going to be coming back with chocolate coloured legs and big grins. If anyone complains about them being dirty, what do they think showers are for . Our key collection is not until Dec 27th (tentative) due to our visit to see my family. We will be in London for 3 weeks. My wife is having fun buying winter clothes . RB

Thanks. Yeah, you are not the only one to say that. I believe Photobucket are having a few issues at the moment. If it continues then I may have to look somewhere else to host them although I really hate imageshack . Yep, I sometimes think I should sell my story as script writers could not come up with some of the situations I find myself in . Makes life more interesting though It is good to know others also have the DIY bug. A fabric wall behind the bed can look really nice. Best of luck and make sure you put some pics up . Thanks Hippobb. I would be pretty upset if all those pics were done with 5D . The ones of the new apartment were done with my HD2 camera phone and the ones of our current apartment were done with my Nikon Coolpix p6000. The poor old 5D does not come out to play much these days although I could always post a few I took with it here if nobody minds . Thanks Marshmallow. Hope fully you got more or less the same answer when you asked . I am glad people are finding the blog interesting and a little amusing. Makes it worth spending the time. I started working on putting together a blog site for myself but never got around to finishing it to the point I was happy for others to view. It still exists as do a few articles I wrote for it. For your pleasure and amusement....

Yep, can only strip for solid or moulded doors. Bit of info here on wood veneer which may explain better than I have the process. RB

easiest way to check. 1. touch it. is it damp ? 2. Get some sealer from a paint shop, a paint brush and some thinner (sealer is oil based so you will need the thinner to clean any splashes and the brush. paint the patch with the sealer until the marks are gone. let dry (usually around 4,hours) then check. if you can still see the mark then add another coat. Once it is gone then give it a few days (longer the better) and see if it comes back. no more stain then be happy as the cause has probably been fixed. comes back then contact hdb and be prepared to share cost with upstairs for fixing (around 1/4) total cost IIRC. Not a perfect test but should be a good indicator for little cost that you can do easily yourself. hth RB quick top tip. Whilst waiting between painting coats, wrap the brush in a damp rag to stop the paint drying. this saves you having to wash it between coats.

Ok, this comes down to your definition of sharp and blunt. I should have qualified my definition of blunt as being non pointed. The edges of the little pebble pieces will still be sharp but not usually pointed. To avoid any further confusion... RB

Thanks Sfk7. Veneer doors use use a thin strip of wood much like laminated kitchen units on the face of the door to give it the colour or design that is preferred. It is not uncommon for veneered doors to be hollow behind the veneer with just an edging frame and maybe a cross beam left to right at waist height. AFAIK, you would have to change the veneer to change the finish but as there is just a basic frame behind, it is likely to be only slightly less expensive than getting a new door and more troublesome. Veneer doors are usually flat with no 'carving' type design to them. These are usually the cheapest type of door although it would depend on the quality and thickness of the veneer. Moulded or solid wooden doors (as per my badly painted door pic above) use lumps of wood to fashion the design of the door. They are usually pretty solid and can be painted. They can also have the paint striped and then be repainted rather than throwing them away and wasting them for the sake of a little effort. There are two ways to strip a door / door frame and both can be a bit messy. You can strip the door in place or remove it from the door way. It is easier if you move it as you can rotate it around as you are striping it and you can do all the doors in one place. The door frames you need to do in place (cannot take them off unless you have pretty good carpentry skills). Heat gun; You will need a heat gun sourced from somewhere like homefix. These are paint stripper guns and usually use an electric element and fan to produce hot air (like a big hairdryer) that melts the vinyl paint. They do not produce flames. You will need a metal scraper to pull the paint off the door when it is soft and protective clothing like an apron (or old clothes), gloves and shoes. Some sort of dust sheet (not plastic) will also help protect the floor. Use the heat gun to heat the paint up usually until it starts to bubble and then use the metal scraper to pull the paint off the door in strips. Start from the top of the door and work down and you can move the heat gun and scraper so the gun heats the paint just before the scraper gets to it. You can always go back and reheat a stubborn part if the paint does not come off smoothly. Go slow and let the gun heat the paint until soft (only the first bit needs to start bubbling). If you get it right it will come off in strips which will become brittle once they cool down. Don't let the heat gun stay over the door where it is striped or unpainted for too long or the wood will blacken and char. It is almost as if you are using the heat gun as an iron for ironing the clothes with the paint as the cloth (but don't touch the two together ). The door frames are usually easier unless they are moulded with intricate shapes. Acid Wash; You can purchase paint removal liquid at homefix (and other like shops I would guess) which you use with a paint brush to paint the door with. This will eat away at the paint so you can just scrape the remaining residue off afterwards. Same protection required as before with the addition of glasses or goggles to avoid splashes in the eyes. It is just like applying a thin coat of paint although the products I have used in the past have been like wall paper paste in consistency or thick congee . Whilst this is acidic in nature, if you do get any on your skin, just calmly go and wash it off with water. It is not so strong that you are going to loose fingers . Follow the products instructions for use and you will usually need to wash the door / door frame down afterwards to make sure you remove any left over paint remover. The advantage of this technique is that is it easier (paint it on then leave for a bit and then scrape off), no hot blowgun, no scorch marks. If you get the paint remover on something other than where you want it and not on skin then you can try baking soda to try and neutralize it. Again, if it is on shin then flush with lots of water. As long as you are not being stupid with it then you should have no problems. You may want a bit of retaliation for both methods but especially for the paint remover as the fumes can be quite irritating. Remember though that any fans around the heat gun method are likely to retard the heating process. Now, there is another type of door colouring and that is staining. A fairly neutral colours wood will be used to make a door and then stained to emulate the desired colour. Changing the colour of these doors can be difficult depending on the depth of the stain. The only way to remove it is taking the top layer off the door by sanding or planing. Planing would be out for most people as you are essentially 'shaving' the top layer off with a plane (hand or industrial). If you are willing to put the effort in then sanding using coarse and then progressively finer sandpaper may allow you to get past the stain. Make no mistake, this is a big job for just one door let alone two or three with door frames. It will help build arm and shoulder muscles though . Personally, if it is stained then get a new door. You may be able to sell the stained ones to someone who is looking and likes the colour you have. Recycle and reuse where possible . Get your protection on, try something new, stay safe, take pride in the results of your own work and most of all, have fun. Right, time to finish my cup of tea and then off to collect my wifes birthday cake and then eat it with her RB

Tempered glass will shatter in to small blunt pebble like pieces. RB

Must be a lost in translation issue. Clearly the heater would be needed if it was cold and not if it was hotter. Why the aircon unit has a crankcase heater (taken from www.refrigeration-engineer.com here) Now I would imagine that in tropical climates it would not be required but I am not a designer of aircon units. The unit mentioned here is probably manufactured for global distribution. What would be the environmental impact of manufacturing a different unit spec for each different climate. Would the effect of doing this outweigh the electricity usage of a crank heater. Doing a quick google around concerning crank case heaters mentions their failure as one of the main causes for aircon failure or the compressor making noises. A few points of note on deciding if you wish to turn off your compressor when not in use..... Do you turn off all your TV's, water heaters (drinking water), DVD players, Computers, Singtel or Starhub tv boxes and just about any other electrical appliance AT THE PLUG when not in use. 99% will be using standby power. We have been doing this for two months and have seen a 15-20% drop in our electrical bill.The calculations bounced around here do not seem to take in to account failure rates of a compressor when not keeping the crank heater running. Having to replace the compressor is far more environmentally unfriendly than an extra few dollars electricity a month.The figures here do not seem to take in to account the better efficiency of the coolant to aid cooling on start-up if a crank heater is installed and left turned on. Saving money through efficiency of cooling may well offset the cost of the crank heater running.The engineers at the company who manufactured the aircon unit most likely know more about the best way to run it than you or me so maybe it is best to take their advice. Surely you (as in a general 'you' not anyone in particular) are not the type of person who googles when you are ill then demands the doctor give you a specific treatment.None of the information has citations. It is all just word of mouth. If there are letters or emails etc then please publish in this thread ? Please make them available so we can all see the original responses. If you fear flipping the RCB on a distribution box because of sparks then you really need to get the distribution box changed as there is something wrong. RCBs should never cause harm to anyone. They are designed to be used by consumers, all be it on an infrequent basis. I have a Mit Heavy Industries 3 split system and will not be turning it off at the plug when not in use. I would suggest anyone who does also checks their warranty as using it outside of the manufactures recommendations may invalidate it. Want to make good savings, make sure you turn off all consumer electronic devices at the plug overnight and whist at work where possible (obviously not the fridge etc). Happy saving cash. More savings means more cash for nicer renos . RB

I have been informed that the contractors do not strip the paint from the doors or door frames by both Home Success and by Image Design. I will be striping the paint myself as the items required to do so are available from HomeFix. It will cut down the price of replacing the bedroom doors and door frames. As you can see from the next picture, the owner has tried to paint another colour over the white gloss paint on the door without at least rubbing the door down with sand paper. The gloss paint does not allow the other paint to properly stick to it so you end up with this horror story of a door paint job. The same is for all bedroom and the door frames for the bedrooms. Another issue is the rockwall on all the electrical trunking meaning that if we are re-plastering, which is our preferred option then we need to have all the electrical trunking replaced as well . The 'off bill costs are going up and up so I need to make note and budget extra here as well. I will make a list of all off reno quote costs and put them in here later. RB

Common toilet Master bedroom toilet cont. in next post.

aster bedroom Signs of aircon leakage in the master bedroom cont. in next post.

Second bedroom Ceiling. They have coated the entire EM (walls and ceiling and trunking in the rockwall finish). In the second bedroom it has come off the ceiling and there was some very bad patch work. Why did we still buy ?. There was no water leakage visiable, no stains and at worst we will need to get the town council to fix. We know the officer from dealing with her over spalling concrete in our current property . cont. in next post.

Second bedroom cont. in next post.

Downstairs toilet TV area First Bedroom cont. in next post.

Dining area View from dining area to the balcony Kitchen Cont. in next post

Ok, photobucket is back again. Here are some shots of the new apartment (owners still living there). Corridor View from the front door Utility room with wall hacked away (the arch is on the dining room side of the main door) Staircase from the door. cont. in next post.

Hmm, I am just home and ready to upload some more pics and I cannot get to photobucket or view the pics I posted previously so I suspect photobucket may be down for the time being. So where are we now ? ...continued. We travelled to the Asia furniture fair with a mission in mind. Speak to as many renovation companies as possible. We came with multiple copies of our floor plan, a very tight budget and some basic idea of what we wanted done. The list of work... (O) = optional, the rest is considered essential. Remove cheap laminate flooring. Lay Malaysian quality laminate flooring & skirting. Re-plaster the whole house Re-install the wall for the utility room (frosted glass, with sliding doors). Hack everything in the 3 toilets and replace tiles, waterproofing and plumbing. vanity units in the two upstairs toilets. hack and re-tile the kitchen Install 23ft cabinets with solid top Exchange solid top for granite top (O) Remove tiled balcony roof and false ceiling (O) Install glass ceiling for the balcony (O) Replace stair handrails with turned wooden 'country' style bannister (O) Replace stairs with wood matching the laminate flooring (O) repaint the whole house. We gave them a budget of 20-25K. The optional items we wanted priced for a second round of renovation around the middle of next year. Having just finished paying the loans for the renovation of our current place we really do not want another set of loan. We spoke to; Image Rest and relax (two ID's) Home Success Urban Design Most of the people were helpful although only one gave us suggestions or alternatives (more on this later). We have yet to hear from Rest and Relaxs ID's. One of them did mention that we would be looking at 30-40K just to do the kitchen and toilets though . Urban Design we are still waiting on. Image we saw today. Their quote had quite a few things missing and when we added them in so it matched the other quote from Home Success they were around 6K more expensive. The guy we dealt with was very pleasant but did little in the way of offer suggestions. Home Success. We made Sharon from Home Success on the way out of the exhibition hall as Home Success had only a small booth. When we started talking about the packages they were advertising, it seemed like we may be able to get most of the stuff done for around 30K which considering the faces the other IDs were pulling at the 20-25K budget made us consider so we sat down with her and pulled out the floor plan. We mentioned the things we would like room by room and Sharon made suggestions, honest comments, and generally tried to improve on our ideas or make them workable. Being more experienced (she is around our age so mid 30's to early 40's) and having children of her own meant that her suggestion were much more practical and child safe. We liked the idea of a glass wall for the kitchen. She mentioned that it would be difficult to maintain if we cooked regularly as the fat or fumes would build up over time. We were looking for a window solution for the utility room and she made it clear that having an opening window would restrict the porch area if we moved the front door back to the original position. She then called over her husband (Henry) who suggested a glass wall with double sliding glass doors. Sharon and Henry were able to work together and give us rough figures for each item or suggestion we made on the spot. Sharon then confirmed that they would have the quote ready for the following weekend if we could come down to their offices (Bukit Timah (sp?)). When we mentioned we do not drive they said they would come to us . They won two gold stars and top of our list there and then.... but the battle is not over yet. Henry came over last Sunday and stayed at our place for 3 hours whilst going over the quote, taking photos of our furniture, taking feed back about what we liked and didn't like about our current renovation and was willing to just chit chat for a while. Again, big gold star for being willing to make the effort and spend the time. Their quote was higher than expected but after chopping out a few things like glass toilet doors which we are not so bothered about and other little things we got it down to 6K less than the Image quote and that is just about possible for us. Sharon and Henry are certainly top runners at this time. One thing that came as a bit of a shock to us is that neither to the two quotes include toilets, sinks, taps, showers etc. These we all have to source ourselves (with their help) but it all adds again to the cost. Electrical work was also not included . We will chase Urban Design tomorrow and see what they come up with. RB

Ok, times up. Image came back to us with a quote and so we have to do and see them tonight. I will update later or tomorrow depending how time goes. RB

Ahh, my mistake also . My father-in-law has a 4a in the 900 series he rents out (he lives with my brother and sister-in-law). The unit is pretty big and I see someone else in the 900 series did a blog about 1 year ago on a 4A reno where the 3rd bedroom was knocked out to make a bigger master bedroom. Very nice result although not sure of the effect on valuation of turning a 4 room in to a 3 room. The kids will have much more space to run around in and I am sure they will use all of it. I think we will need double size sound blocking foam under the laminate flooring so as to minimise the impact to those downstairs . RB

Yes and I really do not understand it. I mean I would have no issue with her taking photos of strange attractive men when I was not around......oh wait, hang on, that is not quite right is it . Yes, I have posted there for critique a while back. Good forums but really push for a pro standard. Not a high floor corner unit with parquet floor upstairs was it. behind the Prime mart ?. We viewed one there and it had great views but we were not so hot on the layout. We prefer the longer old style with the rectangular balcony rather than the square one. RB

Yep, you are right 70-200. I had a few standard lenses but they came up really soft on the 5D where as the L series I have found need very little post sharpening at all. I do read clubsnap now and then but find there is a bit more of a culture difference with myself there which makes it harder for me to fit in. Just the feeling I have from the responses (or lack of) to the few posts I have made there . But it is ok. Maybe I can jsut find a few people around Tampines interested in a coffee and maybe taking some shots. I have also been meaning to go over to the Tampines mountain bike track as well. I don't think my wifes concern was with the ladies getting in her way. I suspect it is with me taking pictures of young ladies and her concern I may get a bit, well you know, ........ RB

4. So where are we now (current renovation). So we were very lucky. We managed to sell our 3 room in 1 day without a valuation report (it was in progress) fro 370K. Since I became a PR here my CPF has been building up so we had a bit more to put down on a new property so could more or less pick or choose. The banks agreed 'in principle' that they could lend us up to around 900K which is just crazy. So with an EM on the top of our list we looked at a few and came up with the following 3. Two were at the very edge of our budget (5th and 10th floors) and one was a lot cheaper (2nd floor) but needed a full reno. Second floor, front door facing the refuse collection building unblocked (not so close though), by a major road (Tamp ave 5), currently tenanted. COV was only 27K to close (Val around 525). Fifth floor, needed work but not full reno, val around 560, COV asking 60K Tenth floor (top storey) needed some light work plus complete toilets and kitchen reno. Val 572, COV around 70K. We got the tenth floor one for a COV of 55K. It leaves us quite short of cash for a reno so we are looking at the basics and we will do other stuff later. Here's a layout of the apartment. I am just seeing if I can get the pics I took when we went to excise the OTP off my phone on to my work PC and if so I will upload now. If not then I will have to do it when I get home either tonight or tomorrow. RB

Yep, that is what I ended up doing. I was contracting (UK contracting) at the time so have a large income and no wife or kids. I love doing portrait or candid work but for some strange reason, after marriage, my wife expressed the opinion that having young pretty ladies visit our place so I could take photos of them was not something she was entirely happy with . The camera still gets used but now quite rarely. I have been wanting to get the 90-200mm F2.8 IS L lens for quite a while now but at 3K I really cannot justify it as we just don't have the available cash any more. The 5D is also great but it would be hard to find the cash to replace it with another camera of the same level if it failed. The only way would be for my hobby to start making some money. RB

Thanks very much reizzz, not sure how the fat guy snuck in the back though..... hang on thats... Kung Fu Pandahhhhhh Hi Leechaorui, we have a single bed from Ikea (love them or hate them, I go for the second choice ) which fits between our bed and the window so our youngest has a wall on one side and our bed on the other. He moves around a lot and can easily stretch from one side to the other on a queen sized bed if he sleeps sideways (which is quite common for him). Sometimes he ends up with his feed by my head and then proceeds to kick me. My wife has caught him smiling sometimes when he does it. He had to have his own bed but is still too clingy to be able to sleep on his own. The position of our bed and the single bed are not in the shot as the single bed was dismantled and our bed moved over in order to make the room look bigger for selling . Cheers RB