Opening A New Chapter Of Our Lives ... 2nd Home In 7 Years

[Chunky Monkey 2]

your kitchen cabinets **** cool!

but those small little compartments are for putting.... ??

did u had to go buy the Hettich Cosario units yourself separately? or are they ava at classic?

The compartments in the Cosario can be resized. The dividers can be shifted if the jars that I want to put inside are fatter. I intend to keep my table top clear of cookie jars, pill bottles, etc and would like to store them out of view but still within quick access. When I chanced upon the Cosario, I called up Hettich at the German Centre and reserved them. And they supplied to Classic. If I remember rightly, there are 3 sizes. 45cm, 60cm, and 90 cm. These you see are 90cm's.

[applefreak 1]

wow the cosario is really a cool idea

any idea if it must be fixed to a top-hung cabinet or a shelf will suffice?

extremely handy for bottles that clutters my table top now :P

[Chunky Monkey 2]

wow the cosario is really a cool idea

any idea if it must be fixed to a top-hung cabinet or a shelf will suffice?

extremely handy for bottles that clutters my table top now :dribble:

Hi applefreak, it must be attached to the bottom of a wall-hung cabinet. The cabinet doors and side panels of the cabinets are longer, to accomodate the recess part of the Cosario. So if you wall cabinet is already done, you won't be able to fix the Cosario. Basically, the carpenter created a small recess area to install the Cosario, so that it will conceal the top part of the unit.

Edited December 13, 2007 by Chunky Monkey

[applefreak 1]

thing is i don't have top-hung cabinets, elderly-friendly sake

guess it's about time to get something for myself instead

looking at the Cosario really makes me heart beat faster :dribble:

[lifestyle 0]

Hi

The Hettich Cosario units is very neat & nice . How i wish i know such unit exist. Lovely kitchen with the island.

Btw, nice photos on the progress.

Cheers

[Chunky Monkey 2]

looking at the Cosario really makes me heart beat faster :help:

LOL! You made me laugh out loud, applefreak!

Hi

The Hettich Cosario units is very neat & nice . How i wish i know such unit exist. Lovely kitchen with the island.

Btw, nice photos on the progress.

Cheers

Thank you, lifestyle.

[mafiawife 0]

hi chunky monkey,

very envy u got such a big and cool kitchen.. i really love Island in the kitchen, but my pigeon hole kitchen doesn't allow... are u going to convert ur back yard into wet kitchen?

btw, i know it abit off topic where u talking about ur kitchen now, but can i know are u using celling cassette air-cons for ur lounge area? hehehe.. i know abit out of topic.. cannot find this topic here lay.. kekeke.. pai say..

if anyone know the pro and cons of the cassette unit, can advice me? which brand is good? gam xia..

Edited December 14, 2007 by mafiawife

[Chunky Monkey 2]

No mafiawife. I will not be converting my backyard into a wet kitchen. Our diet does not have a lot of 'cze char' (more roasting and steaming), so I don't see a need to have an wet kitchen. I did think about it (my mum's house has one) but decided against it in the end. Instead, I will hunt for a Weber barbeque. It's my dream to have one.

Yes, the aircon units in my house are mainly ceiling cassettes with the exception of the children's rooms, where the ceilings are all concrete, and we didn't want to put up a false ceiling, as we want to have high ceilings. They are all Toshiba Inverters.

Pros:-

- more powerful

- 4 directional cool airflow, more even.

- flush with ceiling, and out of sight

- Does not take up wall space, so you can max out wall cabinets

Cons:-

- more expensive

- not every aircon service company knows how to service a ceiling cassette

- cost more to service

Brand ... Toshiba is better than Fujitsu. In case the remote control is out of order, you can use the manual operation switch on the ceiling cassette. With Fujitsu, you will have to remove the ceiling casing to reach for the ON/OFF button.

[mafiawife 0]

No mafiawife. I will not be converting my backyard into a wet kitchen. Our diet does not have a lot of 'cze char' (more roasting and steaming), so I don't see a need to have an wet kitchen. I did think about it (my mum's house has one) but decided against it in the end. Instead, I will hunt for a Weber barbeque. It's my dream to have one.

Yes, the aircon units in my house are mainly ceiling cassettes with the exception of the children's rooms, where the ceilings are all concrete, and we didn't want to put up a false ceiling, as we want to have high ceilings. They are all Toshiba Inverters.

Pros:-

- more powerful

- 4 directional cool airflow, more even.

- flush with ceiling, and out of sight

- Does not take up wall space, so you can max out wall cabinets

Cons:-

- more expensive

- not every aircon service company knows how to service a ceiling cassette

- cost more to service

Brand ... Toshiba is better than Fujitsu. In case the remote control is out of order, you can use the manual operation switch on the ceiling cassette. With Fujitsu, you will have to remove the ceiling casing to reach for the ON/OFF button.

Thanks CM!! that's really informative.. but i only going to install in my hall only la.. my house only a pigeon hole... the rest of the rooms are using normal S/U.

ya, i only know the cassette unit when come to servercing kinda difficult, that why higher on the price. i will look into the price again.. if u got good lobang, pls let me know hor.. hehehhe.. gam xia again..

[Chunky Monkey 2]

Look for Mr Ang at Twin City Aircon.

[wuga98 0]

Chunky: Sorry to hear this, are you using an ID or architect for this A/A? I totally demolished my house instead of doing a major A/A and i hold the architect very very accountable to the main con. In addition, i also appointed separate subcons for my plumbing/sewage and electrical and this is manage by a M&E company owner by my classmate.

All work is done by main con coordinating with all sub cons, but my architect is sort of my only contact but sometimes the main con also contact me. At this pt, we are doing pilling and also some digging.

As for additional charges/cost, this is something that cannot be determine at early stages of the discussion and it will come when they started work but whatever quoted needs to be validated and check for sanity. On and off i do get surprise bills eg. redirecting main electric wires etc.

Currently, i am compiling a jotter book full of information from this forum, magazine, newspaper on what we want eg. cutting/pasting or even writing, describing etc. Hope this helps to limit any changes in the future.

Hope we can share on some of these findings as we are quite similar as i need everything starting from scratch.

quote name='Chunky Monkey' date='Nov 2 2007, 10:35 PM' post='233806']

It's a Black Friday for me today.

I am aghast that there are dishonest contractors around. Firstly, I required my City Gas pipes to be relocated because I am going to have an island in my new kitchen. The first contractor found by my main con quoted me $1200 to do the job. I was totally shocked and I called City Gas to verify; only to be told that they have now outsourced the jobs to the private sector. So basically consumers are at the mercy of ridiculous pricing. I asked the customer service rep if she knew of the ballpark price of such a job, and she said it should be in the range of a few hundred dollars. That answer made my blood boil.

I asked for another contractor in their approved list, and he went down to my new house to meet my main con. I was then told that the gas pipe cannot be concealed under the kitchen floor tiles. And so for the purpose of my kitchen design, I should not use City Gas but to fall back to using a gas cylinder instead. Wait a min, I thought. So the 1st guy was going to do an illegal job of concealing the gas pipe and then charge me double the price?! I was also told that submission to City Gas is needed for alteration of gas pipes. And I thought to myself, what was the 1st contractor going to submit? A false submission?! Enough was enough. I told my main con to seal off my City Gas pipe, and that I am not going to use it. Still fuming.

Second bombshell ... we have an existing solid wood cabinet which we would like to move to our new place. It has a width of 142cm. And therefore, we asked my main con to build an enclave of 145cm (this is in the door way), so we can fit this cabinet in. After the brick wall's up, and plastering done ... guess what, the actual space in this enclave is now 140cm. Looks like the workers placed the bricks at exactly 145cm, without making provisions for the thickness of cement and plaster. Duh. Do I need to kill somebody, or what?! So what do I do now? Get the contractor to chisel out some part of the beautifully plastered wall? MAN! Such wasted efforts and energy. Why can't people get it right the first time!

Thirdly, I asked for a quote to install a set of 3 pieces of top-hung, frameless glass partition, separating the living room from the kitchen.

1 fixed panel + 2 pieces of sliding glass panels. 70cm (width) x 280cm (height) x 1cm (thickness).

And how much was the quote I got?

5 bloody thousand! Daylight robbery! Why do people do this?! Just because it's a renovation boom market right now? It does not give them the right to fleece homeowners or be there to con them! I must be a dinosaur who still believes in honesty and integrity. Doesn't look like these people have it anymore.

I have no choice but to call and ask a few glass merchants directly myself. And I am going to fax them the dimensions and get a quote by fax in return. I cannot let them quote based on site visit. My mum tells me that the moment they see that I am overhauling the whole house, contractors will want to fleece me. I am disgusted.

[wuga98 0]

chunky: we are using fascina for the whole house as well, and we got a quote something like $60k for it, expensive? and have never heard of bestview aluminium, do you have a contact for us to consider. Thanks.

16 Nov 2007.

I received the quotation from Fascina and almost fainted. Geez ... they are expensive. But you know what, Fascina's uPVC is still cheaper than BestView's aluminium. But admittedly I am not comparing like for like, because with the BestView installation is going to come with lami glass whereas the quotation from Fascina is with single glazed plain glass.

I'd thought that there wouldn't be a need to visit the house as things like simply just chugging along, and not a whole great lot. But late afternoon, my main con called and said that I better go and check if the false ceiling cut outs are correct for the ceiling cassette aircons in the living room. I zoomed down.

I was surprised to see that the concrete bases have been made in the kitchen. Hooray! Now there is more time for them to dry properly. I was also pleased to see that the U channel for my fixed glass panel has been recessed into the wall. My peeve about frameless glass panel installation is the U channel just glued onto the surface wall with silicon, which is so not pretty, and shows a complete disregard for proper co-ordinated installation.

I had to leave fairly quickly to take my kids out for their evening activities and called DH to pop in from his office, to help guide our main con to lay the floor tiles in the attic. From my DH's description, our main con was cutting the tiles whilst he was on all fours laying them in the pattern that I want. Main con exclaimed that it's super 'lay chey' but nice, and he will go along with it. YEAH!

I was told if we go back to the house by 1 pm tomorrow (today actually), the attic tiling would be finished! Another Yeah!

[zirhk3355 1]

Hey, I didn't know you got a t-blog going on here!

Your house sure got alot of nice gahgets - very informative!

[sakae sushi 0]

Hey, I didn't know you got a t-blog going on here!

Your house sure got alot of nice gahgets - very informative!

hi chunky monkey

me olso. didnt know you have a t-blog here too. your house is really BIG when the date of completion. looking forward to more pixs

[makemefly 0]

They are ceramic tiles and not laminates. It's about $5 psf. Not for the faint hearted.

Wow! We got ours for $3.50 psf, using for our bedrooms.