S&s Self-Designed Home In The East

[XTR 1]

standing from main door

wall between living room and study room hacked away.

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inside: wall between 2 rooms hacked away.

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flat was in original state. hack all away. hack hack hack.

view of kitchen

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mbr room. 2 rooms combined to one.

will not be doing WIW. will get dusty no matter what.

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After hacking and clearing. Stuffs packed neatly.

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old tv antenna. was told cant remove it. some folks might still be using it. hmmmmm

doesnt matter to us.

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hacked away an entry to the toilet from master bedroom. Want to be able to walk to kitchen from bedroom through the toilet.

There is a sewerage pipe blocking the way. Its there for vacuum purposes. But can be removed if u request.

Before:

After:

Alan has nicely re-routed the pipes too. more space now!

Edited March 31, 2012 by XTR

[XTR 1]

During this whole process, i brought food (they like 100plus to quench thirst) and cigarettes (they love it) for the workers. Depending on your workers, some do like to have someone to talk to. In my case, the sub-con heads let me join in the plastering (the hawk and float method is not easy man) and making cement process because i asked to have a go at it. They were more than happy to teach you about the tricks and methods of their trade.

Ok moving along, below is a pic of a rough initial design for our toilet floor. we are not going to tile the toilet wall and just use weather-shield anti-fungal white paint. If it yellows/darkens in future, will just paint it over.

[XTR 1]

DIY brick wall

Got to say this first...the result will have a raw feel and not the clean straight lines craftstones can give. We just dont see the need to do brick wall and pay 1-2k for extra bricks. I hope that maybe this idea can help you save the extra money.

I first told Alan about my idea and he was very chill about it. He said its our home and so we can do what we want with it. So i asked him to give me a call when his workers were about to do the plastering for our kitchen wall.

I rushed from work because cement dries really fast.

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while the cement still havent dried, i tied a thread to 2 screws and screwed them into the wet cement.

This is to give me a horizontal line to follow. I dont want to be using a spirit level while i am going to dig the design out later.

In the below pic u can see the threads.

In the below pic u can see more horizontal lines drawn. Initially i thought wet cement was going to be goooo-ey but it was really super hard to scrap. Not only that, it was difficult to keep the digging a NEAT horizontal line because some parts of the cement+ sand will drop out.

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so using a scraper... you need to scrap out this design

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Edited March 31, 2012 by XTR

[XTR 1]

final product...somewhat will look like this.

[XTR 1]

Dont worry about the rough edges. There will another layer of plastering and it will smoothen the edges. Then you will need to scrap all over again. At least now u got some depression in the wall to follow.

Make SURE you do the process fast because plaster dries really fast.

Alternatively:

There are other ways to do this ... and it would be to have many long rectangular thin rods that you push into the cement while its wet. Then after plastering, you pull it out. I m not sure of the outcome though. And think its wasting more money to buy thin rods.

Edited March 31, 2012 by XTR

[chocoholic84 0]

bought some wooden letters to put in the kitchen for eating "nom nom nom"

Found these wooden art boxes that you can have so many uses! I didnt buy it...

its cheap. $30 if i rem. You can use it for bedside table....sofa side table....keep jewellery...etc.

love the boxes! So vintage ,old school.. so much potential .. hmm must make a trip there to see if i can find anything =p Congrats by the way .. Looking forward to following ur reno journal

[XTR 1]

cement screeding for the floor. Kitchen + MBR + parts of living room will be cement floor.