Brick Wall By The Floor 5Rm Bto @sengkang

[nickguthe 30]

Are u having rain shower? I do not intend to put in a door as well as I hate cleaning but contractor was telling me the splash will come out if I use the rain shower ... I am still deciding .. But most probably I won't ... Makes the bathroom feels bigger will look more spacious

Nope we are having normal shower head. Not sure how much splashing there will be, so we will risk it for now.

[Ks Toh 74]

Good point! Didn't think so much about the kid part. HAHA. not yet at least, but I think it is possible to add the door after when we decide to. Yea will probably buy a good floor mat as well.

At my previous place, I had one shower without door. Water splashing out can be kept to a minimum only if (a) the shower direction is not towards the opening, unless the opening is far away, and (b) whole body is standing within the glassed area.

I looked at my glass door. At the place where it is hinged to another glass panel, there is a groove in the glass panel to hold the hinge. So depending on your design, it might not be possible to add the door later. Also, remember to contruct the kerb outside of the expected door position. But a drop is preferable, if possible.

If there is water splashing out, a floor mat does not really help.

The above is my experience.

Edited June 12, 2014 by kstoh

[nickguthe 30]

At my previous place, I had one shower without door. Water splashing out can be kept to a minimum only if (a) the shower direction is not towards the opening, unless the opening is far away, and (b) whole body is standing within the glassed area.

I looked at my glass door. At the place where it is hinged to another glass panel, there is a groove in the glass panel to hold the hinge. So depending on your design, it might not be possible to add the door later. Also, remember to contruct the kerb outside of the expected door position. But a drop is preferable, if possible.

If there is water splashing out, a floor mat does not really help.

The above is my experience.

Thanks for the insight! Will probably talk to my contractor more regarding this. All this discussion about shower door making us more aware of the potential issue with it. Good that we uploaded the progress. So thankful for the Renotalk community.

[nickguthe 30]

Day 4 of our renovation.

There was hood and hob delivery today, so I dropped by to check out the site as well. I am impressed by the progress. So exciting!

Our sexy subway tiles... tiling in progress. Also the dry wall for the kitchen entrance is up. To cater for the depth of the shoe cabinet on the kitchen left entrance, we decided to extend out the wall.

Building of the study has also begun.

Electrical work up. We are using the white round PVC conduit because we don't like the normal trunking. For the normal trunking in the image, we will box them out.

Cement screed to get ready for our craftstone brick wall.

We will be overlaying the bathroom floor tiles with dark grey slate tiles. Toilet bowls and sinks removed! We will be re-using the toilet bowls and one of the sink (at the yard).

I am not sure if some of you are like us, find the awkward gap behind the area intended for the media console a bother. We decided to fill this gap with what they call a gypsum wall so that our future off-the-shelf media console can lean against a flat wall since we are not doing any carpentry to conceal that.

Thanks to the workers! yay!

Edited June 13, 2014 by nickguthe

[nickguthe 30]

Do some of you have the same experience?

We started to do odd things like touching the wood laminate at Burger King and counting the number of LED bulbs of a track light at a clothing shop's display. It is like once we start embarking on the reno journey, we tend to pay attention to how shops do their lighting, what laminate and materials do shopping malls use to achieve a certain look? Just wondering if other people also do that or it is just us being really weird.

Or maybe while walking past nicely decorated cafes, you will take a second look at their table and chairs and might be able to guess where they might have gotten it from. Maybe we are too crazy. LOL

Anyway, we just collected our Relite fans from Tai Yong today. The smaller 36" one looks so cute beside the 48" version! They use the same motor, only the blades are of different sizes.,

Also our Tecno SR128SV and Fujioh NL 900 are delivered!

Can't wait to see all of them being installed!

Edited June 14, 2014 by nickguthe

[bianzi 52]

It is normal.. I even checking out the public toilet wc brand

[bert7332 10]

You are not alone haha, i am very much in tune with the decor and materials wherever I went

[James N Joean 8]

LOL... and i tot i'm the only crasy dude.... i even took pictures and the sales person or waitress in the boutique or restaurant will give a "eyesbrow raised" look...

[Ks Toh 74]

For my first renovation, I visited a number of show flats. Not to buy but to see how they renovate.

[nickguthe 30]

haha glad to know we ain't the only obsessed ones!

[nickguthe 30]

On electrical appliances

Yet again. So many choices. How to choose, Which brand, what model, what function ... After reading on renotalk and hardwarezone forum. Each brand has its own following. It was so difficult that we are thinking of just choosing each based on how it looks...

On TV

The most important factor for us was how reflective the screen is. Many of them are so reflective that it is like watching yourself acting in the movie. We know we won't be needing 3D because it makes me (the wife) nauseous. And we don't want to spend too much money buying the latest technology since it is likely that we won't watch much TV. So a 40- 50 inch TV that can connect to the laptop for movies suffice.

Our strategy for choosing the TV involves us going to the different appliance stores many trips to look at their TVs under different lighting and when they showcase different content. A lot of them have bright content on display which makes it hard to see what happens when the content is darker as that is when you see yourself starring in the movie if the screen is like a mirror.

Based on the screen's reflective-ness, we narrowed down to the Samsung TVs, specifically F5500 and F6400. Between them, the biggest difference to us is in the clear motion rate (CMR) other than F6400 being 3D. After reading this article and this article we realised that clear motion rate is a marketing term that takes into account all three factors that contribute to motion clarity: panel refresh rate, image processor speed, and backlight technology ... blah blah blah and we have no idea what those means.

While we are still deciding between a CMR 100Hz F5500 and a CMR 400Hz F6400, Samsung releases their 2014 successors. The H5500

and the H6400. To our delight, they have even less reflective screens! Right now, we are inclined to getting Samsung H5500 above because it is cheaper, has a simpler rectangular base and we don't mind much about 3D or CMR 400Hz.

On washing machine

We don't even know where to begin with this, all of them look almost the same. We are also torn between front load and top load as we experienced the convenience of being able to throw in dirty laundry after washing has started but know that front load saves more water.

Right now, we are inclined to LG front load as there was a mentioning of a silent motor... But really, we also figured that this could be some marketing terms so we will really appreciate any recommendation.

On Fridge

At first, we were set on Samsung RL4013 purely because of the price vs the capacity (402L nett) and the stainless steel minimalistic aesthetics.

The design is similar to Fisher and Paykal's stainless steel flat door fridge E402BRXFD4 (364L) which we quite like, just that RL4013 is much cheaper and bigger.

We went around several appliance stores to take a look at RL4013, but find the suction pressure of the door weaker than other fridges. Then, we also read on hardwarezone and renotalk that some people ain't so happy with their Samsung fridges. Made us rethink our choice...Why F&P E402BRXFD4 so expensive

One brand that stood out during the forum research was Mitsubishi Electric. Didn't think much of it at first because we find their fridge less aesthetically pleasing until we met this sales aunty at Gain City who kept

recommending Mitsubishi Electric based on her years of experience in her own kitchen saying that having a chiller is very useful. But MR-F55E (451L) , the one we initially wanted, is so deep that we don't have enough space to cater for the depth so likely we will settle for a smaller one MR-F51E (418L). How I wish they can make Mitsubishi fridge prettier...

The above is our preliminary choices for TV, washing machine and Fridge, if you have any good/bad experience with the brands/models above, do share. Will really appreciate it. Thank you in advance!

Edited June 16, 2014 by nickguthe

[Songz 132]

I will suggest the following :

1. TV - get the F 7100 series instead as its clear panel and price have dropped a lot compare to last year

2. Washer - will recommend Electrolux as my parents have been using them and they last quite long

3. Fridge - Hitachi / F&P (If you have budget), both this 2 brands are very trusted brand in the market

These are my own opinions and hope this helps.

[nickguthe 30]

I will suggest the following :

1. TV - get the F 7100 series instead as its clear panel and price have dropped a lot compare to last year

2. Washer - will recommend Electrolux as my parents have been using them and they last quite long

3. Fridge - Hitachi / F&P (If you have budget), both this 2 brands are very trusted brand in the market

These are my own opinions and hope this helps.

Thank you for the suggestions. Will look into them.

[nickguthe 30]

On odd kinks in the house and how it influences decisions and tiling

We are still in the midst of renovation. During which, most of the biggest surprises we had were those related to the odd kinks and areas caused by the loading walls and beams that are not indicated or represented accurately in the HDB floor plan.

They cause changes and it will affect how things are done. Case in point...

Lesson 1: Carpentry that you originally design on paper might not have enough space once it accommodates these kinks.

At first, we planned to have carpentry near the fridge indicated by this 3D drawing...

During the 1st site recce by our contractor, he highlighted that there are thick beams in the kitchen.

These were not indicated in the floor plan.

This will make the building of the top cabinet above the fridge quite redundant as there won't be much space left to store stuff. In the end, we had to take them away from the design. Minor... because nothing is built yet.

(to be continued in the next post, too many pics)

Edited July 1, 2014 by nickguthe

[nickguthe 30]

(cont'd from previous post)

Case 2

And since there is no more carpentry, we decided to also overlay subway tiles at that area too...which brings me to

Lesson 2: These kinks will affect the tiling... And it is totally by chance!

We were quite shocked when we saw this little funny triangle at the corner. Reminded me of the yellow angry bird. Ok that is besides the point. XD

so we thought it must have been a mistake and then we thought maybe if the tiles shift horizontally left or right, it must definitely help.

I was thinking that it will look much better if the half tiles end at the ceiling and at the floor. Why must it be so conspicuous at the edges. Can't it be like this:

so I went to ask my ID and this was the consideration...

Full tiles starts from the countertop since that is where the eyes will see the most.

So since the tiling starts from the counter area, with the subway tiles offset and all... it is difficult to pre-determined where it will end and how the edges will meet. Hence resulted in the half tiles at edges and little triangle there... So it is purely chance.

(to be continued...)