Our Practical Spaces

[Finns 0]

A big hello to the renotalk community!

Our family of 4 will be collecting our keys soon, and like many others before, we hope to document our reno journey here.

These 2 years or so, missus and I have been reading rather haphazardly (with what little time we have) to learn what we can.

With 2 very small kids, we are trying our best to arrange our living spaces to accommodate our family's activites & living habits.

This is the floorplan of our 4-room BTO flat in the NE. Yes, Punggol lah!

Excited but also tiring because so many things to plan and decide.

[Finns 0]

Missus and kids are all asleep now ... btw, will refer to missus as "J" in subsequent posts.

With the long wait for BTOs to be ready, we wanted to visualise how our flat will look like.

I remember trying to model our floorplan using Google SketchUp ... failed so badly. Remembering that, it was so long ... 2 years ago.

Considered using Floorplanner software ... but later this went up instead and we stuck to it.

It's a to-scale cut-out attached to our current wardrobe doors using bluetac.

For us, it was convenient to refer to and we could add & shift items around, see whether it made sense or too cramp / in the way etc.

Edited December 25, 2014 by Finns

[Finns 0]

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[razzberrie 3]

Missus and kids are all asleep now ... btw, will refer to missus as "J" in subsequent posts.

With the long wait for BTOs to be ready, we wanted to visualise how our flat will look like.

I remember trying to model our floorplan using Google SketchUp ... failed so badly. Remembering that, it was so long ... 2 years ago.

Considered using Floorplanner software ... but later this went up instead and we stuck to it.

It's a to-scale cut-out attached to our current wardrobe doors using bluetac.

For us, it was convenient to refer to and we could add & shift items around, see whether it made sense or too cramp / in the way etc.

The cut and paste is such a great old skool idea!

[Finns 0]

Burning questions

1. J and I are pretty decided on those longish wood-like tiles for our floors ... but IDs & contractors warned that we could 'feel' the 'edging & kicking' effect on the floor. The advice was to lay these floor tiles with minimum 2mm grout. Is there anyone using these floor tiles and can share their experiences?
   
2. Our kitchen & service yard floor comes with default hdb tiles but we opted out on living room (currently bare w/o tiles). Our idea is to use the same longish wood-like tiles for the bedrooms, living, kitchen & service yard ... and making these level (same floor level). Most of the time, advice given is that we have to hack the kitchen floor tiles to make this happen. Also told that this can be done, w/o hacking kitchen floor .... but not 100% and depends. Which is true??? Anyone knows?
   
3. Lights lights lights. We want to preserve the vertical spaces, so no false celings (& no cove lights). At the same time, we want ceiling fans for the living and bedrooms. Track lights seems to serve our needs but these are usually spotlights and have very focus light output.
   
   We are thinking of using Ikea's dimmable E27 bulbs for ambient lighting (combined with a dimmer switch) but need to find track light holders that support E27 bulbs. So far, didn't manage to find any. Anyone facing the same problems we are having and have a solution?
   
   PS: J also want mounted fans inside both bathrooms (for added ventilation) to lessen mould problems.