ricepapergirl 21 Report post Posted April 21, 2016 9 hours ago, xiang38 said: Can share the cost of your WC, thks Hi xiang38! PM-ed you! Hope it helps! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
nextstep 3 Report post Posted April 21, 2016 wow love love your toilet tiles!!!! nice update!! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ricepapergirl 21 Report post Posted April 24, 2016 On 4/21/2016 at 1:53 AM, nextstep said: wow love love your toilet tiles!!!! nice update!! Thank you!! It is also our favourite area so far hahaha Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
OceanEleven 203 Report post Posted April 24, 2016 On 4/10/2016 at 11:18 PM, ricepapergirl said: First stop, Song Cho at Plaza Singapura on Friday night! My mother-in-law has had Song Cho's Wel-Mi range of bathroom accessories installed in her home for 15 years and they really seriously have not rusted at all even when the other pieces she has in her bathrooms have gotten green and pitted! So we're definitely converts to the Wel-Mi rust-proof range. We bought 3 of their toilet roll holders (though the website shows it as a towel holder), 3 of their towel racks, and 2 of their glass shelves (we don't need a shelf for the MBR toilet). We were also originally going to buy their mirrors (Mother-in-Law also has two of these and no black spots at all!) but they recommended their safety mirrors which is actually metal with a sticker on it. Looked good so we got those instead. Song Cho range of toilet accessories are indeed MUCH better than those chrome coated stuff which will go green after years of usage. However I would also like to point out that the design range that has many weld joints will still rust, or rather rust will gather at such joints. Am refering to those with thin strips bend formed and then tac weld together and not those posted as above. All my pieces of such Song Chu range shows rust gathering at the weld joints, they are removable but unsightly and a tad of a troubel to do it so frequenty. This is despite if they are in direct or indiorect contact of weater. Still they offer greater satifactory than the previous bling bling chrome pieces which peeled and pitted after 2 or 3 years. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ricepapergirl 21 Report post Posted April 24, 2016 Day 27: Tiling 100%, Plastering 60% Popped in after lunch today just to walk around a bit with my parents-in-law and sister-in-law, think we all like to kaypoh kaypoh. Everyone seems happy with the quality of the work done so far, think Andrew's tilers are great workers! All tiling skirting done, all tiling in the bathrooms are done, including finally our long rectangular shelf across the entire wall of our MBR toilet! Our sink will be on the left side of the picture, under the shelf, and the shower area is on the right side of the picture, on the other wall, so the long shelf will have dual function as the shelf for shower stuff as well as for toothbrushes and the like. Glad Andrew managed to do it! Plastering has also started, most of the plastering on the second floor of the walls and ceiling are already done and some of the first floor plastering has started! I am so suaku, think all the places I've lived in so far have had the same standard of slightly-shoddy plastering, so when we asked Andrew to help plaster over our rockstone texture ceilings he mentioned our walls are pretty cui as well and do we want to plaster those, I was like, actually the walls look okay but anyway might as well. WOW. There's quite a lot of difference between the new plastering (and how weirdly unnaturally smooth plastered walls are) and the old-style plastering I'm used to lol. Particularly amused at how they even used these plastic edges to smooth out the rounded wall edges. Feel very suaku but very happy about it. Not much other updates, tomorrow the aircon people will come in to install, and then in short succession the electrical wiring and plumbing and installation of big bathroom stuff will happen through the week. In other fast-hand-fast-leg news, we popped over to Castlery again over the weekend to buy two more pieces for the house, though because we ordered so late they will only deliver late June haha. This wooden shelf (it's smaller than it looks) which will be put near the existing OpenNet point for our ONT + toaster lol. And this lovely sideboard with rounded corners! For now, it will reside on the second floor hallway for our router, cordless phone and maybe even electric kettle lol. In the future we might move it down to the dining room as a proper sideboard and customise a wraparound table for the second floor. Excited about both pieces! Also, because my husband's colleague's girlfriend works at Phillips we managed to score some stuff at 50% off! We got two 1.7L electric kettles and a steam iron for only $120! Love it! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ricepapergirl 21 Report post Posted April 24, 2016 5 minutes ago, OceanEleven said: Song Cho range of toilet accessories are indeed MUCH better than those chrome coated stuff which will go green after years of usage. However I would also like to point out that the design range that has many weld joints will still rust, or rather rust will gather at such joints. Am refering to those with thin strips bend formed and then tac weld together and not those posted as above. All my pieces of such Song Chu range shows rust gathering at the weld joints, they are removable but unsightly and a tad of a troubel to do it so frequenty. This is despite if they are in direct or indiorect contact of weater. Still they offer greater satifactory than the previous bling bling chrome pieces which peeled and pitted after 2 or 3 years. Oh!! Thanks for the tips! I think they did show us one of those types of design for the towel rack but because it was more expensive my husband and I was like, nah, we'll just go with the old-fashioned ones haha. Hope these will do fine! They did mention that you can use metal scourers on their stuff if there was ever any sort of green/rust but I'm a bit like O_O wouldn't that make it easier to rust. Anyway, fingers crossed that our bathroom stuff will last. My parents-in-law just went to walk IMM today because their 15-year-old bath mixer and tap have started to leak and their adjustable rod for the shower head has become sliding instead of fixed. Hoping our hansgrohe stuff will hold up past the 15 year old mark. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ricepapergirl 21 Report post Posted April 25, 2016 Am reminded today that not everything can be smooth-sailing, though sometimes it's about having the right attitude! I'm an optimist at heart but also a pragmatist, if got problem, just solve it! The problem we found today was that we had bought instant water heaters for all three bathrooms, together with hansgrohe shower heads and bath mixers. Our original thinking was that the instant water heater can provide heated up hot water via a stainless steel pipe to our bath mixer, which can then adjust the temperature of the water as per normal and shoot that water up to the showerhead. We didn't really think it through and never really discussed it with Andrew (lolweep) and to be honest, there's not much information on instant water heaters online. Also didn't occur to me that every other instant heater I've seen installed has the heated water go directly from the instant heater to the shower head. So yup, Andrew called today with his plumber at hand, to ask whether we are okay if the bath mixer will only push out cold water and the shower set is not connected directly to the bath mixer. After a lot of discussions to-and-fro, the plumber finally told us that although our idea is workable, there are two issues: 1. the hot water, having to travel through a pipe to the bath mixer then to the showerhead, may not be super hot anymore; and 2. There might be issues with the instant water heater in the future, since it was not built to be used like that. With that, we were given two decisions, either switch to a storage heater (we have no piped gas so gas heater is out of the question), or to connect the instant water heater to the showerhead and use the bath mixer just like a normal wall-mounted tap. After some discussion with my husband, we thought it was fine to just go with the second option. Oops to not enough industry knowledge! Lolweep. Anyway, we still get to use our instant heaters and everything we bought, just that not all of them will be functioning the way we thought they would be. Maybe in the future we might think of switching to storage heaters? Who knows. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
gumbokins 5 Report post Posted April 25, 2016 during a reno process...there's always a lot of hindsight ah >.< showed Andrew some pics that got him quite curious and excited. when he saw our floorplan he was also like "waaah never see before leh". Happy that he's open to new ideas, and at the same time, not ngeow with his knowledge. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ricepapergirl 21 Report post Posted April 25, 2016 On 4/17/2016 at 8:32 PM, gumbokins said: Feeling a little cyberstalkish at the moment, the fittings from hansgrohe fit alright? No compatibility issues? After talking on the phone for some time today, can give some initial thoughts: the fittings from hansgrohe seem to be fine, except that if you get the bath mixer you have to get some wall mounting brackets for them. Apparently Hansgrohe bath mixers assume you have water pipes laid inside your wall (even for those supposedly "exposed mounting") but in Singapore we tend to have our pipes on the walls so you need a separate bath mixer mounting bracket. Haven't heard anything about the rest of the stuff, will keep you updated. 4 hours ago, gumbokins said: during a reno process...there's always a lot of hindsight ah >.< showed Andrew some pics that got him quite curious and excited. when he saw our floorplan he was also like "waaah never see before leh". Happy that he's open to new ideas, and at the same time, not ngeow with his knowledge. Wah! Yeah he's quite good with giving useful advice. Hope you find an ID you like! Now very curious about your floorplan! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
twinklecloud 2 Report post Posted April 26, 2016 wow!! wow!! fast hands n legs indeed!! hahaa so nice.. love the sideboards!!! think i saw one of these too! choosing furniture is so tough.. haha (that's for me!) glad your mixer issue is solved! =) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
althevin 4 Report post Posted April 26, 2016 @ricepapergirl your house is looking great! Saw that you changed the big water pipes in your kitchen, is that allowed by HDB? DId it cost a lot? I have the same issue except that it is in my master bedroom toilet Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ricepapergirl 21 Report post Posted April 27, 2016 10 hours ago, althevin said: @ricepapergirl your house is looking great! Saw that you changed the big water pipes in your kitchen, is that allowed by HDB? DId it cost a lot? I have the same issue except that it is in my master bedroom toilet Hi @althevin! I actually changed all of my big pipes (except the super long two storey one at my balcony), so those in my kitchen and all three toilets as well. I think HDB wouldn't object, we did tell them in our reno permits I think lol. It wasn't that cheap, cost us around 2k. But for many sets of pipes, so if yours is not an EM maybe half the price? Our ID did tell us that if we tried to get HDB to help us change, it would be cheaper by at least a few hundred dollars, but we wanted to just quickly settle it so we got our ID to do it. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
althevin 4 Report post Posted April 27, 2016 12 hours ago, ricepapergirl said: Hi @althevin! I actually changed all of my big pipes (except the super long two storey one at my balcony), so those in my kitchen and all three toilets as well. I think HDB wouldn't object, we did tell them in our reno permits I think lol. It wasn't that cheap, cost us around 2k. But for many sets of pipes, so if yours is not an EM maybe half the price? Our ID did tell us that if we tried to get HDB to help us change, it would be cheaper by at least a few hundred dollars, but we wanted to just quickly settle it so we got our ID to do it. ah i see, my ID's suggesting a low box up but I'm not sure if that will look good. Thanks for the info Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ricepapergirl 21 Report post Posted April 28, 2016 Day 30: Aircon installed, wiring starts Wow, already past day 30! Hardly can imagine that renovation has been ongoing for one month already. The other day my husband notes that we had a few more weeks before we could think about moving in! This whole week has seen Andrew going down to Emma almost everyday, poor thing. Monday was plumbing and aircon installation, where the plumbing hit a snag because of my instant heater woes and because I didn't get the mounting brackets for the bath mixers (apparently they are supposed to look like this, Andrew has kindly offered to help me buy them since we didn't have time to run down to buy them) Tuesday was rushing to finish the rest of the plastering. Wednesday saw the Ikea kitchen contractors coming down to measure our kitchen (apparently the Ikea people and Andrew had a spat. Lolweep) and electrical wiring started. Some pictures from Andrew! The prettiest aircon installation lol in our nursery I think. The pipes are in the other room (back to back installation) The pipes in the study. The narrower ducts right on top are the electrical wiring ones I think. Pipes from study and nursery under the beam along the second floor hallway towards the mbr and popping into the mbr toilet as well. This must be our electrician hard at work! Piping in the mbr toilet. Not actually sure what we are doing with it lol, shall ask Andrew. Quite happy with this very neat pipe popping out and emptying at our drainage hole. Andrew illustrating how our frosted glass swing door would adopt to the new doorway at the mbr toilet. Finally the aircon installation in our mbr. The small window below would be sealed up. We like the location because it is not too near the mbr toilet door (too much condensation potentially), and it would blow towards the long side of our rectangular mbr. Think the box up is also quite okay. Maybe we are too chinchai lol. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
twinklecloud 2 Report post Posted April 28, 2016 looking good!!! seems like everything is going to complete soon!! haha.. our aircon position the same place in the room. lol! hehe. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
