Rain Shower

Ever since we had a free trial at Wellness health centre, I fell in love with having an overhead rain shower for our bathroom. Finally found one that I like from Jalan Besar. It's an 8" square rain shower with rubber nozzles. Rubber nozzles will make clearing of nozzles easier when they get clog up...logically speaking. Will still have the normal shower head and instant heater thingy used with a diverter. The thing is...should I have cold or hot water coming out of the rain shower too? Hmmm...anyone heard of warm rain before?

More info on such shower head at http://www.rain-shower.com/

DIY painting

Phew, what a weekend we've had. Started Saturday with breakfast and then a rush to buy paint and all the required stuff. For painting tips and techniques, go to nippon paints homepage (www.nipponpaint.com) You should be able to learn a lot of stuff from there.

To me, preparation of walls for painting is the crucial stage as it will determine how easy your painting will be. ie. Putty cracks/ potholes and smoothen by sanding, then you will have a nice finish of paint coating. Me & poor Fp spent the whole of Saturday doing that. She'll tell you that the worse part is to put masking tape around the skirting, window frames etc. Her backache is evidence.

I was painting the false walls and ceiling with water-based sealer so that paint will "eat" better on the surface. At the end of the day, whole house was still white with no colours and with many cans of paint waiting to be used = We did however manage to cover one coat of paint for the ceiling of our living/dining area with 5L of paint, till the last drop!

As the progress is too slow, we'll be getting some bangalahs (professional painters back in their hometown) to help speed things up. Hopefully they will do a good job together with us. More photos to be posted when most of the colours are up.

Some more information on checking paint works done by your contractor: http://www.bca.gov.sg/housing/sp/Renovating/Reno_PointerWall.htm#Paint

**Tips: Paint also got offer prices for GSS @ D.I.Y stores in shopping centres.

False Wall & Ceiling

Finally proceeding to next stage which is to put up our false wall and ceiling. From what I've heard, usually this part is done before the floor. Well...there is a reason for that, skirting is done around the walls. If you compare the previous pictures of our master bedroom, you will notice that our bedhead's up (as picture above) and there's actually skirting inside it. If ever, we decide to take the false wall down, at least there's skirting inside. Either Ah Low cock up or he's doing the right thing!

Below are photos of the extension wall for our master bedroom, in progress and when it's complete w/o any painting.

Photo below is a view of all our false ceiling, TV area and dining area intersection. The design is to designate the living and dining area with the lights. Will be putting up some perspertive drawing and our floorplan and things should be clearer.

Skirting Tips

Skirting are usually done to hide the uneven-ness of our house walls. No floor and walls in the house are perfectly in a 90 degree angle. What to do..cheap mah..HDB stuff.

When it comes to skirting, must take note of the following. If you want it to be done up nicely, must NOT do it this way:

Just some explaination, usually only the top surface of the tiles are polished, if its joined by the method above, you will see that the portion which is actually the thickness area of the tile will not shine due to its nature. So I asked Ah Low to get his guys to redo it:

They had to hack off the existing corners of skirting, order more tiles and cut them to size again with more accurate measurement. All's in a day's work although it requires some good workmanship to make sure it looks good. No extra one small ugly line and all surface will shine. This knowledge came from my days in machine making and talking to tile pple. Don't worry that the corners will be sharp etc etc..bullshit. Here's the final result, see for yourself! Feel free to feel it one day. Tada..

Electrical damages, part 1

As a long struggle of not knowing which brand or model of LCD TV to get, I've finally got a good deal from Harvey Norman at the new branch opening sale @ Bukit Panjang Plaza. 37" Sharp Aquos it is!

Main items in the kitchen will be from Samsung.

8kg washing machine and a 53l fridge.

Both to be gotten thru my cousin and his dealer where we'll be getting good prices for these items.

Total damages (for now) = S$ 3.4k (approx.)

More tiles

Ah low did tell his guys to rectify the homogenous tiles which were in the wrong direction and I also found another one in our bomb shelter making a wrong turn. That should be fixed since he ordered in more tiles already. I believe its 4 packs more.

The deep sink to be used for hand washed clothes have been put up and here's a picture of it.

Right beside it will be our Samsung washing machine. We will have our aluminium doors below to cover any ugly containers of detergent etc. Kind of a utility cum wet storage area where the washing powder can be. This thing is put in place so that my dear FP will not have to squat in the toilet like our mothers do to hand wash any clothes. For me, I can use it to soak my usually stinky clothes after sports activity before throwing it into the washing machine. Supposed to keep my clothes fragrant. =)

Above is a view of our master bedrm from where the future tv console will be. This view will only be around for awhile and gone forever once the false wall is in place. Take time to enjoy the view and imagine the view from inside once the extension is done. Grand long cabinet..except for the troublesome beam which will hinder the overall look of our wardrobe.

Laying of HOMO tiles

Next phase of reno is beginning, laying of our choosen homogenous tiles, cream colour with some diagonal patterns on it. Tried to take some photos but it didn't show so you'll need to take a look at them yourselves. Sad for Ah Low as his guys got 3 pcs of the direction wrong, will get him to amend it on Monday. Skirting not very well done as corners were ugly, supposed to be mitered but never do..see already sad heart. Let's see how he's going to react to our first of many more to come complaints!

We've decided to save some money and do the painting ourselves. Going to be a whole lot of work but worth it for our own red den. Should be using Nippon paint and mixing a few colours with 2 colours for every room. Still have not finalized what colour we want. Should have to start painting soon so all's welcome to volunteer when time comes. =)

Went to see lights this afternoon to find out price and the different types available but ended up purchsing a very comfortable half leather sofa (finally) for our living room. Great to sit on, lie on, etc. and we think it's a pretty good deal. We left NOVA furniture @ tradehub21 delighted!!

Something we could not figure out is this one tile space left open for perhaps wiring..I certainly hope its not a rubbish chute for them as its just a few meters away out of my main door. Me and laopo had to clear some leftover drinks and cigarette butts so that no ants will come and invade our home before we move in. FP is paranoid with ants..must keep everything single one out of the house.