X6GT

So there you are, the journey from fugly to coolness. Aerial view of the lounge/TV/wardrobe part of the room: I would post the 360degree video of all the other stuff (you note that I did not write about the loft bed that I eventually got from IKEA, nor the desk etc) that are perhaps not as exciting, but... maybe another time. We'll see when I have time...

Live long and prosper And then here's my nice little Enterprise couch (sofabed) on the other side of the room: Yes, as you may have noticed, I have LOADS of places in the room where people can hang out and sit around. The daybed, the sofabed, the floor in front of my TV, the loft bed. It's nice when I have my little kiddos there if they are sitting quietly eg. watching a movie, reading. But a bit of a heart attack if they run around playing (as they often do). I have so many things and display stuff... :/

4. The A-W-E-S-O-M-E Pallet Daybed When it was still WIP, the first level: Mix and match: With a newly-delivered goose down mattress topper from Korea... heaven! End product To be honest, all that sanding and painting was a right biotch. But in the end, it was all worth it... The mattress was customised to the right dimensions so that my grandma (and little kiddos) can easily get on it and sit comfortably while watching the TV. And the blue cushions are all the IKEA goosedown ones (if you have never experienced how soft and fluffy goosedown bedding is, TRY!) so it's like lying on a bed of clouds. And as you can see, I outfitted the daybed and other furniture in the room with bright colours, so as to give a lively and modern contrast to the main walls colour scheme of black, grey and white. And seriously, the daybed has actually turned out to be the best value for money. It's soooo comfortable, and so cool at the same time! Love it!

3. My DIY walk-in closet Now, the end product of what I'm going to show you might look really nice and very tempting, for you to do it on your own. I wouldn't recommend it, unless you were jobless and/or very handy with tools and carpentry. Let me show you my awesome (to me la) walk-in wardrobe/storage. As you can see: - A lot of shelving is going on 'behind the scenes'. I found that with having a walk-in wardrobe, you will need to prepare other storage alternatives (like shelves) compared to conventional wardrobes. - The point of a walk-in wardrobe like this is not only to keep your clothes but also other things in storage away from plain sight. - Depending on your room layout, better to have a wider kind rather than a 'longer' kind. I am slim so can fit in and out easily, but if I wanted to lug out the big storage boxes to look for something, jialat. Must move 1 wall of the pallet out of the way. Anyway. I actually have videos that I made of the whole process, which starts from sanding the pallets (takes 1 whole day per pallet so easily 2weeks for ALL the pallets I used!), then the termite treatment with chemicals (takes about 2-3days per pallet, until the drying process), then drilling and bolting together the different panels with the right brackets, then drilling on other brackets to ensure the angle between the pallets and floor is just right so it doesn't topple over, then the decorating with the pictures/posters etc to give it a more eclectic and personalised feel. But haha...I won't post here la. Shy. Unless I get 100 votes bumping up this thread, voting that I post all the vids from my reno journey here!

I am Bob the Builder After the painting was done, it was time to put up the other stuff which was: 1. The new venetian blinds 2. The loft bed 3. The walk-in closet 4. The daybed 5. The IKEA furniture 1. Venetian Blinds Well, I didn't build this from scratch la haha... But I took out the existing curtain rod (I hate curtains, actually!) and affixed new brackets (a lot of drilling and measuring involved) that I then installed the blinds on. Thankfully, Dad was around to help with the installation because it's not a 1-man job. I love the blinds, they were cheap (from Jalan Besar) and I think metal ones look classier (and are easier to clean) than wooden ones. They also give a nice contrast to my colour scheme. 2. DIY Loft bed First I must say that despite my best of intentions in making my own loft bed from shelving racks, it was a mistake. Now, for those of you who might have seen my earlier posts or other posts in others' threads, you would have known that I had earlier been looking around at all the various industrial parks and factories to buy 4x4s out of mild steel to be erected and fixed(by me) with brackets and simple bolts. Calculating the raw costs ($60 per piece of 9m), I would have only spent around $240 on raw materials and perhaps another $50 max on the bolts and additional plates. But when I got round to trying to order and getting pricing, the metal people jacked up the pricing when I told them I wouldn't require their services to erect the structures. And some tried to scare me by saying such structures would require PE and other certification, especially when I reluctantly admitted I was doing it in landed housing. Which, from an actual engineer friend...turned out to be not true lol. Why are these people so annoying! Anyway, in my frustration I went to this shop at AMK industrial park, and got talked into an 'alternative'. So apparently, the ah pek who sold me these shelving steel (custom-made, mind you!) bars had cheated me. I mean, I had told him specifically that they were to be made into a bed and had to be able to withstand at least 60kg (with a thin mattress). When I had already put it up (on my own), it was easily bent and was sort of not sturdy at all. So my dad scolded me and said it would just collapse or bend even if we bolted it to the wall. In the end, even though my ego was bruised and I wanted to argue with him, I had to dejectedly put the shelving steel somewhere else instead, and re-think my layout/design As you can see, had the bed been actually sound structurally, it would have been perfect over my walk-in wardrobe (you can see here in this picture I've already put up the black bar across, hanging from massive L-brackets)... Alas, it was not to be

Hi hi...interesting how the concept turned out in reality. You must be relieved! Just checking with you, the black flooring of your living room is how many mm...? I can see that it's like not level in some places, like as though it's simply a thin vinyl sheet being put over lumpy cement. Is it meant to look that way? Sorry I'm asking this, cos I'm also considering a similar flooring for my 3rd storey lounge (to DIY), but afraid of how it might turn out as the thickness is not that thick But the one I got quote for was sooo cheap...

You are so totally right... What my lobangs in the industry say is that, nowadays the KDK if they are cheap then it's actually made in China/Malaysia. So it's the same as the ones people buy in Malaysia back... but charged in SGD hor. The last time Japan-made KDK truly lasts over 10yrs indeed. Also, the other thing about KDK is that it doesn't have the light kit. So even if I wanted to buy KDK, I need light kit so need to consider the other models liao. Anyone ever bought Relite brand ceiling fans...? I heard it's good, angmoh one, but cheap. And quite elusive. Just wonder if anyone has real life reviews to share on it...

I know the feeling bro... I can't wait to turn 35 and to buy my own HDB! hehee.. Instead of spending thousands renting a month, or living under my parents' roof LOL. Eh you do music too? What kind? I'm looking for someone to collab Can PM me a link to your works? Thanks....

Ya...mine is like that kind. Ahyong, try Choo Chiang, which has a few outlets like near the Rochor police station in little India, or at Kallang/Bendemeer Rd side. Just google them. Mine were bought from there...the silver& black kind. I think if you look at some of my pics in my T-blogs, you can spot them (I didn't specifically take pictures of them). I found the pricing at Choo Chiang very good... But maybe that's cos I bought a lot. You can save about $2-3 per switch at CC, so I saved over $60

Wow, that's fast? How many of them are working on it?

Is he Quah Kim Song???

OK so here's some pictures of how the room looked after a fresh coat of paint: Marginally better, eh, after the painting? OK then the other thing... As you may have noticed, my theme is pretty much black/white/grey. So I had decided to paint the ghastly aircon black, as well as the cornice of the entire room. Initially, this was decided on because both the aircon and cornice had yellowed with time. After painting the aircon, it looked good but then I embarked on the cornice and really wished that I hadn't...after just 5mins. Those of you who have never had to endure the torture of painting intricate, flowery cornices with deep grooves will totally not understand the utter frustration and abject despair I faced in painting the dratted cornice. It took almost 2weeks, on and off At the time, I had been rushing the reno to fit the production schedule of a film that I was producing-- the film was to have been shot in the room (a few of the scenes). So, as it was almost humanly impossible to run both projects simultaneously, I found myself having to ask a guy (not really a friend, I would say...just someone I had worked with on some music before) help out. Well, he volunteered. No, not really. While we were communicating on the film stuff, I always kept saying "Oh I can't meet you, I need to do my painting." and things like that. So this chav kept saying haolian things like "Huh? Simple thing like that also you haven't finished?" and "You need to have 'skills' to finish painting la... Just look at me, if I did this with my 'skills', it would be finished in the blink of an eye." "I even helped my sister to paint her whole house when she bought and moved into her new BTO flat" bla bla bla. As you may very well guess, I then got sick of all his big talk and challenged him, out of being p*ssed off, if nothing else, to help me with the painting. Now, there were 2 simple things to take into consideration here. 1: I mentioned I don't do anything 'chin chai'. I am a PERFECTIONIST. Perfectionist means not a single thing should be out of line, not a single line should be out of place, not a single smidgen of paint, or anything should be in any form of disorder or disarray. And my eyes are BIONIC, to put it mildly. I can see even the tiniest of aberrations from a mile away, and would have a right fit. 2: My ceiling is very high, much higher than standard HDB ceilings of course, and this makes everything a lot more difficult, especially the cornice painting. It's about 3m, if I recall correctly. I do have very high step ladders (what tool don't I have in the house? ) that are way taller than my normal sized ones but. Imagine painting the Sistine Chapel, except I did not have the luxury of some kind of a scaffolding to be laying on my back painting the cornice. Just a mere 15mins of painting with the dratted small watercolour brush (15mins = only about 3cm down the length of the cornice), with my neck almost a 90degree angle left me in considerable pain for days after... This was also ostensibly why I kept resting and holding off finishing the whole job, as it was near impossible to do the cornice all at one shot without going insane. And so. When that lazy bas3rd came by to 'help', he took something like 30 smoke breaks (what a mind-numbingly wasteful endeavour these people of this 'type' engage in), then he just like sat around watching me paint (and laughed at me for being meticulous and bothering with every single detail... as if that was a joke ) and finally when he did lift his fat Mat arse to do the painting, oh my god. It was a most horrid thing! I had never seen such scheisser in my life, and was truly really upset that he had completely ruined my walls. For instance, he had just carelessly stuck on the masking tape without bothering to press it down all along the whole stretch, and just anyhow painted like he had Parkinson's. This resulted in the paint bleeding onto areas it was not supposed to be, which then required more time to rectify. By ME. Then he dripped and splattered a lot of paint on the walls (black paint on light walls!) and the floor, and DID NOT IMMEDIATELY WIPE THEM UP. Seeing that happen, I had to stop my own work every like 10mins to literally fcking wipe up all the mess he was making! And he had the cheek to ask me why I was 'so slow'... LOOK AT THIS! I mean, look! Why would you even tape the masking tape over the line where the twain meet!?? Just speaks of utter shoddiness and a can't-be-arsed-in-life attitude. After I got so fed up, I told him to bl00dy stop. I got into a real rage and told him off. And I asked him how come previously he claimed to be "skilled" but was making my walls look as ugly as his pockmarked oily face. I straight up asked him "Were you lying to me?!? Have you NEVER actually painted any wall before in your life?!?!!" [Just a bit of background, this guy has a habit of outright lying about anything and everything, thus my using such a strong term as 'lying'. But I had no choice but work with him, though, under the circumstances.] At which point, I think he could tell that I was seriously angry and he became more serious and a bit more pacifist, saying "Oh, maybe the one I did was not as perfect as yours la.." Then he showed me the pictures of his room that he had painted himself. It looked like capital S-H-I-T. It looked like a septic rat had died in his throat amongst orange peels, and he had thrown up all of it onto his room walls. It WAS SIMPLY AWFUL. JUST AWFUL. I sent him off on his way, and had to spend the rest of the next 4 days repainting a lot of the areas he had utterly ruined. I wholly regretted asking him to even step into my house. Such a wastrel, a totally good for nothing piece of dung that caused me to be not only slowed down but have to do more work than I had. So here's another tip of the day: If you have someone who is 'kind' enough to offer to help you with painting, please for your own sanity ensure that you ask them to give you the pictorial evidence of their competence based on recent past projects, otherwise be prepared to deal with the consequences and the brain aneurysm that results from utterly incompetent nincompoops who only know how to talk from their anuses.

Oh! What a grand idea.. However, what about people who don't have FB (out of choice)?

Painting Rule #1 when painting with/for me: DO IT WELL OR DON'T EVEN BOTHER. Painting is one of my pet peeves. Well, in that I don't particularly enjoy painting, but find that I am relatively good at it. Plus, my exacting standards and perfectionist OCD tendencies always result in me rendering high-standard painting work. And so... it is a pet peeve that grates on my eyes and soul, to see shoddy paintwork. Especially in a house. Especially in a private house. Now, before this episode, I was not even aware that there were people who lived life accepting imperfection (in fact, condoning it). I am going to sound like a downright tyrant and ungrateful bas3rd of some sort when I convey the frustrations of my trying to get the room painted, but I assure you I had every good reason to be/do so...! I take pride in my work, in everything I do in life. I do not do things half-assed, I do not ever do anything 'chin chai', and I most certainly am very careful and meticulous. If I make mistakes, which is rare, because I have the right attitude towards my work, right... then I would do it over again. I would not say "Ah... never mind la. Small thing." Heil, NO. So this was the before: P.S. Tip of the day: If you are going to be painting, do NOT leave your laptop, phone or other precious electronics lying around. As big as the room was, I learnt this the hard way when I found out that I had spatters all over my laptop that was like 6 feet away from where I was painting. I mean, this is not my first time painting, but... well! Always a first time for silly things happening!

Continuing the Nightmare So I mentioned there were other things horribly wrong with the room that needed (my) fixing... They are as follows: 1. Damp wall (singular) and mould trapped under layers of paint; 2. Levelling the parts of the walls where the baseboards had been torn off 3. The mysterious corner of the room where the cement wouldn't dry The Wallflowers OK so these were pictures of the wall that had some sort of a giant crack, that my dad had cleverly painted over throughout the years... causing a massive buildup of mould and dampness from the leakage. As a result, you can see this very depressing state of affairs that was previously hidden behind a book case. It was pretty depressing to scrape off the paint (because I had wanted to get to the root of the problem rather tan simply just slather more paint over it)... and it took me a few weeks. Because working on it was honestly, depressing; I have no other way of describing. I mean, it's not particularly laborious or physically challenging but...quite dreary, staring at the grey wall for hours and inhaling/ingesting mould spores and flecks of paint. I also have ADHD, so am unable to actually focus on this long enough to complete it in one sitting (standing, rather). It was just horrid. However, thankfully certain parts of the paint literally peeled off in 1 big chunky strip (this is proof incontrovertible that the wall has been ravaged by leakage) which sped up my work a bit. After I was done with getting the paint off, the next step was to cover up the crack(s) with the joint compound. Now, guys, I believe my dad bought this for like $70 per gallon...which is atrociously expensive, considering you can make your own with cement for patching-up works. But you know what? At that point, I could no longer be bothered...least of all, to mix up several batches of my own joint compound! Plus, buying it in the big tub like this was easier in that you just need to close the lid and it would keep nicely for a couple of months. Because if you made your own, you would have to make small batches because otherwise they would dry up before you were done. Anyway, so I then took a few hours to cover up the cracks and to try and smooth the wall as much as I could (though with this wall, it was not possible due to the years of buildup of joint compound and other gunk that had been used on it). I had to wait for a few days (given the weather and humidity also) before I actually could paint over the wall. But that, I shall discuss under the general painting part of my experiences... Hit the Bass Nothing much to say about this, other than that it was literally back breaking work. First, I had to manually get all the nails out of the wall. Then, I felt like an artisanal baker-chef in a Michelin restaurant, using my silly little set of differently shaped scrapers to perfectly butter the base of the walls all around the perimeter of the room, sometimes lying on the floor my side, and trying to make the walls as straight as they could. I also had to take care not to get them onto the floor, considering they would stain forever. Considering the walls post-Ah Song were more jagged than Mick Jagger's face, I think I did a pretty good job. This again took a few days to a week total, after the psychological barrier had been removed. Then again, I had to wait a few more days before I could actually paint this part of the walls so I painted the top parts first. Damp You! So, basically, there was this corner of the room where I felt that the cement floor was darker than the parts. And this was even a week after the floor had completely dried, so the Sherlock in me guessed that it was a leakage problem. At first, my dad denied it when I told him about it. So I set about to try and prove my theory right. I joint compounded (and later painted over) the part where the wall column (basically, the wall) met that part of the floor. Since the joint compound was white, I expected it to stay white just like the rest of the room. After a week, I realised that while the rest of the baseboards-area of the room had already dried up and remained white, this part was actually BUBBLING. It looked like a pancake bubbling at the pores or something. I touched, and it was kinda mushy and as though there were air bubbles trapped beneath that surface (took pictures of it but can't find it now). So, it was essentially a gone case and we will have to rectify the leakage at some point. Having said that, though, I don't actually see any structural or massive water damage there. It has been some months now, and the only thing I need to do to adapt to this newfound knowledge is I put a Dehumidifier there at that spot. Initially I bought this fancy American one that cost like $10 per refill-- it was supposed to last for 6mths before the moisture level reached 'throwaway point'. However, mine was completely full of water within 1month, so I simply decided to switch to the Daiso charcoal kind, which makes so much more economic sense!