RumbleInStyle

Thanks! The entire kitchen floor was laid today... amazed at the end result! Excellent workmanship by our tiler

Finally, more work done today... just started tiling the kitchen. We wanted to create a café feel and were deciding between several designs – checkerboard, octagon with dot and mosaic. In the end, we decided on a more uncommon layout known as the hopscotch layout. We wanted the black dots to be parallel to the sides of our rectangular kitchen. But that depends on the sizes of the two types of tiles and required some trigonometric calculations, which we gladly did. We gave our tiler a ridiculously complicated technical drawing of the laying, which totally confused him. But we did a dry laying of the tiles in the kitchen together with him and he got it eventually (hopefully). [read more on our blog]

We stalled for a few days due to pending HDB permit. Meanwhile, to minimize delays, our contractor proceed with the plastering of the walls and painting the old-based sealer. What hampered our progress was the proposed topping up of 10cm of flooring for our kitchen. Earlier in the week, we got our approval and we finally proceeded with our renovation.

The project feels as though it's grinding to a halt as we are waiting for approval from HDB for some works before we can proceed. Keeping our fingers crossed. Anyway, here's a quick view of freshly constructed walls for the kitchen and yard entrances. [read more]

PMed you.

Thanks~ Just normal tiles but made in Italy... got them from Taugres.

Oh... We thought it was camera effect that caused the colour differences. Sounds good. hopefully it will be good for us too.

Living room floor and skirting done. Moving on... just dry laid our study floor. [read more]

Thanks oldskool and MHB! oldskool: saw that you have the same type of tiles for your entrance. How do you find them so far?

Feature floor tiles have been laid... love the look!

Our retro tiles have been delivered! Going to use them for a feature floor in our dining area. We hope this will complement our old-coffee-shop marble-top round dining table that we have been using for almost a year now. We did a dry laying with the tiler to set our tile alignment. Seems like they nicely match up (in terms of look and size) with our concrete-looking tiles that we are using for the rest of the living-dining space. [click here to read more]

It's progressing quite well. The windows have been installed. We didn't notice the greenery until now. [read more: http://wp.me/p3MSYw-4h]

We should be starting to tile the place this week. Here's a peek at our tile selection. The common areas are monochrome, while the other half of the unit, consisting of the bedroom and study will be warmer. Large concrete tiles for the living/dining area, rectangular subway tiles for the kitchen wall. We are too lazy to maintain wooden flooring, so we are using wooden looking tiles for the bedroom and study. And here's the rough idea of how the colours will line up on the floor plan. [read more: http://rumbleinstyle.wordpress.com/2013/09/02/our-tile-selection/]

Thanks! That's one good thing about old units. So much so that we are making it a lot smaller and freeing the space for a larger living area.

Elders say so we do. We're not sure what the coins signify... good luck and good fortune I guess? Got the coins from Tiong Bahru market.

Our reno progressing well so far. Currently plastering cement screed and almost done constructing the walls required. Moving on to tiling next week and hopefully it will start looking more like a house than a construction site. Yet another superstition this weekend. We buried some old Chinese coins in cement in various corners of the unit.

Thanks! All demolition work completed today. Here's a panoramic view from the middle of our new living area. Happy that our calculations worked out and we are able to have a view of all windows through the various openings. Hopefully, these openings will brighten up and ventilate the middle of the unit when the reno is done.

Result after 1 day of work... Kitchen cabinets and interior doors are removed. Hacking work half done. Here are pictures of the newly opened entrances to the kitchen and study. So far so good.

Hi, our existing gate is not the original old one. The previous owner changed it to one with some design.

Bedroom & Study: Store room: Bathrooms:

Our renovation work starts tomorrow! Here's a last look at our place in its original condition before hacking. Fingers crossed for the next 2 months! Entrance: Living Area: Kitchen & Yard:

Bought a wool rug for the living room today! It's a round floor rug from BoConcept at the Proof Living Warehouse Sale at 50% off! It's quite colourful and playful at the same time... hopefully it will fit nicely with everything else when we put our living room together. Here's a photo we took of it when we got back.

HDB has approved our hacking... 1 week before hacking commences!

We rolled our pineapple just before the 7th lunar month a couple of weeks ago. It went 10 metres... all the way from the entrance to the end of the kitchen!

We opted to be more unconventional living/dining layout couple of reasons... We wanted the living area to be the central area of the unit. Anyway, we are more likely to use the living than the dining area as we seldom cook. A 3-room is quite small, so the new dining area and the kitchen are not that far apart anyway.Being a corridor unit, wanted more privacy for the living area, which meant having more distance away from the entrance.We wanted to get rid of the space between the doors, so we had to shift the door of the study to face the main areas... and we wanted that door to be large, so there's not much wall and floor space for the TV and sofa up front.However, we might be having our meals too close to our shoe cabinet... better keep our shoes smelling nice!