elin1029

Would like to share a purchase here An iRobot roomba 780! It's a bit noisy, but I could schedule it to work before I come home. So far so good. Check out the amount of dog hair it picked up! And I only just swept the floor late last night. This is especially good for people who keep dogs that shed lots, like mine!

Thanks enigma. Will you be starting a blog too? Would love to see your renovated place. I try not to put too heavy things in the drawers. I'm not a heavy cooker so that helps.

No, that was how the original door looked like, made worse during renovation works, the contractor didn't bother "beautifying" it after renovation.

Thanks. I'm not very sensitive, so I have no issue walking from parquet floor in rooms to laminate floor in living/kitchen to tiled floor in yard and bathrooms. I thought the kronotex feels much more solid than pergo in my previous house though. Maybe the 12mm thickness plus the rubber underlay help. Go try walking on one before you decide. A fellow forum member was very kind to let me into his house to try walking on his kronotex mammut too. I was quite torn between wood tiles and laminate floor, especially because I keep dogs. I don't like wood tiles because they feel cold, not good for aging people like me. But finally the decision was made for me because the condo management strongly discouraged hacking of the granite floor because it may cause many surrounding units to crack! Although I started to feel uneasy about the quality of this condo project, but I was glad I had to install laminate floor

Problem with installation by Kronotex or the floor itself? Kronotex installation quite standard. As for the floor, this is their highest grade range, AC5, 12mm thick. Together with 4mm of underlay, it is 16mm of laminate flooring. I must say it feels quite good. Some friends have commented it doesn't feel like laminate floor. Even my French friend who dislikes the feel of laminate floor and strongly advised me against installing one. So far no problem. My dogs had accident on the floor several times and I quickly mopped up the pee. Can be a bit stressful in this respect as I can't watch over the dogs all the time and I don't want to confine them to the yard when I'm home. And this floor is quite stain and scratch resistant. Something I'd like to highlight here. Kronotex charged me 10% wastages and we know they will never be used up. Of course they will not refund and will bring the leftover back. What happened was, we had an opening in one of the planks for electrical cables to the island, and contractor made a mistake in measurement. She asked Kronotex for one piece to replace but Kronotex refused to give. In the end contractor had to buy a box using her own money. I thought it was not very nice of Kronotex not to give since there must be leftover from the 10% wastage which I had paid for. Another point to note is the coordination of laminate floor installation can be tricky if we get our own laminate floor. Contractor kept recommending Malaysian brands saying they are equally good but I had wanted Kronotex. So I got it on my own. Now laminate floor should be installed after all major works done but before carpentry. The date of installation kept shifting, at least three times. And after installation, the floor was not protected well during the subsequent carpentry works and there were scratches and glue marks all over the floor. I guess contractor didn't really care to protect it well since it wasn't done by them. So these are some of the things to take note.

Yes, the door has an existing handle.

I'm loving it so far! Just programmed my mum's fingerprint into it and now she can come and go as she likes. I was too lazy to duplicate keys for her. I keep the previous key lock. So when I travel, I'll lock that too for added security. Go for it, especially if you hate to bring keys around, like me.

It's Kronotex Mammut series, the color code is Capital Oak Light. I must say this color is really good at hiding dirt and my dog's hair, which is not necessary a good thing because I may not find the need to sweep/vacuum when it's actually very dirty.

Need some advice here. Yesterday I purchased the following items: - Sony TV KDL60R550A - Samsung blueray player BDF6500XS - Samsung soundbar HW-F751 How should I connect them up? Bluray player to soundbar to TV? Or bluray player to TV to soundbar? Or what? Hdmi cable or optical cable? Also, what is your personal preference - wall mount tv and soundbar or place them on a tv bench?

From inside the house. From outside the house. Got it from My Digital Lock. The website listed $599 and I was going to have it installed on Wednesday but then they were fully booked. Then before they came down on Friday, I found out the IT fair promotion price was $499. Luckily they were able to give me the IT fair price. So it was a good thing they weren't able to come down on Wednesday. This is Yale 4110 and can be programmed with up to 20 fingerprints and 1 master PIN. No keys no cards. But it fits my needs.

For those who are interested, Yale is having some promotion at IT fair. Check out their price list at www.itfair.sg I'm getting a digital lock installed later today.

I like your attitude. Nice table! Did you buy online or in person in Bali?

Can't wait to see the finished look of your kitchen!

Nice! I thought you had the brick wall painted green in the other room! Love the green wall.

Good! I really feel like throwing away the paint! How do we dispose of them? Is there a proper method of disposal?

Edited.

You use normal plastic bottles? Pour through a funnel? Sorry ah, I'm quite bad at such thing...

Makan, good use for the tiles! As for paint, did you pour into bottles yourself or painter did that? I have six big tins and I hardly could open the lid myself.

Thanks Songz. Carpenter gave me his contact and said to look for him if there's any problem. Now I'd like to talk about spare tiles and paint after renovation has been completed. You almost certainly can find tiles and tins of paint in your storeroom or bomb shelter when they handover the unit after renovation. How useful are they? Does it make sense to keep them? How many of us actually will use the tiles and paint? They are taking up precious space in my storeroom as I converted the bomb shelter for my dogs. Recently I discovered a chip in the floor tile in the master bathroom that I hardly use. Dunno how it got there. I never did detailed inspection during handover, leaving it to contractor to make sure everything was ok. So anyway I thought now we can put the spare tiles to good use. The tiler came and was prepared to cut and replace the tile. But he WARNED that the whole room would become very dusty. And there's no guarantee the surrounding tiles won't be affected and everything would look good. In the end we decided not to replace the tile and he used something of similar color to patch it. So now we have a perfectly good reason to use the spare tiles and we didn't go ahead. Will we ever use them in the future when the house is even more lived in? And the worse thing is, many of these spare tiles have cracks!! Makes me think they are just lazy to get rid of these tiles when renovation was completed. So I asked the contractor to get rid of the tiles. Now what about the paint? I would like to get rid of them to free up more space too but contractor said should keep. What is your advice?

I was informed mine would be managed by his assistant right from the start, before renovation started.

Some updates regarding the Blum issue. So the carpenter came with a big plastic bag of Blum hinges and was ready to replace all hinges from Aro to Blum. Before he started, he said Aro hinges are better because there are four screws holding the hinges to the cabinet frame, whereas Blum hinges only have two screws. Upon hearing that, I found out after replacement, the previous screw holes would be exposed. I was also worried the new screw positions may fall in between the previous two holes, resulting in the new hinges being loosely held onto the frame. In the end I decided not to change the hinges. The carpenter added on saying these Aro hinges are better, he used to use the Blum ones but customers complained of problem soon after, so he changed to using Aro ones. I wasn't entirely convinced by that, but my decision was made more to avoid the exposed screw holes after replacement. So it's kinda upsetting that I was supposed to get Blum hinges but ended up getting Aro hinges. The contractor agreed to refund the differences but said the differences is not big. Now it leads me to one interesting observation regarding pricing. When contractors make a high quote, they justify by saying the cost is high because of certain branded stuff being used. If for some reason, the branded stuff wasn't used, they would then say the differences between the branded stuff and the non-branded ones are not big and they would then give you a miserable sum of refund... Lesson learnt. Make sure you get what you are supposed to get during renovation, before they start work. Otherwise, even if they later agree to change, the changes may introduce more dust into an already cleaned up place, and the changes may affect the look of the place. Even though the holes are inside the cabinets, but I don't really want such imperfections to exists, even if out of sight.

Definitely no no. Did they design your house? Did they renovate your house? My contractor wanted to put up my photos on his FB, I requested him not to.

Expedit fan here too. Ikea service is especially bad in Tampines. You can hardly find any staff around in most departments. And the worst part is that even if you're arranging for delivery, they still want you to self collect the (heavy and bulky) items. It's almost impossible for me to self collect so many items and push them to cashier and delivery counter all by myself. At the self serve area, you don't see any Ikea staff when you need one, but when you find one, you find the whole group of them. (apparently it's more fun to attend to one customer in a group).

I am a big fan of Ikea expedit shelves. I find them highly versatile and they look really great. Google "expedit inspiration" and you can find lots of different uses for it. My living room storage is inspired by the expedit shelves. Initially was thinking to just get them from Ikea to save cost but finally decided to custom build. Bought them for the rooms - in the kids room as well as in the third bedroom for storage of all my stuff, mostly books.

Should have watermarked them, but it's an extra step that requires a bit more time, and as it is today, time is so little and so precious. Hardly got time to sleep! Anyway here's the mirror finally up in the master bathroom. I wanted to buy an off the shelf mirror, but the design and size of mirror were much constrained by the two hanging lamps. Design - cannot be too complicated to clash with hanging lamps. Size - smaller to keep the lamps out or bigger to include the lamps? In the end, got the contractor to custom build one to cover the entire wall. Turned out pretty well.