Dwinsplace

Looks awesome! yeah the middle bit of the reno can be a tad boring. Lots of infrastructure stuff that needs to be done so nothing much to post. I think I bought the same track lights but didnt come across any remote for it. Well, i bought that one at first, and then got told that it was WAY too big and changed to a thinner model.

there was a slight hiccup with the cabinetry. The slate laminate that we picked apparently ran out of stock. Well, they had enough stock for half the job but will have to wait till the 20th of Aug for the new stock to complete the rest of the work. So we opted to do the kitchen/ living and balcony areas first as that needed cabinetry to be up so that kompacplus could do their measurements and cost it. I was a little surprised to find out that Kompac was not a full board of material like their samples. Instead, its a 3mm thick laminate like material that goes on top of the surfaces. Still, i guess that helps keep the lines thin and pretty. The first batch of carpentry came in today and I gotta say that it looks pretty awesome. Our slate laminate to be matched with the walnut brown internal polygon. This will be for most of the cabinetry save the kitchen counters. which will be in..... This rough grey brown wood laminate with a lot of texture (small tile in pic) and we have the light brown internal polygon to match. The cabinets have landed! On the (lift) landing! This is our shoe cabinet door to showcase the slate laminate! Love the slits at the top for ventilation.

Paint is up! Most of it anyway. We went with 2 shades of grey. A lighter shade as a foundation and a darker one for accents. 2 shades also would help to keep a greater sense of unity through the house and keep it simpler. As it is, we already have lots of texture elements in our brick walls, steel walls, and laminates. ID proposed that we move away from the normal white ceilings and have that in the light grey as well to make the ceiling more a part of the whole design, which i thought was a great idea. These were the 2 shades proposed by the ID. Granite grey and Noble grey We were afraid that the lighter shade would be too close to our brick wall and concrete tiles. So in the end we opted to swap out Granite grey for Veil grey. Or what my wife irritatingly pronounces as 'veal' grey (just to bug me). Here's what it looks like. We felt that the lighter tone would add more contrast and keep the place looking a bit less oppressive. And HERE is what it looks like on the walls! In the photos, the light grey looks quite white but in real life its just dark enough for you to tell that its a grey. Which is perfect! This is just the first coat though so you can still see some brush marks. Apparently the noble grey was tough to apply. We requested for weather seal paint for the kitchen and outdoor balcony areas. The paint with weather seal mixed in is apparently glossier so they had to work quite a few coats to get it matte for me. It's not done yet but I'm loving the colours. And since its so pretty, we decided on the fly to make the main door the same Noble grey to contrast the black scissor gate. Apparently the original black paint was already ordered so I'm thankful that my ID just agreed to the last minute change without batting an eyelid. She's really been a gem to work with so far!

thanks for the compliment! Not sure how it compares to other brick walls in terms of price but it's the effect we wanted so that makes it worth it.

To my (very limited) knowledge, pre-fab can hack. As long as its not a structural wall (columns/ beams) or an external wall, or something that will compromise water proofing. Just that you won't have nice bricks underneath that you can unearth for a look. My ID told me that all my walls were pre fab and so that why I couldn't just blast off the top layer to get to natural brick below, but I've hacked several walls.

Wah thats really quite a bit of work to redo. (brick wall) sian. I kinda liked the white look though. But the original one is cosier. I think i just love brick

Went down today with the Mrs and saw the cleaners doing our first wash. Which means we're halfway through! And we saw that my beloved brick wall was finally all the way done! Oh it's perfect in its imperfection! *cue John legend song* The grouting is a little uneven, colours are uneven. Certain bricks have leftover plaster on them and certain bricks are thicker than the others or thinner than the others and so you see a lot of texture in the wall. Absolutely LOVE it.

Sorry to hear it. But to answer your question: they use duct tape to connect the insulations mostly. Industry practice.

Welcome to renotalk Dancinqi! Congrats on your key collection and the start of a lifetime of debt. haha. I'm sure you've already given your problem a lot of thought but have you considered folding wall panels for the study, but instead of eating into the sofa space, have those system that allow you to place the panel fully in the study. http://www.modernfold.com/operable_partitions_single_panel.aspx To combat the ugliness, leave about 30cm of the study wall to create an L-shaped recess where you can hide your panels? So at least you won't see it from the hall. The main con here is that the sliding tracks will still need to be maintained. You won't be able to have a full length fixed study table. And due to the movement of the panels, alot of dead space will be created. Not to mention the cost. I quite like an option that you discussed tho! Open hole with classy blinds! I disagree that you need glass. If you don't mind the noise (and aircon) flowing through both rooms then thats an awesome solution!

Yeah I agree that the fold and slide makes it very neat. But I didn't want the hassle and the slightly plastic feel as you mentioned. Pros and cons for both la. JUST NEED A BIGGER HOUSE! Lol

If its any consolation, I'm paying about 1.5 times that.

Aluminium doors are up! These will be used for toilets and entrances into the service yard. I'm also considering getting letter decals for the glass door. Like french cafe lettering. The first pic is the door without the privacy film, and the second one with. You can get glass that's sandblasted of course. That would give a more classy finish but it's also more expensive. One issue with the master toilet though. Because the toilet is small and casement doors use up so much space, we have decided to have the toilet door swing out to the room instead of in to the toilet. Swinging in might have resulted in a clearance issue with the toilet bowl even though the workers said it should have just enough space. JUST enough space would also mean that when I'm inside and want to get out, I would have to squeeze into a teeny tiny corner of the toilet so that the door can open. That would be stupid. Oh if only we had a bigger toilet...

DIY ADVENTURES PART 1 We got cheap T5 LED lights from lighting.com.sg. $14 for a 2ft set, $16 for a 3ft set. Simple, sleek and thankfully fits the industrial look. However the fitting only came in white and so, much to the wifey's dismay, I announced that I would be spray painting them all black! Finished product here with the bulb Think it will look awesome on the ceiling! Lessons learnt: 1. Sanding down the surfaces before is most likely unnecessary. I thought it would help the paint stick better but in the end the deeper scratches actually showed through the paint so probably better without. 2. Use masking tape to protect the electrical contact points from paint. (I didn't actually make this mistake. Just sharing) 3. There's a reason why certain brands of paint are more expensive. My black paint was Nippon Pylon. It cost $7.90 and it sprayed on evenly without streaking or pooling. It dried quickly and the nozzle didn't clog up. The finish is what you see in the pics. On one very small part, I used an additional clear coat spray from some unknown brand ($3.90) in the hope that it would protect the paint. Not only was the gloss ugly, a quick 2 spurts already had the clear coat pooling up in some spots while being splattery and uneven in others. Needless to say, I did not continue with the clear spray. Future gate project will be done with Nippon paint. *nods*

Wooden crates are intact! Manliness is a go! (but cannot find a **** crowbar....)

TB loot arrived!@!! I wasn't there to receive it and ID opened all the boxes to make sure that all the items were correct. I'm a wee bit sad that I won't be the one to open them but still super happy that they are here and looking good! Saw some pics from the ID. Will head down shortly (I'm baking bread at the moment and typing this out as I wait for the dough to rest) and play with all my new toys. hee Will post details on the loot a little later. 2 rooms worth of stuff! Can't wait!

Like everyone else, I've fallen madly in love with brick walls. So during conversations with IDs initially, this was always a must have. Finally, I'm seeing it come to life! At first a red brick wall was proposed but we decided to keep this monotone and went with chinchilla grey bricks. The feature was supposed to be in the recessed area but in the end the placements of sofa and tv with reference to the feature wall would have been very odd so the ID opted to fill in the recess, and extend the brick wall to cover the whole column. And at no extra cost! And for those who have done craftstone, you know that this is no small discount! So I'm very thankful. Here are some pics: Doing up the false wall and reinforcing it to take the weight of the tiles as well as to cater for my doing a wall mounted tv in the future. This partition material isn't the normal flimsy gypsum board they use for partitions and false ceilings. I knocked it a bit and its very sturdy stuff. Halfway up! Recessed plugs for the electrical/ Cat6/ and speaker cables. Hidden! Awesome!

Oh and all those black spots on the wall that look like I had minor fires going in the house? That's from the electrician spray painting the wall socket housings AFTER they were mounted on the walls. But this post is about plumbing. So here goes! Too difficult to explain without pics so I'll do a show and tell. This is my kitchen and you can see the how the water pipe (stainless steel one. Copper is gas) runs around the ceiling and down the edge for my kitchen sink. This pipe then has to go into my toilets for cold water, and also to go into the gas heater and then toilets for hot water. I suggested routing the pipe out the door you see there, following the gas pipe, directly to the gas heater. However it would have affected the door and ID also says that the cluster of pipes in that way very ugly. Since they can't punch through the beam, the only other route was to go across the kitchen as you see and into the hole originally provided by HDB for this express purpose. I'm telling myself that lots of pipes = industrial look. right? This is where the pipe comes in at the common toilet. Then it goes out the window into the service balcony where the gas heater is. Such a long way around. Lol. At first the plumber was aiming to run the pipe in a straight line from the hole to the bottom corner of the window. Making it a slanting pipe. I was like NOOOO.. Can you imagine constantly looking at a line that skewed? Would drive me insane! Lines must be parallel!! So like the valiant salmon struggling upstream, our little pipe finally arrives at the gas heater. Another branch continues down for my service yard sink and washing machine and also punch BACK into the common toilet for shower/ toilet/ sink. This particular bit of convolution is so that there are less pipes running around in the toilet. This i agree with! Here you see it entering and branching out into its various uses. If you look VEEEERY closely, you will also see that the pipes go INTO the wall at a few locations. This is to service the master toilet so that there are even LESS pipes visible on that side. The benefits of a back to back toilet system.

Went to check on the insulation as mentioned by Bianzi and discovered that the copper pipes were insulated with 1/2" as instructed but the drainage pipes were only D class insulation which is considerably thinner even to my naked eye. I asked the air con installer and he explained that the PVC pipe carries cool water which is less cold than the copper pipes. So there will be considerably less condensation to absorb. Also, using the same thickness insulation would result in a much thicker trunking when its unnecessary. He stakes his reputation on it and he seems trustworthy so I will let it slide. However I will run the aircons and if I see hints of condensation/ leakage then he will have to redo the whole thing for me. Some pics of the trunks: This is the wardrobe room. We are hanging the condenser outside the window and there will be a low height vanity covering the wall under the window and the start of the trunking. The trunk goes up and ard the door frame and out to the other rooms. There is also a small casing down the right side which punches into my master toilet for the drainage pipe. Did not realise that the trunking would look quite THAT ugly going around the door frame and so I'm getting my ID to box it up. This view is from the living area and you can see the trunk coming out of the wardrobe room on the left side, going under the beam and into the bedroom. This will be boxed up too. Another branch of the trunk runs along the wall, past the toilet and thats where I'll mount the big 24K fancoil for the living. (haiii.. open concept open concept. Big and airy. But downside is lots of space for air con to run away also ) The branch will also be boxed up. This is the trunk that runs into the bedroom. so we will only see this small portion which I'm happy with.

Looking forward to the pics but yes I can already understand what you're saying based on what I saw when I went to second charm's factory.

Like the half height tile effect in the toilet. And grey and white works like a charm every time. Never knew craftstone came with corner tiles! thats so smart. Even on a normal wall it would make it look more authentic. I specified under the "additional comments" bit when buying from TB that the goods would be shipped overseas to singapore and asked them to pack it better. My loot has just arrived and I haven't had the chance to inspect them all yet but we will see if that comment helped. haha.

I agree with kstoh. At the end of the day, we just want to get what we paid for and know whats going on. It's difficult cos we have limited knowledge of what needs to be done but we're investing a lot of money. Anyway, I did some scouting of my new aircon pipes. The copper was insulated with H class all the way. However the drainage pipe was insulate with a thin D class only. I questioned and got a rather patient and detailed reply which I shall cut and paste here for everyone's learning. "Good evening! Armaflex H-010 grade half inch insulation only use on all copper refrigeration pipe, no aircon man will use on drainage pipe, drainage pipe will use lower spec insulation. Its because 1. No required as drainage pipe is use for drain out cool water which is not as cool as refrigeration pipe 2. If use the same spec for both drainage and copper refrigeration pipe the minimum trucking size will be at least five by five inches 3. Industries practice for thinner spec for drainage pipe, Mitsubishi professor also meant it before when I taking good installation practice class at Mitsubishi building in last year July. 4. No issue happened before as we find it also no any needs to use a different spec as normal practice to make piping in longer term usage" My other interior design sources seem to be happy with this explanation. so i'll let it go.

You got me worried now. You mean they used 2 different types of insulation for you? I'll be heading down soon to the site and I'll take a look and confirm with you. Did you use Tim as well? Cos I specified with him very clearly that I wanted a certain grade of insulation and copper piping.

So quality was good? Workmanship ok? Was it not as.... how to say... refined? as the tables in journey east? It feels like the wrong word since the items there are designed to look a little rough and worn around the edges. The price is good! Journey would be about $3K

The aluminium looks good! nice and thin lines. Thanks for posting about the TB stuff. I've now gone and bought sand paper, lacquer and some tools in preparation for my own TB purchases haha.

Haha yeah we're full of rubbish. It's how we stay together. Jiawen: Women with power tools? Sexiness up by 10! Just do a google search, you'll see what I mean.