Garrison

Hi everyone, I just bought all the downlights, but realised I ordered cool white instead of day white, which, I think, is the norm. The more pure white colour, so to speak, Should I go and change them? They won't be installed for a couple of week. My main concern is the study area, I bought cool white LED T5 tubes. Will daylight white be less glaring? Thanks for the advise.

Tiles Part 2 So work started 2 weeks ago, and all tiles have been completed. Managed to drop by a few times after work to take a look, workmanship is pretty good, I must say. But must check if all the tiles are aligned correctly. Pretty neat work, and good attention to details. Big gaps at the edges, but all covered by skirting now. metal strips for joining between 2 different type of tiles How it looks now. Most of it is now covered by cardboard. Need to talk to the ID about how to inspect the tiles...

Hmm, I ordered cool white instead of daylight white for down lights and study table. Will it be good for reading? Should I go back and change?

The The table is 1.4m by about 75cm. That is the max size i can fit in my dinning area. Price is 615 before GST The storage bed is 550 with purchase of mattress i think. We got 100 off for the divan frame without headboard. Not that ex bah.

Furniture so, most of the storage are built in, and not much furniture to be bought, just the sofa, coffee table, dinning table n chair and bed. But that didn't make our furniture hunt any easier. The typical MDF with gloss finish type of furniture are easy to find, but it didn't suit what we want. And we decided early on we didn't want MDF furniture cause it doesn't last. Sofa: Leather? Fabric? PU? Well, I don't like the design of typical leather sofa. PU leather are known to peel after a few years too. Real leather are super ex and require some TLC to last. So fabric it is. We chanced upon this sofa at Hommage. Took some effort to convince my wife to accept it. But we didn't buy from Hommage though. At the recommendation of wife's friend, we went to inquire from S&C, and was quoted a price about 25% lower! So that's settled. Next, we went to Comfort funiture, and my wife chose this coffee table Matches the sofa pretty well, I think. Dinning table: Lorenzo had some nice solid wood tables, and the price was pretty reasonable, but they were too big for HDB flats. Scanteak's glossy red oiled wood colour and design just doesn't appeal to me. And I was told they are not really teak, but rubber wood. We also saw very good quality solid wood tables from Hommage, but the price was too high. So we sat on it for a very long time (the decision, not the table) , but finally on our second trip to Comfort Furniture we decided on this table Actually, I was a bit worried that a solid wood table would be too much wood in the house, so this, I feel, is a good balance. Would be better if the glass was tinted, but Comfort Furniture does not do tinted glass.They are customizing the glass to have rounded corners, though. These chairs also from Comfort And finally, my wife insisted on getting this, so I got the set Lastly, Bed: My research tells me that the mattress industry is all about marketing, branding and ridiculous mark-ups. Underneath there is very little difference. So I was not very willing to splurge on mattress, although my wife was psychoed by her friends to buy branded, you know, the few brands that start with "S". Spent a lot of time arguing over this. The only thing we agreed on was we wanted storage bed. Luckily, we chance upon Getha latex mattresses at furniture mall, and they had a promotion for their Eco 10. We both found it comfortable, and our combined weight is only about 105g, so we felt we don't need fancy spring mattress. The bonus is the height is lower, only 10" compared to 13-14"" of spring mattresses, so on top of the storage frame the bed would not be too high. My wife is only 148cm tall

More Lights We already decided to use downlights for living and dinning room and MBR, so choosing lights would be easy, right? WRONG. Again, many late nights were spend in front of the laptop searching and researching. First of all, LED or normal energy saving bulb? LED is more energy saving, and the light last longer. But many people say if you only turn on the lights for a few hours a day, the energy cost saving not worth the upfront cost. That would be true if you bought the LED lights at normal retail price. For me I still chose LED because besides the electrical consumption, I didn't like that energy saving bulbs flicker when turning on, and would take a long time to slowly brighten when they get old. LED down lights have the added benefit that they are lower profile, so your false ceiling can build with less drop. Also, I wanted day white, but my wife wants warm white for ambiance. Then we saw the Philip 3-colour LED down lights, and we really liked it. But the price was . Plus, even though they have 1 yr warranty, Philips down lights have the driver built in, so if the driver spoils after 1 year, you have to replace the whole thing. Phillips LED are known to be good quality, but there's always the occassional lemon. And, you have to buy their proprietary switch. I'm not gonna spend 4 digit on down lights alone. So pass. Then I started searching Aliexpress. (didn't search Taobao cause my Chinese is CMI), and was about to pull the trigger for some 3-colour down lights, then I read about a local company called Zenterra. Checked their website and emailed them, and they told me they were having promotion for furniture show at Expo. So I went down to take a look, and saw they have 3-colour down lights too. At only 30 bucks for road show price, it is only slightly more ex then Aliexpress. And they provide 3 years warranty. So I decided to support local. The 3 colour light is only for the living room and MBR. Dinning light and walkway will have normal day white lights. Bad thing is, the glass sits floating below the gypsum board, not flushed, so there will be dirt there. Also bought LED T5 tubes for study lights to fix under the top hung cabinet, and lights for toilet and service yard. That leaves the kitchen and foyer lights. We didn't find anything we like there, so we continued searching. Finally we came across Lumiart at Tanjong Katong and saw something like this The glass cover screws into the metal base like a giant glass jar, so it's fully enclosed, no need to worry about oil fumes and insects. It uses 3xE27 holders, so I bought 3 cheap LED bulbs from Aliexpress. The glass has like a storm cloud like frosted pattern, pretty nice. You won't see it in this pic cause I just pulled it off the internet. I think it would look really cool with warm white bulbs, but I got cool white which is more suitable for kitchen. Also bought this from Lumiart for the foyer. Lumiart also has some nice simple pendant lights which we considered for the dinning area, but the price was too high. So we bought these from Aliexpress. Not very pleased with this purchase, to be honest. Firstly, I did not check the cost properly, and did not see there is a shipping cost of 30+ USD, so the price adds up to be 70+ USD each. Although the colour is nice, the glass is much thinner and lighter and the plastic is cheap quality compared to what we saw in Lumiart.

Ceiling, Lights and Fans Ok, we wanted easy maintenance, so that means no cove lights, even though I really light the effect of cove light. It's just an unreachable area for dust to hide. We are ok with false ceiling and down lights though. So we are doing false ceiling in the living area, walkway and MBR Keeping it simple for false ceiling design. I think no body looks at the ceiling anyway. I don't remember what the ceiling in my in-laws place look like. We also want ceiling fans in every room, including the dining room. I sent so many hours surfing the www for information. Other than one ceiling fan in my old house, I know nuts about ceiling fans. But my only criteria are 1. No UFO shape fans. You know what I mean right? The typical fan design 2. No pull switch. I hit it all the time. Most fans come with remote, so that is already solved. Remotes have their own set of problems, but still... Anyway, went to many places, but not many have a wide range on display. They take up too much space, I guess. Finally, we went to Phylux in Paya Lebar. They carry a wide range, and have a lot mounted and working, so you can not only see it, but feel it in action as well. Finally, we decided on the 52" Spin 2 blade for the living room I like the sleek cylindrical design, and the airflow is quite good, even though it is only 2 blades. And 2 blades means less cleaning! We also got the 46" Crestar Icol for the MBR, and the same model with LED light for the 2 bedrooms And finally, after much deliberation, we decided to get the same fan for the dinning room, But with a steel body and black blades, to match the living room one. Because of the shoe cabinet, and we want to installing a hanging light in the dinning room, can only fit a small fan.

ARRRRGHHHH typed a long @SS post, and the laptop suddenly rebooted!! it's 3.20am now, I'm not gonna re-type everything. Maybe tomorrow.... Or more accurately, later today.

Tiles The first time the ID brought us to Soon Bee Huat, I was like . I have never imagined there could be sooooo many tiles, soooo many different designs, and ceramic tiles can be printed to look like all kinds of wood, sand, limestone, almost anything! But, we went with the more safe design, as some of the fanciful designs do not suit our theme. One design that caught our eyes was one with a swirling pattern. The pattern was really nice, and it's a running pattern, meaning the tiler must line up all the tiles in the correct direction, but it was only available in brown and grey. grey brown The pattern does not show up well in the photo for the grey, but it is a lot more obvious for the brown. The staff said the tiles just arrived, and they had just put up the display pieces that morning. Even the labels were not stick on yet. We really liked the pattern, but I wanted light colour for the living room. The grey looked nice and unique, but I felt the brown looked old and dirty, even though the pattern is the most obvious. In the end we chose the grey for the bedrooms and another white design for the living room. This was before we had seen the first 3D drawings from the ID. As I mentioned, I wanted different tiles for the foyer. I envisioned those granite looking tiles, with the granite texture, in grey colour. The idea is we don't have to worry about wearing shoes into the foyer before taking off. My wife was very particular about the feeling of the texture. We joked that she wanted to scrub the dead skin on her heels on the tiles . Finally we settled on this one. At the showroom I felt it was a shade darker than I liked, but now I feel it looks fine. And it fulfills my concept of creating an outdoor foyer look, even though its inside. Fast forward several weeks, after we have almost confirmed our design for the house, we went back to SBH to confirm our tiles. Lo and behold, they have the same pattern as what we chosen for the bedroom, but this time in white! So we almost immediately changed the living room tiles to this one. Well, it looked like white in the showroom, it's actually a slight cream colour. Maybe it's the lighting at the showroom. Somehow the greys look darker there, and the light colours look lighter. I got a scare when I first saw the tiles laid in my house last week. I thought they delivered the wrong tiles! The next day my wife drove down to SBH to double check the order and got a sample. They didn't have a sample the first time we saw it. To be honest, I'm a tiny tiny bit disappointed it's not the white colour I remembered , but I still like the pattern more than any other I've seen.