CountryGlow

Hi kadventure, Thanks for your compliments! We only engaged a contractor for your house reno. The ID is me, myself and I!

Hi Mrk, We are installing washing machine of course, and a dryer too. We have gotten our contractor to extend our electrical points and water outlet to the other side of our service yeard. Cheers!

Hi peihao83! Here u go: Rainshower (I got the recommendation from another forumer and it's a wise purchase!) http://m.intl.taobao.com/detail/detail.html?id=1352358635# Mirror cabinet http://m.intl.taobao.com/detail/detail.html?id=8681040047

Hi elephantandpiggie! It's Nippon Seabreeze - 1126

ReNoVaTiOn UpDaTeS End of Week 5 ~ We are proud of our Maison De Style Champetre ! At this point of time, our renovation is probably 80% completed. Contractor J had helped us to do one round of acid wash around the house, and we are left with some minor touch ups for the cabinets, painting works, installation of kitchen/other accessories and our doors for the MBR and bedroom 3. Thus far, we have been very satisfied with Contractor J and his quality of work. And is certainly worth recommending... For those who have requested me to share on my contractor's contact, I will be sharing with you all soon. Please give me some time to get back to you as we have been superbly busy at work and our reno. There are some 'external works' still pending our actions before we can shift in in proper: - Installation of air con units - Installation of wall paper for MBR and walk-in wardrobe (bedroom 2) - Delivery of our French furniture - Delivery of electrical appliances for the kitchen - Curtain installation (still sourcing for ideal ones ) - Misc. stuff as I can't think of them now.... Week 5 ended with the installation of our 3 ceiling fans (with lights) which we purchased for the living hall, our MBR and the walk-in wardrobe. Nothing fanciful about our ceiling fans since we opted for old school country feel. The good thing is, these fans fitted our pockets well and compliment our Maison De Style Champetre! Before I end this post, I shall share some pictures on our newly renovated living hall. Can't wait to shift in our furniture which completes the over all look! :) This is our 36" fan in our walk-in wardrobe Our French furniture will be delivered next! Stay tuned for our post on that!

ReNoVaTiOn UpDaTeS End of Week 5 ~ We are 'potatos' yet We Did it ! Our Bathrooms ! Our sliding bi-fold doors for both bathrooms have been installed! White frosted glass for our common bathroom Master bedroom bathroom Clear transparent glass with white frames for our bathroom in the MBR 3-door mirror cabinet from Taobao YEAH for my storage! Rain shower and triple wall-soap-dispensers The rain shower is a steal! Quality is superb and very heavy...even Mr Plumber asked me where I bought it from From Taobao of course! Haha! PS: All other bathroom accessories were bought from Heritage Bathroom Gallery. PSST: Both our bathrooms don't look impressive as we had not changed the original tiles and structure which HDB provided. Headache now...How to transform these bathrooms to be more country-feel? Wanted to install wall lamps beside the mirror but it's too late at this point of time. I've also bought paintings and pops of flowers to throw in...but still.....ANYONE has SUGGESTIONS???

ReNoVaTiOn UpDaTeS End of Week 5 ~ We are 'potatos' yet We Did it ! My LIGHTS! (Cont') Petite & sweet lamp for our baby blue kitchen We regretted not buying 2 of those as one seems miserably small for the kitchen. Too late now as we can't extend another wiring for 2nd piece Close-up shot! Next, for The Wife's and The Hubby's Clothes... A laundry sink which I bought to hand-wash my delicate clothes at our service yard Quality of ceramic sink and stainless steel cabinet are thumbs up! Trousers rack installed into our wardrobe for The Hubby We were a little disappointed that the frame is plastic material although the rest are steel/metal rods (feels heavy). The sliding tracks are smooth and are 'soft close' too!

ReNoVaTiOn UpDaTeS End of Week 5 ~ We are 'potatos' yet We Did it ! The second half of our egg-citement had not ended with our colourful walls because our Taobao loots have arrived! I must say it was not easy bringing in our first shipment of Taobao stuff as both Hubby & I are Chinese-potatoes. WE DID IT ANYWAY and the items are in good condition when we received them! (except for 1 broken lamp that cost us less than 10 bucks, which we can forgo. The other was a pair of broken soap dispenser which we are checking with the agent on exchanging) For the rest, they are good quality and don't differ much from what were shown on the website. Thank God for that! I shall not say further and show our loots! When the parcels arrived....total 14 parcels, at 126kg. And we spent half the day trying to de-package our parcels and crate-boxes. *Phew* First up! My LIGHTS! Hanging above my round dining table A pair of wall lamps at each side of the cottage-window opening PS: The 'chandelier' hanging inside bedroom 3 is missing its lamp shades, which I forgot to throw them on before snapping this shot PSST: See that glowing poster & frame inside the bedroom? *whispers* It belongs to The Hubby, which he can't wait any longer to hang up his AvEnGeRs poster in his LED-lighted poster frame. Another pair of pretty wall lamps along the passage-way Black vintage lamps for both bathrooms One of the lamps broke and we had to scramble to buy another lamp for the common bathroom

ReNoVaTiOn UpDaTeS End of Week 5 ~ We are in a home of colours now ! (Cont'...) Next, to our kitchen and service yard! How I wish we could paint our kitchen walls as well but they are already laid with wall tiles (courtesy from HDB). So....We decided to give our service yard a brush of SUNshine to match our baby blue cabinets for an even more country feel (Please note that the yellow in the picture below (right side) appears more striking than real life.) Our SUNshine colour in the service yard is taken from Nippon's Earth Yellow (3142). Inspired by this Some sort of similarity?? *Hehe* Master bedroom & Bedroom 2 Also inspired by the ceiling colour of our bedroom 3 (in the previous post), we decided to adopt the "coloured ceiling" concept for all our bedrooms i.e. coloured ceiling in the master bedroom and coloured ceiling in bedroom 2. As we had to consider the design/colour of the wallpaper which we will have on one side of the wall, for both bedrooms, we have to choose a ceiling colour that is most similar to compliment yet contrast the wallpaper. Tough choice I must say Well...tough choice but still must have a choice! So for our Master bedroom, we chose Nippon's Angel Pink (1162) which is a shade of pale yet sweet rosy pink that brushes across our ceiling sky as we look up from our bed....imagining the sweetness that lies in the day ahead when we first open our eyes each morning #thinkpositive (Sorry if the picture can't depict the Angel Pink colour accurately. Look at the white ceiling across our passage-way and you shall see our sweet pale pink ceiling! ) Last colour for our home is in Bedroom 2 - Our Walk'in Wardrobe! Ceiling colour - Nippon's Indigo Mist (1129) (Once again, the actual lilac colour of my bedroom 2 ceiling is slightly lighter than what's shown in the picture.) Colourful home we got, don't we?

ReNoVaTiOn UpDaTeS End of Week 5 ~ We are in a home of colours now ! The past week had grew even more EGGciting seeing our house slowly coming into 'life' with our selected colours painted on our walls! Since ours is a country-style theme, the few ideal colours would be towards the neutral hues e.g. barley white (off-white tones), nude/creamy brown, bisque, bluish-grey and pale blue, to compliment our flooring and white furniture. However, the Hubby and I decided to steer (slightly) away from such 'recommended' hues as we wanted some punch of energy and cheery vibes in our home. Hence! We decided to paint the all famous Laura Ashley's Duck EGG (aka the Tiffany & Co colour!) that would be above our featured - wainscotting in the living hall! To not divert too much from the neutral hues, we selected Nippon's Sail White (1199) for the rest of the living room walls. From the Nippon brochure, Sail White appears to be white with a tint of light greyish tone...but after Mr Painter has completed the hall with this colour, we thought it look WHITE Thankfully for the Duck Egg colour, which is one of our best decisions, it helped contrast against Sail White and our white beadboards, bringing Summer into our home! Below is a sample of Laura Ashley's Duck Egg coloured wall: Laura Ashley's Duck Egg --- INSPIRED. (Shot taken from the passage-way) Remember in my post no. 2, that we wanted our bedroom 3 ceiling painted in the Duck Egg/Tiff & Co colour to hold some consistency throughout the living hall at one glance?? *TA-DA!* Here it goes.....! (Shot taken from the wall lined with wainscotting) (Shot taken from bedroom 3. See the Duck Egg coloured ceiling above??? ) EGGciting hall we got, don't we?

Thanks chower thanks clownprince! This part of our house which we wanted to spend the least attention & budget on has now became the best area I love! LOL. At least this wld motivate me to cook more. I guess.

Carpentry works PART II (Cont') Our Walk-in Wardrobe - C.O.M.P.L.E.T.E.D ! My Dressed-Up ROOM everyday! Really love the white cabinets and sleek trimmings on the doors....a touch of class in my personal space! *Stay tuned to the other furnishing and decor in this room. Promise it will be a sweet aw-ing sight * My carpentry updates shall stop here. Up next! Our house will be in colours ! ! ! For a sneak peek, I caught a shot of the open tin of paint while Painter-worker A was painting our house. Will update soon in our world of colours

Carpentry works PART II (Cont') Features of our Living Hall - C.O.M.P.L.E.T.E.D ! Wainscoting - Chair rails and beadboards on one side of our living hall Shot taken of the wainscoting from the kitchen entrance (Pardon the workers in the pic...and the mess! ) To match our beadboards/wainscoting that are adjacent to this side of the hall, we decided to ask Contractor J build a full-height shoes cabinet with panel-design doors. Love the clean and straight lines on this creation...speaks so much of beautiful simplicity...This design was also inspired by a cottage house I have stumbled upon. See second pic below Cottage inspired window opening Last but not least...my cottage inspired window opening through the wall, overlooking into bedroom 3! Albeit the hesitance to hack this wall initially, we look at it now beaming from ear to ear. Besides creating a brighter and larger visual effect of our living hall now, the wall opening serves 2 important functions: 1) As I consider myself as a serious 'weight-watcher', we will be placing an exercise machine in bedroom 3, allowing me to exercise and watch television through the opening at the same time! Just need to turn on Hubby's Bose bluetooth speakers connected in the room and I am happy for a good workout each time! No need to squeeze another TV into this tiny bedroom. 2) As the Hubby adores his Iron-man and Transformers toys enough to (MUST) display his collectibles, we came to consensus to place his toy cabinets in bedroom 3 at a 45 degrees angle in the corner; which allows them to be seen through the wall opening, yet not directly placed in the living hall to 'spoil' our country-style theme. As long as it satisfies the man...Haha! Of course to make our dream country theme of the living room perfect, the very-wise-me have also bought french lace curtains to drape across the window opening. Hiding both my exercise machine and Hubby's array of toy collectibles from sight when the curtain is slightly drawn. Hehehe...we are 2 very happy and satisfied people :)

ReNoVaTiOn UpDaTeS End of Week 4 ~ We are VERY into Motion! Carpentry works PART II Guess this has been the most exciting week since reno started! Our carpentry for the kitchen cabinets, walk-in wardrobe and wainscoting (what I considered the "highlights" of our new house) are 95% completed! All have been smooth except for some minor touch-ups and to install the knobs and handles for our kitchen cabinets and wardrobe I don't know about the speed of carpentry work for others but I must really give 10 thumbs-up to Contractor J's workers for their efficiency and commitment to deliver the best job for us. Must say that so far, all the different workers Contractor J has engaged (i.e. tilers, cornice-er, carpenters, electrician/plumber) are all friendly and take pride in their work. The hubby and I have left the 'work-in-progress reno scene' feeling happy and settled each time as we could always strike a nice conversation with any of the workers, with them sharing so much knowledge on each stage of the reno. I guess their friendliness and productivity let us feel assured that each part of the renovation works are in good hands. Anyway, back to our cabinets..we will be buying our door knobs and handles from Taobao Since shipment would take about 2 weeks to reach, we told Contractor J to only send his guys back to help us finish the installation later this month. We will be getting the below pumpkin-look-alike door knobs for our kitchen and shoes cabinet. Tiffany green pumpkin for the shoes cabinet and white pumpkin for our kitchen cabinet At the middle and bottom right would be the knobs and handles for our wardrobe doors. Single white silvery rose knobs for the doors and white ceramic handles for the drawers. Love our choices which are unique and can't find them locally...hopefully they fit prettily on our cabinet doors Our baby blue (aka farmhouse) kitchen - C.O.M.P.L.E.T.E.D ! *I'll let the below pictures do the talking* Overall kitchen cabinets on the right side Doors alternate between panel-design and box-frame to match our beadboards wainscoting in the living hall. And a white solid surface top to compliment and contrast the sweet baby blue cabinets. Our Samsung fridge will be placed at the far-right corner of the kitchen. A close-up on our top mount kitchen sink* (from Sim Siang Choon) / High curve-design tap (from Heritage Bathroom Gallery) / Fujioh hood (SLM 900) / Rinnai hod (2Gi) - latest model black tempered glass top with 2 inner flame burners Our Samsung fridge, Fujioh hood and Rinnai hob were purchased from a neighbourhood store (*ahem* competitor of Goh Ah Bee) called Kah Hock Repairer & Trading. Bought our other electrical appliances from them as well...shop and save! *Some regrets that we had not selected an Apron front kitchen sink instead since it will further enhance our farmhouse (& maybe rustic) kitchen... Kitchen on the left side - with only bottom cabinets Close-up shot of the panel-design doors - Great job done by Contractor J's carpenters! Our baby blue kitchen - inspired! Did our cabinets achieve this design which we got our inspiration from? I hope we did (with some photoshop and better lighting)!

Clownprince's wife - YES EGGCITING! ! ! We LOVE our baby blue kitchen too! Was a last minute decision to swop from white laminates to blue and they turn out impressive and super suit our theme! But aye...probably the kitchen now feels more farmhouse compared to french country. Hehe! More updates on our lovely baby blue kitchen next! Your sweet pastel colourful scandi home is looking very good too! Really kudos to you and your Clownprince who had painstakingly DIY your own "wallpaper" on your walls! We considered painting our walls but end up decided to give it a miss because it's too tedious and I can't draw for nuts. Hahaha...no talent. Anw, ur colourful pastel bookshelf rockz too! Can imagine stepping into a world like paddle-pop (ice cream, my favourite childhood food) in your home! chower - Thanks too! Wainscotting is a BIG MUST for country homes. Either you do the box-beading kind or beadboards (which is like ours). I prefer the latter because it's more towards cottage than classic Victorian. Glad my hard work to research and carefully-thought-through designs paid off! But half the credit goes to my contractor J who helped me achieved what I dream of in our first home.

Thank you myimaginaryhome! We are very looking forward too! Counting down to our contractor handing over our completed Maison! RookieBoy - Sorry to miss ur PM. At this point of time, I will not share my contractor's contacts until our reno is close to completion. Stay tuned for that ya?

Hi Benetay! Yes all cabinets will up within these 2 days! Can't wait to see the end-result of our hard-thought-through ID! Oh my Victorian-look alike storage bed! You'll be surprised where we have bought it from! It's from Seahorse!

Carpentry works PART I (Cont') Up next! - *The highlights of our living hall* (Work in progress - Wainscoting ) ... Chair-rail and beadboard running along the left side of the hall. Here, we will be placing our dining table, TV console and buffet cabinet along the wainscoting Notice the cut-out boxes at the end of the beadboard which Mr J had considered for us? They are meant to fit in the switch sockets for our TV, player etc and to be disguised along the wooden panels. So professional of him to think for us as he often emphasises on aesthetic and design (Work in progress - Cottage window opening ) ...On the opposite side of the wainscoting, we have my "creation" of a Cottage window which will have a tempered glass fixed between a white wooden border, looking into bedroom 3. We will be placing our cushy fabric sofa under here...Lovely aye? ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Really gotta praise Mr J's workers for their intricate workmanship and good attitude. They are friendly and gladly shared with us on renovation knowledge and help us rectify/ accede to our last minute requests to changing certain details of the carpentry works. Caught some shots when they were working - skillful indeed! :good:

ReNoVaTiOn UpDaTeS Week 4 ~ We are BACK into Motion! Carpentry works PART I The very next day...we headed down to our flat excited and surprised to see the workers fixing up our kitchen cabinets! I LOVE LOVE LOVE.........the babyblue laminates we have chosen! :dancingqueen: We had initially chosen white laminates with blue trimmings and blue solid top for our kitchen to compliment HDB's greyish floor tiles. But since we have overlaid our kitchen floor with our (brighter) wooden tiles, I can now have my dream baby-blue kitchen cabinets which is sooooo sweet and cheery! This colour is rare for most kitchens and definitely suits our colour scheme of the hall and entire house! Next - Work in progress for our 3m in length wardrobe & full height shoes cabinet next to the main door Our full-height shoes cabinet - Hopefully enough for my shoes! ! ! *Hehehe*

ReNoVaTiOn UpDaTeS Week 4 ~ We are BACK into Motion! Oh yes! Things speed up again since Good Friday. A slight 'halt' to our renovation the last week as Mr J's workers were busy fabricating our wardrobe and cabinets in their factory. While the carpentry works were happening back in the industrial estate, our bathroom shower screens and cornices for the hall and rooms are up! Very happy with our choice of the cornices as the simple and sleek design gives our long hall and passage-way a touch of sophistication! (Pardon the dark pic for this shot) (Shot taken from our Master bedroom) I love the cornice design for the rooms too! Standing under this "boxed up ceiling" outside my MBR bathroom reminded me of the high astonishing ceilings of Sistine Chapel! If only we are gonna lay wallpaper with classic Victorian prints across the ceilings, too bad we are not. But still, love what we have for our house! I guess the ugly metallic design of the ventilation plates outside our household shelters are a headache for some of us. Definitely a clash to our country-style theme, we wanted to do the most 'legal way' to seal up one of the metal plates which is above where we plan to place our fireplace mantel. Mr Cornice-worker was so intelligent and kind to help us flush the metal plate with white cornice cement! The metallic plate is gone! *Happy!* Besides the cornices, Mr J got our shower screens for both bathrooms and the storage heater fixed up too! I must say that the quality of the shower screens i.e. the top track and sliding glass are real goooood stuff! Look like those they have in the hotel bathrooms! Sliding shower screen in our Master bathroom. Check out the circle-knob to hold to slide the glass door...this is unique which I hardly see in others' bathrooms! We wanted a L-shaped swing glass door for the common bathroom but Mr J said that the door opening will only be 60 cm wide. Since it is too narrow, we decided to do away with the L-shaped shower screen and just have one piece of tempered glass to separate the toliet bowl and the bathing area. Mr J also suggested to extend the pipes and shift the storage heater out to the service yard so that we won't have a big item above us when we are using the toliet. It was ideal! We contemplated but decided to scrap the idea since it would cost more for the extension. After fixing up the barrel, we thought that the toliet bowl looks pretty "cosy" being surrounded on the top and by the side. Hehe!

#jawdropping No better words to describe your diligence and creativity to make your new home so personalised and special! #kudos Thanks for the kind offer folks! You both should consider this as your side line to flaunt that talent! Just wondering, your bedrooms are non-scandi theme? Only your living halls and kitchen will go scandi? Clownprince wife - Thanks for your compliment on my renovation thus far! I'm looking forward to your pink and baby blue kitchen too! Love the boldness of colours you used in your flat.....! Esp painting pink in the living hall....I love pink but I always have this idea that pink in my living halls will go too juvenile if choose the wrong shade or done too much - overkill. Seems like you got the colour right and amount for your hall! Show us pictures of the entire hall when all your DIY paintings are done ok?!

Hi Zees! They are different "Mr Js". Hopefully both Mr Js will value add to our reno journey! Best of luck to ur renovation too!

Hi Zees! Thanks for the well wishes! But I think the "Mr J" you are refering to is a different "Mr J" from mine Our "Mr J" is a contractor, not ID. Why not show us some pictures of your lovely home?

French-style furniture (cont') For the Master bedroom (going towards simple Victorian ) 3 requirements for our bed, which are hard to find but we found one nonetheless! (i) Preferably king size (as per hubby's request) (ii) Definitely gotta be a storage bed as we need all the storage we can find (ii) Certainly a frame design to suit the simple Victorian theme *TA-DA!* Bed frame will be off-white colour though Pretty Serpentine which we will place next to our bed and can be seen right from the hall and walk-way. And lastly... My French Dresser This beauty will be placed in our walk-in wardrobe (supposedly bedroom 2) as I will throw on my 1000001 types of facial products and makeup, select my outfit and get dressed all within this personal space. It will be MY space! WAHAHAHA!! I love the trimming design of my dresser... (Okay the picture is not doing justice to it, I know) You can feel pretty simply looking at it, which serves the very purpose of a dressing table *more *

ReNoVaTiOn UpDaTeS Week 2 & 3 ~ We are slowing down...For now. As the above reads, there is not much progress to show the last 2 weeks. Mainly the minor works which I won't go into details. Heard from contractor J that our carpentry (i.e. wainscoting, kitchen, wardrobe & shoes cabinets) will up in these couple of weeks, so stay tune for that In this post, I shall share on the french-style furniture which we bought! As I last mentioned, we decided not to have built-in cabinets and have bought all our French furniture from a friend's recommendation. (Although I realised that I could have shipped from Taobao which could save us a bit) No regrets as the furniture workmanship and quality is worth the price we paid for! For the living & dining hall A comfy & plush sofa which we can throw ourselves onto after a day out! I have always adored Laura Ashley decor and furniture, and their all-famous duck egg fabric sofa is one of my favourite! But... *reality hits* for a more prudent budget and easier maintenance sake, we bought this beauty and selected a light/neutral brown fabric colour instead. The plushy cushions are to die for! Which they will be in the darker shade of brown. The floral designed fabric will be for the smallest cushions amongst the big ones. Imagine snuggling up on this sofa....we can't wait! *do boogie dance* Hopefully maintenance will be hassle-free as the lady boss told us we just need to do upholstery cleaning 1 - 2 times each year (depending on usage) to keep it clean to our liking. Here are our TV sideboard & coffee table. Pardon the blur picture of the TV sideboard and half-covered coffee table (only show the legs). The TV sideboard will be specially ordered as I don't want too fanciful carvings on the entire board which was on display. That was why the photo was captured off from her catelogue. Actually most of her furniture are steered more towards Victorian style which we had chosen the slightly simple and straight-cut designs & trims to fit our theme... We decided to go for a round dining table for its unique-ness & chairs with fabric design in lightly golden and pinkish-beign stripes. (note that the borders and trimmings of the chairs will be sprayed white ) The essentials but not the necessaries ~ Fireplace mantel, Mirror & French buffet cabinet *Sneak preview of the fireplace* - Which we will place along the wall next to the kitchen entrance White Mirror above the fireplace to check on our hair and makeup before leaving the house And...the (almost "redundant") buffet cabinet to be placed beside the living hall windows. Why I phrase it as "redundant" as country houses always have buffet cabinets which I love to display nice teapot sets, ornaments etc. But buffet cabinets in BTO houses are space consuming! Oh wellz...we managed to find space for my beauty anyhow!