gumbokins

mainly makes washing of the kitchen floor easier..but it does restrict you from changing the placement of your fridge as well as getting a bigger fridge in the future. the little plastic 'brick' legs work great too, imo.

my suspended kitchen cabinets hv laminate at the outer bottom..

no storeroom means i minimise bulk and junk. it's a great excuse to not keep things. but currently we hv a spare bedroom..that's where the vacuum cleaner goes. suitcases etc goes under the bed.

we bought a resale that had a concrete and stove support. but the tiles were so fugly, and ID said you might as well build a new one instead of retiling so we did. adjusted the layout just slightly. got it mainly because at my parents hse, they don't hv one and even those their kitchen cabinets are relatively new, there's been so many leaks and warping problems. i believe it's the choice of tiles that determine if you can do chopping or not. initially was going to use the floor tiles to do up the sink support but i wasnt able to visualise the look so stayed safe and used the wall tiles. tiler did not recommend i do chopping on that surface but i'm not much of a 'chopper' anyways

when the plumbers came to rectify our leak, it took a while because plumber blame tiler, tiler blame plumber. but we verified with the colour of the water..so the plumbers came, removed to bowl to check if the 'something' is overflowing, then put it back and resealed it. 6 mths on, no leaks yet.

i suppose your neighbour thinks he wants to share his feng shui with you.

we got our contractor to fix it. agreed, that it's definitely due to poor fittings. just dont wait too long, because the blue stuff is corrosive..be sure to rinse it regularly. in the meantime, until your contractor gets it fixed, dont put anymore toilet blue.

yup be sure that the water is from there. you can put some food dye into your tank then put some toilet paper where the leak is to check if the water is coloured too.. it happened to me, at the side. but we were using the toilet blue thing, and the water stained our black floor tiles irreversibly.

ants like warm places too...maybe thats why it likes your water flask?

i think can get borax from mama shops. not sure if its the same thing...i remember my mum got mention before. another solution is to use lavender essential oil. put 2-3 drops in water, then wipe the surface + areas with it. it doesnt actually get rid of the ants, but it apparently screws up its sensory abilities. i tried it out on my kitchen cabinets, and seems to work.

my parents hv their washing machine in the bathroom, it does take up a fair bit of space and before they renovated we had to sit sideways on the toilet bowl lol. they built a kerb and there is a power point and it was handy to hv it inside because we could use the water to wash the toilet. as i dont cook (much) i do hang up my clothes in the kitchen. but when i do, i make sure that there's ample ventilation to get the fumes out. it's better to hv the washing machine nearer to the laundry area, so you dont hv to lug wet clothes across the house (HEAVY).

yup, my parents are ngiao that way.

don't get me wrong, kari, the parquet lasts very long, but it has its battlescars. my parents revarnished it a couple of years back, which restored some of its glory and i think they might hv tried to fill in the deeper scratches and grooves. i'm puzzled as to why contractors says parquet won't last..it's hardwood flooring, isn't it? we also grew up with built ins and my main gripe about them is that you cant change them as you grow up and go through phases in your life i was stuck with some ugly pink striped laminate for the longest time. but built ins let you maximize space and if you go for something neutral, like greys or browns it can last a while. or you can just have the doors changed. i'm not sure abt using the wall as the back instead, most wall surfaces are not very smooth and not only do you risk letting bugs and insects into the wardrobe, stuff can get stuck b/w the gap too? IMO, 'theme' furniture have a very short shelf life. and they dont come too cheap either. i guess i'm just a practical person, and i blame my parents for this. i often envied friends and relatives who had beds in the shape of cars or had colourful painted rooms or even those with MATCHING bedroom furnishings. my parents kept it 'real' by painting the walls white and bought us regular beds which i slept on till i got married and moved out. in retrospect, they probably saved a lot of money and hassle by doing so.

parquet floors are great. very lasting and can tahan everything your kids throw at them. we grew up with parquet floors at my parents house and 20 yrs on, they still look great!

2.5 pax, 4 rm, $70 (no/minimal cooking), $80 with AC but i expect it to shoot up a lot this mth coz i was away on holiday and one of the spray hose pipes burst thus water was pouring nonstop for almost a week before it was discovered SIGHS -_-

well i think it would depend on how well ventilated is your kitchen. if it's well ventilated, then i don't think a door would be needed. but if it's so well-ventilated then the wind is strong enough to extinguish the flames on ur stove, then doors would be handy. but if you're concerned abt the oil and smoke etc getting to ur furniture, then i would not be putting glass sliding doors because it would mean the oil and smoke would stick to those doors instead and create more work to clean up, right? many of my makcik neighbours don't have doors for their kitchens, incl. my mum. they cook daily with lots of oil and chili etc, and i don't think their house smells of oil or smoke.

IKEA also got...lol try going to salvation army to see if can pick up any old pieces, just a bit of cleaning and maybe a change of frame and who knows? esp. if it's just 'to fil in space'.. opposite concourse, near all those fishing shops is a shop that sells paintings.

well you know, it could just be the luck of the draw. maybe some ppl were fortunate enough to get good service, while others didn't. (edit) but i certainly would NOT call it 'flaming', more like 'giving feedback' only.

well i'm sure you all already know this but if you have kids around and don't want doors to go closing on little fingers, you can install the little hooks to the door to hold it open. we hv one behind our main door, and my parents put one to my sis's bedroom door because her room gets a lot of wind and the door has a very nasty tendency of slamming shut due to the wind.

we hv a 2 yr old samsung lcd as well...when we moved into our resale, the electrician who helped to hook up my TV said that that the cable point could be an illegal one by the ex-owner. but he did it anyways, and when the pic quality wasnt so good, fiddled with some box in the corridor to sharpen the pic. it worked, but we were only trying it on one channel. later realised there was some fuzz lines across the screen which only affected Ch5. we don't hv SCV but we were using the same point for our cable modem, so there was a splitter. decided to move the modem elsewhere, take out the splitter and pic quality has improved. i don't really appreciate HDTV nor see the need to have it, would much rather pay for QUALITY programmes than watch re-runs so i can tolerate a few fuzzlines here and there.

yup. but frm my understanding, they are modular pcs that can be mixed and matched. they have 2 rows of two that fit very nicely under their common corridor window.

my neighbours use the IKEA TRONES shoe cabinets and mount them outside their house. being flat, they don't take up much space, which is esp good coz they live in a common corridor unit.

my parents are sticklers for built-ins. every available nook and cranny they will squeeze in a built in feature. growing up, i hated it because it meant i would not get to choose and change my room furnishings, had to live with the ugly laminates. in sec sch i went on a rampage and covered every square inch of the huge 6-door cupboard with magazine cut outs and posters. when i moved into my resale, coincidentally the wardrobes built in by the prev owner matched my bedroom furniture so it saved me quite a bundle from having to get another one. definitely agree on the space-maximising bit, and they also help to conceal ugly pipes etc in the bathrooms.

my parents hv 4 shoe cabinets, 2 indoors, 2 outside. outside is only for cheap shoes, and shoes that are better off stolen (lol...fashion disasters, like jelly sandals and platform sneakers lol) inside is for expensive shoes. i was on the hunt for THE shoe cabinet a couple of mths back, and it was pretty hard looking for one that was just right. IKEA shoe cabinets won't fit my husband's size 13 shoes very well. in the end found the One at Rattan Pacific at Enterprise 1. Comes with a pull-out bench too...but now that I think about it, it was a bit expensive ($600+).

wah the tv guys so good. how did they keep the casing in place i.e not fall down to the floor?