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[Rasp 0]

All the cornices were also removed on Monday.

[Rasp 0]

The 2 door frames came up quite early. Think they are delivered during the 2nd or 3rd WD.

All the tiles and concrete block have been delivered to our place. Yes, alot of concrete blocks cause we are building several walls.

Loads of sand around the house, either in the bags, at the kitchen or at the balcony.

These are at the balcony.

[Rasp 0]

The tiling team took out the tiles and placed them nicely along the walkway so that we verify against the small samples when we come up.

Most of the tiles are correct, except for the kitchen floor tiles. As Hb found that the colour look slightly darker / brownish comparing against the small sample. We told Henry about it and he gave instructions to his tiler to get Simon from Hafary to come down to take a look.

Simon came down on Wed and explained to us that the code number is correct. But this sample tile is from the earlier batch and this batch from factory is slightly darker. He went to our kitchen and told Hb that our kitchen is quite bright so should be ok.

Hb asked if they have grey tile with lighter tone but Simon reverted that there isn't. So probably we will take this.

[Rasp 0]

We had another meeting with Henry on Tues to confirm the wet works. As Hb was unable to attend, he confirmed with Henry on the agenda of the meeting (ie. to confirm washing machine position, cabinet water outlet, tiles confirmation & tile placement) in advance, so that he can prepare me for it.

During the meeting, apart from those items on the earlier agenda, Henry and his guys saw some technical stuff at the site and told me about it. As I wasn't prepare for it, I didn't know what Hb's thoughts would be and I am not really 'technically inclined' so don't really understand them. So Henry had to phone Hb to check and advise him on it. We made about 4-5calls to hb.

End of the day, the initially planned-to-be 30mins meeting stretched for 2hrs+. And Hb came to site after work to check with me about the things discussed as he wasn't able to see the things over the phone.

Generally, there are 4 major items.

1. Kitchen glass door

Most of the glass door we saw are top-hung tracks behind the wall. However, due to the beams at the new kitchen entrance, we would not be able to do a top-hung track as there would be a gap behind the door. So Henry suggested a glass door to be hung under the beam.

In addition, as the new entrance opening is more than 4ft after the hack (around 4ft + 2 to 3 inches), so we would have to extend a short distance out from the wall. We didnt really like the idea of that extension wall. Seems weird to have a small piece of wall at the entrance and Hb prefer a big entrance.

2. Kitchen tiles before glass door

As the new kitchen entrance is created by hacking the wall, the area which is originally the wall would need to be fixed with tiles. Henry suggested to use the kitchen floor tiles to have a consistent look. Im slightly concerned whether the area will look weird as we see the kitchen floor tiles before the glass door. Henry and guys assure me that it will look seamless as the door is transparent so that 'strip' won't stick out like a sorethumb. They even brought the tiles before me and put at the area to show me.

3. Stepped up infront of cabinet

I was when I heard that. The stepped up is only for the cabinet next to the fridge as both of them are seated at the supposed-to-be dining area. So the flooring for them is higher than the kitchen floor and cant be hacked to be as low as the kitchen floor. And 2nd reason was the fridge depth is around 80cm while cabinet depth is only 60cm. Hence, there will be a stepped up of around 20cm infront of the cabinet beside the fridge with height around 7cm. I didnt see this technical aspect when planning the layout.

I thought it look super ugly to have such stepped up and dangerous also. I was mulling over it the whole day while waiting for Hb to return that day.

4. Hacking away the wall at common bedroom

After hacking the concrete support between the mbr and the common bedrm, the wall that was previously next to it seems to stuck out at a very oddward position. We previously intend to use it as a 'blocker' so that the visitors would not be able to see the bed after shifting out the door.

But we have 2nd thoughts about it after hacking the concrete support. Because hacking that wall would make the whole room look much bigger.

Hence, I brought it up during the meeting (hb already told Henry before but Henry wanted to see the wall first). Henry and his guys took off the cardboard protection and found that the marble orientation is different between the ones in the room and ones at the doorway. Even the 'height' of the tiles are slightly different between the one in the mbr and those at the previous concrete support area.

So if we want to hack this wall, we would have to consider changing the marble tiles at this area. Else its going to look weirdy with the tiles having different orientations. And the colour of the new marble tiles will definitely look slightly different tone compared to our current ones which are older. Ooops.. we didnt think of this when we thought of hacking the wall. Infact all the hacking works are already done by then, so need to apply new permit for it also.

Edited August 8, 2009 by Rasp

[beany0811 1]

Gosh... hope your ID able to do something using the sand paper. Maybe she is checking it out for you.

When's your HO?

rasp, our scratches also are still there

super long ones... even worse than sohck's!

the hairline ones were removed, and floor is rather shiny. but areas where there are huge scratches... are still there

the areas where there were fixtures previously, causing staining to the marble, cannot be removed too. brownish stains still there. arghhh

ID promised to try and remove it... he better does!

u can see the pics here: http://www.renotalk.com/forum/index.php?s=...st&p=437637

Edited August 8, 2009 by beany0811

[Rasp 0]

rasp, our scratches also are still there

super long ones... even worse than sohck's!

the hairline ones were removed, and floor is rather shiny. but areas where there are huge scratches... are still there

the areas where there were fixtures previously, causing staining to the marble, cannot be removed too. brownish stains still there. arghhh

ID promised to try and remove it... he better does!

u can see the pics here: http://www.renotalk.com/forum/index.php?s=...st&p=437637

Hihi beany0811,

Thanks for sharing. Guess we will have to check those scratches once they finish their wet works. Our contractor did told us previously about those current brown stains that might not be able to be remove if the stains 'colour' have went too deeply into the marble. But I thought scratches should be ok, except for deep dents. Will check with him again.

Btw, I think we got the same type of marble flooring.

[Rasp 0]

Solutions for the 4 issues above:

Hb spent the whole night thinking about that 4 issues and we discussed what are the possible alternatives around it on Tuesday. We went to our house very early on Wed as we were afraid that they might start working on the fridge area where the marble tiles will be removed and we are considering shifting the fridge away so that there won't be any stepped up.

We reached our house earlier than the workers (around 830am) and waited for around 1hr before going downstair to get some breakfast. At the void deck, we met the tiler Ah-hui who participated at the discussion on Tues. So I told him about the changes and not to work on the affected areas first. He is a very nice guy and gave us his word that his team will start on other areas first while we confirm with Henry.

Hb continued to phone Henry but unable to get him. According to his workers, he's usually contactable after 11+. And true enough, he called hb back and arranged for a last-min meeting at 12pm.

1. Kitchen glass door

Hb checked about the mechanism of the tracks that will be hung under the beam. There will be no bottom tracks but the top tracks will be exposed as its under the beam. The short wall beside will be around 3inches as the glass is not wide enough to fit the whole opening and to make a bigger door would mean the door will be much heavier.

And as the discussion continues, we realised that we need to leave a gap at the cabinet in order for the door to slide in as the wall beside it is not wide enough.

Things we didn't like:

a) the short wall which is going to make the opening smaller,

b) the 'hole' at the cabinet as we think its going to make a great home for spider, lizard and coaches, and

c) the top track going to be exposed from both sides.

Result: We decided to forego the glass door so as to end all these and hb think there's quite a distance from kitchen and living plus the hood so should be ok without the door.

2. Kitchen tiles before glass door

This is automatically resolved after we remove the glass door.

3. Stepped up infront of cabinet

We spent quite some time on this. Initially, we decided to swap the position of the fridge with our tall unit (ie. placing the fridge at the corner, opposite the 20cm stepped up cabinet). By doing so, the depth of both the tall unit and cabinet would be the same so we can avoid the stepped up.

But as we discussed, we realised there is a beam above the initial fridge area. Hence, all the top portion along this area is going to be hard to access and by shifting the tall unit would means that we increased the 'difficult to use' areas.

So Henry suggested to keep the fridge there and we deal with the 20cm stepped up instead. One suggestion was to push the cabinet infront, box up the 20cm behind the bottom cabinet, extend the granite top by 20cm on top and keep the top cabinet intact. We cant shift the top cabinet due to the beam. Hb's concerns are its going to be difficult to reach the top cabinet as the top cabinet door is around 40cm away from the bottom front area and he also think its weird to box up the bottom where we cant see it.

We think the top cabinet is going to be very difficult to access with a beam blocking the door space infront. Besides the difficulty to access, it will also pose difficulty when we want to keep our stuff (ie. the size of the item must be able to fit into the gap between the cabinet and beam. We had some experience with such top beam during our days with the pole system which seems to come in 'useful' now.

Result: We decided to go with Henry's suggestion to extend the granite top out. But we will also extend the bottom cabinet to be all the way in (depth of 80cm, with no box up ) and to forego the top cabinet.

Good thing about this is, our top will be quite spacious even after putting the rice cooker etc. Most importantly, this solution will also remove the 20cm stepped up.

4. Hacking away the wall at common bedroom

We decided to go ahead with the hacking and replacement of the marble flooring. So we discuss about the marble replacement area on the spot and Henry will arrange for the permit. Henry is quite efficient on this, we discussed on wed afternoon and by friday, he informed us that we had got the permit to hack this next week.

[Rasp 0]

Updates:

After our confirmation on the 4 items above, Ah hui and his team started working on them with amazing speed.

The fridge and cabinet area:

Our tiny store for ladder etc:

New room area:

The walk-in-wardrobe area:

[Rasp 0]

We went up on Sat to check on the progress of the reno and surprised to found that Ah hui and his team still working on Sat. His usual team strength was 3, but we counted 6 on Sat. And all of them were working very independently at the different areas. 1 at mbr bathrm, 1 at common bathrm, 1 at the new room, 1 at mbr, 1 at kitchen and 1 more at the new store+fridge area. We were like.. Very efficient team..

The almost completed wall at MBR

The new room wall

The fridge area

The common bathrm wall

The water proofing at the bathrooms

[Rasp 0]

Here's my tiles selections pictures. Hope they turn out nice.

My Kitchen tiles:

We went up yesterday and found that the kitchen wall tiles have been put up. We really love them to bits.

Common bathrm tiles:

The walls tiles are also up. We are quite surprised to see the white lines bordering on the grey ones, wasn't expecting that.

Mbr bathrm tiles:

The wall tiles are also put up, it gives the marble lookalike effect and seems ok to us.

Foyer & balcony floor tiles:

We changed the tile for balcony 2 times as the previous selection seems to be more yellowish and doesn't really go with our living rm marble tile.

[Rasp 0]

hee... the windows in the bathroom from wellmax. Quite neat. Took the pictures from my mbr windows. The kitchen window is also up but the pic was too dark to see it.

Mbr ones:

Common bathroom ones:

[ling3bzr 0]

ohh rasp.. keep the picts coming in! the progress looks good so far!

)

[booy 0]

I like your tiles.. Simple and classy.. I have similar tiles as your common bathroom, but in brown..

[Rasp 0]

ohh rasp.. keep the picts coming in! the progress looks good so far!

)

Thanks ling3bzr. I am uploading some pictures. Will post soon.

[Rasp 0]

Updates:

Hee.. think the wet work team are quite efficient. Most of the newly built walls have been 'cemented'.

The external wall of the new bedroom:

Our wiw area:

Our tiny store:

Oh, we also saw this and took a picture of them 'soaking' the tiles that day.