Guest brrrando Report post Posted April 12, 2016 On 4/8/2016 at 6:21 PM, ricepapergirl said: Day 11 - New pipes in! More tiling! Every time I see there are photos uploaded to the group chat I have with my husband and Andrew, I get so excited to see the progress! Today, Andrew asked us whether we were confirming parquet for second floor (yes!) and revealed more of the tiling that was done! Waterproofing done and most of these two walls of the MBR toilet done! Really like the blue and black, grows on me! Tiling mostly done for this corner (for the shower head) of the common bathroom on the second floor! Looks like they're changing the windows as well to top-hung. Tiling in the downstairs L-shaped kitchen toilet! The design is slightly different for the kitchen toilet tiles, can't wait to see a photo of a more complete wall! Kitchen backsplash up! White 3D subway tiles! Rest of the wall plastered and to be painted! I asked for dark grout for the kitchen backsplash to show off the subway tiling and also because I really didn't want to handle white grout made yellow from smoke and grease. Finally, pleasant surprises all around with Andrew showing off the new pipes. We asked him to replace all of the big pipes even though we might get HIP in the next ten years (the unit is quite old) and if we replace our pipes then it would be cheaper, because we seriously wanted to get all the trouble over and done with at one shot. And thank goodness we did! The existing pipes were scarier than I thought! Remember my terrible kitchen pipes? Not only was the overhang from the ceiling really low (which might restrict my ability to have a high wall cabinet or in fact my original plan was to have a tall unit there), but unseen in the photo there was also a piece jutting out around 20cm above the ground!! Original kitchen pipes! Today Andrew posted in the whatsapp chat: kitchen pipes up. kitchen pipe change position. I am so happy with this! No more fiddly pipe sticking out at the bottom, and the position of the new pipes on top mean that my tall unit can continue to exist in that corner! YAY! Wall and doorway up for the utility room as well! Heh heh. Quite excited to go down personally and look at the place tomorrow morning. We'll be taking the opportunity to check on the work, but also quite importantly to be measuring the toilets so that we know exactly what size of sinks and toilet bowls we can buy. Wow! Love your use of different coloured tiles in your bathroom! Looking forward to more updates! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
twinklecloud 2 Report post Posted April 12, 2016 17 hours ago, ricepapergirl said: Day 15: More tiling and windows changed! Another batch of photos through whatsapp! Exciting to see things moving! Tiling looks complete for the MBR toilet! Yay! I think Andrew was trying to show off the floor tiles for the MBR with that second picture. I also see the drainage covers in, one at the dropdown shower area and the other in the old area! Looks like only the wall tiles are mostly up for the common toilet on level 2! A slightly different design for the first floor kitchen toilet! Looking good! Wood-like tiles for the kitchen floor being laid! It's been so long since we picked out these tiles I actually couldn't remember what colour they were supposed to be... Also, what used to be tiles at the vertical bits of our staircase (the horizontal bits are parquet and is being covered up) have been plastered over and to be painted! New windows also up in the three bedrooms! They used to be sliding windows but we asked for new casement ones. Also windows have been replaced for the kitchen, two top-hung for the bathrooms upstairs (kitchen toilet has no window, only a ventilation hole lol!) and new frosted glass sliding windows for the dining room which faces the corridor! Nice nice!! your wood look alike tiles int he kitchen is nice! =) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ricepapergirl 21 Report post Posted April 13, 2016 Electrical and Lighting Plan, Paint and Doors We went down yesterday at around 6PM and met up with Andrew at our unit. Since none of the lights are up yet we had to visit the unit before the sun set (lol!) so husband and I took time off work to get there early enough. It was also the first time we walked around our unit together with Andrew since work has started, and it was also exciting to see some of the progress for ourselves! Our tillers are really on task! Andrew took the photos in the morning and by night much more had been done! My kitchen floor for example is about 99% finished, complete with tile skirting which looked really good! I forgot to discuss kitchen skirting (because we are only tiling the backsplash and not all of the kitchen walls) and was glad that Andrew made the decision to do skirting without us reminding him! They also started on tiling the balcony floors (looked great!) and part of the entrance and the utility room floors (first time we got to see our light concrete-colour tiles in action, and yay they looked good too!). Whole of the second floor's cement screed was complete as well, and we discussed very briefly the layout for the parquet strips (old-style herringbone style). But the major task of the evening was to confirm lighting, position of switches and power sockets. As is our usual practice, the husband and I spent a few nights discussing this by ourselves and marking it all out in detail on a layout plan, so we handed over the sheets of paper to Andrew and walked through with his help. He gave very good advice on where the switches should be located and which light switch should be co-located with another light switch, but generally he just listened to us when we explained we wanted double power sockets at this beam and another set here and can these be at switch height and this set at around waist-level height. We really like his style because for the two of us, decisions made are usually made with a lot of thinking behind it and it's great not to have to argue with someone about it. He even said nearer to the end of the discussion that he would not generally argue with us (lol!) but actually asked us why we would place power sockets at the beam in the living room but inside the indent of the beam for the bedrooms etc. (Explanation: we might want to place bookcases next time in our living room and would like to flush them against the beam, but for the spare bedrooms we didn't know what kind of layout we wanted yet so best to keep the power sockets in the indent instead.) We then firmed up the lighting and electrical plans through whatsapp after he redrew it his style. Lights, fans and switches plan. Blue are wall lights, red are ceiling lights, green lines point to the switches. Final count for electrical sockets: 25 x double 13A sockets, 5 x single 13A sockets, 3 water heater points, oven point, hood point, 2 LAN points, 1 SCV point. The balcony electrical sockets will have waterproof covers, and the 2 LAN points are drawn from the existing opennet point at our dining room (so we will also use the existing opennet point for a router. 3 routers!) We also picked out our doors for the second floor (the three bedrooms)! The original quote was for veneer doors with lever locks, but when we looked through the catalogue for the veneer doors we didn't really love any of them. In the end we asked Andrew whether we could change to solid wood doors instead and he showed us the catalogue for solid wood doors and we picked these! With traditional door knob. My husband commented that what with the retro-style rounded walls and the herringbone short strip parquet and now these old-fashioned solid wood doors (though in honesty he picked them as well!) our second floor now looks like it came from the 1980s. Maybe I should tag my t-blog with "nostalgic" or "retro" or "1980s style" or something. Well, we are both 1980s kids and grew up in such houses, it's not strange that we should now want to hark back to those times... Lastly, we popped over to a Home DIY store and picked up some paint chips. Andrew also passed us a book of Nippon paints so we picked out our wall colours. Mostly it's light blue, light mint green and light yellow for the three bedrooms upstairs, and then teal-green for the balcony, and one bright yellow feature wall in the living room, light yellow for the utility room. Rest of the house will be white. Hope it turns out well! With that, most of the decision points for the renovation had been made and decided upon. Installation of WCs, showers, taps, sinks etc will start next week, and electrical wiring will start shortly after that. Aircon installation has been arranged for 25 May. Painting should be end of the month. May will be all the glass doors, parquet etc. Sometime in the middle, we will be getting IKEA to come down and measure the kitchen and then we will start coordinating with IKEA for the kitchen carpentry as well as our MBR wardrobes, which are the last two large pieces of work we haven't really started dealing with. Then it's a matter of packing once May starts, hopefully in time to move into the place in end May, and coordinating all the various deliveries that will have to happen. I must say that when we first got the timeline from Andrew we couldn't believe that he could finish everything by the end of May but now it does look like the timeline wasn't too exaggerated! Fingers crossed for the rest of the renovation to be smooth as well! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ricepapergirl 21 Report post Posted April 13, 2016 21 hours ago, brrrando said: Wow! Love your use of different coloured tiles in your bathroom! Looking forward to more updates! I must say, actually when we picked out the toilet tiles we only picked the white hexagonal tiles and were quite happy to have the whole wall in white hexagons. It was Andrew who suggested having some black and blue hexagons as well and assured us he would design something for us to see. If you see the 3D art I posted some time back, it was really his design to have all these different coloured tiles in the bathroom! All I did was approve it hahaha. So although sometimes Andrew feels like a contractor, especially in how he really knows his stuff operation-wise, we're very glad he's actually also technically an ID and can provide some design ideas, even though for most of the house we've made the design decisions. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ricepapergirl 21 Report post Posted April 13, 2016 Whilst everyone else seems to be using Taobao, I'm sitting here trying to figure out the best way to buy the side tables and coffee table I want from Rakuten Japan. Been searching on TB but cannot find the same kind of table and getting a little frustrated, especially since the Rakuten website insists on using EMS to ship instead of seamail (which will take longer but is obviously cheaper). Now checking with a Japanese forwarder to see whether they can help. Husband and I have already put in orders for a bunch of stuff from Rakuten Japan from one of the stores which offer seamail. So the leftover stuff are just my coffee table, side tables, shoe rack and iron door bell. I found something similar off TB for the iron door bell and maybe the shoe rack but the tables are killing me lol weep. Long and narrow medium wood coloured coffee table with foldable legs (so you can keep it away when you don't need it) Cannot find this set of rounded-edged triangular side tables anywhere else but Rakuten Japan (and only a few shops to boot). I don't know why I'm so obsessed with them. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
PinkMonkey 5 Report post Posted April 13, 2016 LOVE the light blue hexagon tiles. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ricepapergirl 21 Report post Posted April 13, 2016 1 hour ago, PinkMonkey said: LOVE the light blue hexagon tiles. They were an afterthought for me but can you imagine a wall full of them? They are a really lovely colour! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest brrrando Report post Posted April 14, 2016 On 4/13/2016 at 3:21 PM, ricepapergirl said: I must say, actually when we picked out the toilet tiles we only picked the white hexagonal tiles and were quite happy to have the whole wall in white hexagons. It was Andrew who suggested having some black and blue hexagons as well and assured us he would design something for us to see. If you see the 3D art I posted some time back, it was really his design to have all these different coloured tiles in the bathroom! All I did was approve it hahaha. So although sometimes Andrew feels like a contractor, especially in how he really knows his stuff operation-wise, we're very glad he's actually also technically an ID and can provide some design ideas, even though for most of the house we've made the design decisions. so you still can claim some credit for making the decision hahaha but from what I've seen already you've got pretty good design sense as well. Glad to hear he's delivering on his services would be interested to hear more about how he works out over the extent of the project. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
gumbokins 5 Report post Posted April 16, 2016 i is very much in love with your hexa tiles in your toilet Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
gumbokins 5 Report post Posted April 17, 2016 Feeling a little cyberstalkish at the moment, the fittings from hansgrohe fit alright? No compatibility issues? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ricepapergirl 21 Report post Posted April 17, 2016 21 hours ago, gumbokins said: i is very much in love with your hexa tiles in your toilet 7 minutes ago, gumbokins said: Feeling a little cyberstalkish at the moment, the fittings from hansgrohe fit alright? No compatibility issues? Aww! Thank you, we really love our toilet tiles as well! Currently our favourite rooms of the house so far! Plumber will be installing our hansgrohe stuff next week, I'll check and let you know! Crossing my own fingers that they should be fine as well. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ricepapergirl 21 Report post Posted April 18, 2016 Day 20 - Tiling 80% done! This time the photos are from our phone cameras, and sadly taken at around 5.30PM so the lighting was not great! But we popped in during Sunday before dinner just to check things out! Nice to know most of the tiling is done, left with just the tiling in the living and dining room left! We actually didn't buy the recess area but our ID didn't seem to care so much and helped us tile over this area as well lol. Oops. Same tiles as our living and dining room! We really like the look! I don't have a good picture of the tiling being done at the living and dining area but it looks good so far! Tiling at the balcony complete with tile skirting done. Photo taken with flash so the colour is not exactly accurate, but my wood-like tiles + skirting done in the kitchen! Tiling for the first floor kitchen toilet done! Grey floor tiles, shower drop-down area and our triangular double shelves in the corner! Similarly tiling all done for the second floor common toilet, also with shower step-down area and the triangular shelves! MBR toilet all done up, except for the tile shelf. We think maybe our ID has some issues fulfilling our vision of having one long rectangular shelf across the whole of one wall (he mentioned previously the length of it might mean it would have structural issues) so we will check with him when he's back from his short holiday over the weekend and perhaps suggest a different idea for the shelving! This week they should be finishing the tiles, and maybe starting on plastering the walls and ceilings, because according to the schedule they are supposed to start on plumbing and electrical wiring this week. Big bathroom accessories are also due to be installed this week, and aircon installation is next week! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
twinklecloud 2 Report post Posted April 21, 2016 love your balcony!!! the view plus the grilles! so awesome!!! your gate too!! kind of retro with ribbon.. hehe.. nice nice.. all coming into together!!! ouch.. the corner shelves!!! Y din i think of that.. forgotten all about it.. shld have done for my common toilet.save me the trouble of hunting for a shelf.=( Wise decision! *thumbs up* Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
xiang38 0 Report post Posted April 21, 2016 Can share the cost of your WC, thks Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ricepapergirl 21 Report post Posted April 21, 2016 9 hours ago, twinklecloud said: love your balcony!!! the view plus the grilles! so awesome!!! your gate too!! kind of retro with ribbon.. hehe.. nice nice.. all coming into together!!! ouch.. the corner shelves!!! Y din i think of that.. forgotten all about it.. shld have done for my common toilet.save me the trouble of hunting for a shelf.=( Wise decision! *thumbs up* Hi twinklecloud!! Haha thank you so much for your lovely comments! Yesh, we love the view from our balcony as well, tree-top view. Outside is actually a very small exercise park so we're thinking of getting tall furniture for a mini-dining area and have al fresco meals once in a while. The gate and all our window grilles (and the grilles at the balcony) all match! It's one of my favourite parts of the original home and I'm really glad we could keep all of the grilles. Nowadays don't know whether can even find the same design. We like the retro feel of it. It is probably actually pretty retro, we suspect it's like 15 years old lol. Aww thank you for the comment for the corner shelf, actually I'm pretty sure I got the idea from someone else on renotalk. But never mind, getting a shelf may be useful too! The corner shelves are just for the shower area so we got shelves for near the washbasin actually. Hopefully the MBR shelving will turn out well, it's supposed to be both the washbasin shelf as well as the shower area shelf... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
