Jump to content
Find Professionals    Deals    Get Quotations   Portfolios
Sign in to follow this  
PinkMonkey

Our Tiny Smart Scandinavian Home (Without ID)

Recommended Posts

Your reno looks very promising :)

1) Mind sharing where you got your uber cool armchair and the sofa? :D

2) About the wall panels, yes, agreed that painting the gaps black will look warmer. What's the pricing like as I will be doing something similar but just one tiny corner of my living room. Disappointed to learn of the 8ft (2.4m) limit of the laminate length. I also prefer the clean look of  a false ceiling fitted with downlights but 'm trying to avoid it as HDB ceiling is rather low. Without the false ceiling, there's a 20cm gap at the top. 

3) Using large size tiles for the kitchen countertop certainly saves costs. But what about the sides of the tile, which is not finished the same as the top?

Good luck with your reno!

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Join 46,923 satisfied homeowners who used renotalk quotation service to find interior designers. Get an estimated quotation
2 hours ago, Stream said:

Your reno looks very promising :)

1) Mind sharing where you got your uber cool armchair and the sofa? :D

2) About the wall panels, yes, agreed that painting the gaps black will look warmer. What's the pricing like as I will be doing something similar but just one tiny corner of my living room. Disappointed to learn of the 8ft (2.4m) limit of the laminate length. I also prefer the clean look of  a false ceiling fitted with downlights but 'm trying to avoid it as HDB ceiling is rather low. Without the false ceiling, there's a 20cm gap at the top. 

3) Using large size tiles for the kitchen countertop certainly saves costs. But what about the sides of the tile, which is not finished the same as the top?

Good luck with your reno!

Thanks !

1) Sure, I will update my shopping list in next post. :P
A closer look at that sofa
large.chair2.jpg

2) Gotta ask the contractor to quote you, could not estimate the pricing as it would also depends on the area size of the corner. About the laminate length, if you don't mind, could "stitch" with another piece, if it is wooden design, would be able to notice much. My false ceiling is only about 15-16cm from the top. Above my air-con blower in living room, there is still quite a big gap of allowance, its not that low.

3) The sides will be using stainless steel trim, which is closer to the look I want from my moodboard.

Edited by PinkMonkey
 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
On 4/1/2016 at 11:03 PM, PinkMonkey said:

Tiles selection

Tips & Tricks

  1. The longer the tiles the nicer it will be. Example 30 x 120 looks very nice, but not suitable for HDB where space is smaller.

 

I'm leaning towards having 15 x 90 tiles. Will that be difficult to lay properly? 

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Shopping List for Living Room

1) Sofa
Option used: 颜色分类双人位布艺/西皮几人坐组合

Tips & Tricks
Online shopping is always a challenge when you cannot see or feel the product. Since I wanted a textile sofa, i requested for sample materials, because sample pictures are not enough. They may turn out really different, due to lighting and camera used, and also if they used photoshop. So asked for sample clothe or leather used to be send to me. In my case, I chatted with the sales girl using AliWangWang (messenger app for TaoBao). Quoted 10 RMB for those samples.
I used a vPost china address, so they ship to my vPost china address, then ship it to Singapore. After touching the real material used, then i chose the color and material i want. 


Review:
Comfortable: So-so, abit harder than I thought it will be
Material and finishing: Good quality. 
Overall: Satisfied purchase, the goods come in good condition, no loose running thread.


2) Side chair
Option used: 颜色分类胡桃木+头层真皮

Review:
Comfortable: Very comfortable.
Material and finishing: Good quality. Better than i expected.
Overall: Good buy, good price.

3) Curtain

  • Day curtain
    Option used: 颜色分类GF-09291尺寸每米价格(韩式挂钩加工)
  • Curtain
    Option used: 颜色分类GF-140421-4尺寸每米价格(含韩式挂钩加工)需要几米拍几件


    Review:
    Hasn't hang up, but the material feels good. Good quality stuff, will review again after hang up and tried.

4) Clock
5) Dining table

6) Speakers (Canton Chronos series)

Audition a couple of times for these speakers when I was in Stuttgart, in their Saturn store (similar to Harvey Norman or Courts in Singapore). Like the sound and the overall aesthetic, able to match with my decor theme.  

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
9 minutes ago, Stream said:

I'm leaning towards having 15 x 90 tiles. Will that be difficult to lay properly? 

- Need to see your living room size, if not big enough, expect large number of wastage due to cutting of the tiles. 
- 90cm long is more suitable for outdoor. When used in-door, higher chance you may knock onto the uneven-ness of the floor, even if it is lay 100% flat now, as house expand in the day and contract at night, might wrap alittle at the side. For 90cm, when it wrap alittle bit, can be easily feel because its quite long. But if used outdoor, as you're wearing shoes, no problem. 

One of our initial choice is also 15 x 90, but in the end, we drop the idea.

Edited by PinkMonkey
 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Updates

Kitchen cabinet are up. 
The washing sink side, the tiles counter top are up, and sealed with silicon. 
Remaining work: To use stainless steel counter trim to cover the side.

large.kitchen_01.jpglarge.Kitchen_02.jpg

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Close up picture of the joint. There is only 1 joint at each side of the kitchen counter top.
Overall, the tiles chosen able to match with the default kitchen tiles.
Also, i used the countertop material as the kitchen backsplash. 

large.kitchen_03.jpg

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

your kitchen top looks so good!! do you know if it's easy to maintain?

 

The wiring part is really informative, does this help to achieve a 'surround sound system'? :D

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Tips
Be kiasu when comes to silicone sealing. There are many types of sealing silicone in the market, remember to request your ID or contractor to use silicone sealer that are

  • Water-Resistant Once Fully Cured
  • Mould & Mildew-Resistant
  • For Use on Baths, Showers, Basins & Sanitaryware
  • Waterproof & Water-Repellent
  • 150°C Heat-Resistant
  • White
  • Premium Quality Acetoxy Curing Sanitary Silicone
  • For use on Baths, Showers, Basins & Sanitaryware
  • Adheres to Most Non-Porous Surfaces

Example... this type
It doesn't cost much but save lots of hassle in future. 

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

And on the other side, my hood is up as well.
The contractor also patched and paste tiles on this side of the wall. Was originally window, but we think it is very hard to maintain, hard to clean up, and not too much use, so we decided to also paste the kitchen tiles with the spare tiles given by HDB to have uniform look on both side of the kitchen.

Remaining works will be to seal up the sides of the hood, and seal up the countertop joint with silicone.
Chosen a 45degree hood, to maximize oil and smell suction at the cooking area. To provide more details later. :notti:

large.kitchen_04.jpg

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
6 minutes ago, teegz said:

your kitchen top looks so good!! do you know if it's easy to maintain?

 

The wiring part is really informative, does this help to achieve a 'surround sound system'? :D

1 of the ideas we explore was subway tiles, which is very popular in scandinavian theme home in the forum. But later, we think that there are many joints for the tiles, and the gout or silicone in between will be hard to maintain in the long run. Because you know... kitchen can be quite oily and messy... 
Both me and hubby come to a conclusion.... easy to maintain and practice comes first in priority... so yes, this kitchen top is easy to maintain.
There are also some other research done before marking this decision... will share later on our "findings".... hehe


Hasn't really tested on the surround sound yet, but it should be. Or that's at least what we planned it to be... haha....  Will do the setup after all reno are done, and then do a review.... 

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Kitchen top looks good. Very creative! The swirls look like the "white granite" another T-Blogger did. :) 

One of my small regrets for my kitchen was to do my marble-esque top all the way to the backing as well, but at the time we were quite ok with the backsplash tiles. Haha. 

Happy for you! Everything's coming into place!

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
On ‎11‎/‎4‎/‎2016 at 11:44 PM, PinkMonkey said:

Planning for Living Room - Part 4 (Universal Remote)

Since the blog titled "Smart"..... this is introduction of the 1st "Smart" things we use.

Our living room looks pretty empty, minimalist. And you wonder where are the TV boxes?
They are all in the home shelter. Main challenge for this approach.

  1. Remote control
  2. Heat (will talk about this when home shelter is done).


For us, there is 2 popular options we seen in our colleague home oversea.

  1. HDMI + IR over Cat5 or Cat6
    (Example: Sewell HDMI over Cat6)
  2. WIFI enabled Media centre IR blaster.  

We chose the "smarter" choice of the 2. Because if we use IR over Cat6, you still need alots of remote controller to control each devices, the only benefit is that it repeat your signal to some faraway hidden area. Whereas option 2, we picked Logitech Harmony , it does even more. (you can get them cheaper during golden deals or logitech sales).

What it does?
Well... we have these items that we need to control.... Android TV Box, Viewqwest TV Box, Marantz AV Receiver, PS4

So what this remote does is, we can program a set of task to these shortcut keys.
Example: If i press TV logo, it auto switch to HDMI port 2 of my AVR, and then turn on my Viewqwest TV Box.
Or if i press "Off", it send a off signal to all my devices. 
You do not have to carry many remotes even when you have lots of devices. And best of all, you do not need line of sight since it doesn't use IR.
 

+ Point
Even if you don't use the remote, use any iOS or Android device, you can control the hub as well. If you have AppleTV or other popular TV box, you can do voice search as well. 

large.Harmony.png

Finally there's a blogger that's into some level of home automation! haha. Have you considered expanding the scope of automation? Maybe control your aircon as well and maybe get a z-wave controller and control your lights too!

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
1 hour ago, wsketchpad said:

Finally there's a blogger that's into some level of home automation! haha. Have you considered expanding the scope of automation? Maybe control your aircon as well and maybe get a z-wave controller and control your lights too!

In the beginning, we were looking at options like z-wave, zigbee, or even raspberry pi ways to do some home automation. In the end, we chose logitech because it's most "out of the box", we don't have to do too much techie stuff to get it work. But we may add other controller if we feel the need. 

Controlling air-con is something we might be doing soon, but not for the comfort that once you step into the house but for haze. The air-con that we chose is Panasonic with nanoe-G for air purifying purpose. So we can do is this.
1) In harmony, creates a trigger to switch on living room air-con
2) Using IFTTT (If This Than That) recipe, like this one to monitor SG weather website and turn on air-con when there is Haze near where we stay plus if time is near our knock-off time.
-> This way, air-con will start working and purifying air when we are on the way back home.


For lighting control, initially we have this idea of getting this receiver for TaoBao and making each light bulbs in the house smarter. This way, we can control lightings with a "recipe" as well. But in the end, we didn't implement this, as we thinks our home is really small. If we got a 5room or EM, then it may be worthwhile doing. 

However, we do have more gadgets that we are currently installing for the house that really makes life easier, like in the toilet, in the laundry yard, and common bedroom. (to be updated... :notti:)

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
Sign in to follow this  

×