Kitchen Glass Door..my INSPIRATION... :p

Yes! The kitchen glass door frosted decal is finally up!

Here it is! I drew my inspiration from a design I found online! As the saying goes, "Ken can cook, why should I?"!!!

Home Sweet Home

Woah...time flies and it's coming to almost ONE month that I've been staying in Jadespring. I shall sum up my overall stay as succinctly as I could. First of all, what had taken place lately in my new home? Here's a list of touch-ups by ID:

1. Aircon problems are finally resolved! Phew! I almost felt I've been staying in a furnace for the past 3 weeks boy! The air-con company had sent its workers down twice and not only did we not see an improvement, the compressor started to protest by making loud humming noises! Finally, the problem was resolved by Mitsubishi and hey presto, the cause of the problem was the aircon company workers had added too much gas, way above the prescribed level! Duh! Anyway with the aircon fixed, I'm beginning to enjoy my living environment better hahaha...

2. The frosted decal for the kitchen glass door is finally ready and will be up by this Friday. Will take a picture and upload here. I conceptualised the design of the decal and therefore feel excited about it hehe...

3. There are still some minor touch-ups here and there but we decided to do them slowly since we still have one year warranty hehe. ID is also very obliging when I requested for some walls to be painted again because we have accidentally dirtied it.

Finally, I think Ken and I have maintained the cleanliness of the house pretty well. I think I have surprised myself haha...I thought I wouldn't be able to sustain that energy and enthusiasm in keeping my new home clean and in tip top condition! Since it's been almost a month's stay here, I think cleaning up the house and doing those laundry have become a routine that I surprisingly kind of enjoy. I also like the unspoken arrangement where sometimes Ken or I would do the laundry if one of us reaches home earlier than the other and that when he cooks, I would wash the utensils. Such sweet shared partnership really makes me look forward to coming home every day. =)

1st week in JS [a continuation fr previous post]

Alright, in the previous post, I've shared what I really like about the house and how much I really look forward to coming home every day. In this post, I shall share some of the things which we would do differently if we were to embark on the reno journey in the future again...

Here are some things I would have done differently. I wouldn't say they are my 'regrets' because these things which could have been done better were not that disappointing after all. Okay..here they go...

Things I would have done differently if given a choice...

1. I think I would still go for the same ID except that I would source for many fittings/furnishings on my own to cut costs. I believe all home owners are aware that ID tends to charge more $ when they bring u on a shopping spree to buy lightings, curtains, taps etc. We are no exception and our reno costs are high mainly due to this. So given a chance again I would try to cut costs by shopping for my own curtains, taps and perhaps some of my lightings now that I have the experience in gauging the type of lightings and number of lighting points I need in a house. :)

2. We might have hacked the service yard walls to extend the kitchen table top and cabinets but this leaves us rather limited space to hang clothes. Though managable, it was somehow umcomfortable to hang clothes given the small area.

3. Regarding lightings, though I love my downlights a lot, I still think that I could have gotten better pendant lighings for dining and rooms hehe..shouldn't have just bought all lightings from one shop...hmm..then again given my impatient nature, I might really just do such things again hehehehe

4. Master bedrm - actually I can't tell the difference between laminated flooring and timber flooring...wished I had gotten laminated flooring instead - cheaper and looks gd too. But this will never happen cos my hubby just prefers real wood for whatever primitive reasons.

5. If I had known I could remove some 'stopper' thingy in the shower head to increase water pressure, I would have removed it before installing the rainshower..my poor rainshower has very low water pressure...this rain is always a drizzle, never a heavy downpour. Good thing we still took out the stopper for the hand shower and this increases the pathetic water pressure by a tiny notch. Sigh HDB...what can I do??

6. Maybe it's my fickle nature...I kinda begin to wonder if my place will look better with other choice of laminates..in particular the colour...I start to self-doubt and wonder if there's too much brown and cream tones here and there in my entire house. Maybe it's time I buy a chair for my dresser that is of a different colour? Perhaps a change of bedsheet colours will help? Hope so. I seriously need to see a bit of green, orange, red or anything more exciting LOL. Hmmm...saw this in one school today...thought it may help to add colours to the 'BROWNIE' house of mine hehe...just showed it to Ken and he's definitely not fond of it...here it goes anyway...

Artificial Gerberas - don't they look sweet & inviting?

7. And finally, I kind of regretted choosing this block and unit. Firstly, it's rather far from the multi-storey carpark :( Given that both of us drive, I think it's really an oversight on my part to have chosen this block (okay, maybe I'm just lazy to walk that extra distance). Secondly, I really didn't know the wind direction and so our unit happens to be one that doesn't receive the 'wind' :( The only consolation is our unit is not facing the west sun directly. Yet again, our laundry takes a super long time to dry - yawnzzz....

Okay, that's all I could ramble about now. Hopefully the next time you read my post, I would have more nicer comments about my Haven haaaa...till the next post...

1st week in JS

Okay...thought it's time for me to write a post after soooo long! Oh well, I started this blog but my hubby was the one who updated it since he's the 'photographer' and later, I made him the scribe as well haaaa. Okay, let me cut the crap and just describe to you our 1st week in JS.

My 1st week in JS

Though we've spent a bomb on the renovation and furnishings, I'm beginning to enjoy the 'returns' of our investment. ROI I must say is pretty high haaa. I really look forward to coming home every day after work. I almost felt as if I'm an expatriate who works in a foreign country only to return to my 'hotel' every night for a good rest. Here are some things I like about my reno:

1. I really love the lightings a lot. I believe the LED downlights (with warm white lightings) really made my place feel more cosy. The comforting lights, as opposed to glaring bright lights, soothe my senses the moment I step into the house. This is one investment I really feel is worthwhile. Somehow the downlights that come with diffusers really sort of reduced the 'glare' yet provide sufficient lighting to the entire place.

2. I love my study room's full height cabinets and tables. These are all custom made. When the carpentry was done, I finally understood why my quote was so high. We practically had custom made two long rows of tables that form an L shape. These two rows of tables also come with a total of 8 drawers with soft-closes. My ID listened to our needs and gave us 'compartments' with sockets inside to hide our wiring. There are also two rows of horizontal shelves with cove lighting to provide ample lighting when I have to scrutinise documents with 'fine print'.

3. I love my TV feature wall. It looks very simple and to me, it's timeless. Most importantly, it came with a full height storage cabinet for us to store DVDs. The cabinet door is also beautifully constructed with a brown tinted full height mirror on the outside, making the tv feature wall look more sleek.

4. I was rather hesitant about overlaying toilet tiles at first because I've heard of stories where tiles will pop in a few years time. Frankly at this stage, we still do not know if that will happen in the near or far future but after it's all done up, I realise that I have no regrets doing up my two toilets. I just can't bear the thought of having a nicely renovated kitchen, living room etc..only to walk into toilets that still remind me that I stay in a hdb. Yes..my aim is for my place NOT to look like an HDB unit (unfortunately some parts of the house, esp those beams, still scream of HDB). Anyway I like it that the ID is thoughtful about having many storage spaces in the toilets. I have three mirror cabinets in the master bathrm and one in the common bathrm. As my ID has aptly pointed out, these storage areas in toilets are important because in many households, due to lack of space, owners would usually buy 'hanging racks' and start displaying their 'barangs barangs' in the toilet and spoil the overall look - how true.

5. Kitchen - this is Ken's favourite place and not mine haaa..so I'll just comment a little on this space. What I like about the Kitchen is the very very deep undermount sink! It really helps to reduce splashes and also make washing bigger utensils an easy task. I like that the bottom cabinets are a distance away fr the floor as this makes my mopping really easy. Oh yes, I love the kitchen and foyer tiles - these are homogenous tiles that look like wood. :)

6. Master Bedroom - I like the good use of space as my bedframe (with storage), wardrobe, side table and dresser are in-built. The full height mirrors on the two sides of my bed also gave the illusion that the room is spacious. :) Because furniture is in-built, even with a king-sized bed in the room, there is still ample space in for walking. I like the matt timber flooring but simply hope the varnish fumes will soon dissipate into thin air!

Okay..because this is an unexpectedly long post from me, I shall post some areas for improvement regarding my reno experience in my next post. :)

Oh yes, my ID will be sending a photographer to our place soon to take some pics. As soon as we receive the softcopies, we'll upload them here. :))

Week 1 - Moving in and tidying up

It is almost a week since we moved into our new home. We are still in the midst of slowly transferring our stuff from our old place to the new; but we intend to take our time on this.

There are a few things I hope to share with new home owners who are like us. Some may be relevant; some may be not but I hope it helps.

1. If you are doing timber or parquet flooring, the varnish of the flooring is toxic. Hence, if possible, allow ample time to air your room allowing the varnish to dry and odor to evaporate before sleeping in the room. It takes about a week of continuous airing before the stench is acceptable.

2. When choosing tiles (especially fancy ones), try to choose homogenous tiles whenever possible. This is so that when chipping happens, they won't look 'off' compared to the original color of the tiles comparing to ceramic tiles.

3. When customizing your kitchen's fridge compartment, it is also advisable to predetermine the size of the fridge you want to buy. If you have a few choices in mind, use the one with the biggest dimensions and work with that. This will ensure that you have ample room left when putting the purchased fridge in.

4. In choosing lighting, there are numerous choices suitable for different taste and budget. The one thing I feel that is universal is to ask the question 'How bright I would like my home to be when all lights are on?'. This will help you determine the total brightness in your home (e.g. Living room) and you can work on the moods from there. I guess the simplest solution to brightening up the place is using 'cove lighting'; and it works brilliantly (choose the mood that you like). Next up will be to select lighting that will create different levels of brightness or moods. There are a lot of choices from here on, i.e. downlights (LED, T5, halogen, etc), spotlights (LED, bulb, etc), feature lighting (bulb or tube based, etc). It is ideal to be able to create a number of levels of brightness in your home, either with dimmer functions or various lighting switches controlling lights from various points. Share what you have in mind with your contractor or designer and get them to do up the lighting to your needs.

...to be continued

Renovation complete...

Our home's renovation works has finally come to an end. It marks a new beginning to a stage of our lives.

We have also finally moved in after 2 days of cleaning and clearing up of our new home; moving important items from our previous house, unpacking and storing them.

Not everything is settled but we are going to slowly move stuff over so that it is not so taxing.

Overall, we love the looks of our home. It feels so cosy and comfy; which is what we set out to do. Kudos to our ID for seeing through all our requests and demands.

We will slowly be taking more photos of our home but below are some comparison shots of the 3D drawings by our ID and the actual looks of it.

Day 52 - The day before all furniture and appliances due to arrive

It is day 52 of our renovation works; one day before the handover date proposed by our ID.

Most of the important works, like carpentry, electrical, tiling, are done; with minor touch ups needed here and there. Today was the first day we set out to clean our place too. Jolene and I try our best to mop and wipe all the dust and grime that is everywhere; so that when our furniture arrives tomorrow it would require less wiping down.

We can't wait to see our home with all our furniture and appliances in tomorrow...


Today, when we were wiping our kitchen, my wife decided to take pictures our Blum system. So I will do a short write up on this. We spent a good sum in investing in our kitchen drawers and cabinets to ensure that we have a long lasting and practical solution. Our ID recommended Blum which is a very famous brand in kitchen technology.

One of the key features is that they have drawer systems that could hold substantial weight without affecting the sliding motion. And importantly, they allow for full extension of the drawers while maintaining their ability to hold heavy loads. The space that we have in our kitchen is very limited, hence it became important to be able to use space effective without wastage. Therefore, we decided that to go for their drawer box system.

Another interesting and rather useful system from Blum is their 'lift systems'. They call it AVENTOS. We purchased their vertical lift system for our dish-rack area; and a forward lift system for our top rack (above the dish-rack). The main advantage that we can see is that the dish-rack can be opened to any level as compared to other systems we seen.

For the rest of the cabinets, our ID threw in all Blum soft close hinges for us for free. A nice gesture... :)

Day 50 - Stainless steel backing for kitchen has started, Master bedroom timber flooring varnish works continued.

It is day 50 of our renovation works. As the day draws nearer to the proposed handover date, we get more and more excited; anticipating how our flat will look like with the furniture and furnishings all in our little abode...

We are pretty pleased with the earthly-toned looks of our home after the first wash. But as it is, it still isn't complete.

There will not be much photos from now til completion 'cos its just little details for now. We will try to take some nice shots once we have settle most of the basic necessities for our home.

As of this day, varnishing works is continuing where the workers left off; finishing touches to the last coat of varnish. Our kitchen's stainless steel backing for the walls are also being put up.

Stay tuned for more updates...

Day 46 - First chemical wash done... minor defects fixed

It is day 46 of our renovation works. Today our house was chemically washed for the first time; and finally we can see all our tiles and walls nicely cleaned. All the debris and rubbish have been cleared.

Not all the works are complete though, hence some dust will still need cleaning after the works are done.

Here are some pictures of our home cleaned... :)

Day 45 - Common bathroom is complete, Master Bathroom almost done...

It is day 45 of our home's renovation. As the day draws nearer to the proposed handover date, we get more excited each day looking at how our home is turning out.

Works to the common bathroom is complete with the installation of our WC and the racks and accessories.

Our master bathroom still requires some works as we change the basin hence the vanity top needs to be changed but the WC and racks are installed.

Below are some photos.

Day 40 - Lighting works continued... (after some time...)

It is day 40 of our renovation works. Lighting works have continued after a long break on a Sunday that we thought no one would be working.

Most of the lighting switches have been connected and placed in their respective areas.

Though it is still very messy and clean up not done but we can feel the mood of our home and imagine our areas with furniture in them...

Some pictures of the lighting...

Day 39 - Glass works for common and master bathrooms done, Granite kitchen tops installed

It is day 39 of our renovations works. Glass works is up for both our common and master bathrooms. The doors and the shower screens are both done.

The doors are 'frosted' design hence cannot really see through but has a silhouette effect. The quality of build is pretty impressive too.

Our 'Jet Black' granite kitchen tops were also installed. They are both single piece granite which makes it looks great...

Below are some photos.

Day 33 - Carpentry continued...

It is day 33 of the renovation works. No one is working on a Sunday today but we decided to take a few nicer shots of our carpentry in the daylight.

Below are the pictures...

Day 32 - Carpentry has begun...

It is day 32 of the renovation work. We knew that the carpentry materials would be delivered today; and maybe the kitchen carpentry works would start. But we had a pleasant shock when we went in to have a look this evening.

We saw that carpentry for all rooms, including living room, kitchen, study room and master bedroom along with both bathrooms, have started. From the looks of it, they have done the backing required and are currently doing placement for the carpentry.

We can't wait to see the completed product for the carpentry works; along with the lights shining on them. :)

Below are some pictures...

Day 31 - Air-condition system installed, walls painted and timber flooring varnished

It is day 31 of the renovation works. We saw today that the air-condition system for our home is finally installed and properly routed. We have one larger unit for our living and dining area, 2 room size units for the study and 2nd bedroom and one slightly more powerful room unit for our master bedroom.

The timber flooring for our master bedroom is also being varnished. The first layer is done and I guess there should be 1 or 2 more layers to go.

The various walls of our home are also painted with their respective colors. The dining area color is not painted yet though. I guess in time it would be.

Here is a picture of the aircon works.

Day 29 - Lighting works has begun....

It is day 29 of the renovation works. We were half expecting only painting works to continue today but we got a surprise.

Lighting works for our home has begun. Most of the LED Downlights and Cove Lights have been installed. We were very happy and glad that the LED downlights themselves were pretty bright and able to light up the living room comfortably; and with the cove lights it is surely bright enough if needed to light up the whole living room.

The LED downlights and cove lights for the master bedroom is also installed. We were so happy to see the lighting works; and once the switches is up, we would not need to bring a torch to our home when we visit it at night.. :)

Here are some pictures below..

Day 28 - Painting works commenced, Lighting ariived and Piping for kitchen stove and sink done...

It is day 28 of the renovation works. Painting works has commenced and the primer coat for most rooms has been done. Once that is done, another major part of the renovation works, carpentry, will begin.

Before that, the electrician will also firm down the various electrical points for the house and fix up the lighting which has just arrived today. Finally, we would be able to have lights when we visit our home. :)

The kitchen sink and stove piping are also done. Now it seems most of the jobs will slowly coincide with one another; and our ID must ensure that the works flows smoothly without mistakes.

Below are some pictures....