The Big Clean Up & Deliveries~!

9th - 11th Sep 2007 - Never been so hardworking in my life before~ Hb and I spent about 3 days cleaning up our place and now its spick and span, yay!

While people are relaxing at home or going out during National Day, Hb and I spent the whole morning and afternoon cleaning up our house. Bought one of those brooms that people use to swipe water, lol. Oh, and karpo some of Mdm Yik's Amway multi-purpose cleaner, very effective at cleaning anything!

We started off with me vacuuming the place with my aunt's old Bomba (that's the name of her vacuum cleaner, lol) and Hb cleaning all the windows. Then I mopped the whole place a few times while he cleaned all the internal shelvings of the WIW, kitchen cabinets, shoe cabinets and oh, both toilets, haha~!

The above pic shows the still messy state of our corner. Our bathroom mirrors finally came in on Wed and were mounted on Friday~!



All thanks to the toilet manager for cleaning up the toilets so nicely~!





The guest room and MBR respectively. Spotlessly clean after a few rounds of vacuuming and mopping by yours truly~! See the shine on the floor? We even cleaned the feature walls~!

Our furniture came in on Friday, and you'll be surprised the guys actually came 1 hour early except for Courts... they were late by 30 mins, lol. Our sofa set from OM came in first, followed by our dining chairs from BHG and boy, I'm so glad we decided to change it to this instead of the original heavy ones! Kinda excited and went around taking videos of the process, I bet the delivery men must be thinking I am crazy or something~! Cellini came after that and brought in our bed, coffee table and complimentary table lamp and 2 fibre pillows. Biang, we didn't expect the bed to be so big... it took up so much space that there was no room to walk between our MBR Tv feature wall and the foot of the bed frame! Haiz, we gonna get Ah Hua (our carpenter) to chop off the portruding part of the Tv feature wall to make room for walking across. Looks like it can only be done in a few days time. Sianz... the room will be messy again with all the dust...

Enjoying the rest of my lunch while waiting for Cellini to finish unpacking the bed frame outside, haha~


Our king size bed from Cellini~








Our coffee table and sofa~





Our dining chairs from BHG and dining table from Mondi~

Courts finally delivered our plasma TV and after that the Panasonic guy came to install it for us. Was kinda afraid that our TV feature wall tiles would crack in the process as we have been told that would happen cos of the drilling. I told the guy beforehand over the phone about this problem and he said he would see what he can do. Guess what? The tiles didn't crack!!! In fact, they did a wonderful job with the drilling by adding water on the tiles first (dunno what's that for) before drilling the holes to contain the Tv bracket and the workmanship was good - no cracks at all!!! Superb~!

The guys from Panasonic hard at work. Will post up pics of the completed job soon!

Our Toshiba washing machine, Mitsubishi fridge and Philips vacuum cleaner came in on Saturday evening~! The delivery guy from Kong Tai tested the washing machine for us and there we were, 2 idiots standing there wondering why nothing happened until the guy told us there was no sound cos its an inverter unit and true enough, I looked down and saw that the machine had indeed started on its washing process! When they brought in the fridge, I wondered out loud how come the design looked nicer than the one we had ordered, then the guy told us that there was no more stock and they are replacing it with the new model (same capacity) at no extra cost! Wahahahaha so happy! Will post pics of these items up soon!

I love my new Philips vacuum cleaner - FC 9150. Really very good suction power! The old Bomba died and revived several times during the cleaning process and it was kinda annoying. I'm so glad the new one came in just in time!

Now we are left with our easy chair from Barang Barang not delivered.... no more stock until 29th Sep!!! Liew.

Personally, although this whole cleaning thing is super tiring, I got to admit that it is actually kinda fun in a way and we really feel a sense of satisfaction after all the hard work and seeing our house spick and span. A small crisis happened though - I accidentally flooded the living room while cleaning the balcony! Biang... there I was, happily pouring pails of water to wash off the detergent and the stupid water went through the bottom of the glass doors and got onto the laminate flooring as well as the living room! Hb and I rushed like hell to clean up the water on the laminate flooring as we were afraid it might be damaged. After we cleared the mess on that area, we focused on cleaning up the mess in the living room. We had 2 mops. Hb stationed at the toilet while I mopped up the water and ran to the toilet to pass him Mop 1 to rinse off and took the nicely rinsed Mop 2 to clean up more mess, then took the wet Mop 2 back to the toilet for Hb to clean while he passed me the cleaned and rinsed Mop 1 and the process repeated, haha. Was kinda frantic during those moments and fed up too, especially when I was yelling at him to bring more pails of water to the balcony and he couldn't hear me cos he was in the toilet refilling the pails and the door was closed! Ok, so now we realise that glass is sound proof. Liew. Took more than 30 mins to clean up the mess and boy, it was so tiring! After that whole thing, we finally had time to take the grapes out of the fridge and slumped on the sofa watching Tv while munching, lol.

- Phebe

Rectifications & Touch-Up

8th Aug 2007 - I took half day leave from work to go up to the flat to settle those touch-up stuff. Managed to settle quite a number of things, like the painting, carpentry, plumbing, electrical stuff...etc. And guess what? Our new TV console is up! Love the black mirror!!! Byebye to the ugly Tv console!

Love our new Tv console!!!


- Phebe

And it became white once again....

4th August 2007 - Hb and I went up to our place and were pleased to find that there were 3 painters this time instead of 1 pathetic painter. Here's the latest change...






Yeah manz.... the red beam now becomes white. Actually I have been thinking about this for at least 2 weeks until I finally decided to give the green light to paint the red to white. Haiz, I still prefer the red but this is ok too. I mean, it makes the house look bigger and more spacious, the magic of illusion. A few people like me, Nicole, Arsie and Famous Meng prefer the red though. Haiz, if not for the fact that Mdm Yik told me once all the furniture are in the whole look will be different and the red may not be nice, I would never have agreed to repaint the red to white. I bet the painter must be cursing us behind his back, lol, for making him paint from white to red and now red to white again, lol.

The entrance foyer~


Study table is up! Love it~!


Kitchen cabinet handles & dish rack are up too~

Artistic view of the WIW

The full height mirror that is not exactly full height no thanks to the glass supplier again!! They're gonna redo it.

Luckily this is correct.


MBR toilet done~!


Common toilet too! Except for the mirror. To be delivered this Wed, haha.

Tata for now~ Watch this space for more updates!

- Phebe

Grumblings about the WONDERFUL glass supplier

As promised, here is my entry about the "wonderful" glass supplier and their works. You would have thought that only carpentry would cause delay, but well, glass works too, and more troublesome as well!

For those who have been faithfully reading our blog, you would know by now that our lil corner is like a glass house, aka fish tank, lol. The construction of this glass house cocked up not once but more than 3 times, and it's getting extremely annoying. First of all, the glass supplier fixed the balcony's glass door at the wrong position. Both pieces should be sitting on the divider that separates the living room and balcony, but yet.... have a look at the pics below and you will know what I mean...

It's freaking ugly!!! MAnz, so pissed! Apparently, according to the glass experts, they were unable to fix both doors at the intended position as it would be dangerous, being too near to the edge of the concrete beam. Their logic made sense. Our ID insisted that it can be done and reassured us that the problem would be solved. Two days later, he came back and tell us that NO, the glass supplier can't fix the doors at their intended position afterall cos of the same reason - safety. He was wondering if we were able to "live with it" but we insisted that he redo the tiling to reposition the divider. He finally relented, but the tiler took a few days to rectify the mistake. See? Kena delay again.

Secondly, the glass supplier took the wrong measurement for the connecting door between our MBR and WIW as well as the MBR toilet's door. Guess what? Kena delay another week as they needed time to fabricate new pieces of glass. Arrgh!

Thirdly, not all those glass works that were completed are perfect. Either they didn't fix a seal, or the lock was faulty, thus, more delay. These are very minor issues that can be rectified within an hour, but they took an amazingly long time. Till now, not all problems have been rectified and it's annoying!

Fourthly, due to oversight of our ID who told them that our kitchen will be housing a thick solid surface worktop instead of a slim one, the measurement for the glass backing was wrong and now, the kitchen glass backing is sitting in our living room collecting dust. They are now fabricating a new piece, but at the rate they are going, it looks like we're gonna have to wait for yet another week, sianz! So pissed! How to handover by National Day you tell me lah??!

Last but not least (I can't recall if there are any further cock ups at the moment, but I am sure there are), the supposed full height WIW mirror did not reach the ceiling and it looks freaking weird!!! Our ID is supposed to solve the problem, but at the rate he is going, I bet it will be another long wait.

This entry is just about the problems we encounter with the glass works. There are also other cock ups we have yet to blog about. Will do so when I have the time!

- Phebe

Overdue Updates for 1st Aug~

1st August 2007 - Didn't have time to upload these until now, but they are not the latest pics. Will post the latest pics later!

HSS feature wall



Shoe cabinet



Study. Now not empty anymore though cos it was installed yesterday, haha!




WIW. With locks and bars now~



Kitchen



HDB contractors did some touch up to the bedroom doors...look at their hideous states now...

Wonder which idiot did this to our common toilet jet spray...it was barely 3 days old... but we've got a new one now though, at Eesy's expense.

- Phebe

Journey to the North

2 August 07 - Our adventures in home renovation continue with the pursuit of the perfect TV console. If you have been faithfully keeping up with our exploits so far, you would have known that the carpenter had just recently installed our TV console but unfortunately, it was nothing like what we had imagined.

Instead of being a stylish complement to the feature wall, our TV console was a bulky wooden husk that looked like a box which had too much material clipped out of it (you can take a look at said console in the previous post). As such, Her Royal Majesty suggested that we revert to one of our original options: a simple rectangular box with rounded ends. However, the idea was swiftly discarded once we were told by the carpenter that this console would end up being even bulkier than what we have hanging on the wall now.

Together, the 3 of us cracked our heads thinking of a design that was simple, contemporary and had a whiff of sophistication. In other words, cheap and good. Eventually, the carpenter offered to send us to one of his other customer's home to view a TV console that he had built. However, he had some work to complete at another site and could only bring us there in the evening.

When evening came, we were told that the customer could not be contacted, and may not be in Singapore. We were almost resigned to letting the issue rest for the night when he suggested showing us another customer's TV console instead. So Her Royal Majesty and I clambered into his lorry and travelled from Jurong West to Woodlands, where this customer was located.

At first glance, the console seemed like any ordinary rectangular TV console, except maybe for the mirrors used for the top half of the console. That was when the owner calmly strolled over to the console, and proceeded to slide out the top half of the console to reveal storage compartments beneath! We were already suitably impressed, but there was a further surprise when the owner continued to reveal that the storage compartments were actually removable wooden trays!

After some discussion, we decided to adopt a similar design with a change in the colour of the main body of the console. Although we ended up incurring additional charges for this design, we felt that it was probably worth it. After all, we will be staring at this console for the next 5 years at least, whenever we watch TV in the living room.

Having seen the real thing, we now feel more assured that our TV console will not deviate too far from our expectations. Hopefully, everything will be completed in time and according to instructions. Watch this space for more updates!

- Melvin

More carpentry, more glass

31st July 2007 - We went up to our place and saw as promised, most of the carpentry stuff have been installed. It was a pleasant surprise to find that the glass works were done correctly this time. Oh have I mentioned that the glass supplier screwed up not once but twice? I guess I haven't, but I will blog about their mistakes in a separate entry after I upload the pics from my mobile, lol. Anyway, this time round we were quite satisfied with the glass works, though keeping our fingers crossed that the remaining glass works and mirrors would be done correctly!
Ok, here are the latest updates:



MBR TV feature wall


More work done to the WIW and tada! The connecting glass door between the MBR & WIW is up! Finally...lol.


Dresser mirror frame installed. Now waiting for the glass supplier to install the mirror in between!


Vanity cabinet for the MBR toilet is up~ Waiting for the glass top now.


Balcony glass door FINALLY positioned the way we want! One headache down~ :)


Same goes for the study's glass wall and door~ :)


Solid surface worktop is up too. Didn't expect the colour to be so errm...colourful (if only you can see the shiny flakes on it), but Hb likes it.


Common toilet's vanity cabinet done. Left glass top too~


TV console is up...but sad to say... it's not what we expected... hoping can re-do...


Shoe cabinet halfway done too....

Frankly speaking, I am not very satisfied with the way the carpentry turned out. Can see gaps in between the laminate joints but we were told the laminates we chose are thick, so can't be helped. But I really don't like it.... and I am not going to accept marker colouring as rectification!

- Phebe