Protection for our dining table at last

There is this love-hate relationship we face with our dining table. As much as we love our dining table cos its beautiful and looks cool, it is freaking good at attracting dust and within 2 hours after cleaning it, you can see fine specks of dust on it. And cos it is black, you can see the layer of dust lagi more clearly! Thats not the worse thing. As it has a glass table top, it gets scratched easily. Now already kana one scratch. Very heartpain cos this stupid table is one of pricier piece of furniture in the house apart from the sofa.

At first, we bought place mats to put on the table to minimise dust visibility and scratches. However, the whole thing looks ugly. The table looks best without anything but a centerpiece like this:

We have sourced high and low for transparent table covers but couldn't find anything suitable. I was actually wondering if they sell screen protectors in large sizes, lol.

Everytime we have guests, I worry whether our table will get scratched by accident, not to mention Kitty has to polish it with the glass cleaner cos our guests never fail to leave some memories of their prescence behind - hand and/or fingerprints. Because of the same reason, we always put newspapers over the tabletop whenever we dine there (very seldom though). Use already just throw, haha. In fact, since Chinese New Year, the newspapers have been placed on the tabletop permanently. It looks UGLY with a capital U!

I finally got sick of seeing our beautiful table being covered up and suggested to Kitty the next best alternative to screen protectors - book cover. Wahahahahaha! We went to Popular to shop for those transparent book covers and were pleasantly surprised to see that they sell "Table Top Covering" too! They look exactly the same as book covers except they are thicker.

Now our table looks like this:

Ok, still not nice, but better than newspapers right???? Plus, its easier to clean (just wipe with a damp cloth) and can prevent scratches!

Inspired to cook

Last week, Ferene aka Olivia wrote an entry about cooking. Don't know whether it is because she was talking about food and all but my mood to cook struck, lol.

Actually, I had wanted to cook 2 particular dishes 3 weeks ago, but somehow, I always end up procastinating. Finally on Saturday, cos of the sudden inspriration to cook, and also to "reward" Kitty for slaving like a dog by cleaning up our MBR as well as the whole house, I decided to put aside my lazybones and prepared dinner.

Dish 1: Chicken Mushroom Steam Rice aka 'Dong gu mum gai fan" in Cantonese

Before steaming

After steaming

This is one of my favourite dishes. Not only is it yummy, its a one pot thing, so convenient for lazybones like me, wahahahahhaha!

Dish 2: Old Cucumber Soup with Spare Ribs aka 老黄瓜排骨汤

This is Kitty's favourite soup, and mine too! Put more dried scallops than usual and let it boil on "high" for 20 mins before switching to "medium" and let it simmer for the next 2.5 hours. Kitty said it was very flavourful, and I love it too! This was the very first soup dish I pestered Mdm Yik to teach me when we first moved into our new home, haha!

Dish 3: Sambal Kang Kong

Last minute decided to cook this kang kong dish cos the shrimp paste I bought 2 weeks ago is going to expire in May. We will be eating a lot of kang kong from now till May, lol.

Was in a relatively good mood yesterday cos Kitty brought me to Zhou's Kitchen after church for high tea to celebrate our 52nd month anniversary in advance. Our 3rd floor neighbour was telling me over Msn that the food was good, so I went back and told Kitty, haha. Well, ok lah, not bad, but I think I still prefer International buffets at hotels. I miss my fave salmon sashimi! Anyway, since I was in a good mood and we were both too full for a proper dinner, I made dessert, lol.

Gingko Barley dessert with Foo Chuk:

Part 2: Newlyweds die as feature wall caves in on them in the middle of the night

4th March - The laminate guy came in the afternoon to insert the laminate skirting along the edge of the wall. As Kitty and I are both working, we asked Mdm Yik to help us out. Not only did she help us to supervise the work, she also helped to clear up the mess left behind. Haha this is the advantage of staying near to the folks! This is how it looks like:

7th March – The guys from Europa were supposed to come between 10 – 10.30am to install the wallpaper for our MBR. They came at 9.45am instead, and I was still taking my own sweet time in the shower! We were told that the installation would take about 3 hours, but they only took 1 hour! I guess that’s because they sent 3 workers down, haha! Anyway, we are very happy with their service and workmanship! Even though we ordered 3 rolls, the workers told us that only 2 are needed, so that saved us $120! There were leftover materials too! Interestingly, I wasn’t very confident of the choice of wallpaper at first, but now that I see it on our wall, I think its really very nice and matches well with our bed head design! Red flowers plus leaves at the background, haha! Even though I like the original brown and white tiles, the design of the tiles is too subtle to be seen, probably cos of the dark brown colour. I realise that wallpaper brings out a different look and feel of the room. Somehow, it’s a “milder, softer” look and feel. Tiles are like… too “strong, hard”??? It’s the FEELING lah! Plus, I love the texture on the wallpaper! Wahahahahahahhaa! I love our new Mbr wall!!

One of the workers from Europa. The other one is squatting down, so can only see his head, haha.

Tools and materials

The workers did the cutting outside. More spacious, haha!

After the guys left, Kitty got started on his many tasks: vacuuming and cleaning the room, bedframe, floor, skirtings...etc. It was night when he finally finish cleaning up the room. It was a really thorough cleanup! We shifted the heavy king-size bed from the guest room back to the Mbr and Kitty proceeded to change the bedsheets. I helped out by wiping the TV and Dvd player, then he carried them back into the Mbr and hooked up the cables.

Just after the big clean-up...

Yay! Our Mbr is finally restored to sleeping conditions! It feels so different to sleep on the mattress without the bedframe! I prefer the elevated height, haha!

Before:

After:

Newlyweds die as feature wall caves in on them in the middle of the night

We are officially into a 2nd round of reno, despite moving in barely 2 years ago. In short, we are renovating our master bedroom (aka mbr).

Here's the scope:

21 February (Sat) - I noticed some hairline cracks along the right side of the feature wall that our bed was against. I didn't think much of it. As long as it doesn't worsen, who cares? I did not check on the other side of the feature wall since they are only hairline cracks and I thought they are common.

23 February (Mon) - Kitty found out that the hairline cracks I discovered 2 nights ago became a big gap! Quite a shock since its become so jia lat within a span of 2 days!


Crack from the 2nd quarter onwards

Close up view of the 2nd and 3rd quarter. The crack along the bottom part (pic on the right) is not as jagged though.

Even though only hairline cracks were spotted along the upper part of the feature wall, Kitty didn't want to take the risk of sleeping in the Mbr. I was telling him for all we know, we would make the headlines in The Straits Times "Newlyweds Die as Feature Wall Caves In On Them In The Middle of the Night". Lol.

As we didn't know how to dismantle the bedframe, we proceeded to shift the heavy king sized mattress into the guest room. Who would have thought that we would be the first occupants of the empty guest room! The mattress was freaking heavy. Thankfully there were handles at the sides to hold on to! Kitty covered the bedframe with white plastic sheets lest the wall collapses and ruin it with dirt, tile chips and cement.



Getting in touch with the ID firm that did our renovation was a pain. Apart from fixing an appt for the tiler to come down to take a look, we had to do everything else by ourselves. After we got the tiler's hp no. from **sy (the person in-charged of doing our reno), we had to make arrangements with the tiler ourselves, as **sy always promised to call us back but didn't. Either that, or he doesn't pick up his phone. He never reply our smses too. You can imagine how liasing with him was such a pain! Thankfully we managed to get the tiler's contact no!

We contacted the tiler and arranged for him to come down on Wednesday night. Better get him to come asap before the wall collapses, lol.

25 February (Wed) - The tiler came to our place at 7.45pm to check out the situation. He said it was the first time he encounted such a problem. According to him, his workers must have used too much cement when they were installing the tiles on the wall, such that over time, the thickness of the cement plus the weight of the tiles weighs down and causes the crack. He was at a loss how to remove the tiles without having everything come tumbling down. I suggested having 1 worker to remove the top tiles while 2 other workers support the bottom tiles to prevent them from tumbling down.

27 February (Fri) - I left work at 4.30pm and went home to wait for the tiler and his workers. They came at 5.30pm and started to lay cardboard sheets over the floor to protect our laminate flooring. I helped out by providing a ladder and 2 stools for them. Liew, as they removed the top tiles, chips flew in all directions. I was so worried about the glass door that was just next to the wall! Luckily I made Kitty remove the TV and DVD player too!






The pics above show the tilers in the process of removing the tiles.

After 45 mins, this is how the wall looks like:



The room was freaking dirty. The men packed up the broken tiles and packed them into canvas sacks. One of them asked me for a broom so that they can sweep up the remaining chips. I told them we only use the vacuum cleaner, lol. Just as they were wondering how to clear up the mess, I suddenly remember we have this broom that Kitty used to wash the toilet last time. Haha and I managed to find it in the storeroom! The pole was not attached to it though (don't know where Kitty chucked it), but the men were saying, "nevermind lah, better than nothing lah!" Wahaahhahaha! So they cleared up majority of the mess, but the house was still very dusty n dirty. I didn't know what to do except to wait for Kitty to come back from work. I tried not to move around the house.

Haha, it is during such trying times when I realise the advantage of having a man in the house. He tabao-ed dinner for me, and proceeded to clean up the mess. That took almost 2 hours!

28 February (Sat) - We were given the option of replacing the tiles at no cost, or topping up to do something else. We decided to do wallpaper instead, thus the tiler came in the morning to smoothen the wall with cement.

The removal of the wall tiles brought along other problems:

- the paint on the ceiling got dirty and the edge of the ceiling wall uneven due to the remnants of the feature wall cement on it.

- there is a gap between the laminate flooring and the original wall cos of the feature wall that was removed. The thickness of the feature wall used to fill up that gap.

We had to call the guy who did our laminate flooring and arrange for him to come and check out the problem. Luckily we still had his hp number! As for the wall, we decided to buy white paint and DIY. Bought a 1 litre can of Nippon Vinelex Matt Plus white paint, 2 paint rollers, 1 brush, roller tray, sandpaper and masking tape. Since there are water marks on the ceiling in the WIW, I asked Kitty to repaint the ceiling in addition to patching up the ceiling wall in the Mbr.


Kitty patching up the edges of the ceiling


Ceiling at the WIW, look at the watermarks.

Kitty the painter did a wonderful job! No more watermarks!

In the afternoon, we went to Europa to view wallpapers. Decided not to order from **sy's sub-contractor for the wallpaper as dealing with **sy was such a pain. I rather source on our own! We spent 1 hour at Europa choosing wallpapers. It was so hard to choose, but we finally decided on a purple wallpaper with texture. The guy will be installing it for us this coming Sat! Heartpain, another $700++ gone. Just when we are are saving for our US trip!

Yay Kitty completed the painting yesterday. Now we are left with fixing the floor (closing up the gap by filling it with laminate skirting) before we can install the wallpaper. If everything goes as planned, we'll be able to move back into the Mbr this weekend. Yay!

- Phebe

New Ornaments for the House!

We are back from our Europe honeymoon and here are some items we bought for our humble abode:

1) A red wooden cow from Switzerland

2) 2 little clay figurines of a church and a house from Athens

3) An old metal toy car from Santorini

4) A fridge magnet of Santorini. Very cute.

We also bought this glass rose and vase from Venice. The sand inside weigh 1kg! Can't decide whether it looks better lying down or standing up though.

In the end, we decided to leave it lying down. Less dust can get in, haha!

- Phebe

New Picture for the Wall

We collected our wedding album and added this to the wall at the passage way cos there is no space in the MBR to hang it, haha.

Bamboo Poles aka Tekkos

Recently, bangalah and china workers have been doing upgrading works to the exterior of our blk. These works include repainting the exterior of the flats and building new facilities. So hardworking these workers are, that they dutifully removed all the bamboo poles that residents put outside their kitchen windows. I guess the bamboo poles got in their way when they were doing the painting.

Anyway, our 2 bamboo poles (aka "tekkos") went MIA. They must be the culprits. Who else right? Week after week we made excuses of being busy. Actually, we just didn't want to go get new ones as they are LONG and UGLY. After procastinating for some time, we finally got around to getting new "tekkos". I guess the missing "tekkos" is a blessing in disguise, cos we got 2 much nicer looking ones! This time, we bought metal "tekkos", haha, they look cool! More pricey though. While the usual red/green/blue bamboo "tekkos" cost $1.45 each, the metal ones cost $9 each! Anyway, the length can be extended, so they weren't too LONG to carry, wahahahahhaa! I remember last year when Kitty (aka Meowvin) and I went to buy bamboo "tekkos", we bought 4, and it was so troublesome carrying them home! Can't even take taxi, cos they were so LONG! Worse, we had to chop them shorter so that they would fit nicely on the bamboo holders! Boy, I'm so glad we don't have to do anymore chopping now!

Our remaining 2 bamboo tekkos, now shifted to the outside so they won't be an eyesore, haha.


Our 2 new silver metal tekkos...

so matching against the lavender walls of the service balcony, wahahahhaa!

- Phebe