Speed Work 2

Speedy Work gives excitment in seeing the house take shape

Thurs afternoon.
Kok called to say that the electrician found lots of broken lamps and shattered glass. Gosh.... was so upset that I had almost wanted to take leave. But I had calmed myself down saying we'll see what happened when we meet in the evening. We had checked all lights and I even played with the lights by wiring them up to see the effect in my room... and they were definitely in good condition when we had placed them in the house about 1 month ago... Maybe we had placed them there too early? Maybe the workers damaged them? Or did the glass shatter by themselves? Doubts and questions just keep popping up.

Thurs evening
The planned meeting of Sun Hup and their "heads" of plumbing and electrician. Met them and surprisingly, it's a short session. Had thought will be long and dreadful. But it's manageable.

The moment I stepped into the place, the plumber & electrician immediately catches me and ask me to confirm the locations and installations... luckily I had been prepared well.  =)

Had earlier prepared plans of where the toilet accessories and lights position.

1/2 of the lights are already up in place.

The cove lights and downlights are on but the switches still not yet connected.

The feature wall is up, only the drawers not completed. I can see the speakers connections and also the open net trunking prepared as well.

The broken lights...

Didn't take pictures of those lights that had been damaged. Those are the 2 common bedroom lights. Identical 4 glass holders on each lamp. Hence 2 lamps which are damaged. Had been surprised to see them shattered and also the plastic plugs for the lamp holders shattered as well. How can they be shattered when it was looking so nice earlier on??

I didn't want to point fingers... One of the electrician asked me if the lights were okie when I placed them there... I said yes... Then his partner came beside us and said, "Yah. last time I open before 1 box, the lamp was alright and not broken..."

Decided to move forward and not waste any more time and money. Luckily we had another ceiling lamp which was an extra... didn't place it anywhere and hence it'll go into 1 of the common room. Then I told the electricians to combine all remaining parts of the 2 broken lamps into 1 lamp. Should have enough good parts from what I see. Then it'll fulfil the remaining room. It's just too bad the common rooms are not having the same lights. Electrician then reply," okie. we'll try and see how to combine them." End of broken lights story... better not to dwell too much. Already stressful enough.

After telling the plumber the positions of the accessories, then Kok started to make suggestions on how to improve things... eg. Kitchen sliding door, he will remove his earlier work and also do a boxup with laminate for the sliding mechanism. He's really experienced but still, he's super busy..... to be able to grab more of his time is good.

Enough of words.... let's see some pics!

Wardrobe Carpentry in MBR

Living Room War Zone (Perlyn in Blue)

Agile in the Kitchen. Good Quality Wood... =P

Speedy Work

Astonishing speed of renovation.

Suddenly we can see things are coming into place and also Sun Hup putting more effort into the schedule chasing.

Just a couple of days.... Saturday was 1st day of painting. Sunday no work. Monday still painting. Tuesday still painting only half done. 

Suddenly by Wednesday evening...

• Painting completed.
• Flooring washing almost done.
• TV feature wall halfway up.
• Aircon installation completed.
• Glass doors installed.

Didn't take much photos as there are too many workers in the place.

Installation of the feature wall must be complicated since there's so many of the workers working on the feature wall. Wondered if it's due to the length..... with all the wires inside as well... 

It's been some time since I blogged on the progress of the reno. Let me update on the series of unfortunate events.

It's painfully slow due to the rectifications.

• The slanted false ceilings are corrected. Now they really look much better. The entrance of the kitchen wall was also straightened.

• The kitchen cabinet and designs are settled. We have to fork out much more $$. At $95 per foot run, it really burst out budget with extra of 17 feet.

• Purple ABS trimmings doesn't match the purple laminate we chosed. No choice but to choose black ABS trimmings.

Super worried if it'll be nice.

Painting have also started. Base coat of paint was applied to 2 rooms already.

Perlyn says by this Thurs painting will be completed. The aircon installation will then take place on Thurs.

Will be meeting the plumber, electrical and Sun Hup all together on Thurs night to finalize on the locations of all accessories.

It will be a long long night.

This 2 weeks will be the renovation hectic lifestyle as next Saturday will be the delivery by Courts for all my electrical appliances.

A Series of Unfortunate Events

Guess what, maybe like all others have said, we cannot be too relaxed with contractors/ID.  Our renovations surfaced some issues and Kok are suggesting to us how to resolve them.

A Series of Unfortunate Events.

Kitchen

1.) After we chosed the settled the purple laminates, Perlyn called 2 weeks later to say no more stocks. Need to wait till end of Oct. Sun Hup say they were played out by the vendor for stock availability. Really bad move as the purple is the highlight and we had really specified for it. In addition, Perlyn had checked and told us there are stocks when we confirmed it.

Solution: Kok will pay for air freight for the laminates to come in after upsetting us. Not the best way to do business but still it's a solution. Thumbsup for being responsible.

2.) With the laminates incident still super fresh (less than 2 days) we were given a new kitchen 3D drawing.

The original 3D drawing dimensions are grossly wrong. No one really knows what went wrong. Kok tells me the designer started the sink area before the box up pipe. Hence there's a difference of 40cm. But still, suddenly it's 1.5 door widths that's missing. => means missing length of 80 to 90cm. So a length of 5m, can have 80cm missing....

How did Sun Hup draw such nice 3D but the length of my kitchen wasn't so long? No one realized it during these 2 months. Now before carpentry is going to be up with the cabinet base done, the placement all went wrong. And suddenly a new 3D is thrusted into our faces telling us this will be the actual.

The cooker-hob will now be 20cm beside the oven. 40cm to the sink. 30cm to the overhanging dish rack.

How can accept right?

Solution: Now Kok suggests that we shift the tall cabinets and fridge to the left wall. This will then solve the issue of fire-hob too close to the wooden cabinets and the water-sink. This means we might incur more costs for more cabinets. And might delay the reno since we have to redo the kitchen base. Kok has at least been pro-active and understands our concerns.

MBR Toilet



We just realized that the MBR toilet tiles didn't match the grout lines at all. We can't accept this.

If they had started all from the same side, then due to small differences in tile sizes and shifted the lines, then we got nothing to say. But now.... Floor tiling starts from the left and Wall tiling starts from the right. Nowhere in the entire toilet can we see a single matching in the grout lines.

Solution: Kok says he'll get his tiler to overlay and try to match the grout lines. No choice unless we would consider hacking again. Not perfect but I guess we have to accept this. Be positive means double protection of waterproofing?







False Ceiling



The false ceilings are completed. However, the leveling is a problem. Sun Hup has done in with laser levelling device showing a perfect horizontal levelling to the FLOOR. It's so called, "water levelled".

BUT, my ceiling and beams are all slanted. With a levelled false ceiling.... now everything looks out of place. The kitchen they say no choice due to tiling will show significant slantness. Now, even living and dining?

Solution:

For dining room view, Kok says that he'll box up the beam to make it look straight so that both the kitchen tile area and the false ceiling looks aligned.



For Living room, the false ceiling will be redone up to follow the beam/ceiling.






A series of unfortunate events... Hopefully it'll have a good ending.

King Size Bed from Cellini and L-shaped Sofa from Nova furniture

We finalized our bed from Cellini!

It's going to be king sized and the mattress is Cellini's nightingale spinal supreme (the one with latex top. No idea if it's plush top or pillow top or whatever top... hahahaha). It's quite big...pray hard that MBR is not overly squeezed...

Decided to buy the L-shaped fabric sofa from Nova furniture.
Fabric not yet chosen. We were convinced by their Sales Manager Edi (tradehub 21) to buy it. Had a hard time deciding leather or fabric.

Hopefully things are as good as Edi says.

We also placed a deposit for a dining table. Had some reservations regarding it.

Suddenly feels quite poor.... sighz...

Our Electrical Appliances!

Time to update the electrical appliances! We have bought quite several items from Courts! Now pending delivery! Courts is a place that I had never thought of going there to purchase but sometimes their discounts can be quite deep. Especially if you get those 1st 5 sets limited deals...

Our fridge is the Samsung side by side model RS21-HNEPN.

Made in Korea. Hopefully will last.

The exterior is a nice brushed gun-metal grey color.

The interior is decent at 551litres.

Although the freezer compartment does seem a tad too big. Maybe suitable for me to have tubs tubs tubs of ice cream.

Our TVs!  We bought the Plasma to be placed in the living room for the "wow" colors and "wow" size. =) HD-Ready. Nothing special but just a nice 50" tv.

Model: LG PT250

For our MBR, we bought a 42" Smart LED TV.

LG 42LV5500

No 3D since it's so clumbersome for people who wear specs.

Hopefully with the smart function, we can surf net. Should hook this up to computer as well.