And that's a (carpentry + plumbing) wrap!

Our remaining cabinets have finally been completed! And most importantly, done correctly this time. WOOT! :D Even got my ID to get his subcons to fix up the IKEA metal wall shelves within the storage cabinet, which the previous owners had up in the foyer before.

Foyer Cabinet

Storage Cabinet

The plumbers have also come and gone last week - the bathroom basin, our cheap US$35 double-bowl kitchen sink (a backdated story I hope to get to eventually lol) and the rest of the sanitary ware (taps and accessories) have all been installed. Love my big bathroom basin~ ♥

Off to Admiralty tomorrow morning/afternoon to collect a carpet I bought on Qoo10 a couple of weeks back for the living room. I actually ordered 2 pieces but in separate orders and requested that shipping be combined for both - unfortunately, the seller missed the special instructions I left and refused to do anything about it, so I have to travel down to their office to collect instead. BLEH~ to crappy service but I guess that's what you get when you buy cheap things - no customer service, so to speak.

Update [13/07/15] : They ran out of stock and asked if I wanted to take another colour instead (no thanks) so I have to wait another 2 weeks for them to ship the colour I ordered to me. Wasted a few hours of my precious weekend for nothing!

Also figured I'll make that trip down to Choo Chiang Marketing in the morning to grab those Legrand Mallia switches I've been eyeing for the longest time. Gotta get them for the electricians asap or work progress will be stuck, cuz parquet revarnishing can't happen till electrical is done (ID said it'll be too dirty otherwise).

So many errands, so little time!

Oh WC WC, where shalt thou sit?

Was over at our new place in the afternoon to meet the plumbers. After much discussion with the friendly, young plumber (Malaysian Chinese who looks to be in his 20s), we agreed to install only the following:

1) Toilet bowl (WC)

2) Bidet valve - position based on his recommendation - slightly above WC seat height

3) Bidet spray - position based on his recommendation - same height as WC tank

4) Instant water heater - position based on my mark-up - slightly below standard height (to make up for my height, or lack thereof)

5) 2-way tap - position based on my mark-up - but he recommended that we move it slightly outwards from the wall for ease of repair / maintenance in the future 

The basin will wait till after carpentry is done since I prefer to have it aligned exactly to the mirror cabinet above it. Likewise with the toilet accessories (toilet roll holder, robe hook). Plus I'm still missing a line of hooks for the bathroom door to replace the ugly, existing one left behind by the ex-owners, which is already missing 3 out of 6 hooks. :P

The bathroom door that bashed my right toe in, has also gone back up again in the connecting doorway to our bedroom. With both bathroom doors in place, we finally have complete privacy once again in our bathroom lol. 

Also done today - bathroom glass panel, bathroom swing door and glass for the cut-out wall in our kitchen.

Doesn't feel much different from when it was an open air cut-out. Phew! Need to stay in the house a little longer to be able to know whether it'll be stuffy though. Didn't managed to get shots of the bathroom cuz the plumbers were already in there by the time I got there, so I didn't want to get in their way.

Finally went thru my VO (variation order) today and my total renovation shortfall is about 10k. :( Stressed out about where to find 10k. Grow on trees? Fall from the sky? Kill myself and fulfill it from my life insurance payout? (Not sure if it applies for suicide, haha.)

In feline news, Bailey had her monthly shower tonight and she is definitely not a happy kitty. Just look at her grumpy face, half-mast ears and still damp fur. I'm a horrid mummy for laughing at her now lol. As usual, she ran away to hide the minute she realised it was bathing time - I had to drag her out (whining and all) from under the bed, after I've closed off all but one of her escape routes. And then she complained the entire time, throughout her shower. 5 years of monthly showers later and still, she hates it. Poor darling...

Bedtime for (wet) Bailey & Mummy...zzz... Goodnight!

'Happy' Labour Day

Spent the entire Labour Day weekend painting and cleaning over at our new place. That's 3 full days of hard labour. After each day, I can clearly feel every single bit of my age - the old body felt battered, like it has gone thru a crazy hardcore workout. Is that what all my weekends will be like once we move in!?

Results from this weekend:

1) Sanitary ware delivered by Heritage Bathroom

2) Bathroom bi-fold door installed by Doctor Doors

Slight imperfection (printing issue) on my bathroom bi-fold door, right smack in the center fold at eye level. Pointed it out to the door installer after the installation was done but he said this was unavoidable. Struggled with whether or not to complain back to the Doctor Doors office about this defect but eventually resigned myself to fate. Will look for wood grain wall stickers or something similar at Daiso to cover it. Sad...

3) Painting by me, myself and I, with the help of a good friend whom I'm very grateful to have - we finished 1 main door frame, 2 bedroom door frames and 1 fat water pipe in the kitchen, with matt white paint from Nam Tai Choon. Met the helpful Auntie again, who gave me tips on what I need and what to do before I start actual painting.

Price: Nippon Bodelac @ $18 / 1L (total damage: $30+ with paint and accessories etc.)

4) Clean up - we cleared out the u-channels where the glass panels will be placed into (the ID told me glass will be going in tomorrow). Also gave the bathroom a light scrubbing to prep for sanitary ware installation.
5) Sanitary ware mark-ups in the bathroom - to indicate exact placement in the bathroom.

 

There were a lot more mark-ups than this but I was too exhausted from all the work that I forgot to take photos of them all, haha. Told my ID that I'll go down there tomorrow when the plumbers are there for installation to go through with them personally, for fear that my mark-ups aren't concise enough. After all, we did work on them close to 9pm in the dark (with the aid of a mobile phone torchlight, lol).

Good thing I'll be on leave tomorrow! 我的劳动节还真劳累啊！

我怕了你...

That's what the ID told me just now.

Seems like our home renovation is bringing out the worst in me... I'm turning into your regular home owner from hell. Just call me Renozilla lol.

The charges against me:

1) I forget to tell him the things I want.

2) I don't remember the stuff he tells me. (FALSE!!!)

I DO keep the things he tells me in mind but in a constant bid to have things just right (blame the perfectionist in me), I overthink the parts I have issues with and try to fix them somehow, overwriting our previous discussions.

Which in turn, gives him heart attacks cuz I'll call him and ask about these issues that he thought were already agreed on, haha. (Ok, I can understand how it sounds like to him...) But but, I need my house to be perfect!

Does that make me a difficult customer?

Anyways, the issue today that led to this comment: 

This is the kitchen base for the right wall of our kitchen. My intention for this side is to have (from right) the sink, the washer and then a full height cabinet to hide the fat ugly pipe. The original plan was to not have a base under the washer so I can slide it directly below the kitchen counter with no worry on the space below not being enough for the height of the washer. 

 

But unfortunately, the water outlet for the washer was jutting up from the floor in the middle of nowhere (see pipe outlet wrapped in blue) so they had to shift the outlet to the left and cover it with concrete base to have even flooring for the washer to go in.

Herein lies the problem(s). The base needs to be extended out depth-wise, so it juts out from the rest of it. FUGLY. Another minor issue I had - the full height cabinet to box up the ugly pipe on the left will have neither tiling nor cabinet wood on the base. Is that normal!? (Apparently, it is - according to my ID) I personally feel that that would be a bit raw and unfinished since it'll be in plain sight when I open the cabinet, so I sent him a message on WhatsApp to check if it can look like this.

He insisted that the base below the cabinet is usually left as concrete but will ask the tilers if it's possible to do as I asked. As for the extension of the base, he's gonna try to keep it small (he suggests 650mm or 630mm minimum). He would rather we have it a little bigger than too small... The OCD in me screams no, but I think practicality will have to win this round. Hopefully, it won't be too unsightly!

This was what saved the day for me - our kitchen backsplash tiles are completely up and the effect was just as I visualized! YAY. Pretty tiles = A happy Bailey's Mummy :)

ID says I can arrange for delivery of lights, sanitary ware and electrical appliances mid April. Exciting times ahead!