Let there be lights!

We have finally purchased all our lights from Sembawang Lighting House. Initially we wanted to get the cheaper version of lights from taobao/qoo10/tampoi but they did not had the safety mark on the driver. Being the afraid-unable-to-claim-insurance-if-anything-happen couple, we decided to invest a little more into getting lights with the safety mark. Nevertheless, please don't burn our house down. Again like every other part of the renovation, we were taken by surprise by how expensive lights can cost, and how many different variations there are. We have opt for all our lights to be LED so that they can hopefully last longer than the usual fluorescent bulbs. And hopefully use less power too!

All the sperms from the ceiling before the lights were installed. And that is Ah Chong, my electrician who is duh, in charge of all my electrical issues.

Kitchen light and fan is up. I have always been in love with the Vento Fino since the day i chanced upon them online. This is however an Elmark version of the Fino, which is less aesthetic than the Fino, but it is made of plastic, and i figured it would be easier to maintain this than the Fino's wood blades as this is located in the kitchen. Tested the wind and it is damn cool (pun intended). The oscillation was however on the slow side, but i guess everyone will get more wind in some sense.

Let there be lights! Finally we are able to go to our new house at night without having to bring our portable camping latern. We had mounted the projector too, hopefully it is in the right position and distance from the wall. Originally it was planned to be further in front (beside the access panel) but on testing, we realised that the screen was not big enough. It was big at about 100 inch, but not close enough to our desired 150 inch. So we move it back and hopefully it will be just nice without being blocked by our TV console. Shall wait till all the furniture are in and set.

She has arrived.

The Alfred to Batman. The JARVIS to Tony Stark. Meet Alexa, the key to our home automation.

Finally laid our hands on this device after reading countless reviews about it. There were always two sides to all reviews, and generally, we pay more attention to the negative side to see if we could live with it. Afterall, we roughly knew the great side about it, that's why we are reading the reviews in the first place. As this product came from the U.S, many people including ourselves, wonder if this voice recognition software would be able to capture and understand the Singapore slang. It took several Singaporean reviews and being part of the SG Home Automation Facebook Group before we decided to take the leap of faith and purchased it.

Originally I wanted to get the new Echo Dot. Although Amazon had cunningly designed that you can only order an Echo Dot by voice through the original Amazon Echo, there is a way to trick the system and purchase a Dot without the original. The Dot does look better and could be linked to our home audio system, but I chose the original in the end because I do not want to leave our home audio system on 24/7. Perhaps next time for our bedroom if all goes well.

Had been playing with it for the past 24 hours, and it is pretty neat. I have taught it to switch on and off my lights and fans in the room but it is really a tiring process to set everything up before you can enjoy the wonders of home automation. Just a quick introduction to how things are going to be like at our house next time.

I will speak to Alexa > Alexa will trigger an IFTTT recipe to send a link > the link will trigger my phone tasker > the tasker will send a command to my Broadlink RM Pro > the RM Pro will send the radiowave to my Livolo switches > the Livolo will switch on my lights/fan > my lights/fan are turned on. :D

Why will I do this instead of just pressing the switch? Because I can.

Links for reference:
https://www.reddit.com/r/tasker/comments/3arbeh/how_to_hookup_tasker_to_ifttt_using_autoremote/
http://wiki.winkathome.net/Supercharge_your_Echo_with_Tasker_and_IFTTT

Splashes of Boldness

Painters are working hard today. Had quite a scare in the beginning when we saw hot pink color in the paint bucket. We quickly whipped out our phones and show them the desired color we want and repeatedly ask them to assure us that we will eventually get that tone of color. All we could do was wait and see....

All is well~ We were trying to achieve maroon tone for the house, which is one of the tougher colors to produce as it was a fine line between red and purple. This turns out perfect. The fiancee love it because it is her favourite color, and the fiance love it for the boldness and color splash! Yay!

Our bedroom was to be painted green because of fengshui matters. Initially we wanted the maroon for the room for the seductive romantic feel of the Scarlet Hotel but had to do away with it because the color was not appropriate according to the FSM. It was fortunate that we could do the maroonish in the living room so we were still happy about it. There is a thing about splashing one solid color on the wall. We like colors that stood out which gives the effect of BAMM, if you know how that feel haha.

Just an overview of the two bold colors together in one photo. We had our door frame painted black too and that had drastically improve the whole look of the house. Definitely recommended to paint your door frame black if it suits your theme.

Electrical, Cove, Aircon Pipes

The electrical wiring are mostly done.


The aircon piping are completed too. We would have to wait for the paint to be up before we could install the aircons. Our false ceiling is up too. Noticed the access panel in the middle of the room? Our ID was so thoughtful to think about having an access panel there so that we can easily access the power point which our projector is connected to. This allow us to troubleshoot any problems if any, or remove the cables and projector should it become faulty or it's time for an upgrade haha!

Got tempted by our ID to do a cove lighting. Originally we were firm with the decision of not having a cove lighting because of fear of breeding those icky insects in those spaces, and not to mention the huge amount of dust that will be collected at the top. However, after much considerations (of how often we shall clean the area) and many beautiful mood boards online, we decided to give it a go, and hopefully not regret it! We just have to be more diligent in placing mothballs and cleaning it up, right?

A glance at how the top of the cove look like. Honestly, this is not what we expected, and we may had reconsider against doing this should we have known that this is the outcome. The way this is done actually left too many gaps into the whole false ceiling, which is a potential breeding place which we are trying to avoid. Ideally, the section of the false ceiling should have been sealed off, so that the only area which may have the icky problem is just the external cove area, which could be easily cleaned away. How on earth are we going to clear the eggs if it is laid INSIDE the false ceiling. Let's just hope the effects is really worth it, and we do not have any icky eggy problems to deal with within the false ceiling. Otherwise, we will definitely advise against doing it.

The forming of the electrical network

Our electrician is down today to set up our electrical network. This was one of the biggest headache to us because we need to decide and get everything correct right now, else we will have to face ugly exposed trucking around the house. We spent a great deal of time planning and counting, making sure we have sufficient power points in every corners that is required.

This is our final electrical plan after much changes and planning. Pretty comprehensive uh. The different colors are coded according to where the switches are positioned, and that is the biggest hurdle in the whole electrical planning.

Prior to talking to my electricIan, we thought we could have our switches anywhere connected to any lighting. Boy were we WRONG. Here are the 3 tips that we have learnt from our experience.

1. When you first enter the bto, you will see many holes in the ceiling. Those are power points provided by hdb and are already wired inside the building structure, connected to their in built switches. Good thing is they are already well hidden, but bad thing is that the switch positions are pretty much fixed. So technically you can't really change the corridor light to be controlled by the entrance switch, unless your electricIan rewired it which means extra moneyyyy.

2. The beams are a pain. You can't remove them, you can't drill through them, so you have to work around them. Try not to think about wiring past them, as that means exposed trucking required, or routing via another room. Complicated and messy I feel.

3. There are such things as concealed wires. Meaning the wires are technically hidden in the walls. This however means you can never change the wire, so better get real good wires such as audio cables, or only do for those built in power points where you will never have to remove or change the cable. 

Ultimately, spend more time planning and discussing with your ID to get it right first time one time, so that the ugly exposed truckings can be avoided.