Maximising our Kitchen

It had been a real tough previous week with couple of school assignments and military events earlier and we did not have the time to update this area. But now that they are submitted and over, we are back! Given that most BTO's kitchen are rather small, we would have to find ways to maximise our space within. One was having the portable kitchen cabinet which provides us more counter space, and the other way was to use the vertical space.

The black racks from IKEA caught our eyes and we purchased a few of them to have them installed on our kitchen walls. Many thanks to my cousin's husband for helping us get them up nicely. We initially ran into a small problem where the back of the tiles were hollow and there were no cement for the nail to be secured onto. It was also untraceable as we did try to knock on every tiles when we first gotten the house but this did not show any signs of defects. The only work around was to get a longer screw to drill to all the way to the back. Let's hope the tiles is strong enough and does not crack over time.

Hanging the boards, and having a basket for our condiments allow us to have more counter space to prepare the food. Plus the blackness of the rack blend in with our kitchen theme so it look really complete and pretty.

In the end, we also changed the rack that were previously at our sink. Funny how that did not even last a week. However, we will install that in another place, probably the service yard but we shall see.

Our complete kitchen look. Loving it!

Doing it ourselves as a learning opportunity

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Through this renovation, there were many opportunities where we decided to use our own hands to get things right instead of relying entirely on our ID. Changing of bathroom tap, fixing up our oven because it was crooked, and siliconing our skirting are just some examples of which we had done it ourselves. Of course if our ID had made them perfect in the first place, we would not have to get down to that, but we like to see it as learning opportunities for us. Beside, now is the best time to try it ourselves because if things get damaged, at least there is an ID who has contractors to fix them up. Could you imagine the cost and trouble of finding a tiler next time to come and fix ONE tile because the drilling cracked it?

And this is the hubby installing the rack to hang our stuffs. It may not seem like anything but we were quite worried that the tiles may crack from the drilling. Apparently it seems that the tiles were stronger than it seem. Hubby's dad came over to demonstrate how to drill the tiles and we fixed up the rack. There is still one more rack to be installed on the other side of the kitchen but have not bought it yet. Finger crossed for that because it will be done entirely by the hubby next time!

The finished product. Space is always a constrain in BTO because of the small area, so we must make use of all the spaces that are available, including vertical space. This way, it enables us to have more space for preparing the foods.

Bought a mini fan for our living room too. Now we are able to save money from not relying on our aircon, and also the hassle of bringing our Dyson fan around so that we have wind wherever we are.

So far it's working well. Even our tissue paper box is licking its tongue in delight!

No more ding-a-ling in our pockets

Another loot from Comex16 is our brand new electronic door locks. Decided to invest in this ultimately because the insufficient keys for the padlock was making things really inconvenient for both of us. Should our ID do a faster job at getting everything done, we may have not placed our money in this yet. Nevertheless, this is our latest addition of technology to the house. New holes have to be drilled on the existing door for the lock to be installed. Am satisfied that our dreamcatcher mural was not damaged in the process.

The end product. Life's easier now since we no longer need keys to enter the house. Just a swipe of our finger or key in the passcode and we would be able to enter our home. However, i still carry the keys around for the time being because it just feel so weird without them.It is also quite worrying that people may come and damage the lock so the next shopping list item would be a recordable door viewer and also other security devices for the house. SITEX16 is in November!

Sword Display Version 2

Introducing the version 2 of our sword display! Previously the whole case was black and the sword was not standing out as it blended with the black. Headed to Spotlight to get some bright red fabric and found this beautiful piece. Now the sword look great inside!

After Remote Control, Here comes Universal Phone Control

The new addition to the chain of home automation. Pardon the unclear poor quality of this photo. The tablet is not exactly HD quality, but it's real cheap, and we got it at half its original price from COMEX. Headed back home to link it up with our switches and we got ourselves a universal control to control all the switches. This is just the beginning, because soon, we will be adding our curtains control, fan control, aircon control, projector control, and tv control, all into this tablet of ours, and we will be able to control the whole house with just this tablet!

Technical Note: This setting up could also be done on our own mobile phones too. However there is a small restriction. To be able to control all the devices, one must be connected to the same wifi as the broadlink rm pro. This means you would not be able to control the electronics from outside of home unless..... you have a bridge in between, which in my case, we are using this tablet. How this would work at my house now is that my phone which is connected to 4G, would send the signal to my tablet which is connected to my home wifi, so that my switches are toggled. This would remove the restriction of having to be connected to our house wifi.

COMEX 2016

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See you there! I will be heading down to keep myself updated on all the new technology that is happening around us, and also to pick up some goodies if their price is a steal! Our house is still lacking a couple of items such as an electronic safe, robot vacuum cleaner, electronic door lock, smart doorbell, tablet for home automation and electronic scooters so I will be there to look for cheap deals!

Side note, the Xiaomi robot vacuum cleaner look really promising, and is due to be in stores (in China) on 9th Sep 16. At an affordable price of one-third from the reputable Roomba, this robot vacuum cleaner is definitely something to look out for.

Just sharing!

deL the builder, can he fixed it? Yes he can!

So, as mentioned in the previous post, we were having some issues with our tap being too close to the edge and its current is too low for comfort usage. The problem largely lies with the tap hole being drilled too far away from the sink, but given its short stout, we figure it would not make much difference either.

Nevertheless, we bought another one, at just a fraction of the designer tap cost. Again, practicality over aestheticality. Just a random purchase from Taobao, and have to say, we are rather amazed at the quality it packed. Definitely feel durable and lasting.

Just a side by side comparison on how much further away from the edge would the new tap be as compared to the old one.

We decided to take matters into our own hands to change it, and hubby actually did a great job at it! Although we faced some problems initially due to the lack of tools and properly-sized spanners, the tap was still fixed up nicely at the end of the day.

deL the builder... can he fixed it? deL the builder, yes he can!

Proud Display of my Sword

Finally got to display my sword proudly in the tv console. It took a long while sourcing for the mount because the previous one were the wall mount kind, and most of the mounts we could find were too high to display it nicely. Even this one is not perfect because we had to modify it slightly to support the sword, and it is not stable now so please do not attempt to remove it. Hands off! Eyes only! Would be adding some velvet to it too next time to make it look better!

Owning this sword has been one of my greatest moment. It was that moment that got me to where I am today, where I can talk about it on this blog from our own house. Am really glad for that, and very grateful to all the loves and supports that were with me all those whiles.

Remote Control, the Key to Achieving Laziness

Throwback from a previous post when i introduced the Livolo switches. Just a recap, the switches i have gotten are not just touch panels, but are remote controllable. There are two types of remotes, with one being more advanced and can toggle up to 10 buttons and scenes but it's more expensive and I have no need for that because I will be integrating all into my phone soon and so i got the other remote, that is shown above. However, one is not enough for all the switches in the house so.....

I got a small army of it. The reason why i got so many of it is so that my phone would be able to control all the switches uniquely. You may just jump to the next picture if this technical stuffs bores you but I will just briefly share it.

Firstly, to control every switches from my phone requires my Broadlink RM Pro to learn the radio frequency (RF) code. There are programs out there that can decrypt and create RF code, but I felt that it is too complicated for now, and so, it it easier to just learn the RF code. When pairing the remote with the switch, an unique RF code is created. By learning this particular RF code, the Broadlink RM Pro is able to broadcast the code as if the remote is sending it. This also mean that i am unable to unpair the remote-switch, because that would render the learnt code useless. By not being able to unpair, I am not able to use one remote to create multiple codes, hence the need for me to get multiple remotes to create multiple codes for all the switches in the house. Positively, each button of the remote is able to pair with multiple switches, allowing me to switch on the living room lights and the kitchen lights together. However, i would not be able to control them separately unless there is another remote that is paired separately. Hope this provides some understanding.

I also tagged each remote so that i know which switches are controlled by them. Ideally, they will all be kept away next time because our phones would be able to control everything. However, i have left some of them lying around at designated spots to provide the ease of switching on some switches that are not found within reach. I am still looking out for a tablet at cheap prices so that it can act as the bridge for my home automation so that we could even control our house switches when we are not at home. Till then!

Side note, black is a color that allows dust to be clearly visible. This means more cleaning effort because it looked dirty very fast. Perhaps that is why pure Scandinavian theme is low maintenance but not our modified-white-become-black Scandinavian theme. However, the worst ought to be Industrial theme.