Quality does Matter - Bedhead Lights

Previously we had bought our LED strips from Qoo10 in our attempt to save some money considering that the whole package cost at least one-fifth of what the local lighting shops are selling at. Most of them were working fine, except our bedhead ones which burns out every 30min. We assessed the fault to lie with the adaptor, and suspected that it could have overheated in that enclosed cabinet. Regardless, it was quite disruptive having to off-on the switch again only to have it burn out again in 30min. Thinking it was a faulty adaptor, i ordered another adaptor from Qoo10, and that burned out in like 5min. Zzz.

So i decided to head down to my local lighting store to get their expensive adaptor which look like this, and it definitely feels better than those laptop-charger-like adaptors from the Qoo10 seller. At almost three-times the price, it better be good. Turns out, it did work, and the burn out issues did not happen again.

Now we could enjoy some proper ambiance lights at our bedroom without having it blackout every now and then. Fortunately though, the other adaptors for my LED strips at the kitchen and living room had no issues so far, but if they do burn out, I know the appropriate solution now.

My ID had also made a fitting box for the adaptor as it could not fit inside the bedhead. Not the ideal situation i have to say, but this does make it look better than having the adaptor exposed in this shelves. Hopefully, it does not cause it to overheat further.

Moving Into our new home

1st August 2016. The day we officially moved into our new nest. No longer coming over here just to oversee the renovation or to fixed up our furniture. The time has come for us to finally live here. We got our FSM down to our house again to help us with the moving in ceremony, and they did some prayers and rituals through the ceremony. Her mother came too, and we were really thankful for her helping us do the preparation and some cooking while we were busy doing the rituals.

Our starting ceremony revolved around the phrase, 风生水起. We switched on the fans for the wind, plant the coins on the floor as seeds, and boiled the water to bring around the house to water the seeds and create growth. We then brought our rice bucket and filled it three-quarter full so that it symbolized that we would always have food to eat, yet space for more fortune to come to us. We unwrapped our door number sign on the gate as a symbol of officially opening the house. We cooked some tang yuan as a symbol of reunion. We brought soy sauce, vinegar, salt, sugar, tea leaves, oil as a symbol of having the necessities. We walked over burning charcoal at the door as a symbol of burning the bad past and having a new start at our house.

That pretty much summed it all up.

We cooked and had our first meal of the house that night. Simple, but delicious.

And to complete the moving in ceremony, we spent our first night there at our new home. No longer do we both need to squeeze into a single sized bed. We now have a larger queen sized one which was just comfortable for both of us since we ain't that big ourselves. Beside, hubby commented that this means more coziness because we have to be closer together when sleeping haha!

WE ARE OFFICIALLY WOODLANDERS!

Fine tuning the house

We really hate holes, largely because they are magnets for dust sand dirt. We sourced around for stickers that closely resemble our laminate colors and my wifey found it! Then we spend the night sticking over all the screw holes. It became so less obvious immediately. There are a variety of colors and patterns so it will be easy to find one that matches the laminate.

A glimpse of how my DB box is right now. Neatly wired up to my modem there. The yellow wire is actually very fragile so take extra caution not to bend it. Just bending it 90degree would result in a snap in the wire. The rest of the lan cable had been connected to the ports which are linked to all the CAT 6 wires that are hidden in the cement of the house. Really job well done by the BTO Home Networking team.

Our solar film contractor came down to demonstrate their films. Statistically wise, it has great results, and is looking forward to having all our windows covered with it. The reason why we wanted to get them is so that we can keep the heat out during the day. There were too many terrible days where we came home to a scorching oven because all the heat had been trapped in the house. The film would also keep out the harmful UV rays, keeping us safe, and also our furniture from discoloring.


Our horse painting is hung! This is really a remarkable workmanship of an expert and we hope we are able to chance upon him again next time. And the story on how we decided on this painting would always be etched in our minds. There were two beautiful horse paintings that we could not make a decision on which one we should get, so we flipped a coin and this was the result. Actually in the end, we requested for a combination, where we got the horse from one painting and grass from another painting to form this art for us.

Our projector is finally installed! The cause of the problem is that the contractor that installed it had used some cheap butterfly plugs which was broken during the installation, resulting in it behind unstable. Our ID decided to take it himself and used his better quality butterfly plugs. Now everything is good, and we could just flopped onto our sofa and enjoy a good movie night.

On this, just a shoutout here is that we really love how our ID is all about using only the best quality items be it wood, quartz or even the screws. He always ask us to throw away the screws that came with the item because they are likely to be bad quality one, and he just used his to install them. And this is why despite his higher quotation as compared to his competitors, we chose him because of the quality he deliver.

How colors make a world of a difference

Our LED light strips are up and running! Initially, we were skeptical about the whole cove light things, and had decided on not having it until our ID convinced us otherwise. Now with the lights installed, we had a great time playing with them. And it is true, the interchangeable lights does affect the whole mood of the house. Romantic, cool, bright, party, you want it, we make it happened. However we need to be considerate for our neighbors. The hubby have plans to change all the downlights to interchangeable lights and make them flash according to the music bass, but that would be too badass and neighbor-unfriendly. Perhaps when we have a private estate next time.

Movie nights are for sure at our house so we definitely should not blind each other whenever we need to grab or prepare something from the kitchen. So we got LED light strips all over to provide just sufficient light to get our snacks ready because we get back to our couch and unpause the movies.

Our sleeping crib is not spared too. Loved the atmosphere here, almost as if inviting us to quickly lay down on the soon-to-be-delivered bed for a good night sleep. This is it!

Carpentry VII - Platform Bed

Our platform bed is up! Love the choice of laminates here. When we first saw it, it looked like unfinished wood for our bedhead. We were almost wondering why did they put the barn frame up without finishing the laminate first. Then we realized that the effect is just like that, and gosh is it unfinishingly beautiful.

Probably the biggest reason for a platform bed is the additional storage space found within in. All around the bed could be opened up to store things which are not commonly used. Our ID had kindly included the hydraulics for us so that the pieces could stay open without us having to hold onto it. However, that caused it to feel like 100x heavier to lift up, and we may resort to disengaging the hydraulics to make it easier to open. Shall see how it goes next time.

Love the green so much! This platform was the largest contributor to us wanting to get the grilles. It was quite dangerous without the grilles as more than half of our body would be above the window. Well, things are much safer now.

And we have finally settled on the trimming for the platform in the living room. We did not want to risk another mismatch so we have went with the safe matte black, which look fitting with the black tv console and black frame of the shoe cabinet. This problem is solved! Much happier with this end result now.