Future: Kids Room. Present: Yoga Room

Finally found a breather to come back to post about our house. Preparation for school projects and exams has taken a toll on our leisure time, but we are back!

Having a five-room unit means we have more space than what's really required for us. Actually, there isn't much difference between a four-unit and five-unit beside a larger living room, but we wanted the huge living room so regardless we still have one spare room. That room was meant to be kept vacant for the future kid but it would be a waste not to use it considering we are paying taxes for it. So we have used it as our yoga room for the time being.

Busy fixing up the TV console from IKEA. We ain't going to put a television here though, but it was a right sized right priced table for us to put our yoga stuffs so we bought it immediately.

How the table/tv console looks like. Here is where we will place our phones, mats, towels, drinks, and other miscellaneous things during our workout. It does serve its purpose.

What better way to tell the time in a yoga room than from a yoga clock made with yoga poses? Painstakingly placed them up where we have to ensure that the layout is accurate like a clock.

Introducing the Mandala Tapestry. It was a word (or two words to be exact) that I have just learnt today. This is the dedicated corner where we will be doing our photo taking at with interchangeable background.

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!

Settling down, Cooking and Cleaning

This above was not meant to showcase the things we bought, but they were just placed there because we were cleaning and mopping the tiled floor.Now that most of the renovation works are out of the way, and we are just a couple of steps away from taking over the house completely from our interior designer, we would probably start to talk more about living there and also share more on reviews and feedback on the things we have bought, as well as how we felt with our renovation and carpentry after really using it. Too often, there are many scenarios where we had been blinded with looking good aesthetically, that we forgo the practicality and functionality. Such issues would likely only rise itself after really using them for a while. *cough* dyson fan.

Although our renovation is reaching the end, the things we can learn from is just the beginning.

Just flaunting our purchases. We bought this vacuum cleaner at only $29. It was one of those super sale items in Gain City Expo Sales. Seriously, one of the best places to buy anything, be it food or electronics or beddings or sportswear is to go Expo. The sales are usually competitively cheaper than any sales elsewhere, and one could always get a free gift or additional discount along the way, which is absent in their neighborhood branches. Ignore the BHG member's only sale or Tefal clearance sales. Expo beats them all. Of course, one must do their homework to see what sales are happening there and when, but it is definitely worth the trip down.

Anyway, the vacuum cleaner isn't fantastic. The cord is only 4m long which means we have to plug in and out in every room, and it is quite a hassle. But this is just a temporary thing before we invest in a robot cleaner. Definitely need one to clean automatically, because otherwise we are always spending the whole weekend cleaning the house. By letting some errands run automatically, we could get twice the work done in half the time.

The blue chair? Nothing to flaunt about just that it looked nice with our door mural haha! Got it from IKEA during their yearly sales, and it is just for us to have a seat while wearing our shoes.

Renovation wise, we finally gotten our nice looking ledge for the soap bottles. We did not want the common steel racks which looked ugly in hubby's opinion, and we could not do a long ledge below the shower because of the pipes nor could we do it at the back due to our swinging glass door, so this is the best it could get. We thought this look great though, much better than those off-the-rack steel racks. Let's hope this holds well. Loved it!

 Another super deal at Gain City Expo Fair. Got this rice cooker at just $19! We were searching around for rice cooker, and were shock to see it priced at about $60 for a phillips brand to exorbitant price of $200 for some renowned brands. We have not heard of this brand before, but it seem decent, and we have gotten cooked rice nicely so far. so thumbs up!

Bought our plates and bowls from IKEA. We had always eyed their dining sets since long ago because they seemed to be very photo-worthy. They were priced competitively too so went for it straight away. Couple of other IKEA things there too.

And finally, this is cooking our dinner in progress. We are still very inexperienced in this area, and to make matter worse, they are all new pots and pans and stove that we had not used before. It is gonna take us a while before we could whipped up some great dishes, but for now, we are going to keep it simple and light. Till next time!

Adding the fine details now

At this point of time, the main bulk of our renovation had reached the end. The things remaining now are the touch-ups, minor corrections and a few missing elements. The clean-up of the house had also been completed, and although not exactly dust-free clean, but it's in a bearable condition. A few other stuffs happened today too.

Our ID came up to help us drill holes to install some towel racks and the IKEA mirror cabinet. It was hard work because the drill was the portable kind and not very powerful, but appreciate his kind gestures to help us get them up. The mirror is looking great, although Wifey commented that it was thicker than imagined, and expressed concerns that people may hit their heads when using the tap. Perhaps we will put a "Caution your head" sign on the mirror if there were to be anyone who hit their head on it.

Our ViewQwest was connected today. Say hello to WIFI! This is the heart of our home automation system, as well as the core to our projector streaming videos and tv channels. Hence we invested in ViewQwest, as well as the monster ASUS RT-AC88U. We had always admire ViewQwest for it's say no to traffic-shaping/throttling unlike the other competitors, and its excellent customer services, again unlike the other competitors. Furthermore, when we saw that their price were not that far apart from the rest during the IT Show, we signed with them straight away. The above speed and download/upload rate were with my Dell XPS using Wifi 5GHz on ViewQwest 1Gbps plan. Pretty impressive I must say.

Our blinds are up. We got a light colored one for the study room so that it would still be bright enough for any works at the table, yet keeping the glare out.

We gotten the darker shade one for the bedroom 3 just in case there are any guests that wants to sleep during the day.

The curtain contractor helped us to put up the Dooya track too. Really thankful because we did not have the equipment to drill all the support onto the ceiling. We plugged in the Dooya motors too, and our motorized curtain track is complete. Cant wait to put up the curtains and play with it after we did a thorough cleaning.

We had also pulled the wires for the projector to the mount in anticipation of installing the projector. However, there were some problem with the support structure that is holding this mount, and it was shaky when we fitted the projector. Hopefully our ID can solve this.

It would be terrible if the projector were to fall off halfway, and even disastrous if the entire false ceiling were to crumble and collapse due to the strain of the projector. In defence for our ID, he had actually planned for a support block in the false ceiling for my projector, but during the installation of the mount, we realized it was too near to the wall and we decided to pull it back to have a larger screen size. However, the new place does not have any support block within, but was assessed to not be a problem because my projector is relatively light at 1.5kg only.

Despite that assurance, we still feel a bit uncomfortable because there are 5 holes in close proximity which are stress points and could give way anytime. Let's see what our ID can do when he comes and take a look.