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.

Few more Minor Touch Ups

Ever since we officially moved into the house, we have brought many electronics into our home. Due to their high values, we insisted in replacing the number lock to our house with a legit padlock. This way, it is more secure than a number lock, which could be broken into in less than a minute, and it also restrict the contractors from entering without the supervision of my interior designer. However, such security resulted in a standstill in our renovation. It has been almost a month of no updates, and it is slowly draining our patience out. The only thing that is making us hold on is that we constantly find new things to get our contractors to touch up or install, so it all works well somehow.

Just a rough list of what there are to do....

Wild hairline cracks appeared at our entrance. It is not obvious but upon a closer inspection, it becomes hard to ignore. A repaint job would have to be done.

Previously had plastered the ceiling, but because it was so similar to the ceiling paint, we missed it out and only found out several days later. Touch up paint would be required.

Several grout lines has some holes on closer inspection. Although this was probably there since the beginning of time, our designer said it could be fixed up and he can take it up so we are looking forward to it

We had requested for this netting thing to be changed to an acrylic board so as to prevent cobwebs and dusts from collecting, and also it look nicer with the toilet ambiance lights. Still waiting for the acrylic boards to be delivered and put up.

Had installed LED lights at our bedhead, and the drivers are placed in the display cabinet at the side. Had requested for a cover to be made to hide the drivers, and is still waiting for it. There were also some problem with our lights, where it kept losing power after a while, and had requested for our electrician to take a look at it.

After trying our designer tap for a while, we really dislike it and intend to change it. The water power is too low, and the water stream is too close to the edge. Kind of an installation issue when they drilled the holes on the quartz top, but a change in the tap should fix the issue.

Where the walls meet the floors will often have gaps like this. It is unavoidable, but that is the reason why trimming are always used around the house. Here shows an area of the wall where the trimming was forgotten and the hole was visible. Now we need it to be covered up.

Another area where there the trimming is missing, but because this area is quite small, we would be covering it with the brown sealant to cover the gap.

And lastly, because we had chose for such a bold solid color, the painters need to apply many layers of coat to achieve the desired result. However, this also mean that the paint is prone to being chipped off whenever we accidentally knock something against it. Here is yet another hole that require to be painted over again due to our carelessness. Being extremely careful is the price to pay for having our walls painted with such bold colors.

Would there be more discoveries after another round of inspection?

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!

Frosted Glass - Now you see me not

Would like to present to you our frosted film glass door. This was not a frosted glass door because our ID highlighted that the glass door would have water stains eventually, and it would be costly and troublesome to change one. Instead, this way enable us to change just the film itself when we reckon it's time. For comparison, a glass door cost about $800 while the film cost $4psf, adding up to slightly less than $100. Definitely a good point to note if intending to stay long at the house.

The glass door would definitely have a gap between the door and the frame to cater for the turning radius. Depending on the position of the sanitary fitting or shower area inside, this gap may be more exposing than you wanted. Hence, a rubber seal is recommended to block out any prying eyes. However, do note that there are different type of seals and ensure you get the right fitting one. The original one we had were too big, and it caused the door to vibrate vigorously when opening. Fearing that it cause unnecessary stress on the glass door, and it's just waiting for a breaking accident to happen, we found another one which fitted much better.

And here's a fun fact which we did not noticed prior to the renovation. The door handles and lock on glass door are usually removable using the allen keys. There are actually alot of things that requires the allen keys, such as our taobao chairs and tables. In the beginning, we thought that the frosted film would have to be cut to fit around the handles and lock. #justsharing

Got a cheap doorbell for our house too because there were too many contractors that tried to ring the unarmed doorbell and ended up having to call me to open the door, despite me being in the house. We are going to get another more sophisticated doorbell soon so this is just a temporary one for the time being. Ding Dong!

Our store room racks has arrived too. At 11pm. Our appointment was between 6pm and 9pm, but there were no news from them until we had to call them at 9pm asking for their whereabouts. They said they were caught in a jam earlier so things slided but they would arrived at 10pm, which they did not, nor did they inform us again, and we have to ring them up again. This time, telling us that the previous client had a messy store room and hence delayed. It was only at 11pm, FIVE hours after my appointment timing, which they arrived.

In short, their price was not exactly a steal, nor their quality something to raved about, nor did they compensate any kind for being 2 hours late, nor did they took the initiative to inform us about being late, nor were they professional in time keeping, nor did they keep their words and therefore, i would not recommend this S**** R****Z company.

Keeping the heat out while starting the fire within

We got ShieldShade International to do our solar films for the house. It was largely fate that we chanced upon them because when we were finding other contractors, we saw their leaflets at our house door, and with a very competitive price on it. A rough gauge on solar film is that 3M, a household brand, cost about $8psf. We got ours at half its price, but the catch is that the warranty does not last as long. In the previous post, they did use their gadgets to measure the heat and we were impressed and so, we decided to give this a shot.

The three installers were hard at work, cleaning the windows and getting the film up. Did a quick check after they are done and we thought they did a great job. The main reason we decided to get the solar film is that we do not want to come back to an oven-like house at the end of the day. Plus this keeps out the dangerous UV rays that are harmful to us and our furniture so it has multiple uses. Let's hope the next time we go up to the house we could feel the difference. Stay tuned!

Could you spot which window has the film up and which has not? We chose the 50% VLT because we did not want it to be that dark. Again the purpose is to keep the heat and UV rays out, not so much about blocking the views and making the room dark. We have our blackout curtains for that. It does dim down a little, but overall, it was still decently bright when the curtains are drawn. Regardless, the windows are likely to be opened when we are at home too anyway.

At our service yard, we decided to paste the film on the inner door/windows because we will be air-drying our clothes in the service yard and we wanted the heat to come in there instead of blocking them out. But the heat would be blocked by the inner door/windows so that they do not enter our house. This was the plan because we did not want to hang the clothes outside as it is cumbersome to keep the clothes one by one when it starts to rain (as you cannot keep the clothes by taking the whole rod in so you have to un-kiap one by one), and that it is still very dusty outside due to the many renovations taking place at our new BTOs.

Additionally, we got the darker one with a 10% VLT as we realized we forgot to take this windows into consideration for our projector. At the current situation, the sunlight from the service yard would cause half of my projector screen to be flushed out as it is too bright. Hence, we went with 10% VLT to keep the light out. We did not go with black out black because we felt it may be too dark and not look nice too. Turns out the 10% VLT is just sufficient for our projector.

We also done the frosted film for our toilet glass door but we forgot to take the picture!

Our queen sized mattress is delivered! It looked so small, but we guess it would be perfect for the two of us since we are considered small-sized. Beside, all the more reason for us to sleep closer to one another uh!

The Citygas installer also came up today to attached our gas pipe to our hob. We decided to go with the gas pipe so that we would never have to worry about running out of gas, or that we have to cater a space for that bulky gas tank. We did not go electrical too because gas is cheaper than electricity, and that we would save a lot more in the long run. The fires were shockingly strong and huge, and it made our current house fire feels so inadequate. Let's hope we can get used to this strength of fire and not injure ourselves in the future!

After the installation, we went to check the gas meter outside and we were shocked why there were bubbly soapy liquid at the pipe. We were about to report it to Citygas worrying that there are something wrong but it turns out (as indicated in the manual for the gas hob) that one should use soap liquid at the joint to test for gas leak. So apparently our installer had did just that and tested for gas leak, but we felt that it would be much better if it were cleaned up instead of left there. Ohwell.

We will be moving in soon! Real soon!

Open the curtains, Close the holes

Forgot to take the before shot before applying the silicon. During the renovation, there were many skirting that were removed due to wall hackings or installation of carpentries. Afterwards, they are placed back but due to the unevenness of the walls or floor, there may be gaps here and there. Did you know: the floors and walls are not as straight as you think. I have always thought they should be. Anyway, decided to take matters into my own hands by getting the silicon and applying myself. This was the last one I did, which was also the most perfect one after all the practices. Look good right?

Used this instead of the silicon gun because there weren't many gaps, but I still have to close them up because I couldn't stand the dusts that are accumulating inside them. However after applying, my ID told me that this is the cheaper one because it does not have some anti-algae capabilities. Ain't they all the same? Let's hope everything remains good. Else we can always pluck them out and change a new set.

We did our thorough clean up today, and hanged up all the curtains too. The track they provided were quite stiff for us to pull the curtains, but let's hope it loosen up after some uses. As of writing, it seemed to be better, but it could just be my mind.

The living room curtains are up too. There is no problem with this track because it is using the Dooya automated track! Have been enjoying opening the curtain automatically when we stepped into our house, and closing them automatically before leaving. Very satisfied with this investment. Can't wait for it to automatically close when our projector are switched on for our movie nights!

Livolo instruction manual

The Livolo switches had been awesome so far, and we would still recommend it. It looked so classy and futuristic and in our opinion, much better than the stock switches. However, we had an experience and would like to share it so that you would not get the same panic as us.

We chanced upon this instruction after buying the Livolo switches. This was not found on the site which we bought, but since it was an instruction, we told our electrician about it. However, he did not turn off the power supply when installing it so we did not think too much on this. Anyway, so he screwed it in, and we attached the cover and there arise the problem. After we tap the button (to test it), it got jammed, as if someone is holding onto the button. We were like, oh no defect piece?! We tried to detach and attach again, and even tried our spare piece, and all had the same problem! We even tried to put some cupboard inside, thinking perhaps the sensor board was too close to the touchpad, causing the problem. But nope. problem persisted.

Luckily, it turns out, after attaching the cover, we just have to wait for about 2 minutes for it to 'settle down' and the switches can be toggled without any issues. It was such a relief when we finally discovered that, and were grateful that all our switches were in great condition and none were defective. I guess the 2 minutes in the instructions does mean something afterall.

An open concept within a close concept

Our walk in wardrobe is complete, with the addition of the final piece, the glass door. We had decided on having the doors because an open concept wardrobe would attract too much dusts, conflicting with our desire to have a low maintenance house. However, we still want to open the wardrobe fully in order for both of us to access all the clothes at the same time and so we came up with this idea. We requested for the track to be extended all the way to the 'entrance' so that we would be able to push both doors 'out' of the wardrobe, giving us full access to our clothes. One thing we hated about sliding door last time had always been the fact that only half the wardrobe could be opened at one time. Another alternative was the new-trend bi-fold doors, but that was out of our budget.

Now that the our wardrobe is complete, here are some things to note for future projects.

1. Size of the glass - the ideal maximum size of the glass door is dependent on how big your lift door can fit in. One can always get a larger glass door and request for it to be brought up through the stairs or via a pulley system, but the cost would increase tremendously. The service fees are usually charged per floor, ranging from about $50 to $100 each. Staying on the 20th floor would require $1-2k extras!

2. Support of the glass - Beyond a certain size, the door frame requires a support beam in the middle for the glass to be stably held on by the door frame. I believe the size would depend on the type of materials for the frame, the type of tracks, and the type of usage it is expected to go through, so it would differ between each one. This is nothing too disturbing, but just a friendly reminder to anticipate it because usually the 3D concept drawing will not include it so that it look seamlessly beautiful, yet deceiving.

3. Hanging compartment, shelves and drawers. This are the 3 types of compartments, and the only 3. One could always start by taking a look at the current wardrobe and see what's lacking, and do a rough plan to let your ID know. Afterall, only we ourselves would know what we need most. After our wardrobe is completed, we may have a bit too much drawers and too little hanging compartment ops!

4. Take note of your height and how high you can reach. Even if your ID tells you the height would be the default one, it would be wiser to get the measurement so that it would not be ambiguous. Ours was at 210cm in the beginning, a far reach for both of us. We had to request for it to be lowered to 180cm, which was similar to all our current house wardrobe which we thought was the standard template.

Originally the hubby's drawers were on the right side, but we soon found out it would be blocked by the door when we pushed it to the entrance, a mistake we overlooked. This is because the entrance is slightly smaller than the door itself. Luckily our ID agreed to help us rectify this issue by changing some of the parts of the wardrobe to bring it to the left side.

There were a couple more issues with the walk in wardrobe, and in summary, I feel all of them could have been avoided if we had the blueprint of the wardrobe to look through before the assembly of the carpentries. I could not stress more on the importance of the blueprint, and I hope that in the future, we could avoid the painful mistakes we gone through this time. Please remember to demand for the blueprint if it was not provided.

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!

Livolo Switches. Important Note.

Had a little issue recently when installing the Livolo switches. The original carpentry actually had a square cut out, but because we change the position of the switches on the last minute, they had to cut a new hole, but the hole was round. This would not have been an issue if it was an ordinary switch, but because it is a Livolo, the round one would not fit and would need to cut a bit of the edge to make it fit. A small issue nonetheless, and solved easily. Ideally it would be that we do not change the position last minute, but such problems would not be noticed until it is a problem.

Just to share some photos of the Livolo switches, together with the default house type on the right. They are the same size so one could always easily replace the default switches with the Livolo. They fit in the default switch boxes too so no worries about that. Don't the Livolo look so much classier? It is also not that expensive to order, and it is a great addition to my home automation system.

However, the behind section is slightly different, where the Livolo is slightly larger. It would still fit in the switch box, but things like an ad-hoc round cut into the carpentry would not fit this.

Another view of the back. Noticed the difference. The default one would have easily fitted into the round cutting. However this really does not calls for any concern if the holes were planned during the carpentry phase. Like I said, if they were planned, it would be a square hole instead of a round one.

The Livolo I got are Radio Frequency enabled, meaning to say they can be remotely control by a remote control like the one on the right, or a more advanced one that look like a TV remote. However, I have a bigger plan to incorporate all my switches into my home automation system so a small one would suffice in the meantime. A learning pointer on this which I unfortunately overlooked is that they are RF controlled and not IR controlled, meaning they do not require line-of-sight remote control. I had designed the electrical plan to have them placed within a line-of-sight, which may cause some other inconvenience instead. A hefty lesson because should I have found out earlier, could have significant changes to my electrical plans, reducing it quite a bit.

Would I recommend this? Yes. Definitely yes.