6 months on....

It's amazing how time flies.

6 months have passed and we've really settled down in a place we can finally call home. We've gone out and about to slowly furnish the apartment with bits and pieces of furniture and decorations, and we've finally installed our curtains after staying in for more than 5 months!

With the installation of my sound system, conveniently hidden under our kitchen island, as well as the purchase of some pretty funky flame-less tea lights, we can pretty much convert our living space into a nice bar and mixer area. (Amazingly, we managed to squeeze in 30 friends for our first house warming in X'mas!)

Philips Electric Tea Lights make for good ambiance throughout our home

I'm still looking out for some soft neon lights to turn this place into a "disco"

We really love the island

You must have heard (or thought) about that nagging question about how messy it is to cook in an open kitchen. Well believe it or not, we've done our fair share of baking, brewing, boiling, and yes, frying, without having oily floors and heavy smells.. The sunk-in cook area helps prevent too much oil from flying about, and the chimney hood pays for itself, sucking in EVERYTHING that steams up when we cook.

I love my WMF knives set!

The study is also complete after my D.I.Y efforts to hang my in-law's old picture on the partition board. I was freaking scared when I tried to put it up, fearing that the wall will collapse, but thanks to E-How.com, I managed to get the picture up without too much fuss. (Much to my delight)

The picture really completes the "MD's office concept"

We found a nice cupboard from IKEA to slot into the small depression. Perfect. 

Yeap, been working at home enough to really mess up the document tray now.

The curtain selection in the MBR also took a while... More than half a year. Anyway, we finally found a fabric to our liking, and after much procrastination, we finally got the guys over to install it along with the roller blinds in the other rooms. Installation was swift and smooth, with the workmen taking a mere 45mins to install everything!

Bed isn't exactly tidied to showroom standard but who cares

Our precious tots collection in the tall beside "table"

6 months since I've updated this blog, but I guess better late than never.... At least blogspot didn't delete the domain. Check out the rest of the pictures here.

This is my first post in a long time, and could be my last post in a long while. Our Chinese customary is coming up and boy, is it a lot of work to sort it all out. (Yeap, we've registered for more than 1 year now! Needed to save up) If you are a newly-wed or a newly engaged couple, let me wish you all the best and have a happy one. :)


Go out there and make some babies.

Settling down

Its been a couple of months of moving, settling down, and shopping for deco and stuff and I can only update the blog now. My wife and I have been pretty slow at things, painstakingly trying to find the perfect "whatever" to fit that "where-ever". I think the thing that took us the longest were the bedside tables.. We've yet to finish the bedroom really, and two months into moving in, there is only 1 plant at home, in my toilet.

Anyway, here's what the living room looks like now. We're pretty happy with the sofa, but that 40inch Samsung LED seems a little tooooo small for the wall! Fits our minimalist theme nonetheless. :P

The favourite panaromic shot.

The Pinnacle of Minimalist

Sofa & Cushions from Massimo, Coffee table from AIR, Rugs from Vosch Element

Well, I really spend too much time on my PS3 for my own good. Wife is nagging at me every night to go to sleep / stop hogging the TV so she can what her dramas.

Anyway, this is the kitchen. We've started cooking, and believe it or not, the smell does not seem to be a problem. the Turbo chimney hood that we acquired is good at what it does, meaning minimal fuss after cooking!

Yeap, its not just for show and we can actually cook here.

Well, that's it for now. I really need to head back to finish the boss in FF13. PS3 in Full HD is much to be awed about and the graphics make XBox and WII look like they come from the 1990s.

Handing Over...

Just a very quick post before I go to bed.

I finally found the pictures of the Master Bedroom and have put them up below. We've payed up 90% now, and just have the finally nitty gritty touching up to do. Again as I mentioned, the furniture will be rolling in bit by bit as over the next two weeks. Lets hope I manage to find a nice mattress.

MBR Toilet. Mirror makes it look much bigger.

MBR Wardrobe. I hope its enough for the two of us.

Off to bed, and let's hope I have time to post more pictures tomorrow.

Let there be light

As I mentioned a few posts earlier, we had bought lights from Marsling Lighting House. Good prices, good service, and they provided a decent range for your regular lighting needs. Yes they might be a bit far away though. Anyway, we didn't buy all our lights from them though, as one particular light, the centre piece of the living room, would be purchased from Million Lighting in Park Mall. (Google: Pirce from Artemide)

Anyway, all lights are up less the one in the living room which is due to arrive this week, essentially becoming the finishing touch of the house. Here are some pictures:

Entrance Lights

Living Room Lights

Kitchen Lights

Study and Guest Rooms

Common and MBR Toilets

Now, for some reason, I failed to locate the picture of my master bedroom. Will update this post once I manage to dig it out.
Having saved the best for the last, the almost completed picture of the common area lies below.

I finally got the panaromic shot right!

Well, that's all for now. There are still a lot of kinks to be ironed out, but hopefully we can see the fridge, TV, furniture roll out slowly bit by bit.

...We're just halfway there, keep on moving...

Carpentry and plumbing

Almost there to hand over...

The carpenters were here the entire of last week and this. The kitchen island was the first to be up, along with the MBR wardrobe, before the set-up of the tall unit of the kitchen and the little console for our SCV box and PS3.

Before the pictures come in, I must say that one has got to keep a close eye for the small little things. Fortunately for me, I had a wife with a strong eye for detail and was able to spot all the tiny little defects here and there. On the face, things looked good as the apartment took shape, but if you looked closely, there were problems with the skirtings, the laminates of the cupboards, the switches, the walls, the ceiling, the painting, everything had glitches here and there that amounted to quite a substantial bit. (of agony)

Future home owners beware, fix it, before your aunties get to them first.

And now for the pictures:

Building the island

MBR Wardrobe

More Carpentary Pics

The above are the pictures of the fabrication, and below is the end-product, well, almost.

My kitchen faucet!

One thing that we had to do, when bringing down the entire kitchen wall, was to somehow hide the yard that was connected to it. The tall unit was the ultimate solution.

Now you see it, Now you don't

Think this is enough for one post, will post the pictures of the lights after installation soon.

More pictures of the carpentry works can be found here.

Color the world

The last couple of weeks have been pretty packed with various activities for the two of us and I finally manage to find time to update our blog.

In the last two weeks, we have finished up the marble flooring, after a lot of pain and anguish (not kidding), and the lighting started, followed closely by the carpentary.

The painting work was done up reasonably fast, though there will be another round of touch up towards the end of the project. We had earlier chosen the colors over the weekend and have the color plan below. The effect of the paint job was quite siginificant in the sense that it completely changed the look and feel of the place (the old orange walls were gruesome to say the least).

By the time we found time to check out the paint job, parts of the lightings were already fixed up, and that really made the place look more spacious and clean. My favourite area then was probably the balcony. The light we chose matched the chengai decking perfectingly, and created a really cosy atmosphere at the area we planned to use for chilling out and relaxing after a long day's work.

Paint Plan

Painting Process

MBR Wall

Study Room

I like the look, and all that's left here is the Chengai sanding.

So far so good as far as the painting is concerned, though there is still much to worry about with regards to my flooring. Hopefully we can get that sorted out soon and I can then post pictures of that up here.

Will be posting carpentary pictures up soon, so watch this space.

Lights and furniture

The last couple of days have been spent on acquiring lights and the basic furnishings. As our sofa has already been bought from Massimo, the main furniture outstanding was the bed, then followed by our bar stools (so that we have a place to sit to eat dinner), and my work desk.

We went to a couple of places to check out lights, and without a doubt, the first place was Balestier Road. The downlights in the living room, MBR and kitchen were simple enough, and we decided on LED lights for the old dinning room (soon to be our little piano / art corner). The difficult part was the entrance lights for the apartment and the MBR. We found some nice stuff at one the shops in balestier, and got an intial quote, but didn''t sign up right away (mainly due to my missus' occupational hazard).

We went to Marsling Light House the next day. It was a little neighbourhood store, with two shophouses a few units away from each other, and it offered as much variety, with 10-25% cheaper in cost. Without mentioning the figures, we managed to get the entire package at around 85% of the quote given to us by the shop in Balestier. (In absolute terms, the savings were rather significant.)

Some of the lights that we bought

The next thing that we went in search for were the furniture. The bed, even till now, has been our biggest headache, as we have yet to see a bed frame that wow-ed us, and match the theme of the apartment. We have been to the furniture mall, IMM, and the most dissappointing was Sungei Kadut. (maybe we are just blind) We've managed to shortlist a couple of beds, one at scanteak, and another at furniture mall, after much effort, and should be making a decision on either one very soon.

The most difficult thing to find, wasn't the bed though, but the elusive bar stool. We have been looking for something comfortable but elegant, and have yet to find anything that suits the theme of the apartment. Lets just hope that we can eventually figure that one out, though it is not as urgent as placing the order on the bed.

Fingers-crossed, lets hope we can find everything on time.