Part One of the Long Awaited Photos

Here are the long awaited photos.

Our sign above our door post from ebay.
Our collection of black antique stuff.
View of our living room from the dining area.
Our coffee table from an antique shop.
Another view of our living and dining area.
Our shabby shelf with our B&O phone.
Our kitchen with the cooker in.
The wood and white trimmings in our kitchen.
The shelf in our kitchen to display stuff.
The dining area.
The common bathroom's console complete with knobs from anthropologie. Behind is the shelf filled with objects and books.
The bath hook with a hand towel.
Another view of our bathroom console with the toilet roll holder mounted on its side.

No More Saw Dust!

At last! We are done with carpentry. The kitchen is finally done. The cooker hood and the top hung cabinet doors are up. I think that it looks lovely. It's old meets new and the theme runs throughout the entire apartment.

Tomorrow, the cooker gets delivered, the painters paint the common vanity top, touch up the walls and the apartment gets cleaned. So much to get done in such a short span of time, then the madness of moving begins. One more day to moving and much packing to be done before then.

The completed kitchen.
The common bathroom with the shelf inserted to hide the sewage pipes.

Almost Done.

Plagued with diarrhea and nausea, I pulled myself out of bed to get down to our new home to inspect the place. I had been informed earlier that my contractor was bringing someone through to show off his handiwork to some potential clients. Just as I walked in, I noticed the older "out-of-town" couple. Think they are Indonesians. The couple asked me about how prompt they kept to the schedule, and how they were as contractors, etc. Then they made a strange comment," I love your place. Very young and fresh." Got me thinking, I thought I was trying to do the old fashioned european look not fresh, young and contemporary. The remark made me more ill than the stomach flu.

Our front door adorned with a door knocker and a letter slot.
Our door knocker mounted.
Our dummy paper slot.
The kitchen with the antique lamps mounted.
The common bathroom mirror.
A South African chair that I bought off an expat which was in her husband's family for years. The seat is woven with leather and the weaving technique is called reaming which is of one of the South African tribe. Love pieces with history. This was a steal at $35.

Time to countdown!

At last the marble top and the sink have been installed with a slight problem. I didn't ask for a back splash at all.  In fact I think the back splash for the marble top is a little unsightly. I heard it isn't hard to get the back splash out but as the wall screed is not very even, there might be a gap between the wall and the marble at some areas. I shall go take a look at it again then decide. 3 more days to moving!

The wardrobe doors have been given their coat of white paint and the front door has been painted black. Looks beautiful! Will take more pictures of the dressing area today.

The kitchen sink mounted under the marble top.
The counter top in the kitchen.
The newly painted wardrobe doors.
Our main door, freshly painted.

Saturday at the Block.

Ever wondered how much can be accomplished in one Saturday morning?  Being over ambitious, I was determined to complete the guest room for our night's stay at our new place. Since we were going to be there for the day, I had also arranged the fridge, washer, dryer, hood, curtains and ikea furniture to be delivered.  

Here are some pictures of our finished guest room. Very lovely, only missing a side console and some artwork.

Many thanks to Denise and my hubby dearest for helping to clean up. The place is so much cleaner and neater.

We can't wait to move in! 5 days more!

The completed guest room.
Our Hemnes wardrobe and laundry bin.
The single bed by the linen roman blinds. The material for the blinds were from ebay.
I've changed the knobs of the wardrobe to these by Anthropologie.
The curtain guy hanging the mustard yellow curtains. 
The dining chairs and rattan arm chairs in the living room.
Our finished master bathroom console.

Packing and Having a Dingwall Moment.

Lots of packing to be done. I have a tonne of things. Packing can be a nightmare especially when packing the fragile items. I am taking with me, my dad's set of china. Packing them is especially tedious as you want to be as careful as possible, so not to break anything.

Have you ever met a person and thought she's not everything you wished you had, nothing really wrong with her and yet you are not sure if you can love her? I just had that Dingwall moment. The carpenters installed my kitchen wrongly. The top hung cabinets were high gloss white as with the bifold doors and the bottom cabinets. It doesn't look ugly. In fact, the white makes it look pretty. I kept asking myself if I could bring myself to love them eventually. Then the contractors wouldn't need to change them and waste their hard work. Unfortunately for them, I just couldn't. It isn't what I wanted. The poor carpenters had to take down the doors of the cabinets and bring them back. What colour or pattern were they supposed to be? Next week, all will be revealed.

Boxes sitting in the living room.
Boxes in the store room.
The colour of the guest room.
The master bedroom walls painted.

Flooring, Almost Done

When we popped by after work, we realised that the flooring has almost been completed. The skirting has been put on but not nailed in as yet. Here are some of the photos. Enjoy!

The Oak Flooring.

The Birch Flooring.

Sand, Sealed and Varnished.

Today, Perswood came by early in the morning to start their 3 day job on our hard wood flooring. I managed to sneak a peek at them busy sanding late in the afternoon. 

After our dinner, we went back to put the new venetian blinds in the store. The living room floor has already been varnished. They looked absolutely divine! Unfortunately, I don't have any photos of the newly varnished floors.

The living room floor sanded, not varnished.
In the background, is one of the professionals with the sander.
One of the workers, busy sanding the area under the door.

Shelves and Tops.

We've been doing our own private countdown to the day we officially move in. It's terribly exciting. The kitchen's top hung drawers have their shelves fitted in. It looks so beautiful even without their doors. The solid tops for both the bathroom vanity consoles have arrived. I've requested for them to be fabricated without the usual back splash and skirt. Instead, I wanted them to look like a table tops, nothing too special. I can't wait for the painter to paint the common bathroom's console. 

Tomorrow the parquet flooring is going to be sanded, skirted and matt varnished. As the varnish takes 3 days to surface dry and a week to totally dry, we can't step into our new home till friday morning. The wait is killing. 

9 more days to go to our official move.

The kitchen's top hung cabinets without doors.
The solid top mounted on the vanity console.
Side view of the vanity console, waiting to be painted.
The solid top on the master bathroom's console.
Side view of the vanity console.

White Washed.

As we inch closer to the end, the painters decided to come in to white wash the ceilings and the new doors on a sunday. We got there early to unlock the door for them to start. As usual, they were late. There must be something in the contractors' handbook about never starting work on time. It is as though it were built into their systems to be tardy. Anyway after waiting for 45mins, we decided to go to Tanglin Halt to have YC's favourite vegetarian bee hoon.  When we got back after brunch, the missing workers have started to work on the doors.

As you can see in the pictures, they looked great. It was worth the wait.

The kitchen door.
The master bedroom's and guest room's door.
The common bathroom's door taken from the inside.

The Importance of Details.

As we draw near to the end of the renovations, it makes me a tat sad and excited. Sad that all these would be soon over ( I love the whole process of renovating, would love it better if I could build a house from scratch) and excited because a new chapter of our lives is about to begin. 

Over the last two days, the carpenter, shower screen professionals, electricians and the door professionals were around to put up the custom made (shower and room) doors, install the kitchen (cabinets and electrical outlets) and laminate the remaining parts of the wardrobe. When we went over to take a peek, we were amazed. Even though the doors were incomplete (as in not painted), they looked great with the glass door knobs which I bought from Anthropologie, online. 

Can't wait to move in but first, there is a lot of packing to be done and we have only packed 9 boxes. There is so much more to go.
The half dusty cantilever shelf in the kitchen for display items, cookbooks or a radio.
The locking mechanism for our master bathroom and kitchen's bi-fold doors.
The push-pull bar for the shower screen in the master bathroom.
The unpainted doors flanking the corridor. They looks great.
The guest room's door taken from the inside of the room.
A side profile of our glass globe door knob. The bedrooms have the same door knobs.