Tag Archives: Renovation

the Feature Wall dilemma

03 Thursday May 2012

Posted by in Home, Renovation

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The advises I got with regards to where the feature wall should be is as below.

1) Should be the wall which is most solid (i.e. no windows / doors and etc)

2) The first wall you see when you walk into a room

3) The place where you wish to draw people’s attention to

Most of the rooms was quite easy to decide on our feature wall. (e.g. For the bedrooms, it is where we plan to put our headboard)

The tricky bit for us was the living room downstairs and the family room upstairs. Generally, most people place it on the wall where they hand their TV. However, for us, that wall is full of holes !!! (Big giant sliding doors)

Finally, I decided to make the wall along the staircase our feature wall. The reason is because I would like to create illusion of continuous flow from downstairs to upstairs. One Giant feature wall connecting 2 spaces !!! Not to mention, I bought some really nice funky wall lights which gives out interesting shadow that would not have stood out if the wall was white. (Fingers cross that it will work out as I imagine)

After deciding on the wall, it was the color next. Generally (in my opinion), it is either you opt for the harmonious effect or the dramatic results. 

As I recently pointed out to my BFF, I find out when it comes to my living space / home, I am actually not very adventurous. hehehe… Hence, I sticked with harmonious effects. So, No daring bold colors for me! (i.e. No neon pink / Chili Red and etc)

But, this doesn’t means that our feature wall ended up with boring tone. You can still get a pretty significant standout feature wall by choosing a darker shade of your overall color scheme. In our case, our house is based on Brown and Greyish scheme.

After some serious paint hunting, here is our feature wall. Painted in ICI Dulux Pentalite Easyclean – Smokey Glass (50YR 22/052). In another shot, it actually leans towards grey… how interesting, eh?

So far this is just the first coat and we are happy with the results. I can’t wait when the whole place finish painting…

Columns, Beams, Pipes !!!

20 Tuesday Dec 2011

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The hacking begins and so has my nightmare.

Even after checking up and down. Looking at the house original print and also asking the developer. We still ended up with a HUGE column where we least expected it. sighhh….

We had expected that there would be one column on this wall and it was the column 1. However, to our SURPRISE, there’s a column numero 2 !!! AND look at the SIZE of this column… sigh. ALL the previous pain-staking design, calculation and layout is throw to the bin. It’s back to square one again.

A word of advice for future house owner. If you are planning on doing alot of extension, it might be better to get your contractor to punch a whole thru the wall on specific places to acertain before you do your layout. 

Sob. sob. sob.

 

3 Phase vs. 1 Phase Electric Power (Home Reno)

07 Wednesday Dec 2011

Posted by in Renovation

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What a hassle! For some reason which I am very sure I know why… my developer only supplies us with a one phase electric power into the house. Shocking eh? 

For this day this age, most of the houses in Malaysia are built with three phase!!! sigh…but, my developer went with one phase. It only makes sense since most equipment are getting more and more electric dependant. Even we humans are getting more electric dependant. Yes – we knew from the start that it is one phase before we buy. But, we love the location (well – more me than hub actually) and also it fulfilled most of our many requirement for a home. So, we went ahead with the purchase.

Anyway, back to topic…   

I don’t have the right qualification to tell you the technical difference between one phase and three phase but if you Google it, there’s plentiful answers online. So, this post will not be dwelling on the technicality but more on my personal opinion.

For me, one major problem I worry I might face with one phase is the constant tripping of electric. As far as I know / experienced and told by friend, if you have the tenancy to switch on more than 3 air-condition at the same time with one refrigerator and the usage of washing machine / dryer, it might prompt the electric to trip. I am very sure one phase is pretty sufficient for a daily routine at home.

But, my biggest concern is when you are throwing a house party (which I foresee us doing quite a fair bit in the future).  I have actually witness the circuit breaker explode and flamed up during one of my friend’s house party. Not a good thing to happen. It’s pretty dangerous too. So, hubby and I were pretty firm about changing to 3 phase.

 

And so, I would like to share with you my experience with the procedure to apply change from 1 phase to 3 phase inMalaysia. (Thankfully we learned it is at least equipped with 3 phase wiring from the sub station to our house. It is only from the meter to the DB inside which is one phase. IF your house doesn’t have that, the cost is even higher as the TNB people will need to patch one cable from the sub station to your house!!!)

Find a certified electric contractor. You can just ask your contractor and they will know who to find. (When we call the Tenaga / TNB, the electric utility company inMalaysia, we told that they only deal with a certified electric contract for this kind of changes)

The contractor will submit your IC and a form to TNB to start the process. You will need to increase your deposit to TNB

Once approved, TNB will send people over to change the meter outside your house to a 3 phase meter.

Contractor will replace the cable running from the meter outside to the DB inside with a 3 phase cable and also make the require changes in the DB to be able to handle 3 phase.

We are now waiting for the application to be approved. I wonder how long it will take…