Lowyat.NET: Latest topics by bhtan

Modern/contemporary picture frame

bhtan — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 10:48:03 +0800

It has been a while for me to get any customized picture frame. I am looking for a good quality custome picture frames for some of the stuff that I didn't know I have until I cleared my store room recently! These are posters and handmade small rug that are odd sizes that I may not be able to fit a standard frame size.

Post renovation marble/tiles polishing

bhtan — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 09:59:44 +0800

My renovation is almpst completed. Now I am looking for service to clean/polish up my existing marble floor plus the new tiles added. Although I could also use the service for general cleaning but my priority is to get the floor to be shinny clean. I got a referral but the service provider is taking too long to even quote me that I am having second thought of engaging them.

I searched this forum but can't find anything other than one on Roslan's cleaning service but I am not sure if he does the floor polishing.

Feng shui anyone?

bhtan — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 17:27:17 +0800

I saw a number of threads where the reno work includes input from so called Feng Shui master. The recent one is on removing the tree in front of the house as tree/lamp post is considered bad for feng shui. Personally, I dont believe in a lot of the Feng Shui stuff other than those that are more sensible such as dont buy a house that is at the road junction as I do not want to see some car in my living room!

As for the tree thing, i had a tree shared by myself and my neighbor. I thought was OK but I was surprised one day when I returned from work, the tree was gone and I was not informed previously! Interesting thing is my neighbor is Malay

Renovation lessons learnt

bhtan — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 17:01:28 +0800

In view of my renovation almost completed, I am compiling a list of lessons learnt and hopefully it is useful for people considering doing this. I will add more if I think of more. Sorry if it is a long read

1. Most important thing is to do proper planning. By this I dont mean high level planning and budgeting. I did my high level planning and budgeting and while it is still correct as per the ORIGINAL scope, my final cost was 50% more due to scope creep - mostly things that I didn't think of. Examples, when I did my kitchen extension, I changed the swtiches, add the windows. But after changing the switches, I need to change the rest on the 1st floor as they are not the same. Then the same logic applies and I ended up changing all my house's switches and windows! Another example, I didn't plan for garbage disposal unit and though is good to have and now I have it. So when you do your planning, it has to be as detailed as possible. Do all the home work and research before embarking on the journey. You can never be over-planned in this case.

It is also a good idea to understand your lifestyle/pattern before you embark on renovation. By this I mean really understand and even charting your daily activities at home and this will help you to align your renovation work/budget to support your daily activities. As an example, I found that we are spending a lot more time in the living and kitchen and lesser in the bedrooms. So my Phase 1 is fixing up the kitchen and some part of the living. We also like to chit chat in the kitchen and thus my dry kitchen is now one of the largest areas in the house and with plenty of window and natural lights.

2. Get sub con that are referred by friends/colleagues or at least those that you have actually seen their work. I got my subcon from my friend's referral. He is not cheap but service not bad. At least I dont have the nightmare experience with him. All the things that are not well done he is willing to fix it for me: exmaples: misaligned switches, noisy fan, wrong light connections, etc.

3. Get quotations with itemized and detailed breakdown from the subcon. Again, do your research - for example, tiles work how much per sq ft, window how much per sq ft, etc. Then you are in better position to negotiate. It is also better to get all the quotes upfront as variation orders may kill you as the subcon has got you locked in and you are in weaker position to negotiate AFTER the work begins.

4. Visit as many forums as possible as new ideas can come from reading some of the topics in the discussions. For example, I learnt about Philips Ledino series and Blanco sinks from one of the forums and I ended up with them! Another avenue is to visit your friend's home to get some ideas too.

5 There is no subsitute to be diligently checking the progress of the work DAILY. This is to ensure defects can be fixed and not become permanent.

6. Do not go cheap but do not go overboard. I think I erred on the later but either is also not good. So the trick is to find compromise that you can live with. In my case, most of my appliances (hob, hood, fridge, oven, fans, sliding doors, etc.) and cabinet/countertop and tiles are expensive. Finally, just to keep my budget at sanity level, my toilet has to "compromise" to Johnson Swiss rather than high end stuff. Another example: some people here at the forum seem to get very cheap ceramic tiles instead of porcelain tiles. To me, if you can afford it, the porcelain tiles are much more maintenance free and tougher and worth the money and the cost (i.e. the workmanship) to put the same dimension tiles are the same anyway.

7. Take the opportunity during the renovation to do some house keeping. I threw away a lot of junks that I was lazy to throw away but now with the big tong sampah, I managed to clear up a lot of useless junk from my house! My relatively big store room which was competely full is now half empty.

8. Limit variation orders to as few as possible. My experience with my subcon is that every variation order's margin is very high. Again, identify those upfront and negotiate before the work starts.

9. Let your subcon know that you are a fussy a$$hole. I do not compromise on quality and set my expectations upfront. All the substandard work will need to be re-worked by the subcon. On my part, I am also very specific in my instructions. For example, I spent one whole night just to draw up all my switch locations and layout - with illustration diagrams and labeling down to which switch control what. All my lights and switches have to be aligned, etc.

10. Some items such as grile may not seem like important thing but it greatly affects the overall look of your house. I may have made the not so good choice of opting for good safety but ended the house look like a jail Important thing is, if possible, see the actual products before you install it. This is not always possible. For example, I chose green glass for all my windows. I wasn't sure if brown, clear or even black would be better but I gambled on it (especially the expensive big sliding doors) and it looks great.

11. Anticipate that your renovation timeline will delay. Even using the best practice in project management may not help here. Mine was supposed to be a quick 1 month job but it is more than 2 months. Of course my subcon says it is due to scope changes but it is also due to other factors including the subcon resources, managing the interdependencies, work quality/rework, etc. If your subcon is of decent quality, he may have a number of projects running. So he will shuffle resources around. In a number of instances, he reallocate the resources on mine to work on others and I wasn't happy about it and have to tell him off.

12. Be more considerate to your neighbors. Make sure that your subcon do not work on Sundays or public holidays. Inform your subcon to be careful with debris and painting such that it would not drop into the neighbors area. I had the bad experience with my neighbor's subcon dripped the paint on my car in the driveway and denied doing this and had a not very pleasant argument with my new neighbor (then). It just wasn't a good start and when you renovate, be mindful of this. Even stuff like your contractor's truck/lorries, you may also want to make sure that they are not blocking the neighbor's gate entrance.

13. Unless your subcon is very very good chances are after the renovation you will know more stuff in some areas than he does. What's my point here? I am talking about do not trust all the suggestions/recommendations from your subcon. Again, it is important to know exactly what you want or do the proper research rather than relying on your subcon. I probably made the mistake of listening to my subcon on the grile. In addition, most subcon may only have knowledge on the common stuff. For some unusual or unique requests, he would have no idea. For example, my subcon does not know when is a stained glass when I told him that I would want to do my glass door using stained glass!

14. Do your renovation work within your financial mean. My take is do not borrow money just to get everything nice but suffers the financial stress after you move in. The wet work/structural work probably worth doing it once and for all. The others can be prioritized accordingly. In my case, some time I wondered if I need to spend that much on basically a set of new kitchen plus minor upgrades to the house. It is a matter of opportunity cost that i am wondering ...

15. Pay attention to the details and make sure that the subcon do a good job rectifying some of the minor defects. Examples of these are: position of the lights/fans (may be off); tiles (misaligned); doors, slanting walls, etc. In my case, one of the fans (baby) fan was not centered and interferes with the downlight. I also had problem with a couple of the doors where the doors and frame were not aligned. All have to be reworked.

16. Don't trust everything that your contractor is telling you. By nature, the contractor will go for high margin but easy to do work. Those that are harder to do they will discourage you from doing it. Sometimes, it is good to validate some of their claims especially on the things that you like to do but your contractor is telling you too difficult or not possible to do.

17. Pay attention to the fine details. For example, ensure that the new doors are completely aligned with the door frame. I have one which was not installed with even gaps around the door. The vendor has to adjust it to make it right. My other aluminum glass door came 1" short so the vendor just did the short cut and put another 1" frame above the door. Of course, i rejected the door but if you dont spot it, you may not be able to get them to do later. Another example: my cabinet has to be redone partially because the Hitachi Inverter fridge that i bought has large door and requires at least 5cm each side for it to be opened. This was omitted in the original design and the cabinet maker ended up has to adjust the cabinet to fit the fridge!

18. Expect bad service and bad workmanship along the way. This is one of the reasons why most of the renovation project is delayed (the other being scope change). Despite my specific instructions and order, I have Fujioh installed the wrong color hood in my wet kichen; I have many of my new doors not installed properly; I have Sig Kitchen under estimated my fridge size; I have the electical guy fixed the baby fan at the wrong place and placement was not centered. After adjusted the placement, the fan made lot of noises. After fixing the noise problem, the plaster ceiling guy reintroduced the noise! You may have to keep your temper in check in some of these instances. While I said i dont tolerate this but sometimes I just wonder if I will ever to see good customer service and doing first time right attitude in my life time here in Malaysia. This is sad.

19. The journey can be very stressful: financially and personally (with spouse, etc.). It is stressful to your spouse because the renovation will be the subject of discussion many times over the period and one will be tired of it! (e.g. what color of the tiles, window glass, paint, etc; should I replace the fridge?; why do i need to get that Fujioh expensive hood? etc etc). It is stressful when you have to sign the big checks and see your bank account balance drops like rocks. It is stressful when your subcon pushes you to rush to get the tiles/switches/lights. I have to go to the electrical shops 3 or 4 times just to finally (and hopefull) completed the switches. I stepped on cat poo 3 or 4 times during the period! Just keep a positive mind set. I did that every now and then imagine the final state of my renovation and the anticipation that it will become real soon always put a smiles on my face.

Share some renovation stories

bhtan — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 16:50:10 +0800

I am about to finish my renovation so i want to share a funny/irritating (depend on your perspective) about my experience. My neighborhood has quite a number of cats. So during renovation, they seem to like to hang around because of the availability of sand. So far I have stepped on their poo at least 3 times and each time it stunk like hell especially when I left the house into my car! Not only that, during renovation, the house has some openings that they will roam into the house and have parties there. So I see their foot print on my sofa. Worse, at one time I left my packed dinner on my coffee table and went out temporarily and went back to discover that food were scattered all over the floor!

At night, they stayed in my big tong sampah and seems to have orgies there (with the noises that they made)

I was so angry that I swore to kill one of them one day!

Cost of window changes

bhtan — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 12:04:21 +0800

Can anyone help to comment if the quote below is reasonable/expensive as I am planning to swap my windows for my house:

Aluminium window: To supply manpower and material to :-

a) Grd fl casement window 4' x 4' with 5mm thk green glass c/w powder coat white aluminium frame = RM480.00

b) 1st floor casement window 5' x 6' with 5mm thk green glass c/w powder coat white aluminium frame = RM900.00

c) 1st fl fixed glass 2' x 6' with 5mm thk green glass c/w powder coat white aluminium frame (2 units) = RM720.00

d) 1st fl casement window 3' x 4' with 5mm thk green glass c/w powder coat white aluminium frame = RM450.00

e) 2nd fl top hung 2' x 4' with 5mm thk green glass c/w powder coat white aluminium frame= RM400.00

f) dismantle window and make good plastering = RM1500.00

Note that this is a partial quote!

Tiles for kitchen, bathroom and gym room

bhtan — Mon, 30 May 2011 11:47:44 +0800

This week I have to finalize my tiles for my kitchen, small bath room and gym room. My house is not far from Hous Depot. Jalan Ipoh is not that near but it is also not that far either. My subcon is telling me that most of the tiles shops are selling about the same quality but I am not sure. Granted my tiles will be very simple no fancy design and white/off white/cream color. My question is where to get high quality tiles assuming price is not a major concern?

Garbage Disposal unit

bhtan — Mon, 30 May 2011 05:01:14 +0800

I am planning to put a garbage disposal unit in my wet kitchen. I saw almost all western kitchens have one but here is less common. I do find it is useful as the waste (e.g. vegetable/fruit parts) can be disposed via the sink. So you garbage is not smelly if you do not take it out daily or more frequent.

Door Design

bhtan — Sat, 28 May 2011 05:13:33 +0800

I am going to try to custom made my gym room door to follow this design. I am not sure if this can be done and how much but will try to do it. Not that it will change my decision but I am curious to hear some feedback!

Indoor water filter

bhtan — Thu, 26 May 2011 14:46:37 +0800

Currently have an external big water filter. For the internal one, I used to be on Amway but now it is out together with all old kitchen appliance when the new kitchen comes. I am looking for a very good one and would appreciate any comments/feedback. This internal water filter will be on its own and not connected through the tap as my new tap will not have any screw threads.

I saw a BacFree model somewhere that looks OK but not sure if it is one of the best. I am trying to avoid those heavily advertised one like Diamond water ...

Roller blind and LED down light

bhtan — Sat, 21 May 2011 18:16:25 +0800

These are 2 outstanding items in my current kitchen and gym room renovation project. I want to put simple roller blind for my kitchen and gym room and would appreciate any suggestion where to get them - a good quality one. i could get this from Signature Kitchen as well but I think their price will be higher.

As per LED downlight, I went to Alfo light at Jalan Ipoh but they dont have the square one in stock. I also need the shop to consult me on how many I actually need as LED brightness also varies and the person dealt with me there was kinda blur about this thing. I did find a ceiling LED light that I like though.

Kitchen renovation

bhtan — Thu, 19 May 2011 02:50:55 +0800

Hi all, I have just stumbled upon this forum. My current kitchen renovation project has just started last week. Would appreciate any comments on the design.

Below is the 3D picture of the Dry kitchen. The actual appliances were not included in the picture. I also wont use so many ceiling LED lights!

Dry Kitchen accessories list:
Refrigerator will be Hitachi R-M800 GPM W910mmxH1760mmxD760mm (with handle)
The dry kitchen sink will be Blanco Dalago or Blanco Zia 9 with matching Blanco tap. I would like it to be flush mount
The dry kitchen hob will be Fujihome ETA cooker (FBI 2880) cutout size 708mm(w)x405mm(d)x80mm(h)
No hood for dry kitchen
The oven will be Fujihome FBI923 Built in measurement: W556-560mmxH590mmxD550mm
The steam oven will be Fujihome FBI2689 W560xH383xD550

Others
Kitchen Island will be 3x6 with Silestone Quartz countertop
Countertop will be white Silestone Quartz
One side consists of tall unit (black)
The otherside is white cabinet with display top cabinet with LED

The wet kitchen look

Accessories List
The wet kitchen sink will be Blanco Metra 9 sink with matching Blanco tap
The wet kitchen hob will be Fujioh FBI7892 cutout size W670mmxD350mm
The wetkitchen hood will be Fujioh Fujioh FXP9800 dimension W900mmxH1200xD600

Others
Countertop will be black Silestone Quartz
Cabinet will match the gray/aluminum color of the sink