Saturday, January 1, 2011

Refurbishment of our apartment


(Above) Unveiling our home's new look

Having stayed 3 years in our current apartment, we felt that there was a need to update and refurbish our current apartment for a updated look and to keep pace with new needs. We are very happy with our current location at Bedok South as it is a private HDB estate that is near ameniites like Siglap, the ECP, near a good school -Temasek Primary, coffeeshops, salons, pet clinic and pet grooming, laundry, 7/11 all downstairs and walkable to Tanah Merah MRT and feel we will stay here for long term so we decided to invest in a new look for our apartment.

We started with our kitchen extension which was featured in our earlier post which saw our kitchen extended to incorporate more storage space, tabletop space,a glass encased shelf for books and baking items and installation of a built in oven.


(Above) Original state of the Kitchen before extension.


(Above) After extension of the kitchen cabinet.


(Above) Additional Storage space


(Above) Glass display for Gayle's bakery books and bakery items.

Next we changed our lights to energy saving lights as the current halogen lights were quite energy consuming in our opinion and gave out heat.


(Above)Original halogen boutique light for walk in dressing room.


(Above)New energy saving lighting tubes which act as a wardrobe light too.


(Above) Original halogen crystal master bedroom pendant light


(Above) New master bedroom energy saving honeycomb design pendant light. We like the lighting and shadow effects on our ceiling.

With the new master bedroom lighting linked to a Philips dimmer enabled energy saving bulb, it means lighting that saves energy, yet flexible enought for brighter light for reading or a dimmer light for cozy dinner in the dining corner of our master bedroom(below)


After a week of installing the new energy saving lights, we noted a drop in our electricity bill due to a drop of 11 kwh in electricity usage when our bill arrived and this is in December where usually our electricity usage goes up since we are on leave and stay at home more during this period.

We plan to divide our current relaxation room in the future with a dividing feature wall and made the first preparatory stage by repositioning the light point and including an additional light point. The addition of an extra lighting point and light also required us to purchase a 2 gang light switch from the Legrand Milla range(below) to replace the current 1 gang light switch.




(Above) Original lighting point in the Relaxation room.


(Above)Installation of extra lighting point and pendant light and shifting of lighting point.

Our next step after the kitchen and lightings was to remove our curtains in the hall and replace it with contemporary roller blinds. Curtains are difficult to clean and previously when Shayna was infested with ticks, we were advised by Rentokil, the pest company we hired to detick our apartment to remove curtains as they are a good source of hiding spot for ticks, fleas and bugs. So with the curtains out, we contacted Chicks and Blinds Decor to install our glossy black roller blind.


(Above)Black gloss roller blinds add a modern touch. We like the thin blackout material of the blind fabric and the smooth pulley system.

At the same time, we hired Colourland to repaint our house using NIPPON paint and apply oil-based sealant to keep out mositure on the wall due to condensation of walls in air-conditioned rooms.This was the main reason why we got inspired to repaint our apartment as there were alot of water condensation marks over the 3 years. We chose interesting colours of a combination of spellbound red and galaxy grey for our hall and master bedroom, lime green for our relaxation room now renamed Blissndreams room, white for common areas like the kitchen, wash area, black for the toilet ceilings, combination of yellow and purple for the study and walk in which really help brighten the room.

After the paintjob which took two days, we hired Modishop Design to customise decals to rejuvenate our bedroom glass doors to give a fun look to our contemporary home. All in, our apartment looks better than before and we are pleased with the results!


(Above) Hall and dining area of spellbound red and galaxy grey.


(Above) Galaxy grey dark tone brings out the play on shadow by our avant garde clock from XZQT.


(Above)Purple for the entrance to our storeroom.


(Above)Red ceiling gives a cozy feel to the master bedroom


(Above)Bright yellow for the study to brighten it up since natural light is blocked by the walk in wardrobe behind.


(Above)Combination of purple and yellow for the passage to the study.


(Above) Purple for the vanity area of the walk in space and entrance to master toilet.




(Above)Lime green for the revamped Blissndreams room


(Above)Yellow for the study and passage leading to walk in space. IKEA wall mirror helps to make the space bigger.


(Above) Shayna supervising the guys from Modishop who were putting up our decals for our glass doors.


(Above) Our customised decal on our bedroom doors.




(Above) Our rejuvenated living area.

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