The new apartment – Update 1 « Whimsicaljottings

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The new apartment – Update 1

August 1, 2009 by whimsicaljottings

So the renovation work on our house has been going on for about two weeks now. We drop by from time to time to see what work has been carried out, and woooooo…. The place is like a war zone now! That’s a good thing coz it means that they ARE doing their job and are on schedule, as we have to move out of this rented place by mid-October.

On our visit on 25th July 2009, this is what we saw:

Doors removed

All the doors in the house have been removed. If you look carefully, the doors are really retro, from the 70’s, what with the glass and all. We are replacing them with white doors.

Wallpaper removed

The previous owner had put up wallpaper in the entire house, and we had to pay quite a bomb to have it removed, as I can imagine it is no easy feat to clean the walls properly so that it would look smooth and good painted. If the wallpaper was tasteful and in good shape, I think we wouldn’t have minded living with it, but err….they weren’t exactly our taste, and they weren’t in good shape.

Toilet bowl and bidet removed

Am excited to see what my new bathroom would look like

Flooring of Room 2 demolished

I was happiest to see the sight above Wow. Do you see the pile of brown stuff at the corner? Well, that’s parquet. Or it used to be, anyway. You may wonder why the floor of the room had to be destroyed just to remove the parquet. Well, that’s because we are installing an insulation material beneath the flooring. Also, it is because we are changing all the pipes in the house. Pipes in the room? Err, yes. That’s because the pipes channel hot water to the heaters throughout the house.

Demolition of flooring in Room 1

As you can see in this picture, part of the parquet has been removed, but the flooring has not been “drilled open” yet – for a lack of better words. The pile of white rubbish on the left is the wallpaper that has been removed. And yes, those are my legs that you see

Demolition of floor tiles outside rooms

And four days later, on 29 July 2009, even more progress. Yay!

Water inlet

Look closely, and you will see a piece of pipe that has been removed, lying in front of the shovel. It is in bad shape, rusty and clogged with muck and limescale that has accumulated over 30 years! Good thing we decided to change the pipes. Imagine using all that water to cook, clean and what not.

Bathroom 2

Tiles on the walls and floor of my bathroom have been removed!

Partial demolition of living room tiles

Yesterday, we paid the house another visit, as we had to meet our architect and electrician. More progress has been made. Where previously we had concrete to walk on, now we only have bare earth in the house! They have dug below the concrete to remove the old piping and what not. I forgot to bring my camera, and so I have no pictures to show, but will definitely take more pictures this coming week.

HB and I have been agonizing over the type of lights we should choose. We’ve been to a number of shops, but none quite appeal to us. It’s not like in Malaysia where there are light shops aplenty. (There are LOTS of light shops in Puchong especially). Over here, what’s aplenty are cars, cars, and MORE cars. Blek. Unfortunately, the HB and I don’t plan on getting a Maserati or Ferrari so we had to venture out of the city center to look for them elusive lights. And WOOT! Who would have thought, we accomplished our light searching mission today! In one shop! The first shop! Without bickering!

Now the only pain remaining is the darned bathroom sink cabinets. Really hard to find. I’m happy to settle with the kitschy white Ikea sink cabinet. But the HB wants something more expensive impressive elegant, so that’s that

And oh, did I mention that I *am* getting a new kitchen after all? Thank God Unfortunately we have kooky walls in the new place, so we have to custom make our new cabinets instead of using our current one. Yea, kitchen cabinets here are removable, so when people move houses, they bring their kitchen cabinets, sinks, stove etc with them too. Moolah aside, getting a new place is quite fun