Our Home in Kovan

Performance -- Front-Load vs Top-Load Front-load is better.  We had been using top-load all these years and now we knew why those who use front-load swears by it.  The clothing comes out much much less wrinkled. Performance -- Dryer for extra straightening effect. When you combine it with a dryer, the result is even better.  This is because the heat from dyer straightens the clothes further. Is it not good enough to wear? Ok, this white school shirt may not look that good on photo, but this is so much better than what's coming from a top-load (I did take a picture but just couldn't find it).  And trust me, it is good enough to wear to school already.  After you put it on, 5 minutes later, they all look like this right? The "Perfect Laundry Process" Washer --> Dryer -->  EZ Bella for assistance to put them on hangars --> Wardrobe There!  If you still don't think it is awesome, just think about it: No more laundry r...

Miele, by accident It was mid September, 2015, just a month after placing our option to purchase for the new apartment.  Although we had been browsing the kitchen section of Harvey Norman's, Best, Gain City... we knew we were not in a hurry.  Where to put them if we do buy? Then we saw the ad for warehouse sale for Miele.  We had never notice Miele and decided to go take a look at what they had to offer. We reached the sale location at around 11am.  Almost half of the items, mostly demos and showroom sets, were gone!  Even after the price reduction, they still cost more than a brand new set of other brands. However, my wife was mesmerised by this: She said it just felt right.  I was pretty angry actually, I had wanted her to get a front-load and she resisted.  Now, just like that, in mere seconds, she's converted. I, on the other hand was busy being mesmerised by this: Specifically, this: I did not expect to find this many ticks...

Neufloor Update and Verdict It's been a month since the touched up.  I believed that's enough time for me to calm down. Trip to Showroom Before the Neufloor guys come down to fix the problems, we went down to their showroom in Guillemard Road. The salesman explained the product and gave us a demo: lighting it on fire and scratching it with a coin.  I examined the system and got a better idea how to put the system work. Fix-it team The same two guys came down.  Found out the supervisor's name was Q? or sounded like it.  He didn't seem to want to let us know.  He also said that the first guy who came down was Andy, his GM.  At this point, I didn't know if I could believe his words. How to install skirting If you don't already know, these days, the vinyl floorings are mostly using clip-on: easier, faster. In the showroom, the skirting, or side board was also clip-on.  Something similar to this: I didn't had the chance to ta...

Home WiFi Woe Update 3 -- Woe no more! I showed off the dual router setup to my wife and she shot me a thoughtful question: "Really? One more power eating thing?" Hmm... ok then.   SingTel to the rescue! I called up SingTel to see if there's something they could offer.  After hearing my wifi problem with the modem, the customer service officer did a line test - there were some error packets!   "It does seems like there is a problem with the line or modem.  We will schedule an engineer to do a modem swap."  New Modem Are Dual Band: Aztech FG7003GRV(AC)-J With the new router in the same position, I did a quick test on just 5Ghz band: Aztech vs Dlink 868L Living Room - 134Mbps vs 139Mbps Bedroom 1 - 84Mbps vs 112Mbps Kitchen - 42Mbps vs 58Mbps Dlink is marginally better but hey, Aztech comes free! Connection Dropped! After just two days, complaints mounted.  Moving from room to ro...

We spent many hours arguing about what should be used to separate the cooking area and pantry: should it be a counter, bar top or table? Doing an extension of the kitchen counter or adding a bar counter would be the easiest decision. However, both are not very useful.  A counter (extension of the kitchen top), makes it hard to find a suitable chair, whereas bar top (bar counter) though looks nice, it is quite useless.  Hehe, sorry people, there was a time where bar counter was so popular, we had done it, my brothers, in-laws... all did it.  As soon as it was completed, nobody uses it:  bar-top surface is too small and bar stools are uncomfortable. European Design Ideas Inspiration came from EuroCucina 2015 -- most of the designers went for a conventional table.  This was what we had in mind: Yep, a table would be 100% useful.  Easy to find chairs too! And so we did it: Sure... the legs could be something sexier like these: but I don'...

Fixed, Tilt and Full Motion Correspondingly S, M & L -- size of the mount, weight and thickness. I picked the LG mount because it is exactly what I wanted: Slim And just enough tilting motion for access and in case there's unwanted reflections. Mine is a 55inch Sharp.  As long as the TV comes with a Vesa mount, 400x400mm, it should fit.

Left over food for dinner -- ok. Messy house -- ok. No lights, no fan in the room -- ok. Everything is OK as long as wifi is working. Wifi Repeater I had a powerline repeater in one bedroom and a wifi repeater on the other.  The problem was if you start to move around, your session can easily get dropped.  This is because even when your laptop switches to a stronger repeater, the session will not be handled over.  It may mean you have to reset the connection.  Matter is much worse if you are in between zones. Few days into setting up the repeaters, complains mounted and they simply switch the repeaters off. One night after another round of complaints, I decided to make some changes. Dual router -- one to face SingTel and the other to broadcast wifi Doing this actually solved two problems: 1. Keeping the SingTel modem to face the internet makes it easy for SingTel customer service to conduct testes. 2. Keeping the SingTel modem near all my Ethernet ...

Under-mount of course!! Ok, we initially agreed on top-mount because it would be easier to replace.  Also the previous owner's under-mount sink had so much stained in the joint between the counter and the sink we thought we had better avoid it. There's so much debate on this forum already and I shall not repeat the good and bad of both. What should we do? Luckily, we had our carpenter to rely on. "Leave it up to us." said Mr Chua. Now that we have used it for three months.  Let's take a look: Under-mount - for the look and the convenience of pushing whatever leftover on the counter top directly into the sink! Top view The quartz top just hovers a little bit over the sink.  This was done so that water would not easily get trapped and stained the silicon seal.  It worked very well and we don't really have to bother much with it. It's so good to have an experienced carpenter on your side.

The company that my ID engaged for doing the plumbing work was quite a big company.  So I requested for a different group to come down to fix the issues. They sent down a guy called Ah Meng, late 30s?  He worked alone and fixed the tilted washbasin in the common toilet. He also help to put in switches below the washbasins and shower heads. Something I thought was a standard but then they made you ask for it. ----------------------- All cold water pipes leading to faucets SHOULD be fitted with a switch.  If not, when you need to change the faucet or when it breaks, you will have to run outside to switch off the main supply to the entire house.   Hot water pipes only requires a single on/off switch next to the exit point on the hot water tank. ----------------------- At the same time, he also helped to put in the rest of the racks and hooks to the wall.  All went well without a hitch. A second group came later in the week to change the pipe...

I mulled over this before the installation.  Came the time to install, we just went along with what our carpenter suggested. Ouch! Ouch! Ouch! After a month in the kitchen, I have hit it at no less than five times and from all sides.  I should now be able to answer this with some authority: how should the hood be positioned?  Here's the definitive guide. It's all about the height. First, there is a constraint you have to work with: the maximum distance between hob and hood. For my Fujioh hood, the separation distance should be within 800mm. Second, determine the height of the hob.  It should be around 800mm to 900mm, depending on your height and what you are comfortable with. The height of floor to hob in my case is 900mm and hob to hood is another 750mm making it a total height of 1650mm or 1.65m.  I am 1.75m tall and the hood is just at my eye level. I had a chance to take measurement in my rental apartment, my mom's and my two in-laws': aver...

Taking a break from work at home, I decided to do a modification and see what the results will be like. Selecting The Best Wifi Channel Looking at the scan result yesterday, the best channels to use were 3 and 6.  First I tried 6, but saw that there was another strong signal in the path, so I switched to 3.  Verified that I was the only one on 3, I re-run the test. The Setup Here's the layout of my unit. Area of just 80sqm or 600 sqft It should be so simple, so perfect for just one Wifi router to work and yet... Real World Wifi Testing For this round, I decided to test sitting in various room in the most likely position.  The rooms are small anyway and I am no more than 8ft from the router or access points. Also to note that it was late in the morning, there should be less traffic.  There were also just 20 (it was 27 yesterday) other wifi signals around.  We should expect better performance, 'cleaner' results. Living Room -- Wifi Router ...

My current living room and three bedrooms occupy a rectangular area of 10x8m (32x26ft).  The 2-year old Aztech router I brought over has served a bigger area before, so I DID NOT expect to face a networking problem.  Why is the reception so bad here? Invasion of Wifi Routers! When the technician from SingTel came to re-install the PON, MIO box and modem, I asked him to conduct a test and here's why: There were 27 (!!) Wifi networks around me, some with very strong signals!  All the wifi channels were filled! Walking around the apartment with the wifi analyser app on my phone, I could see that once I enter into any one of the room and shut the door, the signals dropped off tremendously. Powerline Technology Is The Way To Go... or Not? I almost regretted not putting in Ethernet cables when we re-wire the house.  But then, to put in a patch panel, ethernet switch, LAN cables... put me off.   Another alternative was to put in a more powerful wif...

Pozzi  K321 from Tiong Yeong $65 Grohe Bauedge from Hoe Kee $114 Grohe, at almost twice the price is better built and felt more substantial to the touch.  But I am doing this comparison not so much to compare the brands but to show you the design.  We somehow picked both with flat top due to their slim look.  I found out it may not be ideal because water tend to settle on them, espeically  so on the Pozzi, leaving obvious stains.

Before After the kitchen, this toilet was the next in line that made us spent many agonising  hours.   Ignoring the pipes, the space was limited and I wanted so much to have a proper shower area with shower screen and a wash basin area for our items. Special thanks to ifp !   ifp  is a fellow Renotalk member who has the similar layout and showed us what they had done.  On the 3D drawing, it looked cramped.  But, seeing that it was possible, on 3D drawing, we went ahead to execute it.   Previous shower area was divided into two.   Wide on each side was 750mm, which was good enough. We put in a 4inch ledge so that all the bottles and tubes can go onto it.  This was something we did before in our previous house and we loved it.  Never thought that it would create some problems here. First was quite major.  As I had written before, the ledge took up space  for the wash basin area.  ...