Our Home in Kovan

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.  ...