House Transformed

2010-07-06T00:32:00.002+08:00

The house is finally completed. I still welcome any new comments or opinion which may be able to benefit the public at large.

Thank you all for reading the blog.

Introductions

Content

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Post Renovation

2010-07-05T10:22:00.004+08:00

The house is finally done.

Officially we have actually moved in as well. However, there have been bits of pieces which is beyond our layman's imagination that occurred after the completed project. Just when I was pondering where I should post the tiny changes which may come about from time to time, I finally decided to create another topic just to bundle all tiny bits of pieces in.

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First of all, the biggest problem we encounter is water leakage.

We found out over a period of a month, that certain directional down pour leads to water leakage into the side wall paint especially under the window frame.

There is one spot of water leakage too, spotted over the ceiling.

For that, we called back Ah Phan, along with his trusted deputy Ah Lee, who has investigated the problem.

The solution is to install Awning, improve the water sealing around the edge of the window frame, and get Ah Phan to reduce water pooling outside the window frame when it rains.

Here's Ah Phan's man at work to help installing the Awning.

Completed job.

Note the Silicon Sealant on the edge of the Awning to prevent leakages. This particular Awning is tougher to install due to the placement of the Air Conditioner Condenser above. We actually have to shift the Condenser upwards by a few good inches to create space for the Awning.

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11 May 2011

It has been a long time.

Other than the usual wear and tear, we did encounter a couple of problems to our house. Water pipe leakage was one and it was duly rectifed. This time no picture was taken as I was working when the fixing was done.

Then another issue is the Power Surge problem.

We encountered almost definite power cut off whenever there was thunder storm. If that is not enough, I have so far encounter sensitive electronic equipment damages as well.

So far one PSU of my home computer was burnt. After it was changed, the unit return to normal. And even my amplifier has experienced failure of remote sensing, which I think is due to the surge as well.

After making a few enquiries and posting the problem ONLINE HERE, I finally engaged a professional company to solve the problem. Here's how its done:

Plus we add another earthing rod (about 12 feet long near the TNB power entry point) to divert surge and lessen the burden from the house unit.

Now we shall wait for more thunderstorm to verify its usability.

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The beginning.

2009-10-30T14:07:00.003+08:00

The story begins when we received some minor complaints about our dog (seen on the left, taken together with his toilet.)

We are now staying in an apartment, which, generally do not allow any pet dog to be kept. Thats the way the Malaysian law is as far as I know.

This is coupled with my wife's desire to have some small plot of land to satisfy her green fingers.

For that, our hunt begins for a smallish medium cost house, which hopefully do not burn my bank account but able to allow us to have some space.

Then our daughter was born.

Which in effect, confirmed our desire to have a bigger space to allow more life's experimentation !

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Where are we ?

We are in Malaysia, in a suburb called Petaling Jaya, Selangor. This place has everything that a person would ever needed generally, hospitals, morques, schools, both primaries and secondaries, privates and Publics. There is also University of Malaya, which used to be one of the best University in the country. There are shopping centres, factories, legal and illegal business entities, thugs and good people. PJ has been gazetted as a City too.

... and do not forget about tonnes of old houses hanging around here too, amidst all the vibrant lives.

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A house chosen !

2009-10-29T19:10:00.000+08:00

A phone call changed our destiny.

When our property agent friend called up and told us there are an old house open for sale, my immediate response was to ascertain some criteria to be fulfilled.

Is there a small space available ? yes ..

Is the house reasonably priced ? well... not bad it seems ..

Is it near to where I work ? It is, no doubt ..

Will the cost too much to renovate ? Now.. it could be, and thats what this blog is all about.

The fact is the house is more than 30 years old probably gave us a faint idea how much we need to dump in to fix it back up again.

It has been tenanted for, well, probably 5 to 10 years? Perhaps further enforced our impression that more job may need to be done to make it user-friendly.

So we committed nonetheless, finally acquired the building with tenants in-place.

Middle of this year, we finally manage to get in to have a closer look inside every rooms. And there we went in for a surprise.

To summarise it, I can safely say that this house's extended kitchen and upstair rooms had literally broken into half !

The picture on the right shows the red crack, which is due to the sinking soil under the kitchen extension. Was it due to poorly constructed foundation? Or due entirely to the soil structure? We didn't know.

When my wife and I saw the condition, we just went ' Oh oh ... '.

It did not look good. Not a bit .

Le pipe.

2009-10-29T18:27:00.011+08:00

One of the drawback we invited by changing the original position of the up-stair common bathroom to one of the rooms is the underground piping location.

Here's how it looked like at the Siting Room downstair !!

Don't forget, it is a view at the siting room.

So Ah Boy came around, saw the pipes, and it was a huge NO. He is going to lay the plaster ceiling under the pipe. If the pipe is going to be like this, the plaster ceiling is going to be too low for comfort.

So Ah Boy instructed one of the builder to change the piping, to at least higher to allow for taller ceiling.

To insulate the flushing noise through the pipe, Ah Boy will put up a layer of rockwool for sound insulation.

So the alteration begins:

Ah Seng (one of the assistant renovator under supervision of Ah Phan and Team), started to modify the existing unsuitable piping.

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Today a new piping design appeared:

Hopefully it will serve the function well.

This is how the sewage pipe looked like from outside, we will block it with either a wood structure of a bricked one, will see how it turned out.

A pair of columns are being built, with one used as a cover for the sewage pipes.

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As some of you may have been aware, the piping down at the Siting Room has been messy.

Worst of all, it has impeded the work of the plaster ceiling installation, as the contractor cannot simply make the existing pipes any less intrusive for him. So after discussion with us, he suggested a redo of the upstair bathroom (from the Master Bedroom), which will in turn alter the piping web as you can see above.

Here's the new modified one:

By doing so, it opens up the space necessary for the installation of aircon above the window. Previously the piping was so low that it was impossible to cover up the pipes with the plaster ceiling without eating into the space for the aircon unit.

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Guess what.

The 'piping', is still unsatisfactory for the moderator. So another version has been made as below yesterday :

Do compare the difference. So far this is version 3 of the piping design. The final product must allow the plaster ceiling to be installed with minimal elevation of total ceiling height.

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After the holiday season, the original plaster ceiling contractor Ah Boy gets his boy back to finish up the job on the plaster ceiling. This stretch of ceiling finally sees the beginning of its completion.

The final layer of the plaster ceiling is being framed up. The layering will be carefully designed to cover up the pipe while looking good esthetically once completed. We'll see how it turn out.

Here is another view of the frame works.

The plaster ceiling will try to cover up the concrete beam. It will house future down light casing, and allow Speaker cable to be placed above the plaster ceiling for the surround speakers at the back. For future proof, the cables will be installed to cater for possible 7.1 speaker. The cable was purchased online through ebay, rated 14AWG for long distance usage. Its still cheaper than locally sourced cable of similar quality and length.

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Meanwhile, water meter was repositioned from inside the garden to outside the house, so that it can be read by the authority without disturbing the residents. A very wet transformation indeed !

Here's the end result.

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Plaster ceiling is being placed to cover the much modified pipe works features above. Speaker cables are being stuffed right above the ceiling too to connect to the surround units.

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Note the wire that hanged from the ceiling for speaker connection.

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The ceiling is finally almost completed with the Rockwool insulation marks the side wall.

All the pipes are well sealed now.

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Downlights are being fitted.

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Flooring and Tiles

2009-10-29T18:06:00.024+08:00

Finally the floor tile guy arrived and did something from today. Tiles may arrived this week while the original team will come over the weekend to sort out things that are supposed to correct. Paving ways for tile laying next week.

Here's the sitting room. The floor is raised and flattened with layer of rough cement.

Another view to show how thick the floor was raised.

Here's the kitchen floor.

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More cement works :

Car Porch ground work.

Sitting room is elevated by about 1-2 inches. Tiles will be laid on top.

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Upstair lobby is being cemented today. That will allow Laminated Flooring in due course.

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Store Room flooring, ready for tiles.

Kitchen is now ready for further works.

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Wall socket before tiling.

After tiling, with meticulous precision cutting.

The toilet beside the kitchen has started been worked on as well.

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Kitchen wall tiles are slowly done. Meanwhile...

Downstair toilet tiles are up too.. but more tiles are needed, so the tile supplier will provide more to finish it up.

Marble pieces to serve as solid platform for utilities in the bathroom. It turns out to be cheaper, more solid, and to me, much more reliable than screwed onto the wall glass holder. Solid is the word.

At the same time, while waiting for the extra tiles, the staff started their tiling work upstair at the common bathroom.

Some of them also started the 2x2 sitting room porcelain tile work. Its from the NN tech acquired cheap from the Houz Depot, Damansara. Quite a good value really.

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This long stretch of no blog entry is due to something for me to learn.

It is due entirely to late delivery of tiles.

From my experience, Guocera has one of the better looking budget tile selection to date, as compared to other local manufactured tiles. But the problem is they do not hold much tiles at Klang Valley. Most of them are actually stored in Johore.

Yes, you guess right. JOHORE.

Which means, if you were to buy from the company, if unfortunately, they only stock it at Johore, you will have to wait for their delivery boy to deliver all the way from there. Which also means, if you only order a small amount, you will have to wait till the volume increase by combining other buyer's order, before they contemplate delivery.

So when we try to order from them, make sure we order from stockist that keep the stock (more than what you would need, in case you need to buy more to cater for unforeseen usage such as damaged tiles at work etc), or avoid all together a company that has no stock near your house !!

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Today work resumes. With all the tiles finally came in, the crew spring back to work, with a few spots all at the same time.

Sitting room 2x2 tiles, with old fashion skirting in place today.

Store room being worked on. Since it is going to be just a storeroom anyway, I just asked the worker to source me an Al-cheapo 1x1ft tiles just for the sake of it.

Kitchen floor. Now, with our original Meditteranean idea, various assortment of tiles of different shades but of the same theme was sourced. This is the intended mix tiles idea. The next picture will give a better idea of how it will look like.

Mixing tiles of various shade. A total of three shades were used for the purpose.

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Sitting room is 98% done.

Another view of the sitting room.

This is the border between the dinning area and the kitchen.

A total of three different shades of tiles were used to make the random floor tile look. Some may like it, some may not.

Meanwhile the upstair common bathroom is being fixed gradually. Two marble sheets are used to become toilet racks. Its old fashion, no doubt. But it works, and very tough.

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During the final week before the holiday season, the car porch flooring was 95% completed.

Good job as far as I am concern. The remaining 5% will be completed once the gate railing is fitted in due course.

In the mean time, the kitchen tiles was also completed, while the table top is still pending.

The last bathroom, the masterbedroom bathroom, started the job as well, but it was left halfway until after the season.

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Now finally the whole series of Public Holidays are over (not that I complained). The contractor finally fulfill what they have promised earlier, and back to complete their job.

Here's the update so far..

The plastic ceiling finally being fixed in the bathrooms. Here's ground floor common bathroom.

And here's common bathroom upstair. With another view from the same bathroom below.

In the meantime, both bathrooms upstair received its water insulation treatment on the floor to prevent future water leakage downwards. Its only applied to the first floor bathroom. Ground floor bathroom does not need the treatment.

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After laying down the base coating..

... and also in the other bathroom floor...

They use sheets of Glass Fibres and applied them onto the floor, fixed with glue..

Here's how they made it.

And here's the final bathroom waterproofing layer. The fibreglass sheet was applied to about half a foot on the side wall as well. This layer is thick. No short cut seen. Really impressed with the work.

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Just to add this picture to show the quality of the work they rendered. This is on the side panel of the outdoor porch tiles. This segment of the tiles require cutting to make sure that the edge is of similar width. So precision work is necessary.

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Its confirmed that the water seal is tight after a two-day water soaking test. Today the tiling team came back and plaster a thick layer of cement to prepare for final tile's work. Meanwhile the lowest layer of tile was being placed as shown below:

Meanwhile the master bedroom wall tiles resumes its activity today too.

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The car porch flooring has its final work began. This part will correlate with the auto-gate railing.

At the same time, 3 pieces of the wall tiles were being hacked out (without any damage at all) to cater for another pieces of marble rack for the bathroom. This is another hindsight adjustment.

Another upstair bathroom floor tiling received its finishing work. The wall tile colour and the floor does not match that well, I admit. But we still go ahead with it.

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Two layer of marble racks being placed, the lower rack was added in after correction. Compared with the photo I added earlier.

New cement slab was added for aesthetic reason.

Side step outside the garden are being worked on. We need more small chip stones, so it is delayed for a day for now.

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current progress :

Washing area in the garden received its wall treatment.

Here is the common upstair toilet. Work is still in progress.

There is some progress also in the common sitting room. The planned wall sound insulation layer (Rockwool) is being placed against the wall. This will insulate the sound to protect the neighbour SHOULD we opt to blast the sound system ! But nothing will stop the sound from leaking through the windows, door etc.. Nonetheless I think this is the least I should do.

Here's the close-up view of the construction.

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Elevated stool was built to support small water Reservoir ala kampung style ! Yes we are still old-fashioned.

Completed sink support completed with tiles.

Garden structure receive its final coating.

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The Sitting room extension wire for the speakers finally arrived from the eBay seller. It was finally installed above the plaster ceiling and to be hidden properly. The Board was placed to cover the sound insulation rockwool fibre partition. Note that this wall does not dampen the sound reflection. Its just to reduce the sound from traveling across next door. Talk about responsible neighbourhood.

And this is the Monster cable, 16AWG, length at 35 feet for the surround speakers. It was supposed to be THX rated. But frankly no one can tell the difference at this length.

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The soundproof wall is being painted, all the wires are hidden. With the latest Astro Byond and probably High speed broadband wiring still remained unknown, I do hope that this wall will not need to be hacked again.

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Laminated flooring guys finally came to do their job. It is best done at the end or near the end of all renovation to minimise damages to delicate surface. It is rated as AC-3, with AC-5 as being the toughest. The company, from the Floor Culture , took up the job with reasonable price we got from the home deco exhibition last year.

It was used for the staircase as well.

Here's the foundation layer we opt that helps in water proofing and levelling.

Seems nice and smooth ..

Only to be removed the very next day ! The cement floor was not found to be smooth to give the seamless feel. So after discussion with Ah Phan and Ah Boy, they asked the Tile Man Team, Ah Fook, to step in with their precision workers to take over the levelling of the ground. So the room steps right back to its original mess again for a short period of time. This is a correction work in progress.. and it has to be done !

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After the Tile Team put on a new cement layer to level the floor, the laminated flooring can be completed.

Here's the lobby, which was used to be a common toilet a year ago.

Here's the Master Bedroom.

At one corner, it was deliberately elevated to be used as activity centre for the family. Left door leads to the bathroom.

Finally Laminated flooring for the stair case as well.

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Colours and Paints

2009-10-29T18:00:00.008+08:00

This page will collect all the final paint job on the house.

We will kick start with the paint job today at the outdoor side wall...

Darker shade of brown was chosen for the wooden structure.

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This is the colour scheme for the kid's room.

Here's the colour scheme for the general guest room, but its not obvious through the picture though.

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Here's the exterior colour scheme ! Hate it or love it?

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A darker shade for the dinning room side wall, this is exactly the spot where sunlight may set in in the evening, so it can afford to have a darker look.

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Exterior colour scheme, note this power switch is no longer necessary to be there. Will wait for the Tenaga guy to dismantle it.

Balinese shade.

Light colour for the rest of the sitting and dinning area. Darker shade for one wall for contrast.

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Master bedroom unfinished colour scheme.

Finally nice blue sky with house exterior.

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Some painting errors :

The left wall was meant to be whitish. Only the right wall around the window is Green.

It was corrected the next day.

The front half of the wall was meant also to be white. But this stretch of error will be retained for future colour matching deco. More like accepting the error as it is.

This is how it looked like from the other angle:

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There goes the old tenage power line and switches. Refer earlier photos on this.

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Truly Tropical Building

2009-10-29T15:53:00.001+08:00

I mean it is going to be really HOT ! Look at the sunlight at around 5pm on the sunny day :

This is the dinning area, with huge open sliding door towards the garden.

This is the sitting room.

This is one of the rear bedroom, the one facing the garden.

And this is the upstair lobby.

With sunlight like this, who needs an oven ?

Poor picture quality no more !

2009-10-29T13:37:00.000+08:00

For those of you who bothered to read this blog would have noticed that the photo quality has been, to put it literally, appalling !

That's because my old Canon Digital Camera has given up on me some time back. So This Digicam has been helping me to take either a still photo with its built-in 5MPix engine, or screenshots I took from its video files.

Here's the helper:

Well, last night I finally managed to get hold of a 2nd hand camera, Sony F717, used to be a pretty good camera about 7 years ago. But nowadays with 5Mpix, this camera ran out of its favour with the main streams photographer. I got it from one owner last night, which will give a pretty good pictures like the one above (after 65% size reduction).

Here's how the camera look like, taken by the Digicam above and do compare the quality, 5MP vs 5MP !

A transformation begins

2009-10-28T19:23:00.000+08:00

At this point of time there were only a few motivations.

First, we need to settle our future house problem, well not a major one, but to cater for our need, solving the dog's woes, small garden, and perhaps a place we can have more space for better day to day enjoyment.

Perhaps an occasional blasting of movies through our budding Home Theater system, by engaging my own desire to DIY my very own system!

That leads to another issue I did not mention. I need a space and room for my DIY too.

So for once, we will just face the music and sing the song.

The following two months, we have engaged at least 5 renovators to come and have a look, with at least three gave us their thorough quotations and the breakdowns.

Those that have responded, I got to admit, exhibited great amount of professionalism in listening to our requirement, not to mention lots of patience to organise meetings, listening to our repetitive abeit layman statement, before coming up with their proposals.

We finally settle for one.

Why him ?

Firstly, he basically share our frequency. We can comfortably share with him our requirement, concerns, without much reservation.

Secondly, he is not perfect. But he admitted it. Thats what really make him difference. He will get his partner's opinion to come up with his own version of solution and share with us with humility and with a smile at all time. You may think that he does it because he wanted our business badly. Well perhaps. But we have encountered renovator which literally operate with an element of iron fist. You can smell it.

Thirdly, of course, his quotation is one of the most reasonable one. There will be plus and minuses no doubt. But for those subjective items, such as our shaky extension, no one actually know how bad the condition is until one dug up the soil. For those, he throw in the ceiling price, there will not be more than certain amount should thing goes bad.

So a decision has finally been made, and work finally begins.

The Contractors

2009-10-28T16:54:00.011+08:00

Starting December 2010, I have removed the contact info about my Contractors. Other than the chief Coordinator Ah Boy who has given me impressive coordination among his team then, his other team members have had some issue with regards to their work in other engagements.

While some have shared some info here, some of the problem remained unsolved as I wrote.

Now Ah Boy is still focusing mainly at plaster ceiling and office renovation work which is his primary domain. He no longer take up coordinator job with Ah Phan and Ah Fook.

In order not to mislead the readers, I therefore chose to remove all the contact info or even their photos.

Ground Floor Massive Transformation

2009-10-27T12:10:00.020+08:00

One of the biggest job this house will have to go through would undoubtedly be the rear extension

As you probably have remembered much earlier that the rear extension has literally broken into two by the time we collected the keys from the old tenants. The main reason can best be described by the illustration below:

Look at the red column. While this column was meant to be a pivotal item to sustain the weight from the extended part both ground and first floor structures, the soft soil plus the wrong footing depth, way above the ground level will not do a good job.

No wonder the structure sank, and split the wall as it went.

The solution, after discussing with engineer, the contractors, and countless brains from the people in the know, would suggest a solution such as this :

As you can see, the red footing has to be BELOW the ground level, way below the retaining wall that maintained the elevated house structure.

So thats what we are going to do.

I will post up progressive series of photos depicting the progress of the actual work itself. It may take months before the final products though.

Do be patient with me.

This is the planned design, which has gone through countless nights of brain cracking, mind teasing, sleep depriving moment. Well, its only be fair to say that it was my wife who lost her hair the most over the design.

I am quite cool over it.

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Progress of the works:

Soft soil thats suitable for gardening but not exactly for ground stabilisation.

Wall has been built, creating the separation between the kitchen and the common toilet. Seen here the contractor is inspecting the toilet window..

Meanwhile, a separate small room has been created. Seen below is the wall set up to create an L-shaped room. A small hole is seen here facing the neighbour's back garden.

View of the small room from the window direction.

And here's the window.

Kitchen area. The main feature right now is its huge long window, overlooking the garden from the sinks.

A wall was built up to separate the kitchen from the dining space. This will provide the necessary space for the kitchen cabinet to be built in a smallish space available.

The new Brick Rectangular 'space' is the small extension from the garden to be used as a garden storage. Although small but sufficient to put in uncut 8x4ft pieces of wood for DIY.

Window frame being put up in the kitchen.

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At this mid-junction, the follow up on the Kitchen and ground floor bedroom can be read in Kitchen - Second Phase link page.

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Car Porch - reinforcement.

2009-10-26T13:15:00.022+08:00

This is the original house plan after it was first constructed, about, say 30 plus years ago.

Many years later, the owner extended the upstair bedrooms forwards, occupied the car porch, and extended sideway to give rooms to the second room extension.

Note that the extension was not built upon stiffer middle column. So the extension of the second room maybe flimsy to start off with.

The yellow segment is the present extension. Note the there is no support in the middle on the left column.

To avoid future stability problem. We have decided to change to the following by adding one extra stronger column as shown below.

Shown Red Column is the new reinforcement. The Yellow portion, which is the old porch, will be demolished for good. Giving way to a cheaper shade to cater for modest use.

With that I think we will sleep better inside the extension !

The original look of the old extension. Note there is no supporting column under the room extension above.

Here's another view.

The frame has been built, grabbing the pillar above for stability.

Enforced beam finally takes its shape.

Old supporting beam is being demolished. Note the new one replaced its position.

Old porch is finally down for good. The workers make sure that the neighbour did not get disturbed that much other than the inevitable noise and some dust.

Patching up the surface.

Final appearance of the new supporting column, this time with proper underground reinforcement courtesy of Ah Phan.

Just like the rear extension, it was reinforced by deep red wood before the 3-4 feet concrete base.

Old porch was finally dismantled.

The first part of the wooden porch is being set up today. Here's the progress photo:

The porch is finally done ! Paint work will come later. The workmanship, to be honest, deserved a good praise!

Note the rain water drainage from the roof. The open end will have chains connected right down to the drainage reservoir on the ground. It does not appear to be that sightly for me. But life is an experiment I would have thought. So likely that we will just go ahead and see how it turns out.

After a while, the wooden porch experienced a sinking feeling !

With one morning work, it is rectified. Reinforcement by adjusting the beam supporting the roof tiles are made.

Here's the result :

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Second Floor lobby

2009-10-26T09:21:00.030+08:00

Lobby?

There was no effective lobby. The original design simply followed the old traditional design. When you go upstair, the common toilet will be facing you right on your face. While this design allow maximum usage of space to turn into rooms (A total of 4), it does not allow ample natural lights to get into the lobby. Worst still, when someone use the bathroom, it will leave the lobby in total darkness.

Pic: Red box denote the common toilet, which effectively blocked up the common 'lobby', which is purple.

So we did the relative unthinkable.

First, we decided to hack the two front rooms into one master bedroom. And one of the room will be converted into TWO bathrooms, with one serving the master bedroom, another serves as the common bathroom for the rest.

With that, the original toilet will be hacked down, leaving behind a huge drop down window, allowing lights to enter the dark lobby and facilitate ventilation, hence encouraging natural ventilation ! With that in mind, hopefully that lobby will serve effectively as one in due course.

Work in progress (Photos will be updated from time to time ):

This is where the old common toilet was, blocking away the natural light into the lobby.

This is the rear room, where the extension has been demolished

This frontage room will be sacrificed to give half of its space to become 2 separate bathrooms. The other half will be part of the Master Bedroom itself. Pretty unconventional idea for me, but I think that's the only way to create decent lobby space with ample natural light.

The common bathroom partition is being built.

The Master Bedroom toilet is taking its shape.

Left the remaining half of the room as part of the Master bedroom.

Common Toilet door has been created. The door was shifted about a foot to cater for interior need. That may reduce the size of the lobby, but too bad it has to be done.

The lobby ceiling and roof's down.

Front room, part of the master bedroom.

Walls are up now. This is rear room 1.

This is rear room 2.

Many days later, new roof is slowly being built up.

New roof is being built up.

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Master Bedroom partition finally being hacked down.

Inside the master bedroom, this is the small section which houses a bathroom and a mini walk-in wardrobe. But...

... the bathroom is really too small ! Now we have to innovate to fit in all the bathroom fixtures.

We decided not to hack anything down at this stage, but rather think of a way to live with it.

Cemented floor of the rear room 1.

Cemented floor of the rear room 2.

One of the first batch of window frame came in nicely.

After a few days, the frame is in placed. Here's the wiring track being hacked.

Piping tracks inside the common bathroom.

This is the lobby that wasn't there in the first place. With wide open window, the lobby can finally see the day light all day long.

Plaster ceiling job begins !

The metal support frames are being put up room by room. The level is being measured by using a laser device as being shown below !

A day later, the ceiling is up.

Here's the ceiling occupying half of the master bedroom now.

Lobby and rooms are getting their plaster ceiling installed.

Here's how they looked like after a few days of work and patch up job.

Ah Phan the chief Contractor summoned back his boy to install the bathroom sink support and cement top now. The work has been delayed for a while due to their hectic schedule.

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The master Bedroom toilet has been a subject of discussion among us for quite some time.

Firstly the size of it is just too small to be able to fit all the bathroom facilities. But we manage to design on paper that it could still be done with some compromise. I have even convinced my wife that, after years of shifting rooms (rented unit) since our tender age of 18, I have more or less learned how to take things as it comes. So with no exception, we should be able to live with such toilet size.

Secondly, the piping that protrudes underneath the bathroom serve another big problem for the plaster ceiling downstair. Our chief coordinator Ah Boy, after days of gazing at the pipes, concluded that it is just too intrusive for proper work to be done without harming the aesthetics of the sitting room.

So after discussion with the boys, we have agreed to modify the existing plan. From the original small rectangular bathroom, we will extend the side to make it into an 'L' shape, making room for a shower space, leave behind the rest of the space for a basin, toilet bowl and dry space for hanging clothes etc.

Here's the toilet design earlier :

Here's the new design, note that the toilet bowl has been relocated away from the window.

Here's how it looks like before the mod :

Then : Wall down.

New walls are being built up.

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At this point of time, most of the upgrading work is featured in Tiling Chapter. Do go to the link for more updates.

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Finally the windows are installed.

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Masterbedroom extended area was built on the original car porch. So the level is actually lower then the 'ground'. We have decided to level it by building the wooden support, completely flatten the room for comfort. Well, one of the corner will actually be elevated as activity centre for the kids. We'll show how it works at the end.

Tempered glass for the shower room.

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Here's the built up platform, literally flatten the masterbedroom.

The wet surface is the Anti-termite treatment.

Here's the glass partition for the bathroom. Nice work.

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The floor was found to be a little bit too flimsy. So they are dismantled for further reinforcement.

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Almost reaching the final stage, the doors are being fixed in. It is not the best design in the world no doubt, but it will be made even lower key by being painted white overall !

... and this is one of the permanent fixture appeared in almost all houses in Malaysia ! Metal grill ! The mother of all interior design spoiler.

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Frontage & surrounding fence

2009-10-25T11:05:00.005+08:00

Being in the corner of a sharp bend into a small lane does not help to make the design of the front gate easier at all.

The old angle of the gate makes the car harder to drive in if we were to drive in from the west. On top of that, the presence of a Fire Hydrant point made it difficult to correct the difficult angle.

So we agree to adjust the gate a little.

We will also try to add in the auto gate in due course.

As to the fence, the ventilated wall has to go to make room for a old style bricked cemented type. As cost cutting is of topmost paramount, we think we should just leave the fence as boring as it is.

After years of neglect, there used to have two (or three) well grown papaya trees within the compound ! Everything has to go.

The final product of the garden will be a simple piece of lawn, surrounded by cemented wall of about 5 feet. The height of the wall should not affect the naturally windy surrounding, which we gladly found throughout the time when we were there.

Kitchen - phase two.

2009-10-24T20:13:00.007+08:00

After the time consuming Phase One renovation on the sinking part of the house, the kitchen and the groundfloor backroom have taken their shape well.

Here's a quick summary:

Before

After

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3: Wall separating the dining area from the kitchen.

Step 4: Now the kitchen has its own space, its time to fix things up. First we opted for cemented kitchen top. So here it goes :

Here lies the problem :

From this view the kitchen window gave a wide opened view onto the garden. No doubt this is what we opted for and fond of. Imagine one can do one's dishes facing a garden view like this ...

Sounds ideal? Well the problem is we originally wanted to have at least an 8 inches wall before the window frame, so that the water won't splash the window all the time. From the photo above, notice there is literally no space for such 8 inches wall between the window frame and the kitchen top.

Ah Phan noticed the problem and immediate ordered to rectify the problem. So a new window frame will be made to replace this one.

Finally, this is the photo BEFORE the change :

.. and here's the photo AFTER the new window frame being put up today :

Here's the new scenic view after the window mod. Compared it with the photo posted earlier.

Kitchen ceiling receives its treatment. Here's the frame are being built for the plaster board.

Here's the almost final product. Note the ventilating fan and exhaust fan holes were being made on the wall. As all the fans are situated here, the wall will receive the oily fume treatment. Meaning this corner will have tiles being placed to its max for easy cleaning.

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At this point, more updates can be read in Flooring and Tiling Page . Almost all the wall and flooring are tiled up for the sake of easy cleaning and pleasing to the eyes.

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Windows are finally installed once most of the tiles are in-placed. Its made of aluminum frame with white powder coating.

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Granite plates as table top. This range is one of the most economical one.

Holes and trims are done to fit the kitchen sink in due course.

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Today stove and overhead suction pump are being placed.

Here's the finished product.

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Cabinet was being installed. Note that the middle drawer, it was too narrow for proper usage. So the factory get the stuff back to widen it.

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After widening, and a few days later, the kitchen cabinet was finally completed. The timber colour will be able to fit in with the overall colour combo of the kitchen.

This would mark the final update of the Kitchen.

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Garden - A remake.

2009-10-24T13:24:00.025+08:00

Old house came without a proper garden.

The space was cemented with shades, with a small building at the back, probably served as a small room to rent out to others in its early days.

One can see the dark shaded porch with its side roof to cover the 'garden' space.

Here is the original roof, pretty well made. But it no longer serves our purpose here. A simple lawn will be created right in this spot.

Out they went when we came in.

A few days later, the roof has gone. This photo was taken almost from the same angle as the photo above.

Here's the location of the power cable, fitted in today. Tenaga's approval has been obtained much earlier by the power cable guys. They will play a major role soon in this building.

Most of the work is being inhouse, with very minimal work being seen on the garden ever since the last post. But here it is. A big sliding door leading into the garden is having a small 7 feet Balinese shade, blocking both the evening sun and rain from the door.

Here's the bare outlet into the garden (same photo was being shown in the Le Pipe page.)

Works are being done to install the hardwood frame.

Factory prefabricated and pre-cut frame, note the patterned tip of the horizontal beam. Despite that it is still hand-sawed to correct length. Impressive handwork for that as well. For me, I would need a circular saw to achieve the effect.

Within a day, everything is done.

Roofing is made of Asphalt Cambridge Shingles. It is hammered in place with zinc plate water proofing, placed onto a base layer of plywood. This is how it is supposed to be installed - Video .

The Asphalt roof was purchased all the way from Butterworth ! I am sure someone in Klang Valley carry this but we just don't know who.

Two new columns were built, one is to conceal the sewage pipes. Another one is mainly for the sake of symmetry.

Manholes are being built at this point, for drainage from the roof and hopefully from the garden. However, being a step taller than the ground level, something will need to be done to direct water from the surface into the manhole.

Another view of the manholes built and buried along the building.

Here's one more view, extended piping all the way to the rear, where it is going to be drained out.

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The garden will have two water outlet. This is one at the back.

Manhole just right below the kitchen window. It has to be redo to improve the water flow and allow water from the garden to flow in should there be a minor flood (if it works !)

Another manhole redone.

Power line to be laid right in front of the building by the Tenaga people soon.

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The oldest tree trunk is finally being uprooted. This tree is probably there for around 15-20 years. Giving way to a flat garden.

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The main door is up. With solid wood simple design, one and a half frame.

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All those loose, or left behind slaps of cements were buried under the garden soil. We spent almost 2 days, with hired two workers and our own bare hands, managed to dig most of them out to be discarded. That way hopefully the future gardening activities will not be impeded. Lessons to be learned here : remove them BEFORE laying down any soil on top. It takes ages and lots of muscle just to dig all out throughout the garden !

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Problem: When we try to drain out the reserved water from the tank (to facilitate the background chap to install the new water filter), one of the manhole literally flooded the garden. The drainage was blocked at some point.

The Ah Phan's team folks came, dug out and exposed the pipes, and corrected whatever the error that could have caused it. Problem solved.

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Some green touches starts to decorate the garden.

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Garden spikes are being installed.. Easily another famous Malaysian invention !

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These spikes were cut from the old 20+ year old gate, and being welded onto the slots. My wife's idea that is.

Final installation of Motorised Gate Mechanism.

Finally, after 2 days of hard work, episode of Gastritis, small blisters, hours of hot sun, poor food, soaking wet in heavy rain in the evening, and tonnes of aching muscles, both of us with the help of 2 other temp workers managed to add a truckload full of soil, before coating a layer of sand, followed by team work by four of us to distribute the grass patches to complete the garden. Soil was arranged by Ah Phan's contact, which is cheap enough indeed. Yes we are proud of ourselves too. Its hard work within such a short time. Will I do it again next time? NO !
Here's the rear view of the garden.

Here's the front view of it.

With this, I think the Garden chapter finally draw to a close.

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The Staircase

2009-10-22T13:31:00.019+08:00

Is was not part of the plan.

For us, a staircase is a staircase, no more, no less.

It still has a good solid Mosaic tiles in placed despite all the years serving the people. For that we have decided to keep it as it is.

Until we built up a storeroom at its side !

It appeared that, the bricked wall was built onto the side of the staircase. This staircase, being an ancient product, was measured at about 3 feet wide, or almost a metre. With the wall built onto the side, and a future handle bar to be placed against the wall, the staircase would have been too narrow for comfort !

So we have decided to hack off the top wall, creating a bricked flat top staircase handle instead.

As this is still a project in progress, we will see if the plan works well.

The Triangular space that forms the side storeroom will be covered up with plywood or something similar. We will discuss the option with the renovator in due course.

The triangular wall will be covered with wooden board to seal as the storeroom wall.

The stair case started to take its shape with plaster in place.

This is closer to its final look.

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A board was placed to cover up the void, forming side wall of the staircase.

This is how the board was built viewing from inside the storeroom. The lower part is the original staircase side concrete wall, allowing future diy wall fixtures.

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At this point, a layer of cement plaster was being applied to cater for future floor lamination.

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The Roof

2009-10-20T16:51:00.005+08:00

There is nothing wrong with the roof.

When we got in initially, one of the main concern is the quality of the roof structure itself, and the possibility of Termites infestation.

After investigation by the Pesticide company, I am glad to know that, after almost 30 years of standing, the wood structure in the house remained firmly intact, with no evidence of termite infiltration whatsoever.

Despite all that, due to the extension of the house, the roof will need to be rebuild, so that the extension too will have a good drainage from the rain.

Here's the old roofing:

The old extension has insufficient slope angle for proper drainage.

The new roof, shown in the yellow segment, will be about 4-5 ft taller to cater for the extension.

The new roof will also house two water tank, side by side, for domestic consumption.

There are two kind of structural supports available, Wooden support beam or metal support.

Metal support would be generally lighter, less defects, and with no danger of future termites infestation. But it is also more expensive.

Wood however is cheaper, though by not much. In our case, we can still harness the old structure as the hard wood is still in very very good condition. It will be a waste if we were to just throw them away as nowadays the price of solid hard wood can be comparable to metal.

So after using back the old wood, we only need to get a little more to rebuild the whole roof. That translates into cost saving. We decided to opt for wood as a result.

These are the old hard wood used for almost 30+ years. Its still in very good condition despite its age. They are now stored for rebuilding purposes.

The new brick can be seen elevated the roof by about a metre plus.

Zinc plates arrived. It will form the base layer before laying down the roof tiles. It does prevent leakages, intrusions and, to a certain extent, heat from sieving through.

Here it is. The zinc plate are being laid.

The almost final look. Overall it is about 4 ft higher than the original roof. Hopefully it can also cool down the house a little.

It will be followed by the final act of placing ventilation shield to allow air movement in and out of the roof for cooling effect.

Stay tuned.

First stage of wiring is being made before the ceiling board.

This is how the Air Vent looked like. It allows cooler air to flow in, and allow the hotter roof space air to leak out through the side vents. This is very much an experimental shot, hopefully it can effectively reduce the temperature of the underlying rooms.

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One side of the roofing support appear to have a small sinking appearance. Although it is of no harm. My wife suggest rectification at this point.

This is after the rectification job.

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