Guest Blogger: Holiday Surprises For The Family

Holiday Surprises for the Family

In order to bring richer content to our readers, we have tied up with other bloggers to post as a guest.

Please welcome today's guest blogger Bob from http://metalhandyman.com

I look forward to the holidays because they remind me of wonderful childhood memories. I'm a pretty sentimental guy so when I get the chance to think back to those memories, I take advantage of the opportunity.

Thanksgiving and Christmas are the two big holidays I spend the most time preparing for. I enjoy spending time with my family and I make sure that my home has a few memorable surprises every time they visit. I've taken the liberty of jotting down some of the projects I've worked on in the past. These projects provided the right amount of excitement. I love the look on their faces when they come over!


1. Paint Job
Painting was probably the easiest and cheapest holiday project I worked on. I didn't paint my entire house green and red, but that was one of my initial plans. It was going to cost more than I thought to wrap my home in paper and bow. Instead I decided to paint my bathroom. It's the smallest room in the house and I knew that if I got sick of it, repainting the room would not be a huge problem. I sketched a few branches on large brown paper and taped them to a freshly painted white wall. I then painted over the paper with red paint. The result was a winter landscape against a bright red Christmas background.

2. Light Fixtures
In the past I've changed light bulbs in the kid's rooms to reflect the Christmas mood. I know it sounds corny, but green and red lights shining through the bedroom door made me laugh uncontrollably. A simple green tinted bulb can supply all the Christmas cheer you need. I also heard of a great DIY project involving wine bottles. These bottles are usually ornately designed so adding a few inches of LED lights inside a few of them can provide some interesting decoration. I'm stilling thinking whether or not I want wine bottles sitting around on my table. I saw an article about changing a light fixture so I've given thought to installing a special light fixture in the dining room. Maybe it will give our dinners a fancy feeling.

3. Kitchen
The kitchen is probably the most important room in your house for the holidays. It’s where everyone will gather. It’s where the kids will roll out sugar cookie dough, where your uncle will go for Thanksgiving Day game beers and where your mother will say the gravy is too lumpy. Don’t give anyone anything to criticize by giving your kitchen a quick update. Fresh paint on the walls can breathe new life into the kitchen. Or, if the cabinets are in good condition but about as stylish as big ’80s bangs, fresh paint and hardware on the cabinets can make them look as good as new. White is always a classic, or consider painting the upper and lower cabinets different colors for a contemporary look. New hardware – silver or matte black are very “au courant” – will finish the look.

4. Bathroom
I spent a few years as a plumber so the bathroom is my favorite place to make changes. One of the first projects I worked on was actually turned into a gift for my daughter. I placed steel fittings around a mirror and surrounded it with LED lights.For me the bathroom is probably the the most important room for the holidays. My family sometimes stays over for entire weekends so I know the bathroom will be a busy place. I already mentioned the paint job idea I implemented before. Alternatively I thought about simply coordinating towel bars, wastebaskets, toothbrush and even toilet paper holders with holiday themes. I've also considered making general changes such as adding a new vanity and sink which can cost as little as $100. I'm most familiar with the shower and sink but I've never been able to think of anything fancy for the holiday. I saw an article about channel drain showers and thought about how amazing the looked. Maybe one of the models from Quick Drain USA. They make the bathroom look incredibly modern. That's not really my style but I know my family would be so excited about it.

Improved Toilet Layout- Cost of Renovation

There has been numerous inquiries about the cost of renovating the toilet.

However, there are a few assumptions before sharing this information:
1. Do bear in mind that this was priced in end 2009 and offered as part of a complete renovation package.
2. Excludes demolition works and installation of all other toilet accessories.
3. Toilet is approximately 4.8sqm in floor area

a. S$1700: To Supply and Lay ceramic floor tiles c/w water proofing (Material cost up to $3/ft2)

HDB renovation- toilet floor waterproofing

For your information:
water proofing needs to be done under the toilet floor tiles. The failure of this waterproofing is often the cause of a wet/ leaking toilet roof between neighbours on the upper and lower floor.

b. S$1500: To Supply and Lay glazed wall ceramic tiles including low wall @ 1 toilet (Material cost up to $3/ft2)

HDB Toilet- Wall tile near completion

c. S$920: To supply and install 1500mm wide vanity top c/w integrated Bowl
d. S$820: To supply and install 1500mm wide suspended cabinetary c/w mirror panel door (Material soild ply/Laminates)

HDB toilet- Vanity Top and Wall Mounted Cabinet Construction

Improved Toilet Layout- Feedback Dec 2012
Wet Floor Toilet Design
Improved Toilet layout

Does the Refrigerator need a Plinth?

Do you need to create a plinth for the refrigerator? That was one of the "minor" points my ID was trying to play down and convince me to avoid the plinth. His argument was that without the plinth, it was easier to roll out the fridge to clean up the dust behind.

As the end-user, my concern was to address the case when the kitchen floor gets flooded from the washing machine malfunction, it would damage the fridge's electrical circuits. Read about front load washing machines having this risk here. "But that is a 1:1000 chance of happening", he argued back.  I figured he was trying to find the easy way out, as without the plinth, the tiler will have a much easier time. Click here to read the reasoning. Anyway, to cut the long story short, I won the debate, which I now am glad having doing so. To protect the washing machine from the flood, we have also placed the rubber blocks to raise it above the floor.

Fridge on a plinth, adjacent to stacked drier on Washing machine which is on blocks.

Washing Machine on blocks

After moving for 2 and a half years, the "1:1000" incident happened... the kitchen floor was flooded when the water discharge tube from the washing machine was accidentally pulled out of the house outlet pipe.

The fridge on the plinth and washing machine on blocks were safe from the flooding. The only thing to handle was cleaning up the flood. Snapped some photos while moving the washing machine and drier out to clean up the wet floor. All these effort to prevent permanent damage to the fridge and washing machine.... I'd say it is worth it.

1. Shifted out the drier and washing machine
2.  Create a temporary extension plinth to roll out the fridge (using newspapers and plywood shelf board)

Note the concrete tiled plinth on the left. Fridge has a white wheel and black adjustable leg. 

3. Roll out the fridge to access the kitchen outlet.

 4. Clean up the kitchen outlet

Kitchen water outlet was located under the fridge. All the flood water was discharged through this outlet. Also note the back of the fridge (on the right) has a lot of electrical works, vulnerable to flooding.

In conclusion, while making design decisions for your renovation, do consider some worst case situations, especially if they can cause some form of permanent damage to your assets.

Also see kitchen layout

Floor Tile Selection

As usual, we did some casual research on a few type of flooring available.

1. Natural stone
The 2 common type are marble and granite.
Marble was our favourite as my partner and I both loved the wavy natural patterns and cool feeling of marble. But marble is probably the most "capital intensive" and high maintenance of all our options. It needs to be polished every few years to maintain its glossy look, each costing about S$200 plus (depending on floor area) and major furniture shifting. Marble is also more susceptible to staining from deep coloured drinks like red wine.

Granite on the other hand is extreme durable but cheaper than marble. Our problem with granite is that the patterns did not appeal to us very much. Granite patterns are usually speckled and it looks too heavy for our theme of Classic European


2. "Man-made" stone
Commonly known as Homogeneous tiles. These are factory-made tiles compressed under high temperature and pressure into form and pattern. we learnt that homogeneous tiles come in a large range of qualities. Not that we understood how to tell the difference. Homogeneous tiles comes in a large variety of patterns and are known to be more durable and easy to maintain than marble. Plus it is a fraction of marble price.
3. Laminate
If you have seen our blog, the pre-renovation was using wooden laminates. the system consist of interlocking wooden panels that is laid on a tile or concrete slab surface.

Conclusion
Considering the functionality over ascetics, budget over luxury, we picked homogeneous tile. We had 1 young boy and another one coming then. Milk spillage and crayons is something marble cannot withstand.

However, we choose as big (600mmx600mm) a homogeneous tile size as possible from a pattern that resembled marble. That's as close as we can get to marble... ...