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.

Glass Door and kitchen-living window

Hi everyone, we wanted to share our feedback on the choice of a full-glass swing door for the kitchen-living room door.

Firstly, the kitchen and dinning area is connected by a door. Initially we were following the concept of a design that has a similar longish layout like ours here. It was using a wood frame-glass panel bi fold door. As the design developed, after we decided to introduce a "window" between the kitchen and living room (so we can keep an eye on the kids in the living room while cooking), the decision for the door naturally followed. see our kitchen-dining area concept below

kitchen-dining area concept with glass door

An elevation view of the "window" and glass door. If you have noticed, we put some decals and clear stickers as a few of our first time visitors did not realise the glass door and bumped into it. Using a sliding door would have compromised into our storage space to the sliding pocket and would block the "window". Another option was to use bi-fold doors but we did not like the rails especially in a heavy cooking oil environment.

The glass is made of a full piece of tempered glass, meaning that it has been strengthened by heat treatment so it is harder to break. In any case it is broken, it will shatter into harmless tiny pieces of glass. We have asked specifically for the edges of the glass door to be chamfered to remove any sharp corners.

window and glass door with decals and stickers

The glass door can open in and outwards. This allowed for some flexibility in usage.



glass door swing outwards

glass door swing inwards

Feedback:
Overall we are quite happy with the choice. Specific points as follows:

Plus points
1. effective keeps out kitchen oil, probably like any other systems
2. fits into our design and the adjacent window
3. in-out swing was useful when serving hot food
4. allows light sharing between the living room and kitchen which gets the evening and morning sun respectively.
5. no rails or sliding pocket

Minus points and what we could have done better
1. However, a word of caution is to train babies and toddlers not to plan in the door swing zone. The glass door edge and floor can form a nasty pinch on the little toes, which has happened twice. Besides reinforcing that this it a NO-PLAY zone, we would probaby looking into attaching a soft rubber for the lower door edge to reduce the pinching effect.

2. The glass door swing mechanism is a PH and is still working fine. It was only after it was installed before we researched that Dorma was the best brand. I would insist on a Dorma if I knew earlier.

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

Kitchen Design Concepts and Specifics

My wife and I spent a fair amount of time  deciding the approach to the kitchen design and layout. After weeks of discussion, of which some are less than cordial... here is what we agreed on.

Concepts:
1. Who has the Ultimate Say? My wife, being the primary user will have the ultimate say in the choice of layout for funationality and material/colour choice for outlook. For the new couples working on the renovation for your new home, it can be a lot of tension while making decisions along the way. My personal experience is always good to give and take.

2. Do we believe in FengShui? Yes! From my limited memory, our FS master dictated the Stove direction, refrigator facing direction, and insisting on avoiding clashes between the "hot" and "wet" elements are a few key parts. "Hot" elements are like stove and oven. "Wet" elements are prepresented by toilet door, sink and washing machine. We did some research work to check back. But if you want to take into consideration your GUA number, you may consider engaging a FengShui Master to help you early in the design stage. These FS guidelines will form part of the controlling parameters to guide your decision making.

3. Do we actually cook or bake regularly? Yes and quite a fair bit! Thus, to isolate the stir-fry and deep frying fumes from spreading to the living room, we decided to keep the kitchen "closed" aka non-open concept. From the above,
a. The choice of stove and oven was clearly important.
b. To reduce cleaning, we decided to choose a high performance hood.
c. We chose to introduce a glass door to isolate the kitchen from the living room while cooking. A glass door was chosen so we could keep an eye on our children in the living room.
d. Tabletop space needed to be increase for baking and food processing. These extra tabletop doubles up as a breakfast table.

4. What kind of theme do we want? We both wanted a neutral theme, but it has to look spacious. Thus we adopted a "white kitchen" concept. There are other themes like cottage or 2-tones. Some of our research references are here. Looking at photos helped us visualize and decide what we wanted. Communication with the ID is also easier with photos.

5. What is the Storage plan? After visualising how our movement would be like while cooking or baking, the wall mounted cabinets, tabletop cabinets where added around the stove, ovens, sink and refrigators. For more details, most of our ideas care from here. My wife wanted the following:
a. Sliding shelves for stir-fry sause beside the stove
b. Commonly used staff to be at middle level for ease of access
c. Staff that is seldom used a should be a at a low level, so the user will not need to squat or bend over too often.
d. Staff that is required once in a bluemoon is stored at the highest level. A stool may be required for access.

A glimpse of the completed kitchen layout as follows:

Also see
Glass Door and kitchen-living window
Does the Refrigerator need a Plinth?
Pre-renovation Preparation