DIY- Decorating Boy's Room (HDB common room)

While teaching the boys to read the clock, we realized that their bedroom wall was a little plain, especially after doing up their baby sister's bedroom.

We first bought the decals for the vehicles and clouds but found it a little plain. So we bought some roads and added more to the wall. See the results below.

HDB common room decoration with wall decal for Boys

See the link to purchase the decal online from amazon.
Decal for vehicles


Decal for clouds

Decal for roads

Comments are welcome!


Also see

Decorating a baby girl's room

Glass doors and children

Choosing Ceiling LED Lighting (How to check and ask for quality)

With the emergence of a large variety of products from the "emerging" economies, (no pun intended) it is sometimes difficult to tell good value for money.

In my context,
Good value for money = fair price + good quality
Fair value for money = high price + high quality OR fair price + fair quality OR cheap price + cheap quality
Poor value for money = fair price + poor quality OR high price + fair quality
In short, you pay for what you get.

After some investigation, we would like to share our 2 cents worth with all the readers.

HDB renovation 2009- Ceiling Light before installation

1. Look for thick plastic

HDB renovation 2009- Ceiling Light, thicker plastic is better

2. Look for Metal hinges (plastic ones will crack after 2 years when you try to remove cover for bulb changing)

HDB renovation 2009- Ceiling Light- ask for metal hinges

3. LED ( aka Light emitting Diodes) are the latest trend in the market. They are energy efficient, requires lasts much longer but are more expensive. We will not cover the details of LED here. But in short, the LED must work with a driver (which converts Singapore Power's AC current to Direct current) The drivers usually fails before the LEDs.

So the trick is to ask for 2 sets of LED with their independent Drivers. If 1 driver fails pre-maturely, the other set is running, so you will not experience a total blackout.
This is of course on top of the warranty!


HDB renovation 2009- In 1 Ceiling light fixture, 2 independent sets of LED (Small squares arranged in a circular fashion) and drivers (the white boxes)

Also read:
Shopping for Lights
Problems with False Ceiling and Lightings
Lighting- cost savings
Lighting Concept

Decorating Baby Girl's Room Wall

Having conditioned the baby to sleep through, we managed to find time to decorate her room, but was on a tight budget. My wife was keen to make the room more lively and "girlish".

She found an elegant and economical way to create a theme wall for our girl's infant room, DIY decal style. It is a quiet forest theme with an owl, porcupine and squirrel.




Take a look at the finished product here. Stickers are reusable and of surprisingly high quality. So there was no worry about adjusting the picture arrangements to your preference.

Decorating Baby Girl's Bedroom economical DIY

There are other 2 choices which we found to be pleasant and suitable for baby girls, but without being too pinky



Also see
DIY- Changing cabinet knob
DIY- Decorating Glass Door with Decals
DIY- Decorating a boy's room

Changing the chair fabric

Dining set  consisting of 1 table and 4 chair set was purchased back in 2009.

To cut the long story short, after 3 years of wear and tear, the "leather" started to disintegrate.

We contacted several contractors and found it difficult even to get a quotation. It was only until we found Cheong and Mun on renotalk before they sent someone to take a look and offered a price on the spot.

In the discussion, we found the following facts, posted here for your benefit:
1. The original material was made of PU synthetic leather ( aka polyurethane)
2. Accoding to the saleman, a more durable material would be PVC synthetic leather ( aka polyvinyl chloride) which should last for at least 5 years if it is properly cleaned with water and soft soap. It is also the most water-proof amoungst the 3.
3. The most comfy, but at nearly double the price is cow skin leather. It can last at least 5 years provided it does not get wet and will last even longer if regularly maintained with leather cream and oil.

See the difference here and there

Verdict:
1. With 2 yound children, we expect frequent fluid spillage.
2. Leather cream and maintanence would take a lot of quality time.
3. Probably more worthwhile to choose PVC now and if there is no desire to change the furniture, in 5 years time, to replace with cow leather. This is a time where we optimistically expect lesser "waterfall: incidents after the children are more grown up.

Will post an update when the skin change is done.