Major Renovation works for Bathroom!!!

Basically bathroom works is the most complicated and cost the most money parts for renovation. As mentioned in the earlier post, I did not get my toilet done when I moved in to my house 8 years back. Therefore, this time, I had decided to have a major make over for my bathrooms as well!

The bathroom I had in my condo is quite small, therefore, I am trying to design it to make it look comfy and glamour!!First, I told my contractor to remove all the existing old fashion tiles, WC, basin, water heater and all others items in the bathrooms, as I will be replacing everything new in the bathroom.

Shopping for bathrooms accessories can be fun if there is no limitation of budget!! Arrggghh... There are so many nice and luxury stuffs that I would loves to have in my bathroom! Anyway, following are the items I had decided for my bathrooms. Basically both bathrooms will have similar designs, but the differences will be master bedrooms will be using all the luxury items, whereas for guest bathroom, all accessories used will be regular items.

Let's first talk about guest bathroom. When shopped about the bathroom accessories, we saw Teka is having warehouse sale in Glenmarie area. Usually Teka will have good mixer and shower accessories for sale at steal price. So we decided to give ourselves a try. The warehouse sale started at 10am in Teka's warehouse in Glenmarie. We arrived around 12pm and guess what?? Most of the good items had gone home with others! Anyway, after several round of discussion with my sis, I had decided to pick up 1 mixer for washbasin, 1x rainshower set, 1 set of hangers, toilet roll hanger and others Teka accessories at a very super duper cheap price. As for WC & washbasin, there are both from Johnson Suisse.

When comes to bathroom for master bedroom, my first choice is Hansgrohe overhead + raindance select shower head and Hansgrohe Metris 260 mixer for washbasin. These are the 2 most luxurious items for my bathroom! Besides, in order for the rainshower set to run smooth, we had installed the Joven 35L Storage Water Heater + Grundfos water pump. Same as the guest room, WC is Micca from Johnson Suisse and wash basin - I had chose the Jupiter from Johnson Suisse for Vanity Top design. Initially I was aiming at the washbasin from Duravit (Product made in Germany), however their washbasin is totally out of my budget, thus, I can only give up and walk over to Johnson Suisse.Tiles for both bathrooms are from Niro Granite as I feel that tiles from Niro is more natural and more choices. Since the current trend for tiles for our size of bathroom is 2'x1'.

Here is the little introduction of Hansgrohe Metris New 260 basin mixer for wash bowls.

Product features

• ComfortZone 260
• normal spray
• flow rate: 5 l/min
• pop-up waste set G 1¼
• suitable for continuous flow water heaters

(Products details copied from www.hansgrohe.com.sg)

If you ever tried their mixer in their showroom, you will definitely love the water flow from this mixer. Most of their products are made in Germany. No doubt their products are expensive, but I guess it is valued for money.

I had actually ordered for this mixer for several weeks from Living Bathroom in Bangsar, but most of the dealers or distributors in Malaysia are out of stock. Thus, I tried to call to Hansgrohe Singapore to check if it is available there! The SA answering the phone told me it is available and the good news is they are having GSS '13 promotion now! Usual price was S$ 582.62/set, current promotion is S$ 405.53 (RM 997.60). Whereas the selling price in Malaysia is going at RM 2,690 (Retail price), checked in main distributor in Kelana Jaya, they offered RM 1570 (their best price) and Living bathroom is offering RM 1240. LoL! Happy consumer! Still have saving of almost RM 240! I really wonder why is Malaysia price so much different from other countries???

I do not have much information to share about the Hansgrohe Raindance Select range of shower mixer set. Most likely I will snap photo before unbox for installation.

Will snap photos of my bathroom after renovation is done! I am super excited and cannot wait to look forward to next Monday when my bathrooms are all ready!!

Glossy box X Vogue (Japan Edition)!!!

Had not post about beauty stuffs for long time! Had seen everyone been crazy about beauty box and at first glance, I was wondering what is this all about?? And started googling about all information about beauty box!! 

There are so many brands floated the market... In Malaysia, namely Vanity Trove, Mivva, Bag of Love and etc... But I guess beauty box are all about paid samples in a beautiful box!

I got my first beauty box from Japan! When I googled about beauty box in Japan, I found the most famous beauty box in Japan is Glossybox and so coincident they had crossover with Vogue and this is yearly crossover!! Since I had never own a beauty box, I thought this might be a good chance to try it!! 

I placed order online and had it sent over to my friend address in Japan! Received the parcel mid April 2013! 

This is how the box looks like:-

    

This is what I got in the box!! 

Deciding on renovation

This will be a super long post without photos....

I guess everyone of us will have the same thought as me after staying in our existing house for so many years and hope for a make over to change the new look! Or perhaps when we moved in to our house that time we do not have so huge fund for renovation and after several years of saving and finally we have a small saving for a minor make over!

I had this thought for many years! When I moved in to my current house 8 years ago, our saving was used on our wedding and only left a little for house renovation. During that time I decided to invest all the little money on my kitchen! Thus, I am happy with my wonderful kitchen!

After so many years, I always told hubby that I was regret as last time we didn't renovate our toilet and window frame as well, as the window frame given by the developer was so lousy and there is leakage from the edge of frame itself. Regret regret and regret... 

Over the year, I had so many BIG ideas.... wanna convert my room to a bigger room (2 rooms become 1 room)... wanna have a dressing room... wanna have a nice huge walking wardrobe... wanna have a powder room ....  wanna have a rain shower... wanna have a robotic vacuum ....basically wanna have everything perfect in my little house!

Then I started off with making a lot of survey on the design of the rooms I want!! From master bedroom design to dressing room to bathroom and lastly living room!! Also survey on the cost incurred for every items. 


After several round of think and rethink, if really have to carry out this type of huge renovation, it's not only the money that matters, we also have to think about where we are going to stay during renovation, how and where we will keep all our stuffs. So ended up we gave up on the idea of renovation and started sobbing about all the thoughts I had in my mind!! I told hubby I will bury all the thought in deep inside my heart so that it will never be found again! LoL!

Then in April this year, I went to Perfect Living '13 and finally decided to change my flooring to laminate flooring which I had a good discount from one of my friend who currently working in that industry. But again, of course I need to plan how can they do the flooring with all my furniture and stuffs sitting around the house!!

Then I told my sis about my idea on just do  flooring for my house and wanted to move some of the stuffs out from the house perhaps to keep in her store room. After sharing the thoughts, she asked me, since I will move out some of the stuffs, why not you take this chance to renovate your house and make it more comfy and cosy??

Here comes the BIG ideas!!! Then we started off with planning to do just flooring and plaster ceiling, making the estimation cost of involvement and everything. Yeah! It's still within my budget and I can still managed to get a dream robotic vacuum for new flooring!!

Since then, I started with my packing and planning to move back to Klang during the minor renovation. Along the way of packing my stuffs, I started to feel tired and hate packing. As then only I realized, I had crazily a lot of stuffs to pack! First, take out all unused clothes and give out to friends and family or charity! Secondly, find new houses or owners for my precious paperbags and novels!! Thirdly, packed all my beauty stuffs which I intended to do garage sale to sell it off! Then finally, packed all my clothes, bedsheets, curtains and other stuffs!Have them moved slowly to my MIL's house and some to my sister's house in Klang as well!

However, over the time, my sis asked if I planned to reno my toilet as well? As I might want to tile up the wall to make it looks cleaner? I was like, really?! If I wanted to do my toilet as well, I might need to spend additional for it. Then I was like... hmm... never mind la, just check the price first, no need to decide immediately! So, I started to look for wet works contractors and invited them to quote for my toilet works. Then only I realized, the wet works are so expensive this day compared to few years back. Meanwhile started to shop for all other items needed for toilet such as tiles, WC, basin, mixer, rain shower, water pump and etc. Will share in details in other posts.

Anyway, most important lesson I had learn from this renovation is that do not underestimate the cost of renovation. There are always unforeseen cost incurred from no where! Or in another words, I really need very HUGE courage to decide on renovating my house, guess there will not be another time in future. Therefore I must make sure I did a good job this time!

Cheers!!!