The Sabbatical - Home Improvements Edition

It is absolutely true when they say statistics show that a large proportion of people quit after going on sabbatical. The thought of going back to work, facing the deluge of emails waiting for you is just daunting and depressing. I think however, the studies focus of people who self- reflect and feel that they can/want to do more with their lives etc. Maybe the daunting emails play a part as in "I can do more than just respond to these irritating emails."

A week and a half before I was supposed to go back to work, I wrote my boss to ask for another 3 days' off to make it a whole week out instead of returning to work on a Wednesday. As I was arranging my social calendar with friends in Singapore, from Seville where I was at that time, I was thinking I didn't have enough time to pack in all these meetings, plus do those little and not-so-little home improvement jobs I wanted to tackle.

After not hearing from the boss after 4 days, I wrote him again and asked if silence meant consent? This got me an immediate response, the good man replied that he thought he had said yes on email before and if he didn't, he said it in his head, resoundingly. Ahhh... who wouldn't love a boss like that? It makes the mountain of emails less irritating, almost.

Anyway to put work out of my head, I started tackling the home improvement jobs. I patched the few holes in the master bedroom walls left by the removal of the curtain rods which were never in use, ever. Not a great job as I did that in the semi-dark but I think better than nothing. And we finally bought a can of Nippon paint called "Charming" this afternoon. I was really impressed by the whole computerised system they use now, the computer dispenses a few drops of coloured paint in the right concentration into the can of white paint and then the can is placed into automated shaking device which shakes it up to mix it well. So no one needs to stock a bunch of coloured paints and hope that they all sell equally well. Anyway this is NOT my kitchen but what I hope the Charming colour will be close enough to. But I got a sneaky feeling it is going to end up looking exactly like the colour of my cabinets now...

Home Improvements - You Win Some, You Lose Some

After installing blinds in the living room, I lost the free form hanging wall (aka window grills) for my various artworks. That was a lot of space that was surrendered and there were many pieces of work which are now missing a display spot. 

So when my new Zhu Hong watercolour was delivered, I had to find somewhere to hang my new treasure. I decided to swap out my own red masterpiece. I love being able to enjoy my new purchase while I sit in the living room surfing, or watching tv. I like how the black frame makes the orange pop.

I don't know yet what I am going to do with the other pieces that no longer have a home. Should I create a salon wall, if so, where? Or should I put them into the store room and have the discipline to rotate them on a quarterly basis?

I like home improvement projects. I like the fact that every step makes me love my home even more.

Quick and Simple Home Improvements

I can think of various cheap and simple ways to enhance a room:-
1. Bunch of flowers from the supermarket
2. New cushion covers
3. Aromatherapy oils or fragrance sticks
4. Framed postcards or pretty calendar pages
5. A cheerful throw blanket over an old sofa

My favourite is to grab a bunch of flowers from the supermarket and arrange them in my collection of vintage pots and vases. I rotate the vessels and see what catches my fancy and what goes best with the type of flowers and colours.

Flowers from the supermarket: $3
Lifting mood of the house and the owner: priceless.

A Late Stroke Of Genius

Finally. It's over. This is our best idea which came late in the day. We changed the orientation of the bedroom door, moved it down the corridor, then up, then even further up and flushed with the built-in wardrobe. Then the light bulb came TOTALLY on, we started with a sliding door, were told no-can-do for various reasons, then we went with a regular door, reusing our existing door but fabricating a new door frame (which had to go to waste after being completed and paid for). Then with the light bulb going on, we reverted back to the idea of a sliding door but using the tracks of the new wardrobe. For some reason, this brilliant idea was fine with the contractor, who thought it was rather clever too.

So here it is, doors all shut, flushed against the wall.

And here with the bedroom door slid into the wardrobe, revealing the corridor leading to the front part of the house. A late stroke of genius but so totally worth it.

Home Renovations - Before

Finally, the renovations are about to happen. This picture shows the most detested feature in our house, this wooden parquet platform that was put in by the last owner who thought it was a brilliant feature he adapted from his last resort holiday and was so proud of. I really hated it because it was impractical and dangerous especially for those middle of the night loo visits when one could easily fall over. We overcame that obstacle by swapping the sleeping area with the study area. But it was still annoying because there was also the issue of stubbing your toe instead of falling over when you came from the opposite direction. We lived with that for 3 whole years and finally decided that we have to do another round of renovations and this was the first thing that had to be fixed.

I was pretty happy with the rest of the house, but our bedroom just seems to be a white, functional room. Even the roomful of vintage furniture like the Art Deco dresser and the mid-Century long blue bench (from the Sydney Opera House foyer) could not save the insipidness of this room.

So I am looking forward to having the works done and adding some colour to this room. The room will be getting the character it deserves after a long 3 years. I can't wait. 3 weeks to the unveiling!

Work In Progress

We have been in our little flat for almost 3 years now, it's a cliche but time does fly. Our renovation and upgrading works thus far were:-

a. before moving in, basic and minor renovations - we were very eager to move into our own place!
b. about 1 year + upon moving in, upgraded shower fixtures and replaced the sink in the common bathroom. We had also replaced the stove from the stainless steel one to a glass one and repainted our kitchen cabinet doors from a plain pine to a baby blue and changed the handles. Finally hung up the 2 mid-century space ship lamps purchased online from Holland.
c. very recently, hung up more artworks and created a sorta salon wall with smaller pictures in the living room (I say "sorta" because they were under threat of removal by the Boy but I think they work and he's left them alone since).

However the one area that always felt neglected to me was our bedroom. We finally put double-glazing in and wooden blinds and that improved our sleep quality. But apart from that, we hadn't done much. The space (bedroom cum office) was functional but soulless. We have a couple of nice vintage furniture in it but that still didn't do anything for the room.

So this time round, we are focusing on our bedroom cum office. We will finally:-

a. get rid of the much-hated platform parquet floor in the office area, legacy of the last owner. It was a dumb, impractical feature but we kept it because of the speed we needed to move in 3 years ago. We made it more practical by switching the sleep and work areas, so you don't fall over the platform stumbling from your bed to the en-suite loo in the middle of the night. 

b. flatten the indentation in the 2 big end walls and make them into feature walls. I am the creative director for the bedroom area while the Boy is responsible for the office. Dark, heavy drapes will divide the 2 areas. We will be laying wooden floors on the newly-leveled surface. 

c. hack the wall separating the bedroom/office from the rest of the house, opening up the space. We will however be putting in a sliding door to block off the private space from the dining/living rooms when needed.

So we are now awaiting the contractor's quotation before we give the go ahead and I am excited to finally see the light at the end of the tunnel and have a bedroom which says style rather than just function.

Lights, Camera, Action!

We are doing home improvements after the decluttering. We installed a hat rack in the store room so that G can hang his shirts up and we were planning to hang my handbags in there and the top shelf can hold some light boxes.

We also changed the mirror in the guest bathroom, hanging a wooden box-like mirror, the bottom ledge acting like a shelf as well for little toiletries. It instantly lifted the bathroom we think.

The next thing on the list is to change some of the light fittings. We are leaving the alcove lights as is but the ceiling lights will be replaced. We have narrowed the choices for our bedroom to:-

a. artichoke lamp: hard to find the right size

b. George Nelson bubble lamp (criss-cross): very expensive

c. Aero lamp (pictured): have not come across in Singapore but available online from Australia

As such we are going to live with the current bedroom lights for now until we find the right lamp. But we will get the kitchen and guest bedroom lights changed this weekend.

Slowly but surely, we are moving towards making the house more into a home.

Plus And Minus

We finally got our act together and bought wooden blinds from Ikea for the home office cum master bedroom. The ugly cardboard which we had used as an interim solution, taped up against the window grilles, as an experiment to test what sort of noise buffer we needed, against the traffic noises, were finally removed. Anything would have been an improvement.

On the positive side, the dark wooden blinds go well with the rest of the furniture, wooden floorboards, under window carpentry. On the even more positive side, the blinds guys took down the window grilles for free, opening up the view from the windows, making it easier for us to open the windows, letting the wind in.

On the negative side, the blinds for the home office were not hung in a centralised manner, leaving a horrendous gap of about 15 cm on the left side. If they had hung them properly, the gap would have been in the middle where the metal frames of the windows meet, where there is no glass and where it would have been perfectly fine to have a gap. Now we have 15 cm of exposed glass on the left side.

A small part of me wants to shut my eyes to this defect. But a bigger part of me, just wants to get it fixed, quickly before we get to the "can't-be-bothered" stage.

Cute Bento Lunch

My creative bento-making friend, K came to my place today with 2 cute little bentos for my lunch. After looking at the cute photos she has up on her blog, I finally get to taste some of it. They were tasty in addition to being oh-so-cute. I saved the 2 buns with the cute faces because although the bento seems like a small box, it was rather filling. G and I made a quick snack of the buns on our way to meet a friend for coffee later in the afternoon. K and I had a good time discussing how to make a business out of her creativity in this area. I am really hoping that she can make a business out of it.

K also left me gifts of the bento box, food picks, a bento bag and a cute bento box strap since I was lacking a strap when I bought my own box from Daiso in Tokyo being the bento novice I was, I didn't realise they ALL need a strap to hold them in place.

In addition to all the edible goodies and bento accessories, she also gave me this lovely plant for the kitchen. It goes so well in the laundry area, adding some colour to my white, beige and steel kitchen. Now all I hope is that I don't kill the plant with my anti-green fingers.

To Outsource Or Not To Outsource - Decor Dilemmas

Two nights of back-breaking efforts at getting the curtains sewn and I'm technically still not done. Only the 2 side seams and top and bottom of each panel have been completed, we are holding them up with clothes pegs (hence not shown) and I have to sew the tabs. It's the sitting on the floor, bending over and pinning the folds down, ensuring that I've got them all consistent that is back-breaking. Why the floor? Because it's the only surface large enough.

And after all that, G is regretting his choice of fabric. There is just no pleasing everyone. I think IT'S FINE!

We got the new Queen bed delivered today, it was an online purchase. My regret is I didn't discover this earlier and we could have saved a bundle if we had ordered our European size bed from the same place. Anyway, once the bed went in, we could see how big our spare room actually is. I mean we knew it was a good size but with the placement of the largest piece of furniture in the room, the proportions became clearer. We have the 70s closet in there already, and my green tile top 70s table has also gone in and there is a lot of space for a standing lamp and perhaps one of the teak armchairs which we are repolishing and have got new cushions made. And we are off to Penang next week for a short holiday and to collect our precious cargo. And I am now thinking of sanding and varnishing the armchairs myself because it doesn't seem like too much work and is much easier to do it at home than cart it to the shop and back. (I guess when I have back aches and laments, I will regret I did not outsource the job. But till then, I am confident I can do it on a weekend.)

The New Pad

Finally after 8 months, our furniture saw the light of day and made it out of storage and into our new home. Technically we are only half moved, as we have about half a truck worth of stuff still at my mum's but since everything we need to function is already here, we are fine. (note to self: still need to get act together and move the rest of the things over)

I've only enjoyed 3 days in the new flat before I went off for another work trip. So I am looking forward to more days in my own space, enjoying my own furniture. We still need to hang pictures, decide which clock goes on which wall and put our clothes and other junk away. But I think we've done quite well with the unpacking so far.

Next step - party time!

Letting Go Of The Old

The apartment is looking a lot emptier now, and feels a lot lighter too. We or rather I, have managed to sell off quite a few pieces of furniture and other odds and ends. Surprisingly, Christmas time seems to be a good time for people to be scouring the classifieds to see what they can lay their hands on. And at the prices I've advertised, they know a bargain when they see one, especially those who like retro, vintage furniture.

So good bye to the old, familiar pieces, especially when they had been with G for so long. It is with a twinge of reluctance to let some of them go, especially the low orange plastic Kartell-era coffee table on which we've had many weekend brekkies on the balcony of our other apartment in Surry Hills. We tell ourselves that since we've moved to this apartment, we have not done the same, so it is time to let it go.

I was a bit sad to see the orange vinyl dining chairs go as I like them a lot. But we had to make a choice between them and the green vinyl Parker-ish chairs and those won, even though they were squeaky and will need to be repaired in due course.

The pink retro toaster which can toast 4 slices of bread at a go used to sit on the bench of my apartment in Oxford St as it had been a spare which G had. I like the retro design but on my own, I will never need 4 pieces of toast at any one time!

The Danish-style wooden table was always a tad high for a coffee table although we like its clean lines. So we last used it as a table for the printer. The top was a little water-damaged and had started to warp a little and the slates in the second tier were loose. So we really didn't want it THAT much.

G was also a little sad that his light green table lamp had to go, he used to have it on his bedside. I didn't like it that much for some unknown reason. The low Ikea coffee table was the right height for us to prop our feet on when watching telly but once we've got the Noguchi table, we used it as a side table for odds and ends.

Hence as the Chinese saying goes, "If the old things don't go, the new ones don't come". How very apt. And with furniture, and other general aspects of life, we probably have to let go of the old and the familiar in order to welcome some other newer, better changes into our lives...

Flowers And Friands

We got some flowers. Just because. The pink tulips came first. And eerily coincidental to what I was just eyeing on my way home. When I got home, there they were. Not exactly the same ones I saw, but pink tulips nevertheless.

The vermillion gerberra/chrysanthemum hybrid was another uncanny meeting of the minds. As we walked past the usual veggie shop to get take-aways on Friday night, the myriad of flowers in the pails along the pavement was so bright and lush. And when G echoed what I was just thinking, "the orange ones are really nice, aren't they?", I had to get them.

I don't know if some ESP has been going on, or just a matter of the most eye-catching colour amongst the blooms that people become instinctively drawn to. But we have flowers! And they sure are pretty.

And some home-baking also makes the house smell nicer, since the flowers already helped with the visual aspect. The first baking that I've done since I've moved in. And the start of more to come, I'm sure!

2 Resolutions And A Funeral

An update on various household headaches, past and present:-

1. After more than 3 months of angst with the real estate agent, strata agent, electric company, turning to the Fair Trading Office for help after hitting a brick wall with the aforesaid, I finally got about $58 back in credit in the mail today for my electricity bill. This makes all those white hairs, non-printable spewing (including my favourite coined by an aghast Singaporean friend, who could hardly believe how horrendously bad/inefficient/incompetent/nonchalant Australian customer service can be - "FUBAR"), constant ranting to everyone who cares (or not) to hear my grievances, ALMOST worth the while.

2. My gas situation also got sorted out and I received my first "real" bill of almost $200 which gave me a shock until I realised that was for the last 7 months as the gas company had been billing me for the wrong address (to the wrong address so I never got the bill while the occupant in that unit was enjoying free gas all the time) while my own unit did not receive any bill throughout that time. Maths isn't my strongest subject hence the initial almost-heart attack till I divvied it up and figured it was only $20 plus per month.

3. After 2 happy conclusions, I have to report a sad one. My 9-month young TV was off-kilter as I shifted it slightly to get it to a better viewing angle in the midst of "Grey's Anatomy" last night and it crashed face down onto the timber floor. I must thank my lucky stars my toes weren't crushed as even from that low height, it was mighty heavy. I put the TV face up again and the sound of a million pieces of shattered glass greeted me. I was grateful to have my toes intact and also not to have smithereens all over the floor as the TV screen was somehow intact.

I will bury the dead (TV) when I get some help to carry the body.

Dream House

The friand craving is still there although that has been somewhat assuaged by the yummy custard tart and the chocolate mud cake I had from the Surry Hills Patisserie today. Enough sinful pastries to last to the next weekend. So I didn't get a chance to bake some friands, but we did inspect a good handful of properties in the neighbourhood on Saturday. And we even saw one that we both fell in love with. The first one ever since we started viewing properties (for research purposes).

This was a house that had a modern apartment feel. Judging from the personal items in their bedrooms, the occupants were very likely to be designers or architects. The clean lines, good layout, simple yet tasteful fittings won us over. The bedrooms overlooked the neighbours' gardens instead of into someone else's rooms. The little patch of a garden was just nice, not too big to take care of, not too small to render useless. It was a house that we could clearly see ourselves living in.

But G reined in the emotions and figured that the returns on this wasn't going to be as good as that on a cheaper apartment in the same area. This would be good for our own occupation but as an investment, not so good.

I'm going to just keep dreaming a little...

Life's Treasures

This was a good weekend, it started out quite good with G making a lovely 4-mushroom risotto with pan-seared scallops and ended up fabulous with me finding a couple of treasures.

The scallops were sweet and juicy and the risotto was just flavoursome with the different types of mushroom. We topped it off by sharing a lemon meringue tart from the new pastisserie which we wanted to try out. The baker, a lovely Asian woman, friendly and generous and understands building goodwill, gifted us with a little tart of our choice after we picked the regular-sized lemon meringue tart. We chose a chocolate swirl tart. That got my undying loyalty and I vowed to support her business which didn't look very busy when we went. We returned on Sunday and bought a small sourdough baguette and a cherry cheesecake tart. Once again, she gave us a free little tart, we picked the chocolate meringue this time and it was delicious.

After dinner, we wandered down to Hyde Park for the opening night of the Sydney Festival. We wanted to hear "The Pink Martini", a group from Oregon, play their multicultural blend of music. The music was great, even though the drizzle came and went, in various intervals, but cooling down the temperature considerably. The night ended with a fireworks display. It was a really pleasant night.

On the treasure finds, the first was this beautiful gold-flecked, dark glazed lidded container from the local Salvos store. The form was professionally thrown as well, it was not an amateurish piece I could tell, the potter's signature was a flourish on the base of the container. I would have to do some online research to try to identify the potter. When JF's gallery reopens for the new year, I'm going to pay him a visit and tap his expertise. I could hardly believe my eyes and the price tag which was not very clearly written - it was going for the princely sum of $1.

Hugging this to my chest, I had crossed the road to the retro furniture and bric-a-brac shop that was closing down. I had wanted to visit the week before after seeing the closing down sign but didn't get the chance. Entering the shop which was housed in a Victorian terrace house, I immediately spied a lovely dining table sitting forlornly in the middle of the centre room. It was a table which could be extended or retracted and had lovely legs. The wood was strong and firm, it was a beautiful piece. I peered under and found the label "Parker Furnitures" - bingo!

I went out to the front and asked the guy tending the shop for the price, he hesitated and pointed to the lady in front of us - she was waiting for her son to view this table in 15 minutes' time and she was very likely going to buy it. I was disappointed but didn't think that it was quite ethical behaviour to try to cut her by offering a higher price (it was only $90) and an immediate binding offer! The guy told me half in jest to return in 15 minutes because he didn't want to be stuck with the table if she didn't take it, as they were clearing the last bit of stock. Well on my return trip later that evening, I did pop my head in and checked if she had bought the table, not surprisingly she had. My last hopes were dashed...

On Sunday, I convinced G that we should walk past that retro furniture shop just to see what else was left. I saw a small wooden cabinet sitting on the front of the shop, we quite liked it but I wondered aloud what the little bolt sticking out of the top was for. We then saw a display cabinet inside and from what we could see (as there was a box of stuff wedged up against it), it looked quite nice - firm wood, clean lines and in a really good condition. I asked the price. $60 and the base was the cabinet we had seen out in the front! Now that explains the little bolt. I had been wanting a display cabinet for my glass and ceramics and this was perfect. I immediately bought it. The guys were nice enough to agree to transport it at the end of the day after they closed up, down the road to my apartment.

We checked out the cabinet after we moved it upstairs. The label inside said "Chiswell". Another good buy! It was lovely as it was before we knew it was a Chiswell, but knowing that I got a Chiswell for $60, I could not stop smiling the rest of the evening.

Finding treasures unexpectedly is one of life's happiest moments.

Water Woes

The noise on the busy party, gay street that I live on, was not something that could be controlled. I have learnt that Friday and Saturday nights were the worst nights of the week. Wailing sirens, drunkards talking loudly, party-goers chatting on the pavement, all contribute to the sudden piercing through the night.

The second irritant of living in this apartment was the numerous baby cockroaches that began to pop up ever since the weather started warming up. This was another thing I contended with until I started having to kill between 5-10 creatures every single night. My high tolerance threshold was breached and I emailed the real estate agent who quickly contacted a pest exterminator who came and did his non-noxious magic and within a week, I stopped seeing cockroaches.

But tonight, the water supply was abruptly cut. It didn't occur to me that the roadworks on the street next to me, which had caused muddy water to slightly flood the road, which I had witnessed on my way back, would have a repercussion on my water supply - or at least that is what I suspect. With the bare trickle of water from the kitchen tap, I filled up my kettle so I wouldn't 't thirst to death and also managed to fill a third of my small bucket before that trickle dried out. I had to make do with a wet towel wipe down instead of a shower.

I'm hoping that my water supply gets restored by the time I wake up tomorrow. Otherwise, there will be trouble.

Sofa So Good

It's been raining cats and dogs for the past 13 hours. And will be raining for the next 7 days, feels a little like Noah's Ark to me, the rain hardly letting up at all.

I had spent amost 5 hours at the Gallery today, gallery sitting while JF went over to M's house with the van to pick up the dining table for himself and the sofa (bed) for me. Turns out that he needed me to gallery sit for a bit longer because he had to make a couple of trips with the van to transport some extra pieces of furniture which M thought the second hand furniture dealer had originally wanted but changed his mind last minute, leaving her in a state of panic since she leaves for Japan on Wednesday. In return, I was going to get the sofa bed free! Completely free, no transport charges even. So ended up that being payment for my 5 hours in the gallery I guess. I handled 1 sale of a lidded jar ($290) and packed up 2 pots which were collected so I did feel a bit useful! And pleased to be back in the gallery setting as well.

When we got home, I threw the green sofa cover also provided by M, over the sofa cos the mumsy floral prints were really not my cup of tea. In a fortuitous way, green seems to be the uniting colour in this apartment, from my oriental tissue box cover, to my table runner, to my table cloth on my little coffee table (actually a pareo overlaid with a linen tea towel over a milk crate in reality). Green is also supposed to be the colour to assuage feelings of homesickness. Now that the sofa is in place, G and I can finally sit down properly together and watch TV. Everything is coming together nicely.

Moving Under Control

Today I started to clean in preparation for the handover of the shoebox next week. The shower area has not been washed in errr... a while. So I figured I had better start doing that as I may have to do that area a couple of times before I get that to a decent state. So I took out the Jif and started scouring.

The packing doesn't seem so scary even though I haven't done that much that early. I have it mentally mapped out, so I am not that worried. I did pack another bagful of clothes which I know I cannot wear within the next 7 days. So they can safely go into the bag. I'll be getting the keys on Tuesday evening, and the next few days after, I'll start bringing little things over on my way to work as that is on the way.

Things are pretty much under control.

Home Improvements

This is what I need - the "Anywhere Telescoping System", perfect for renters as they don't need drilling, won't leave marks and you can take them with you when you go. You can change the curtains with any fabric to suit your whim and fancy and colour scheme. They create a nice divider for the room and afford some privacy. The only problem is it's available in a country not so near me. And at US$99 a pop too. I think when the time comes, I'll just resort to the old-fashioned way of hanging a fabric divider, perhaps use some 3-M hooks. At the moment, I think I'll be in the shoebox for another 2 months.