Progress a little slower than expected, largely because carpentry specs were finalised and are now being made in the factory. Here’s an update on everything else that happened in the meantime!

You probably noticed that this apartment is full of “niches” under the windows. Ordinarily, I would build storage shelves or compartments like what I have at my current place. Unfortunately, the under window niches in this apartment are for the most part very very shallow making them largely useless for storage.

So what to do with such less-than-useful eyesores? Box them up of course!

But two pieces of board?? I wasn’t really sure about this at first.

I am a lot more convinced that this will work after some plastering work was done though. I would expect the entire wall to look seamlessly flat with some matching paint work.

Boxing up also finally covered up the exposed water piping (I don’t use gas) coming from outside the apartment.

One “special feature” I’d specifically requested for was for a small part of this corner of the living room to be boxed up. This is so that I have a TV wall that is perpendicular to the windows in the living room, and parallel to the kitchen’s (upcoming) island.I find this arrangement makes it a lot more comfortable to watch the TV while in the kitchen or when seated at the dinner table (which will be perpendicular to the living room windows)

This is the newly created niche above which I would mount my TV and soundbar. It has the routed fibre point, and electrical points for the TV, soundbar, router, media player and so on. Hopefully this is deep and wide enough!

The glass guy also came to install the only large pieces of glass in this entire flat! And so completes the look of my “opened up” study room.

The glass is affixed securely on the base that is this half wall. No chance of accidentally getting dislodged!

I asked for the glass door to swing only inwards to avoid accidents. But this is also why the light switch for the study room has to be located outside the room.

Recognise this box? Probably not,  seeing that most Renotalkers go with more well known brands like Starmex and such. This brand is Trentios and I just might be the first Renotalker to use their inverter air conditioners  I read about them not too long ago and figured..why not? So far their sales staff and installers have been very responsive, polite and professional. Will post an update after several months of use.

One odd thing that happened with my order: I bought 3 x 9k units (one for each room) but I was upgraded to 3 x 12k units.Did they run out of stock of 9k units? Anyway, seeing that this upgrade was FOC I accepted it without hesitation.

The small box in the picture above is a promotional and free Trentios branded portable infrared cooker..which I suppose is a “hot plate” type of induction cooker?

This is what the aircon unit actually looks like.The installer guys left the plastic wrapping on seeing that the entire apartment is still in a mess and full of dust!

A view of the compressor unit from the window of my service yard. When I did my window grilles the previous week, I also replaced the service yard windows with 3-pane on 3-track sliding windows. The installer guys thanked me saying that putting a compressor though the previous casement windows would be that much more complex and challenging.

Unlike newer BTOs that have aircon ledges large enough for 2 men to stand on safely, mine has only a teeny aircon ledge. I don’t even want to imagine how the guys lowered and installed this compressor.

The bathroom guys also came to install the sink cabinets and bathroom accessories. Because of the water pipes running across the bathroom walls, the guys had to saw off parts of the back of the cabinets – very time consuming work! Drilling each hole carefully (because no tile was cracked!) also took time.

The look of my bathroom coming together quite nicely. The mirror cabinet and sink cabinet and mixer I got at really good prices from Biene at Woodlands. The classy towel ring is from EZBuy.

This trio of wall mounted corner caddies are purportedly made of “space aluminium”

As is this towel rack. I love how it can be flipped upwards (and stay there!) when not in use. Both items are also cheap and good buys via EZBuy.

The bathroom guys also helped me to fix up 3 wooden floating shelves I got off EZBuy – which somehow fit perfectly into this corner niche in the study room!

Encountered one boo boo though.

Somehow the pipe at the bottom of this service yard sink is too much in front of the sink cabinet!! I understand that some retiling will need to happen to address it….

Since renovation will be wrapping up in the next two weeks (only carpentry and lights installation left!), I also took the opportunity to do a little bit of DIY.

Three of the window handles are broken, so I ordered replacements from Lazada (at $3 each) and replaced them using a screwdriver and spanner.

Achievement unlocked!