If you look in the archive of this blog - you will see our renovations on the previous appartment we lived in - in OCT-DEC 2004.

Now it was time for the next renovations. They were not as drastic as in our previous place (which was a complete gutting down to the bare concrete) but involved more practical changes. After all the new place we have bought was done up very nicely 1.5 years ago.

We have in short: combined two rooms to create a TV room, changed the windows in the two bedrooms on second level, sanded all wooden floorings, various fixes, and then painting and wallpapering.

The TV room (combining two rooms) looked to be the biggest job, as we found all kinds of issues with aircons / networking / cabling / doors as we went through it.

Click on the image below to see pictures of the TV room job.

TVroom

http://picasaweb.google.com/marcusdelange/TVroom?authkey=Gv1sRgCMPK9pDc_4u-ZA&feat=directlink

Here’s just a review of all links in this site devoted to the renovation of our place in Discovery Bay. I noticed some people came back here and asked me questions about it, so I listed all previous posts on the topic in here. 

You can click on the “Renovations” category in the Tag cloud on the left or click below:

http://www.marcdelange.com/category/renovations-discovery-bay-hong-kong/

Below are all previous posts, the most recent one on top.

• 3 Jan 2005: Renovations done & we’ve moved
• 3 Jan 2005: New Antique Furniture?
• 21 Dec 2004: Tight deadline
• 19 Dec 2004: Wooden floor
• 04 Dec 2004: Buying stuff for your house
• 04 Dec 2004: Wat is er deze week allemaal weer gebeurd in huize zeevogel?
• 21 Nov 2004: Water pipes and electricity
• 14 Nov 2004: Bare to the bone
• 07 Nov 2004: Earthquake?
• 06 Nov 2004: Knock on wood…
• 06 Nov 2004: Tearing down the place
• 05 Nov 2004: Renovations Started!!
• 12 Sep 2004: We own a property!

marc@marcdelange.com

If it’s a little quiet on this weblog that’s coz we’ve been busy moving from our old rented place to our new self-owned appartment.

It was all a dusty and troublesome process, since on the day of moving, the contractors were putting the last hands on the kitchen. While they placed the kitchen counter top, the saw dust literally went through the whole place…

Anyway, we packed all our stuff and had a moving company transport everything from A to B. What a joy to have these movers: they take care of all the larger items like TV, speakers, wardrobes etc. as long as you make sure you’ve emptied them. Everything was moved to the new place and they didn’t make a scratch on the new floors.

Below the foto impressions of our recent move:

Packing up in the Greens:

Unpacking it in Seabird Lane:

And finally - this is last night. Mostly done, although there are still a good number of boxes to go (see on the left…)

Don’t you like the old, antique Chinese chest of drawers, desks, beds etc?

The interesting thing here is that you can have ‘genuine antique’ Chinese furnitures custom-built in any shape, form or colour you might like… Hmm - are those really antiques? Well if you define antique as being nailed together in a Chinese workshop somewhere across the border in Guangdong province. So definitely not antique!

Still, they do a pretty good job in getting things to look old, and for us that’s all we need.

We’re currently waiting for a TV table which is custom designed to fit our Hi Fi equipment, including the centerspeaker of our set. The other thing we’re having made is a ‘partner desk’ which is a desk you can sit on from both sides. The partner desk has a hidden panel that can be removed on one side, and this will be hiding exactly all the power / network cabling that connects the PC / Server to the house’s own network.

I like the fact that you can design the whole piece yourself. The shops will send you their design, and then you approve it and they start manufacturing it in China.

Check out the mentioned designs below. Once we have them in house will post another picture to show you the real thing.

TV Table:

Desk:

Three more working days to go and then we should be ready.

Still to do are installation of lights in all rooms, installation of three drop ceilings (kitchen and both bathrooms), changing of all electric outlets / switches, touching up paint on walls, and installing bathroom accesories.

Also the kitchen builders will come by Thursday for the last bits: the countertop plus replacement of two cupboards that they had wrongly manufactured (2 cm too high…).

So by Friday we should be sorted

The renovations are nearing completions. It doesn’t quite look finished yet, but the remaining work will all be done over the next week. We should be finished before the christmas weekend - although the paint will probably still be wet during our Xmas diner.

The flooring is now being laid, all throughout the place. We chose Lapacho wood, which is imported wood from Suriname and is particularly hard and durable. The finish is dark brown with a hint of red.

We’re moving into a new place and for the first time need to buy all sorts of stuff we’d never thought of before.

What is such a revelation is that the choices one has for all these things are just flabbergasting. Ever wondered how many different types of toilets there really are? Or how many different type of shower sets? Gee, I’ve seen simple tap and shower sets ranging from 1000 HKD all the way up to 45,000 HKD!!
And in toilet seats we saw a Philip Starck model priced at HKD 32,000 while a lot of toilets that look quite similar go for 1,500 HKD.

HAVE WE ALL GONE MAD?????

I like good brands and for some things like sunglasses, watches, jeans, shoes, handbags etc. I can see how one would want to spend extra bucks there. But where are we going if your toilet seat is a particular brand that cost you a small fortune? Are you going to tell your guests to use your toilet and ask them about the amazing feeling it gave them when taking a leak??

The toilet as status symbol?

Nou de dingen beginnen op te schieten.

Alhoewel nadine en ik ons regelmatig zorgen maken om de voortgang, vindt de aannemer dat onzin en zegt nog steeds klaar te zijn op 21 December…

Maar we zitten dan misschien wel zonder keuken!! Dat komt omdat de keukenboer waarschijnlijk niet alles op tijd klaar krijgt… Onze keuken wordt als ik dit schrijf ergens in een fabriekshal in China gezaagd, bewerkt en in elkaar gezet. Daarna moet de hele zooi op transport naar Hong Kong, en dan kan het bij ons het huis in.
Het lijkt erop dat het meeste nu wel rond de 20e aankomt, maar in elk geval het keukenblad gaat langer duren…

Maar goed. Wat is er deze week weer allemaal gebeurd: tegelwerk in alle badkamers (jaha, wel twee!) en in de keuken, badkuip gezet, airco’s opgehagen, electrawerk gedaan.

Zie onder de fotoos…

goet,
Marc

Hier hangt het toekomstige verlaagde plafond langs de zijkant. Er komen halogeenspotjes in.

Dit zijn de vloertegels in de keuken. Goh is dat marmer? Nou ja het lijkt erop.

Een wandje getegeld. De rest hoeft niet, want daar komen kastjes te hangen, en een glazen achterplaat.

Dit is in de tweede badkamer. Badkuip zit er al in. Toilet en wastafel komen deze week (ik heb ze net eergister geshopt).

Dit is de wand in de ‘masterbathroom’. Mooi tegeltje dachten we.

Dat hek voor het raam hebben we eruit gehaald. Hier komt een stuk glas voor in de plaats.

De aircons hangen al, en we zijn ook met plamuren bezig. Komende week beginnen met schilderen.

The electricity lines and new waterpipes are being done at the moment.

Meanwhile we’ve made some choices for Aircon, bathrooms, tiles, kitchen etc.

The aircons will be Fujitsu General split type units. One 3 HP, one 1.5 HP, and 2 times 1 HP units - if they’re all on stock at the supplier. Nadine’s in charge of the tiles as well as the paint colours.

Nadine and Danny checking out something…

Nadine trying to decide on the wall / ceiling colours (not the red please..)

Electricity in the kitchen. For the electric waterheater, dishwasher, and washer/dryer.

Here are some of the wardrobes after the second layer of paint. Not bad at all, we’re happy that we didn’t choose to have the whole thing replaced, coz a layer of paint does the trick!

Here’s our “loodgieter” messing with the water pipes:

And this is a picture of an electric conduit along the staircase. I’m installing a couple of small lightpoints near the stairs.

See you later and check out my MMSBLOG - see the link in yellow on top.

Marc

Most of the breaking work is now finished and the debri disposed of. On the pictures below you can see how the utility room is being added to the kitchen.

This is the utility room viewed from the kitchen:

The open part on the right hand side of the utility room will be closed by an aluminium window unit. The floor will be raised to the same level as the kitchen so that it becomes an integral part of the kitchen.

This picture is taken from the utility, so you look back to the kitchen:

The gas heaters (all three of them) have also been taken out, leaving two gaping holes in the bathroom walls. Hong Kong houses generally do not have one central water heating unit, but instead there are small heaters for the kitchen and the bathrooms.
After the renovation we will have a small electric water heater in the kitchen (immediate hot water) and two gas heaters in the bathrooms.

They’ve made a start with painting the inside of the wardrobes. The inside had plain brown ply wood, which didn’t look very nice. Because the wood is so porous and would suck up all paint you put on it, they’ve put a layer of white plaster on it first.