Sweet Home Vol. 31

The issue of Sweet Home Magazine featuring our home is available now!

As I mentioned previously, they came to the house to shoot our home and interview R and I about living in Malaysia.

They shot some of the antiques we had out which are mainly Persian items. It's fun to see these items in a magazine!

Pick up a copy if you can. It's in Mandarin, if you can read it. Otherwise, the rest of the magazine is great just to look at the pictures as it features a number of contemporary homes in Malaysia/Southeast Asia.

Guest Bedroom Lighting

As I worked to get the place ready for the Sweet Home magazine photoshoot, I found I had to make a trip to Ikea to get some things. Going to Ikea from Seremban is a half day event or longer, but there was some things I really needed. I picked up this Melodi ceiling lamp for the Guest Bedroom. It's not that great, but it works.

We had already bought the two small grey Ikea table lamps (not sure of the name) for the tables.

The Blue Room Lanterns and Ikat Curtain

The Blue Room is finished! Well, almost. The five Ikea lanterns I bought were installed. I think they look pretty close to what I wanted to do. I'm using energy saving bulbs from Ikea, the light seems a bit bright so I searched around for some basic low wattage light blubs. No light store in Seremban carries them!!!! but finally found 25 watt blubs at a small old hardware store near the house, they looked liked they had been sitting there for ages, but I didn't care. I came home and put them in hoping it would create a dimmer effect, but no they are exactly the same brightness as the energy savers, so I guess I'll have a dimmer installed sometime. The single platform bed is KONSMO Ikea in dark blue. Very simple and without a headboard which makes it more like a daybed in the small room. Rug on the floor is an Persian carpet R's sister sent from the middle east that is black and red with some navy blue, it fits perfectly in the space. I added a few pillows I had brought from the middle east to the bed as well, although I should search for something better. Instead of a dresser we did end up putting a small TV table, forgot to take a photo of it.

The Ikat Curtain we picked up in Bali on our recent trip. It's one large panel. I think the woman told us it is a 'king blanket'. Works great for the large windows in the room.

Blue Room Update

The other thing we managed to do before we left for our trip was to paint the Blue Room. It took a few coats of Nippon Seclusion Blue, but finally came together. The room is hard to photograph, but these images should give you an idea of the color.

The door trim and the door into the bathroom need to be painted. Reminds me that the trim on all the interior doors in the house need to be be painted. I have been procrastinating because it is oil paint and I hate working with it and also because I keep wondering if I should go with a light grey or white trim. If I go with white it will look good with all the white walls in the main part of the house, but white won't look so good here and on this small door that needs to be painted, it also won't look so good in our brown bedroom.

On my last trip to Ikea I bought five of these Vate 46cm wide lantern shades and the white Hemma fixtures that you hang them from.

My idea is that there are two electric sources already in the ceiling. One is for the fan and one is for the ceiling light that was here when we moved which we will remove. I've already asked our electrician if he can take power from these sources to make five lighted lanterns in the room as I want them to hang over the single bed/daybed we are going to put in the room. He said it can be done.

Here is a messy drawing of how it will look.

Second Try

I decided to do another paint test for the blue in the second Guest Bedroom on the main floor. The color to the right is the Nippon Porcelain Blue we think is too bright. The color on the left (only one coat) is Nippon Seclusion Blue which we think is much better.

We just had the ceilings painted and now we can do the blue paint sometime soon. R and I are going to tackle this room ourselves as it is small.

Porcelain Blue Disaster

We finally chose Nippon's Porcelain Blue 241A for the 2nd Guest Bedroom on the Main Floor. We picked it over the darker colors because we wanted it to be radiant and rich. But, the painted samples show it is way too bright in a bad Liberty Blue kind of way. Hideous. R and I thought maybe we shouldn't go with Blue at all, but finally decided to give Seclusion Blue 201A (one of our original choices) a try. It is darker and has more of a grey base it won't look like the Blue Mansion in my post here but that's okay. We brought the big 5 liter can so there is no going back now!!!!

Guest Bedroom and Bathroom Ceilings Repaired

In preparation to have the second Guest Bedroom on the main floor repainted, we had the ceilings touched up and the holes from the hot water installation plastered up.

One of these days I'm going to go pick out a blue color and pick up a sample to test, then we can get going on the last room in the house to paint!

Instant Hot Water Heater Installation in Guest Bedroom

See my previous post on the problems we had in the house and hot water due to the malfunction of the Joven Hot Water Heater in the attic. We had to do an emergency installation of the Joven 880P Instant Water Heater in the second Guest Bedroom (formerly the Maid's Room) where there was no hot water pipes routed to the bathroom so we could install a portable instant water heater in the bathroom, actually it is the only option unless we wanted to hack the walls and add new piping which would have been a mess and very expensive as we would have had to re-tile the bathroom, something we didn't want to do!

We had already purchased the Joven instant water heater and planned to take the electricity from the ceiling light. But when C came to install it, he said that we couldn't use a 'light fixture' electric source as it wasn't strong enough for an instant water heater. Therefore, the only electric source for the bathroom was all the way in the guest bedroom itself from the room's only electrical outlet.

So C tapped into the electrical outlet, and ran external white plastic casing along the walls to get it to the bathroom. Here in Malaysia this external piping is quite common. Yes, it looks crappy and we know it, but we didn't want to hack the walls which would have been a mess, costly and in the emergency installation... would take too much time. So he rigged it up the wall. As we plan to paint the room a dark blue or grey, we will use a sealer on this casing and paint it too, hoping that it will take the paint.

C's first suggestion was to run the piping outside over the cornice!!! I couldn't bear that and so we reluctantly allowed him to hack open the plaster ceiling so he could get the electric cords threaded through the cornice with a minimal amount of damage. Now we'll have to have the plaster guy here to fix this hole.

He also made a small hole in the bathroom to get the electric near the wall where the instant water heater was to be installed.

You can see that that white casing comes down from the wall. Again, this is quite common here and our only option unless we wanted to rip the tiles out. All of this because the original contractor or first owner decided that the maid's room would be completed without hot water and therefore, no hotwater pipes or proper electric were installed in the maid's bathroom at the time of construction. So for now, we live with that ugly white casing. Joven 880P model is not a pump model as we did not need one, when we had tested the water earlier, we heard the pump come on and it was very good water pressure in the bathroom. At least the water is tied to the pump in the attic.

You can see that the installation is not complete, I snapped the photo above while C tried to go to a number of plumbing stores in Seremban to get the flexible hose that connects the water source (small hole in the wall) with the bottom right of the instant water heater as this hose wasn't included in the Joven box. All the stores were closed, so he went to his house and found an old hose to use on our unit temporarily. By early afternoon we finally had hot showers!!!!

Toliet which needs a white toilet seat.

Small sink intended for the maid. There will be no hot water here for our guests.

Basically the Guest Bedroom and Bathroom are looking pretty bleak at this point, but at least there is hot water in the bathroom now and in the photo above you can see that we had C wire the space for an air conditioner which we will install once the room is painted. After the plaster and re-working of the ceiling light points, painting and decorating is done, I hope this room will be cosy and inviting instead of the mess it is right now...

Inspiration for the Second Guest Bedroom Color

We have been thinking about what color to paint the second Guest Room on the main floor (formerly the Maid's Room). We have so much grey in the house, we are thinking about a very dark blue color. The photo below shows the Nippon colors but the photo doesn't depict the color really well. The samples are actually darker. We will have to do a test color because blue is a tricky color to work with. Basically, we want very dark walls to make the room cozy and so we can put up a bunch of small artworks which will stand out on top of the dark color. Colors we are favoring Wira Blue 471 and Seclusion Blue 201A.

The images above come from photos we took at the Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion otherwise known as the Blue Mansion in Penang when R and I stayed there a few years ago (on our first trip to Malaysia). It is truly one of my favorite hotels in the world (not the most comfortable, but the one with a lot character and charm). Anyway, I was thinking all along about painting a room the blue mansion blue, I even contacted them to find out the color awhile back. They let me know it is called indigo but it is the special process that they use with the plaster that gives the color its multi-layer depth. I love this color, but think our room needs to go deeper.

David Lynch's Blue Room

Twilight Tones Article in Ideal Home Magazine (UK)'s February 2011 issue has some ideas on Blue

Door Trim

Our House has metal framed doors throughout the interior of the house (and a couple wood frames in our Home Office). I've seen this same type of metal door in the middle east as well. The metal is painted a glossy forest green, we suppose that the previous owner chose green because it goes with the green metal window frames. But the dark green around the doors is ugly and since the doors and frames aren't always perfect and the paint job isn't perfect, the green stands out like a sore thumb. So we plan to re-paint the frames a neutral and somewhat light grey color.

Right now we are thinking about going with Venus 1406 a pre-mixed Nippon 9000 Gloss Finish color which is 102 RM for 5 liters which works on both metal and wood. The one room this won't look that good with is the Guest Bedroom, pictured above which is a medium grey color. Although I think the light grey trim will look good with the white walls throughout the rest of the house as well as the dark brown in our Master Bedroom. As the green is really getting annoying, we can at least paint the doors of the rooms that the walls have already been painted and finish the rest once the walls are all complete.

The Maid's Room

We've been using the 'Maid's Room' on the first floor located off the Kitchen as a storage room for all of our renovation supplies. Yesterday I was in there cleaning out the room and the bathroom attached to it. The room is currently painted yellow (with green on the door frames). I'm starting to think about what to do with this room. Maids are very common in Malaysia, nearly everyone has a maid in this neighborhood. The room as we bought it had no hook up for air conditioning and the bathroom, while it has a shower, has no hot water installed. I guess maids around here only get fans and cold water (sad really). Since we don't plan on having a live-in maid, we are thinking about making this room a second Guest Room. It will be small as it only fits one single bed and enough room for a dresser on the other side of the room. We will have to hack the wall and get an AC line and air conditioner installed before we would ask anyone to sleep in there. The walls are a bit rougher too, like they didn't bother to do a good job on the finish of the room (not that they did a good job on the construction of the other walls in the house either but these are particularly bad).

So I am thinking we could give it a rough wall look and paint the walls a very dark dark grey or even this nearly black color. It would make the room already small have a cozy feeling. Maybe get a day bed or at least a single bed with pillows. Change the ugly light fixture on the ceiling by moving the electricity to the side of the room and have a hanging lamp to give the room some atmosphere. I'm not sure if we paint this room next or work on the other remaining rooms in the house - the Entry Hall, the Staircase area, and the upstairs Family Room which all need to be sanded, skim coated and painted.

Guest Bedroom

For the main floor Guest Bedroom, once again we went with Nippon Paint in custom color: S3502-B a medium grey color. We bought Ikea furniture, Engan Bed and Engan Wardrobe and a couple white side tables. The Shades which are blackout to eliminate lights at night from the neighbor's house are Tupplur in grey (we used the Tupplur shades in the office and have been happy with the way they function). Bedding is Ikea too, although I forget the duvet cover name. The bed is a King Koil mattress which is as soft as we could find, nearly a pillow top but slightly harder. We wanted something good for our guests and most mattresses in malaysia are too hard. We would have liked to get Getha for our guest room, but it was over our budget.

The photo shows the main floor bathroom which connects to the guest room. Of all the 4 bathrooms in the house, this one has the least attractive tiles. They are white and navy/royal blue. and the sink and toilet are light blue! So without gutting the bathroom, we tried to downplay the blue and add this Ikea dark brown cabinet and dark shower curtain. B is working on a dark wooden frame for a mirror above sink (photos after it is installed). The planter on top of the cabinet holds a giant orchid plant (you can find beautiful orchids here in Seremban), well the flowers fell off the new plant one week after the guests arrived because the room might be too dark for orchids. I should buy new plants whenever guests arrive, or try a bamboo plant which is what the nursery suggested for the bathroom.