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.
Another thing we had put off for a long time was choosing the light fixture for the stairway. There was a long electric cord hanging there since we bought the house. We were looking for a large fixture because the stairway is pretty big. There is of course a wide variety of really gaudy fixtures available here in Malaysia. The long crystal ones like the chandeliers shown on the TSEN website here seem to be quite popular, but too 'fancy' for our taste especially since there are already a lot of elements going on in the stairway.
As for the two windows. One is made of glass blocks so you can't see through it, but the other window is overlooking the side of our neighbors house. The window itself is something like 250cm+ long, so it was hard to find something that would fit the window. Our neighbors have had a custom piece of fabric installed, which doesn't look that great. When I saw that the Ikea panels for the Kvartal panel track were 300cm long, and two panels side to side would cover the width of the window, I chose to use it. We had to have a person install the Kavartal and panels because it required a tall ladder. It took them a few hours and I could hear them complaining about the process (had read online that these are not easy to install). Well, glad it is done, we have light and privacy!!!!
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 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.
The Bathroom mirror is up in the Office Bathroom! We didn't have B make a wood framed one as we didn't want to add another element in there. After looking at all the mirror places we could find in Seremban, where they make mirrors and also windows and window frames, we found one place that would put up a mirror without the standard gold or silver tacky poster frame that all the companies suggested. The compromise is that it has 4 silver round top screws on the outside of the mirror. No one is doing this anymore for large mirror, but well, in Seremban it's all we could find and it looks ok. I'm just concerned the screws will rust over time as everything here does.
We also had the company install a round bevel mirror we bought at Ikea in what is now our Master Bathroom. You can see that there are two doors in the bathroom. One connects to our Master Bedroom and the other to what used to be a slightly smaller bedroom that we are now using as a big walk-in closet (will eventually have B make custom wood closet shelves around the whole room...). Anyway, the bathroom wall tiles are ok in beige. The special tiles are greyish green tint and have a bit of elegant design (or try to be) of course we would have gone plainer, but here we are. The floor tiles are a green color. So what I thought we would do would be try to go a bit more elegant here. You can see that the counter is pretty big for only one sink. I would have put two, but then again when both doors are open (they open into the bathroom), the one sink in the center looks good. The ikea mirror is kind of elegant and I found a small pendant light with little crystal chandelier pieces dangling in it, somehow glamorous but still minimal and modern that we will have put up when we get a few more light fixtures for around the house. That and add an orchid plant on the side of the countertop and some nice spa towels and we should be done. 
Not sure we want to add glass around the shower, but might do someday. For now, I was thinking about buying some of that teakwood flooring (something like this) and put it in there with some asian pebbles around the outer parts of it all inside the existing edged parts of the tile floor. Just some thoughts, but not sure yet.
I'm getting ready for B to make the mirror over the sink/vanity in the Office Bathroom as the Ikea mirror selection didn't have a mirror that would work here. In my recent post here, I shared the photo above which shows the weird yellow fixture over the sink/vanity that doesn't go with the bathoom or the other light fixture over the jacuzzi. 
So I looked around for some cream colored acrylic paint to try and paint the back part of the fixure, I didn't find the cream color I wanted, but found some pearl off-white paint with a bit of metallic in it. So I thought I would give it a try. Using my finger to rub the paint over the fixture, I didn't want it to look to solid. I wanted the paint to be slightly translucent, so that the color underneath was still present. Just wanted to downplay the brightness of the yellow color.
T is around 9 months old now and we enjoy having him in our lives. We found him through Petfinder which is one of the better ways to find a pet in Malaysia. He has already had all of his booster shots (35rm per shot) and has been fixed (operation was around 140rm). I've spent time since September when he arrived finding different cat products, often times finding little selection at high cost. Relatively speaking the cost of having an animal in Malaysia seems higher in proportion to in the US in terms of cost of living.
We finally bought the patio furniture. We decided on Malaysian Rattan. I mentioned before that the man making rattan near our house could make large Malaysian Coil Chairs for us, but when I went back to the store with R we both decided we liked the traditional size chairs, so we bought a set of four.
The chairs were more expensive than the coil chair (pictured a few images below) listed on Mudah. But I wanted to support the local guy. When the chairs arrived and I looked at them compared to the photo on Mudah, I noticed that this local guy’s chairs are better made and have 24 round ‘coils’ around the chair, in the Mudah photo I count 16. I think these chairs we bought look much better and more stylish.
We have placed the set with a simple white table from Ikea. I like the look of this table with the rattan chairs as it has a 70s vibe. But we might buy another table later. We saw one made out of wood which was nice (hard to explain it, it was large and square and made out of small faded grey driftwood pieces with glass on top). Or we might go for a rattan table (ottoman) for the center.
I love going out on the patio and sitting since we got the patio furniture. It is great. If I can find some simple cushions, I might buy them for the base of the chairs, because while the chairs are comfortable, after awhile, it base gets a bit hard. Oh one other thing, after we got the chairs it rained huge amounts for a couple days, the chairs got wet and then dried off quickly; I’m go glad we didn’t get big cushioned furniture.
Above is another round chair I found online other than the popular Papasan Chair. This chair was being sold in Vietnam, the design is different from the Malaysian coil chairs
Initially, I saw what I thought was a really great round rattan table large in size at an old shop in Seremban. I thought I could use it as a table if we bought rattan for the patio. I should go back and see it again and see what it looks like exactly. But further research online already tells me it is a Rattan Ottoman because it looks like the ottomans made by Franco Albini (or these have been attributed to Albini) the Italian designer known for making really radical rattan pieces in the 1950s and his pieces have since become classics.
I’m not sure if the squared-off-top ottomans above are true Albini or just inspired by Albini designs. The beautiful Rattan ottoman I saw in Malaysia was rounded. I’m thinking now about keeping the Ikea table and buying that ottoman for another piece of furniture on the patio or asking the local rattan maker if he can make an ottoman version which will go with the chairs he made us, maybe with more 'coils' if that is possible. I’d get two of them as it would be nice to put our feet up on something.
We couldn't find a mirror pre-made in the correct size that went with the Ikea cabinet we added in the room, so we had B our kitchen contractor make a solid wood framed mirror in the correct size and stained as close as possible to the dark brown-black wood of the Ikea cabinet. The mirror looks good enough for 70 RM, you can't complain at that price. But there is always something and when it was delivered it had two screw brackets at the top of the frame. B said he couldn't hide the screws behind the mirror. So I painted the screws white to hide them a bit, and I think they are passable. What a difference a mirror makes in the room!
There was no glass door for the shower area, so we used a shower curtain I had sent from the US. It was something I used in my house there. We couldn't find any good shower curtains here, I couldn't even find a white plastic shower liner for the back of the fabric curtain. I had to use a light beige one. Also the curtain had to be cut shorter, because the height of the wall was smaller than a standard shower curtain size. 
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 Kitchen’s nearly complete, B has to do a couple more things and the custom made Stainless Steel Table which is over 9 feet long has arrived but can not fit through the doors (after we had them measure twice and they promised it will fit). So tomorrow they will take off the metal legs and then re-weld it together in the kitchen! We plan to do our cutting and a lot of food preparation on the table and on the far side by the door to the wet kitchen add a few stools so we can sit around it while we cook, maybe eat in the kitchen if it’s not too hot. It will be nice to get it in place. I added a few plates and asian bowls on the shelves as a sample how it will look, but need to get some stacks of plates and bowls (like I see in the cooking shops in Thailand and Malaysia and some places in the Middle East). The idea was to have it look like a working kitchen where the plates and bowls could be grabbed as needed, not as a ‘display shelf’ so I guess I better take down those display plates on the top shelf because they aren’t looking right at all.
Table badly needed in center of room!
Above is a close up shot of the Hava handles used on some of the cabinets. The other handles are Ikea Lansa (not our favorite design, but the only ones we could find which were long enough for the tall pantry doors).
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