Indonesian Coconut Shell Carving

When R and I were in Bali we saw some carved coconut shell lights in the markets, most of the designs were fairly simple. But when we went on a sightseeing trip to a temple outside of Ubud, we found this old man who had been carving coconut shells for his whole life. His designs (in the photo above) are quite elaborate and magical. We zeroed in on one that was really cool with monkeys carved in it, he said we picked his favorite work and wouldn't sell it, but showed us another that was similar. ...

The design also has monkeys, if you look hard you can see their bodies and arms and tails. It sits on another carved shell base.

Sometimes these lights are lit by candle, but we put a electric bulb in ours when we got back to Malaysia. It looks pretty cool at night as our master bedroom is dark brown so the light makes the room very moody. I tried to search more on Indonesian coconut shell carving, not much out there on the web.

Bathroom Mirrors

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.

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.

Master Bedroom

Here is an updated photo of the master bedroom. All the door frames in the house are still dark green and need to be painted once we have all the wall painting done. We are thinking of a neutral grey to paint the door frames. Well the photo makes the bed look not that big, but yep it's a malaysia king size. We continue to absolutely love sleeping on our Getha mattress.

Home Office Update

Our Home Office gets the afternoon sun and so we have been searching what is the best option for blinds in the room. Originally we planned to use Malaysia made Wooden Slat Blinds like the blinds we used in our Master Bedroom only using natural/light wood instead of the dark wood color. But after the Master Bedroom blinds were installed and we started using them, it became apparent that they are very touchy... they hardly close when we pull the slats at night and lifting the entire blind up to open the windows is a difficult task and seems like it might cause the blind to break.

Dark Wood Blinds in Master Bedroom (hard to photo as they are dark and walls are dark)

So I was thinking about how I plan to open and close the five windows in the Home Office throughout out the day. We need something that opens and closes easily and totally blocks out the sun when needed. We looked again at metal blinds, which seemed really cheaply made and we didn’t think traditional rod curtains would look good in an office. Then I saw some Roller Blinds with a cord on the side to pull them up and down. These are better than the old roller blinds I had in the US. So we were planning on getting a Seremban company to custom make some roller blinds (they are expensive and limited in colors to beige, white and grayish colors, still we thought they were our best option). Then when we were at Ikea buying the metal handles for the Kitchen Cabinets we saw the Tupplur Roller Shades in Black and figured out we could work with the sizes they came in by cutting the two small window blinds down in size to fit into the Bay window.

I am not a fan of Ikea, in fact, I didn’t like the products in the US at all, but in Malaysia there is such a limited selection of furnishings/houseware items that we find ourselves buying Ikea products (such as the art desk we also bought on our recent trip). The best part of the Tupplur Roller Shades is that they cost half the price of the Malaysian Roller Blinds and seem to be better quality. The drawback was that we would have to install the blinds ourselves (something I hate to do, but R seems pretty OK with). Cutting the two small blinds down and sawing off the metal tubes was like performing surgery and installing them in the odd sized space was very difficult and time consuming. But the blinds are up (except we have to screw the white ball cords to the wall which should be easy).

Office at 9am... the afternoon sun is much more blinding

So now our Home Office is finally looking better. Remember this used to be the Master Bedroom when we bought the house. Awhile back we painted the gross sea-breeze-green-ish color on the walls to Nippon 145 White in Spotless. The two desks are Ikea (Vika Moliden Stainless Steel legs and Birch Effect Amon Table Tops) as well as the Leather Verner Chairs. The chairs are a bit ugly, but they were the only affordable AND comfortable chairs we could find. Some people told us not to buy leather because it is so hot in Malaysia that your back sweats if you are using a leather chair. So we bought a mesh back chair to use when we were living at the Condo and it was so uncomfortable and the mesh back started to rip... this chair is now placed in front of my art desk, but I don’t know if I will use it.

my new art desk

The new wooden Leksvik Ikea Desk which extends with leafs to a length of 230cm long, was listed on sale for 699myr for solid wood (regularly 995myr). We had been planning to have B our Kitchen contractor make me a custom desk out of some kind of low cost laminate, but we figured that his price would be around 700myr anyway and we thought that this table was better. B had told us he would have used panels of laminate all around the base of the desk for strength, which we thought wasn’t as nice as open legs like this Ikea desk.

The sconce Light fixture in the Office was here when we moved in. We added a dimmer to the light socket and for now we are keeping it, but we are thinking about getting a lamp that exends from the wall and hangs over our computer desks (will try and find the image on the TSEN Lighting website and post it here soon).

Living in the House

Before we made the move last Wednesday to live in the house, we were able to get our Master Bedroom painted with the right shade of brown.

We also had a water source and drain pipe installed in the room near the kitchen that we are using as a Laundry Room and then installed the Washer and Dryer after painting it a light shade of grey (forget the Nippon color).

We chose the Panasonic NA 14VA1 Eco Drive Front Load Washing Machine as it is using an inverter and is water saving supposedly. It also has a 1400 rpm spin cycle which made it more powerful than the Bosch and Electrolux models being sold here in Malaysia we were also looking at. I may have mentioned that Dryers are not that popular here in Malaysia, most people line dry their clothes. So the dryer options are somewhat limited and expensive. Because it’s just R and I we decided to go with a low-end dryer as we are on a budget. The dealer selling us our Panasonic items said the most popular and reliable model here in Malaysia is the Fagor / Edesa Tumber Dryer. We chose model SE-60 T. When it arrived it seemed small in size compared to the washer and when it is working it goes off and on in a weird fashion, not what I am used to with other dryers. I wonder if it turns off and on because to keep it from getting too hot in the Malaysia heat??? Don’t know. But, at least we have a working dryer which I haven’t had since I left the US!

Since we moved in there has been a lot of activity on the house including our Broadband TM line being installed, so more posts on the way....

Dulux Sealer Problems

After spending a huge amount of time spackling the imperfect (by our standards) plaster walls and sanding the Master Bedroom walls down, we attempted to apply a coat of Dulux ICI Wall Sealer on the wall in preparation for adding the Dulux brown paint. It was a DISASTER; even after we added water as the product and hardware store suggested it was still too thick and caked on the wall in a chunky mess before we could even re-roll over a stripe. We finished after adding more water, left the house and can only hope when we return tomorrow morning it will have miraculously flattened out to what we were expecting from the expensive product. We haven’t been at all convinced about the Dulux products so far. Our experience with Nippon in the Laundry Room and Kitchen was pretty good.

Move in Date Set

We recently decided that we wouldn’t extend another month at the rental condo and gave our landlord notice. We now have to move out by the end of the month, so the plan is that we will be living in the house starting on JUNE 30th!!! It doesn’t give us much time to get it habitable and we already know that the Kitchen won’t be finished when we move in, but we think it is best to get into the house because trips back and forth from the rental to the house are becoming tedious and we can better monitor the work at the house when we are on site.

Today there was a rush of activity mainly because of yesterday's heavy rain when no roof work could be done and the wood kitchen cabinets could not be transported to the house.

This morning R and I were at blind/curtain stores picking the blinds for our Master Bedroom as we need to try and have them installed before we move in. I’m not sure they will be ready in time. A few days ago we decided that we wanted to paint our bedroom (and the walk in closet if possible) before we move in. So we spent some time picking the color for both rooms. R wanted a dark color so together we finally picked Artisan Brown RM 71YR 08/119 from Dulux (ICI). We painted a test sample of the color in Dulux Supreme in the bedroom because it is so dark to try and get an idea if it would be too dark for both rooms. We like the dark color, but the paint on the wall does not match the paint sample swatch from the hardware store... the color on the wall is not as rich as the swatch and more of a run of the mill 'chocolate brown', the hardware store had Dulux come out to the house yesterday to check it. The color specialist said that hardware store was not using the most current base and that we should do another test with a new sample mix. So late this morning R and I were working on getting the bedroom prepared for painting while the roof repair was underway and B brought the cabinets on site. The blind company came out to measure the windows late in the day. And now we are resting for the night. Tomorrow will be another big day on site.

Getha Mattress

After looking at a number of different mattresses like Simmons, Dunlopillo, King Koil and Goodnite we decided on a Malaysian made eco-friendly brand called Getha. We talked to a few people who love their Getha mattresses and the MY mattress forums say good things about the product. Getha is made from natural latex foam and does not have MC Methylene and is chloride free (many mattresses produced in Asia supposedly have these harmful chemicals). The high-end Getha models were over our budget, but the Spring Power mattress from the Transforme Series was soft and extremely comfortable (comes with both natural latex and spring coils and a soft padding on top) and somehow affordable. The Getha website states, “The company manufactures its product with the Dunlop technology process and its latest European automatic foaming machine and automated line. All products are proudly manufactured using 100% pure natural, high quality latex from only Malaysia which is renowned for its world class quality.” At nearly 3,000myr it was a splurge for us, but yet it doesn’t cost as much as many of the other brands, especially the imported mattresses. So we thought we would try this locally made product.

The only furniture that was already in the house when we bought it was a new bedroom set including a king bedframe/headboard, two side tables, a large closet wardrobe and a vanity with mirror. The set is ugly!!! See photo above when the set was still in the master bedroom.

Speaking of the Master Bedroom- the room is large at 21.5 feet x 17.7 feet not including the bay window space. The house has 5 bedrooms (if you count the maid's room as one).The upstairs has 3 bedrooms: the big master bedroom (with large bathroom including jacuzzi), a medium size bedroom and a slightly smaller one. The two smaller rooms are jointed by a shared bathroom. Since it is just the two of us, we decided to we will use the master bedroom for our home office where I can do my art and R can have his computers. And we will use the other two bedrooms and bathroom as our “master suite” since they are all near each other on the other side of the house. Using the larger of the two bedrooms for our sleeping room and the smaller one for a big walk around closet (someday we will get custom closet cabinets to fill the whole space). Using a smaller bedroom means we will run a smaller size air conditioner at night as well. So we moved the ugly bedframe and two side tables into our new bedroom until we find a bedroom set we like and will move the wardrobe and mirrored vanity in our “closet” until we make that custom closet.

Bed in our new smaller bedroom

The Getha mattress arrived in its own plastic/cotton bag sealed with a green Getha lock and a CD of music for helping you fall asleep (we’ll have to try that later when we get a cd player). The mattress seems great and quite thick. We can’t wait to start sleeping on it!