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!!!!

Painting Complete

The painting and clean up of the upstairs 'Family Room' (as they call it around here), Stairs and Entry way is finally complete! I think it looks great and is ready for some furniture, now if we could only find the right items. The Ikea mattress cushions that I saw with the grey covering turned out to not be a good idea. The grey part was not a permanent fabric but kind of a temporary cheap fabric cover that would get ruined pretty quick. So for now we have to find other cushions that will work or resort to sofas/chairs. The search is on....

More Painting

For the past couple days the painters were here sanding and priming the walls in the Family Room, Stairway area, and Entryway to make the walls smoother. What a mess, but we put up plastic in the living room doorway and the kitchen doorway to cut down on the dust which was really bad last time they sanded the living room and dining room. The walls in these areas were painted a light 'gardenia' green. Almost white but with a light green tint. It was ok, but the walls were a bit uneven in places so we decided to paint the rooms Nippon 145 White in Spotless. We had used a cheaper non-washable paint Nippon paint in the living room and dining room and it just isn't performing as well as our Home office or Kitchen which are Spotless White. So we decided to use the better paint especially for the stairs walls which gets dirty faster. Here in Malaysia the Geckos create a dropping that gets on the walls and it needs to be washed off. No matter how hard you try to make your place gecko-free, they manage to get in anyway and there is always some of the brown hard droppings around the windows and floors. This sounds gross and it is, but after being here for awhile, it is just part of living in Malaysia that you have to deal with. Well, having washable paint on the walls does help cleaning it.

The photo above is while the painters are painting the sealer on the walls before the coats of paint.

Image of the completed ceiling in the stairs area.

Entryway with sealer coat.

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.

Exterior of House

The painting of the House Exterior and Roof Tiles is finally complete! The Roof Tiles are painted with Dulux Roofshield in Idaman Grey 10524. The Exterior House walls are Nippon Cement 9507. The Timber under the roof is painted with Nippon Timbershade (Low Sheen Finish) in Silhouette Grey 4223D and the Exterior Property walls are Nippon S 8500-N (accent base).

We still have to order the exterior lights. I think we are going with black. And now it is time to move on to the landscaping!!!

at the back of the house the covered wet kitchen

Bungalow Exterior Paint and Property Walls Color

The first coat of Nippon Cement 9507 has been painted on the exterior of the house. They still have to paint one more coat, but the house is looking a bit lighter than we thought it would.

So in trying to determine the exterior property walls color, we have opted for a very dark grey, nearly black Nippon color S 8500-N (accent base). We think that the dark wall on the side and front of the property will give the house some color and character. With the bright flowers and greenery we will add to the flower pots on the exterior side wall and up on the second floor flower planter, we should get more color around the house.

S 8502-Y on the left (the lighter color) and S 8500-N on the right

Other Progress- the Roof painters are now painting the tiles on the lower roof and 'after lunch' (this is a very vague time in Malaysia since lunches can run up to two hours!) the Corian Countertop should be arriving as well a B to oversee the installation and install the Ikea Stainless Steel handles and Hava handles. If we are lucky maybe the Bareno kitchen sink and Tuscani standalone cooker can be hooked up today, tomorrow or Saturday and we will be ready to cook!

Painting the House

On Saturday the Painters power-washed the house to prepare it for painting, they say it is important to power-wash all of the old paint off the house and any peeling paint before painting. It was a HUGE mess. Water seeped into the windows inside the house, peeling paint landed on the ground and surrounding bushes and trees and it still remains. Luckily, we haven’t done the landscaping yet. After the power-washing episode, the painters painted two coats of Nippon Vinilex Wall Sealer 5100 over the ceiling of the roof underhang and walls of the entire house. The sealer is very important in Malaysia, because without the sealer they say the cement walls will peel; it is true because the sample colors R and I painted on the front of the house had already started to peel (after less than a couple weeks! And when they power-washed the sample color sections on the wall, the paint peeled off in giant chunks because we didn’t use sealer under the paint when we did our test). Yesterday the painters painted the ceiling of the roof underhang and today they have finally begun to paint the Exterior Walls with Nippon Cement 9507.

House with two coats of Nippon Sealer

Seeing the house with the peach accent color gone and white from the the sealer confirmed our decision not to paint the house exterior bright white which we thought about doing during the color selection when we about gave up on mixed colors here in Malaysia. White looks way too stark for the house, think Cement will blend into the landscape better.