Recycled and Reused Dining Bench

The two Dining Benches for our Dining table is another project that Hubby did.  The bench is made out of Kempas Wood and the legs are made out of two single 2ft louver.  The bench itself is about 7ft long and can easily sit 3 adults.  So our Dining table has two chairs on each end and the two dining benches on the left and right.

These louvers are from old colonial bungalows which was built circa 1880s.  It would therefore make these louvers about 100+ years old.  Kudos to Hubby who comes up with these creative and innovative ideas.  Who would have thought of  making louvers as bench legs.

You can read more about the louvers that we made as an air-conditioning compressor cover in my other blog post here

Like all other wood projects, we had to clean, scrape and sand down the wood.  Once all this is done, these woods were given a chemical treatment.  We would normally varnish our woods but for these benches, we have decided to leave it with it's natural wood color.

One of the four 2ft louvers that we bought

A close up of the louver with it's before clean up condition

Another one of the four louvers

Child labour? Nah ... they just love scraping the old paint out!

Left : A 'clean-up' louver
Right : Paint scraped out and waiting to sand down

Fixing the louvers to the bench

A close up of the wood and the louvers

For extra support and for decorative purpose,
we used the Ikea bracket for shelves 

Completed : The dining bench with louvers as it's legs

The Dining Bench in use!

A Tinge of Orange

We love the color Orange ... ok, ok, maybe I love the color Orange!  Not because I am of Dutch Descendant but because I think the color Orange is a very lively color!  So you can imagine if our new home has a little bit  or rather a tinge orange.  

In Feng Shui, the color Orange presents the fire element and it is best in suited for the living room, dining/kitchen and children's playing room.  This color gives you a playful, lively and pulsating energy.  It's  advisable to either accessories the color in decor or as a feature wall rather than a full room color.

For us, we've painted the feature wall in our dining room, inserted small square tiles in the entrance landing area as well as the kitchen.  We have also added the border in Orange for part of our kitchen wall.

I am not a risk taker, so to add this color into our new home, I think I made the right choice.  I know I like it and that is all that matters.

The small Orange tiles inserted at the entrance landing

Painting the dining feature wall Orange

Another one more coat to go

The kitchen flooring with the same small Orange tiles inserted
(Note : Kitchen cabinets not fitted as yet)

The Orange boarder at the kitchen wall

Tiling

On 25th August 2012, the house is now undergoing tiling.  We are tiling the driveway and patio with terracotta tiles.  The foyer, entrance and dining is tiled with white 2x2 tiles.  The kitchen and domestic helper's room is tiled with light grey 2x2 tiles.  All three bathrooms will be tiled with 1x2 black and white tiles.  White tiles on the bathroom walls and trimmed with black tiles.

Because we are on a tight budget, we hired Indonesian labourers instead of getting our Contractor to do the tiling for us.  We were advised that if we were to hire Indonesian labourers, we were taking a risk as they might not be very good.  However, luck is on our side as these batch of Indonesian labourers are good and they seem to know what they are doing.  Let's just say that we paid only half of what our Contractor wanted to charge us.  Cement and tiles are provided by us.

Part of the tiles that were delivered to our house

The Indonesian labourer cutting one of the tile

Indonesian labourers tiling the dining area

They work fast, within 10 minutes, they laid a number of tiles

More tiling going on

By evening, almost the dining and kitchen area are tiled

Furniture Hunting : Report 4

I am a little embarrassed to blog about this but I just got to share!What was a trip to Grand Teak Furniture in Puchong to just drop off the railway slippers to replace the dining table legs ended up in ME making another purchase!I saw a beautiful console / buffet table that would fit perfectly at the dining area. Perfect for keeping place mats, coasters and even cutlery. I just got to have it the moment I laid eyes on it. I don't know if you ever had this feeling, it's like the moment you've laid eyes on something, it catches your eye and you know you've got to have it, it's yours!Well that is what happened to me! So let me introduce you to our latest teak buffet table that has joined our family!

The new console / buffet table

The view from the side ~ note the carved panel

The drawers ~ two carved flower drawersWe have asked them to make another drawer in the centre ~ don't want wasted space
The carved flower panel which will be made into a drawer

Renovation Progress 2 : Kitchen

We've broke down the wall to the entrance of the kitchen as we wanted to make a countertop that act as a breakfast table too. Now that the wall is down, we get a very wide view of the dry kitchen from the dining room.

Wall has been broken down - countertop not up yet

The bathroom wall has been broken down too

As for the dining room, there was an arch and it made the dining room look small. So we've broken down the arch AND we've discovered that there's a beam there. So we've now have to 'crack' our heads on how to design it.

Now you arch it, now you don't