Chenggal Shelf

We purchased a piece of Chenggal wood from a scrap yard in Sg Buloh when we were renovating our home. This was an impulse purchase as we did not have any idea on where or how we would want to use it.

To us, when we buy any wood pieces, we look for wood grain, eyes, uneven lines, dents, holes as all these bring characters to the wood piece. You do not want a piece that is 'clean' or straight as it would look like any other piece of wood.

This is what happens sometimes when you buy wood pieces, you will fall in love with it, you will find that the piece is speaking to you. 

Someone offered to buy this piece of wood when we used it as a shelf during one of our bazaar sales.  However, this piece was not leaving us!  Overtime, we changed our minds several times on what this piece of wood would be used for, from making it into a bed-end stool to making it into a table for display and finally after 5 years, we finally decided to use this in our loft for my art studio as a shelf.

The Chenggal wood measures 147cm (length) x 29cm (width) and it fitted nicely onto a wall sandwiched by two windows. P/S : Don't mind the air-conditioning hose!

So handyman Hubby fixed it. He made his own shelf holder as the Chenggal wood was very heavy. Needless to say, I am loving how it turned out. It now holds some of my favourite quotes, my plants and some of my craft items.

Let us know what you think, leave us a comment below. You can also follow us on our IG @urbanwood17

DIY Bathroom Counter Top

After 2.5 years of moving into our new home, we finally got around to install the counter top and cabinet in our master bathroom.  We purchased the Freden series cabinets at the discount corner in Ikea before we moved in.  The counter top is recycled Chenggal wood which we bought from our local lumber yard.  Plumbing was done by Hubby himself.

Here are the pictures of our master bathroom.

Before : Our bathroom, plain and simple.

After : The counter top and cabinet installed!

For now, this will be the decoration ...
intend to add more color later

In progress : Adding the counter top.  

So much storage now!

A look at the plumbing and how we manage to
incorporate it with the cabinet

Another look of the plumbing and cabinet

Our DIY Shoe Cabinet - Part 1

Living in a home with 5 people, of which 3 are growing up children, there are bound to be lots of shoes lying around!  Shoes for school, shoes for going out, shoes for sports, shoes for work, shoes for walking and the list goes on ... 

So handyman Daddy made us a shoe cabinet.  One that can keep all our shoes.  It will come with a short bench so that we can sit to put our shoes on and a tall cabinet to put our laundry hangers and pegs and maybe some gardening tools.

The materials used for this cabinet are recycled wood from old kampung (village) houses such as the walls and window frames.  The type of wood are Balau and Chenggal, I don't know what are the English names for these woods.

We will leave you with some photos and will update more when the final project is completed.

The green drawers is where we currently keep our shoes,
one drawer for each family member.

The frame is put in place to confirm the length we want.

One of the cabinet doors in the making.

The skeleton frame of the cabinet.

The side and top of the cabinet is put in place.

The cabinet doors are being fixed.