DIY Patio

We love the idea of a cosy patio, where we can have breakfast, tea and entertain families and friends.  A patio surrounded by comfortable furniture, lush green plants and beautiful and colorful flowers.  So when Hubby said that the patio will be up before Christmas, I was excited.  Hats off to Hubby who built the patio from scratch.

The wood that we used for our patio is Chengal wood and it is recycled wood.    We acquired some of the wood from a public playground, where the multiplicity council decided to replace wood with high quality plastic, and some wood were purchased from our regular lumber yard, which were also recycled from old kampung houses.

For the roofing, we will be using roof tiles.  Initially, we were contemplating to use glass sheet or poly carbonate glass.  However, we felt that this would not give us that cosy feeling.  We wanted a resort like feeling, and to match the house so we decide to go for roof tiles.  I will save the story of our roof tiles for another blog post.

So here are the chronicles of our DIY Patio ...

Recycled Chengal wood from a public playground.

Our home before the patio

Wood purchase from our regular lumber yard.
We sanded down and varnished the wood.

Hubby cut the edge of the wood for some design.

The wood cut to shape.

The wood is varnished and will be used as beams.

Here Hubby sets the beam.

Beams all set.

One of the pillars is secured to the wall.

The pillars are up.

Another view of the pillars.

Now the beams go up.

The patio is almost done ...
The roof is covered with roof aluminium sheet.
This will act as a cooling function for the patio.

Chronicles of our Main Door

Our main door is now almost complete.  We have hired help to varnish the door and it looks beautiful!  This door has now become a conversation piece in the neighbourhood as well as contractors who have been moving in and out of the house.

Now all is left to do is to fix the glass at the side.  We wanted Nyonya glass but at the very last minute, BTW this is rather norm already coming from our Contractor, he said that Nyonya glass do not come in the size that we want.  He suggested that we go for normal glass and tint it! I am like "What the &%^*???"  Anyway so now we are sourcing for the glass on our own.

So we'll leave you now with the chronicles of how our main door became ...

The chosen Chenggal wood for the main door

Cutting the wood to the desired size

The Master and his hired help

The door frame and the door

The door frame being installed 

The locksmith installing the lock

The modified hinge for the main door

The main door and it's maker

The main door gets a coat of varnish

Tiling (Part 2)

The tiling of our new home is now completed.  The porch tiles are terracotta tiles and is bordered with black tiles.  Terracotta tiles were also used for the entrance landing and was tiled with small square orange tiles in between.  The hall was tiled with white tiles and the kitchen was tiled with grey tiles and small square orange tiles.  The kitchen wall at the back was tiled with white tile and trimmed with orange tiles.  These orange tiles were used throughout the house.

As for all the three bathrooms, we've chosen black and white tiles. The sales person who sold us the tiles, came up with the designs for each bathroom. For the shower area, we pebbled wash the shower area for all three bathrooms.

As we had balance tiles, we tiled our back lane as we built a outdoor sink with a RC slab.  This out door sink will be used when we are entertaining.

So here are some pictures for you to look at and sorry about the mess ~ will promise nice pictures once the house is cleaned.

Laying of Terracotta tiles at the porch

The almost completed Terracotta tiles at the porch

The tiler initially tiled the entrance landing with white tiles from the hall - sort of like a continuation

But we told the tiler to change it to Terracotta tiles and inserted with small square orange tiles

The master bathroom with white tiles inserted

The children's bathroom

The guest bathroom

The back yard / land cemented and getting ready for tiling