The Dining Room Photo Project

Dear friends, we need your help in picking out the best photo for our dining room.

After successfully finding our kitchen photo (link), we are now working with YC of TwentyOne-Fifty Photography to pick a photograph for the dining room. The following cropped photographs were shot by YC during his Chicago trip. Please let us have your views on which is the most appropriate photo for our dining room.

(A) Silhouette Skyline

(B) Windy City

(C) Up In The Sky

Using simple tweaks on Photoshop, here's how each photo might look on the actual wall:

(A)

 (B)

 (C)

Looking forward to your vote and opinions. =)

The Kitchen Photo Project

We are looking for a picture for our kitchen. The main idea is to add a dash of red color to the kitchen for better feng shui. And also as kitchen deco, close-up photograph of some red vegetables or fruits would be an ideal subject for the picture. It's more personal if the photograph was self shot.

We were privileged to have a lot of help from YC from TwentyOne-Fifty Photography (see their wedding photography portfolio here / YC's personal portfolio here). He came over to the apartment on a Sunday and we attempted to shoot macro-photography of some strawberries and bell peppers.

YC contributed a lot in the lighting department. Without his light/soft box and his guidance with light play, the photos wouldn't have come out nice. Although I was doing most of the shooting, my 50mm prime lens proved to be inadequate for macro photography. The focal length was insufficient. Even with YC's macro extension attached to my lens, it was still hard to focus perfectly. Hence the session was a bit harder and time consuming because of the inadequacy in the lens department.

Strawberries were a lot of fun to shoot. Their rich vibrant color and textured skin provided a lot of details in the photographs. The outcome looked impressive, I couldn't believe that it was shot right on my kitchen cabinet top. We also made an attempt with some bell peppers.

Bell peppers were tricky. Despite having a rich color and nice shape, we could not capture the right feel. We even attempt using a different background, like shooting on a piece of my floor laminate. The wood texture looks nice so we tried shooting other subjects on it.

Out of the many shots taken, those that made the shortlist had to fulfill our criteria and have the right feel for our kitchen wall. After rounds of review and post-processing, we found our winning shot...

Furnished

More of our furniture arrived today. Yay! This is some good news to uplift the spirits a little following the hiccup. Now the apartment looks a little more habitable.

Magino Coffee Table

King-size Epi leather bed with Kartell side table 

Furniture for the office

Tulip Dining Table with Eiffel Chairs

The Not So WonderWall...

Today was spent at the apartment resolving issues. Removing the groove tapes to reveal the brick wall took half a day. From a distance, the brick wall effect actually looks pretty good.

Unfortunately at close inspection, the workmanship was really unacceptable. The crooked groove lines and uneven brick design looks apparent. So the contractor agreed to redo the wall and use another application method to ensure a better execution next time. First of all, they need to remove everything that was previously done and restore the wall to original state. 

By late evening, the wall was completely void. When the "bricks" were scrapped off, they came out taking the undercoat, emulsion and primer paint. Even the ultra hard compound plaster came off at some areas revealing the paint done by the previous owner! The sight of it was funny and pathetic at the same time.

While it seems that we are back to square one for this wall. Let's choose to believe that it's the beginning of better things to come! Well that is, in 2 weeks to come... =)   

Major Hiccup! Delays Expected Again...

I lament on the fact that our renovation progress has been hit by another delay! What a bummer...

This time, it's the nightmare that every new homeowner dreads, getting nearly irreversible results that was not what was promised. As I blogged in the previous entry, the brick feature wall was undergoing preparatory work. After 3 days of work, we are most displeased with the results when we inspected the progress today!

The photo above shows the partial completed brick wall. The textured paint has been sprayed on and is drying. Where the groove lines were exposed, the problem areas become evident. The groove lines are slanted (notice those in the lower row?).

The following photo shows the preparatory work being done on the wall. The brick lines were all manually drawn. Subsequently, the lines were masked by masking tape. After the application and drying of the textured paint, the masking tape will be peeled off, exposing the groove lines to complete the brick wall effect.

The issue is that the process was entirely manual and susceptible to human error. There's no way to ensure that the masking tape form perfect straight lines and this resulted in a lot slanted groove lines. We were always ready to accept a margin of error but the results were beyond our threshold of tolerance.

The bigger issue is that we are not getting what we are prepared to pay for. According to the supplier's catalog, the process involved the use of a "Template" to ensure standardized brick design (See above pic). So why was masking tape used in our case which resulted in poor outcomes of wasted time, material and effort, gaining dissatisfied customer, and tarnishing the brand name of a reputable Japanese company? 

We are expecting the supplier to make good on what they have promised after a meeting with their sales representative today. As the brick wall starts drying, the paint becomes as hard as rock making a reverse process almost impossible. Our request to the supplier is to revert the wall to original condition by removing what has been done ASAP and then start over using a template and a more skilled applicator to finish the job. It's arduous and time consuming but it beats having to hack and re-plaster the entire wall before starting over, which will result in even more wasted time and effort. Then we may even have to remove and reinstall our timber skirting. (Nooooooooo....!)

It looks like this setback is going to delay us by weeks perhaps. =(

The Beginning Of the End

3 weeks elapsed without much activity as Jeremy, our ID was out stationed for another project assignment. Yesterday, the contractor for our brick wall finally send a guy yesterday to begin preparatory work. At last, the final phase of renovation is going to take place.

Thinking back, renovation has been in progress for three months already. The first day of hacking was August 10 and yesterday was 11th November. We have requested to Jeremy, our ID for the entire process to be completed within another week. This entails not only the brick feature wall construction but also adding the finishing touches to the entire apartment's renovation. On our part, we'll be coordinating the delivery of furniture and installation of blinds. Looks like we got quite a busy week ahead of us.

Door Grille

Sometime ago, we had new door grille installed.