Progress over the long holiday

27th December 2008

It has been a long holiday since Thursday, and like all my officemates at Brunei Shell, we'll only be back to work next Tuesday. Nevertheless, it has been very busy for my wife and I, getting fixtures for the completion stage of our new home. Here are the progress so far:

Firstly, tiling works continues. The workers were sent to a different building site during my recent long vacation in Brisbane, and came back to work their craftsmanship on Christmas. Some tile designs were quite intricate work, especially in the dining room. Thankfully, the Vietnamese workers are talented and managed to follow our imagination. Good thing we took the task of preparing the design on the computer and printed them out earlier. This really helps, especially with the language constraint between us and the workers!

Simple tile design in the formal living room, but the many curved wall still makes tiling works a little challenging! And look at the dollop of cement on each tile...! The workers were complaining that the 80 X 80 cm tiles were heavy.. hehehe...

The dining room is done. Believe it or not, it took three workers almost two days to finish this room alone. They say... lots of cutting!

Dry kitchen tiles, partly done by today afternoon.

Ohh, and we also finalised our choice of laminated timber flooring, which will be installed in the master bedroom and closet, the kids' bedrooms, play room, library, home theatre room and the guest bedroom. Since the areas cover more than 2000 square feet, we were able to get discounted price lesser than the contracted price.

Another progress is the construction of our driveway. It takes the workers roughly around three to four days for the initial preparation; levelling the ground, constructing side beams and barriers, laying down the metal frames and finally today, cementing began. For now, we'll leave it as it is, and we'll probably enhance the appearance some time in the future.

Amazingly, it seems that lots of works are being done all at once. Yesterday, workers had started pulling off the protective covers of the window frames, now revealing the beautiful white frames. We were told that the windows will be installed starting Monday, and we can't wait to see the result. It's quite unfortunate that our initial choice of Belgium imported golden glass was not available, but we managed to find a similar alternative, with the help of our architect. We'll have to wait and see...

And some minor detailing works...

It's now no longer scary to walk past the spiral staircase that the railing is completely installed. Even Syafi was happy.

Believe it or not, the whole house is painted by this worker alone, Addin. I'm really amazed! Now, almost all walls has been painted, inside and out, and the staircases area is next.