Haha...sure you are enjoying your hard work now... I've actually learnt lots of things from your thread. Thanks for your sharing bro! The termite vendor Stopest was also from your recommendation.

My reno progress is still not even up to 50% yet...hoping everythings gonna be fine..
The budget has actually been stretched at earlier stage when I was getting quotation and pressed the calculator...
I think you will definitely agree with me, nothings comes cheap...few Ks here and there added up to a scary figure!
My initial budget was only around 150-180k (included electrical appliances and basic furnitures). When I started pressing the calculator and go into each and every details, I realize it would be around 260-300k practically. So, I'm holding tight now to the revised budget and hope I won't touch 280k.

I'm getting a Joven heating drum for my master bathroom as I'm placing a long bath there. Moreover, there will be only 2 of us newly-wedd living in the house. Will use normal heater in another 2 bathrooms.

It was nine hundred over, bought last year July..

yalor...i can only take picture to record the wiring route now....
I should've know this earlier...
hmm...at least for those who are reading and planning to do renovation soon pls take note...

The contractor asked me to get IWK to come over and check the sewerage chamber as he suspected it has being fulled up. Then only I realised that I have yet to change the name of the IWK account. So I went to their HQ in Bandar Bukit Damansara, changed the name and paid the balance before I request for a check. Within a few hours I received a call from IWK, making appointment for the next day to come over for checking.
After some checking, I was told that the chamber is not full but my manhole was clogged. IWK will not be liable for the problem or work inside our area, hence we need to get our plumber to fix the clog. Their guys offered me services to unclog at RM150 (discounted to RM120) as a private arrangement, not related to IWK (although it was done during their working hour ). To solve the problem fast, I just asked them to go ahead and do it as I know that it won't be anything less than rm120 if I get other plumber to do it though...




Using their special long metal tools with spiral end, the work was done in less than 15 minutes...and the manhole has been unclogged.
As you can see from the pic below, the culprits which caused the clog were some living roots and what a surprise, they pulled out a face towel!!! It was trapped by the roots...
The guy said they have sorted out the same problems for several places in Ara Damansara with same type of living roots clogging the manhole. Those roots could come from the plantation ground before the re-developement or from the thirsty trees nearby. hmm.. the shitty water is indeed the best fertiliser for the roots huh!?..
Before covering up the manhole again, the IWK guy taught us to pour some diesel along the manhole wall to kill the roots. However, this is still not a permanent solution as it can only work for about 6 months before the roots start to grow again... So we decided to pour some diesel once in a few months, hopefully before it build up its empire again...



This post has been edited by maxxon: Oct 22 2013, 03:59 AM

Updates as of end of 7th week:

- The back extension has been started with some BRC ground work and poles, now the flat roof slab.






- Air cond piping




- Plastering to cover hacked wall for concealed wiring




- Prep work for cement rendering effect on a piece of wall in master bedroom. The wiring has also been relocated to run as low as possible coz I wanna get it as further away with our heads as possible when we sleep. (Do not feel comfortable having the wiring and its electromagnetic field near my head when sleep )




- Most probably would have to change to a bigger DB as the existing is too small to insert this bunch of wires...




- Start building the fencing wall at car porch.


This post has been edited by maxxon: Oct 22 2013, 05:00 AM

My ext is up to 3 feet from the fence (which is my own request), hence mine has no issue and has been approved. Many of my other neighbors did their extension all the way up to the max. You may check and confirm with mbpj for their requirements if you want to ext to the max too coz the approval will depends on your area and location of premises... from what I heard is, if there are quite a number of your other neighbors are doing the full ext, they are likely to approve yours too, provided that there is a back lane for emergency use (eg. fire). The back lane shouldn't be blocked and the width should allows a vehicle to pass thru...

This post has been edited by maxxon: Oct 23 2013, 01:02 AM

It is already 8 weeks since the renovation started, I really pray to have it complete by end of this month. I'm also trying my very best to keep the works as initial planning because any mind-changing at the moment or additional jobs could really jeopardise the completion date.

Following are some updates thus far:

Kitchen extention with flat roof.


Kitchen floor leveling and plumbing work.


Now that the kitchen is getting ready for tiling jobs. As you can see from the picture below, there were some weird markings on the floor as a result from the foot steps of some intruders (some stray dogs)...

The cement rendering effect on a wall in master bedroom...still need another layer of touch up.



The lightweight blocks are up now and it gonna be some vent blocks later to form another half of the wall...



Waterproofing has been done for all bathrooms and on the top of the kitchen extension's roof slab..
As per discussion with contractor, waterproofing in all bathrooms' wall should be done up to 5' height to prevent water sipping thru walls when we shower. (Actual work has been done up to around 6' height). I was told that most contractors will only do the waterproofing up to around 2' height... hmm...so, what about yours then?




This post has been edited by maxxon: Nov 1 2013, 06:01 AM

The separation wall at car porch was up. It was my thought to keep it as simple as possible, but still allows some air flows...this is kind of a common design but I bet it is less likely to looks obsolete overtimes...

I've also hacked down one of the concrete pillar to have wider main gate. Was thinking to use the pillar which is shared with the neighbor to hold the gate but the pillar was found not suitable as it is just constructed with sand bricks...we afraid that it might not be strong enough to carry the weight for a gate over 14' width, thus we added BRC concrete to the existing pillar... So, the width is now left 14'3".





This post has been edited by maxxon: Nov 1 2013, 05:33 AM

We learnt a lesson today where we didn't take note on the exact location of the concealed wiring on the living room's wall. After the plastering, it really can't tells where exactly are the concealed wires...so, it gonna be problems if we happen to drill on the wire later when installing the TV wall-mounting-bracket.
Hence, we got to hack a small portion on the wall now (to take measurement on the wire's location) instead of taking risk of redoing the wiring later if we happen to drill the wrong thing...

Went to Houz Depot to buy some stop cocks for bathrooms to replace the old ones..
We bought some Filton brand's which are given 5 years warranty and it was at a 40% off.
Following are the price after discount.
3/4" - RM58.50
1/2" - RM54.00





This post has been edited by maxxon: Nov 1 2013, 06:17 AM

If it's of different modesl/brands, u've got to hack the wall unfortunately...

I took a video recording the 'scars' on all walls but it was taken after the plastering work of this wall... I should have record it earlier and take the x,y location too...

This is straight from the DB box...so they should actually make it goes up to the ceiling and drops down again right? I really hope if I know all these earlier and should have set my requirement on wiring before work commence...





It should be a folding/swing gate (undecided yet). I think my contractor overlooked this.
Thanks a lot for your reminder really..
Actually we did try our best to visit the site as frequent as possible and try to identify any mistake before it's too late...but there are lots of things that we are not familiar with and lack of experiences...
I do hope the contractor could help me to do a better supervision but I think they are too busy with too many projects on hand...
Anyway, i still have to learn the hard way to solve all these problems...

Do you think I can hack a portion on the pillar to 'plant' the mounting in with cement?
If not, should I just get the gate contractor to do something like the following picture?

I only thought of taking the video after they do the plastering...other wall is still able to agak the position but this one coz the plastering width is too wide already...
Since my contractor didn't follow the standard drop down system...i think just the photo/video alone is not so easy to get the exact position...
For future reference and record, I think I should take some effort to do the x,y position measurement for these type of non-standard wire/pipes laying..

Haha...next house? I need a break of at least 10 years then...

Yup, should be fine with the wall plugs way...luckily that I'm not so fussy with the look of it's hooks...

Haha...doing renovation is truly stressful but its excitement of watching the transformation is priceless too I guess...
The 'bad eyes' that wanting to change almost everything and desires for all the 'good' and pricey stuffs is definitely the killer bomb...

I think yours will sure gonna be a big project, looking at all your post on home designs...

This post has been edited by maxxon: Nov 27 2013, 02:26 AM

I realised that sometimes the renovation and decors are more on the intention to please the guest...so, I keep reminding myself, making it a 'home' to suit my lifestyle rather than spending the unnecessary to please someone else/guest.

This post has been edited by maxxon: Nov 11 2013, 04:31 AM

Earlier on, I was told by the Unifi agent that there was no available port anymore for my application. Thus, I was only left with the option of getting streamyx and was told that the waiting time for TM to open up new port could be very long... I was once so upset about this...until about few weeks after that, I received a call saying that TM has just opened up new ports as there are couple of other applications submitted by my neighbors... Hehe....im kinda lucky huh!?

There were 3 guys from TM came for the installation. They charged me a lum sum RM250 to lay the fiber optic wire thru plaster ceiling and there involved some drillings too... It was a 2-3 hrs job..


TM fiber optic ports located at the back lane..






Wire puller was used to pull the wire from manhole into my place.







The new router modem (Hua Wei brand) from TM. The TM guy said this new modem is not as good as the previous with orange and white colors. He suggest if we want better speed can go for Asus modem but kinda costly around rm600+. Another choice is TP Link which is cheaper, around rm200+....
Why can't this TM give a good modem at the first place? Hmm...I gonna try out later to see if the speed is ok...



This post has been edited by maxxon: Nov 11 2013, 04:34 AM