Category: Design & Decoration

The journey of our staircase.

This is probably one of the most boring blog posts I’ve ever written. Okay, maybe not as boring as the fillers but stairs? Who has an entire blog post dedicated to a flight of stairs? :P

Well, remember the state of our stairs before renovation?

The railings were weak from old age and compounded by termite damage, were pretty unsafe to be used. Here are some old pictures to jostle your memory:

BEFORE

# – Kampung style.
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# – Don’t use the railings or this might probably be your last view before falling over and die.

DEMOLITION

When the railings and floorings were finally ripped out, we breathed a sigh of relief.

# – All gone!

DURING

# – Installing the treads. The flooring contractor gave us a little heart attack because they were covering up the risers as well when we had informed them not to. If you looked closely, you can see some nasty glue stain on the riser because we were making them removed all the flooring :P

Well, while writing this post I found myself stumped because I had no idea how to describe the different parts of a staircase. So I did some googling and discovered this very useful illustration:

# – Now you know why I know how to use the words “tread” and “riser” :P

SOURCE

It took us forever to decide on a railing design. We wanted something timeless, easy to clean and sturdy. We finally found something we liked on Google Images and showed it to our contractor.

He actually made some improvements on the design we gave him. For instance, he made the circular base and baluster (refer to illustration above) into a single piece. Some people cover the baluster base with screwed on caps which might get loose in the long run so I’m really thankful that my contractor had thought ahead for us :)

# – Positioning the railings before the painting. Notice the baluster with circular base on the left of the picture?

NOW

And now after a paint job, the railings are finally installed!

# – Our staircase.

# – Our staircase. Again.

The transformation is quite drastic and I’m very, very happy with the final results :)

# – Before and After.

So there, an entire blog post about my stairs. Happy renovating!

Getting an awesome feature wall for your home.

Having a feature wall is a great way to bring in some colours and character to an otherwise boring room. Personally, I’m tired of those boring, mass produced wall decals. They probably look great the first few months but after a while when dust and gunk start collecting around the edges and they begin to curl…yucks.

I loved those Damask wallpapers but it seems like EVERYBODY is using them now. Wallpapers with unique designs cost an arm & leg and I’ve seriously never seen a perfectly stuck wallpaper in my life. There’s always something about the alignment and the faint edges that put me off. So yeah, no wallpapers for me.

I had a drastic thought of asking my contractor to strip off existing plaster on the wall to expose the bricks but long term maintenance issues scared me off almost immediately. Think dusts and the female fickle-mindedness, am pretty sure I’d miss the smooth wall after 10 minutes. What if I’m bored of exposed bricks then, it’ll cost us a bomb to smoothen the wall again :P

Back in the late 80s and early 90s at my parents’ home, we had a bare wall right behind the staircase railing that was visible from the living room. I remember my Dad meticulously cutting out shapes from newspapers and sticking them onto the wall with sticky tape. And then, he’d spray paint all over the newspaper cuttings and when he finally peeled them off, an awesomesauce picture of a sun and black birds emerged on our wall. It was too cool!

I’m pretty sure I have the picture of the wall somewhere, me and my brothers used to camho with it but the pictures are at my parents’ home so you’ll have to contend with an illustration of how I remember it :D

# – Dad’s sun and birds. Hmm, that’s the staircase railing at the bottom :P

Well that’s a feature wall circa 1990 for you. People don’t do these things anymore, do they? It’s time consuming and plus, you really must have an epic bundle of faith in your own creativity before you start messing with your walls (which my Dad had. He’s still got it but he’s channelling it into bedazzling his golf bag, just kidding).

Well, even if you don’t have the time, energy or creativity, fear nothing because my friend Haze and her two friends have created a dream team in transforming even the dullest wall into a work of art. They are called “PaintLust”. Check these out:

# – Whimsical and pretty.

# – Sexy rock & roll. This is KY‘s wall by the way.

# – Sleek and manly.

Yes, these are all painted walls! So you want an awesomesauce customised wall painting in your home but you suck with the brush and rather sleep than dirty your hands with paint, you know who to call.

Before I end this post, I’ll show you one last picture to show how talented Haze is. She drew this in under 15 minutes:

# – She gave me better eyebrows hehehe.