Builderscape Landscaping

A lot of landscape companies in Columbus have been breaking into the construction of paver patios. There have been new materials used since the original installation of just brick materials. A Columbus paver patio contractor, Builderscapes has been utilizing various materials from stone, brick, to asphalt products in there latest design. In addition, there designs have been able to rank them as a top 10 installation and design firm.

Who is Builderscapes? Builderscape Inc. is a Columbus, Ohio based landscape design company with more than 30 years experience in Central Ohio. Based on initial conversations with Builderscapes, they can provide various scopes of work which can include residential and commercial projects ranging from paver patios, stone wall construction, decks, irrigation system installation and maintenance, and care-free swimming pool installation, just to name a few.

Hardwood Flooring

We did not do anything to the floor of our house when we moved in about two years ago.  The previous owner rented out the house all the while before we bought it over from him.  Due to wear and tear and it was not well maintained, the house was not in very good condition.

With very low budget, we only managed to touch up a little, paint the walls, fixed any leakages and moved in to our new home to avoid paying rental to the landlord of our rented house.

This more than 20 years old house of ours, we called it our new home, needs a good face lift and refurbishment. If budget permits, we would like to do a renovation and also an extension to the kitchen.  The floor tiles are old and with stubborn marks here and there, we will replace it with the modern hardwood flooring.  I have seen many nice hardwood flooring patterns at Ephrata floor store.  If we were to replace our flooring, we will have to browse through the different brands and species of flooring available at Ephrata to decide which type suite our furniture best.

I would like to have the hardwood flooring at our living room as well as for our bedrooms and study room.   I am really looking forward to do some renovation to our house hopefully by this year.

Lights for the house

Since last week Clet has been wanting to bring me to an electrical shop in Inanam where there are some nice ceiling lights for sale on discounts. We went there last night just half and hour before the shop closes.

We spent our half an hour there looking up at the ceiling for those lights and chandeliers. Honestly getting a nice and suitable lights for the house is not easy especially with tight budget to work with.

Personally I pretty much prefer to have a chandelier at the entrance / foyer of our house, it makes the house looks grand some how, but the price is not cheap too. I am thinking of getting something resembling of a chandelier but with much cheaper price (lower grade chandelier so to speak).

I quite like this one

and this one

This lemon light caught the eyes on my girls

this is not bad too but insects tend to land on the centre piece (the middle bowl)

My girls wanted me to take photo of this light because of the hanging stars and the moons

This is also one of our choice. Gold trimming, I need a lot of gold...:D But the price is too high for this type of ceiling light.

It must have been the shape of the butterfly fairy wings that made Pearl took photo of this light.

We did not buy any of the lights yet, still searching for the ones that really to our liking and with most reasonable price.

Cheap Cheap Home & Living magazines

If you do not mind owning some backdated issues of magazines, go to 2nd hand shops. There you could find cheap cheap magazines priced as low as RM1.00 per copy. These magazines are still in very good conditions.

To get some ideas of home improvement for our new home, Clet bought more than 10 copies of these magazines from one of the 2nd hand shop here. I used to buy home & living magazines many years back, some of them are more than RM10.00 a copy. Though we wouldn't be able to follow any of the designs for our house at the moment but I enjoy reading them and have gather some ideas on how we want our home design to be like in the future renovation, particularly the design and layout of the kitchen!

Update on House Repair

After a week or so, with an increase number of 1 worker to 3 last week, they have helped to speed up the work a little. They managed to remove the bath tub from the master bed room and the shower tray from the common bath room, glad that we decided to remove them because there are leakages and water have been retained underneath, the downstairs ceiling are falling off due to the water sipping in over the years. To avoid same problem happen in the future, layers and layers of water proofing have been applied on the bathrooms floor before tiling can be done, normally takes up several day for it to dry up totally, some delay now to avoid future headache.

Floor tiles have been laid for the room downstairs, the tiles appeared to be a bit beige instead of cream, but it's ok. The dinner and living room fallen ceiling have been touched up, under coating has also been applied to the walls, just need to be repainted.

Our nephew introduced a good carpenter who will be helping to repair the built in wardrobe and kitchen cabinets which initially we thought of getting rid of them, actually the wood are in good condition, just need a good carpenter to reform them.

Inspected the house today, there are still a long way to fully get the whole house repaired. We will have to leave the kitchen, front and back yard for later. These areas can be done even when we have moved in.

Update on House Repair

Here are some updates on our house repair. Though we are trying to minimize the repair work, it seems that changing of roofing, piping, wiring and tilings are inevitable at some parts of this a couple of decades old house.

repairing work in progress at the living and dining areas.

parts of the roofing in the master bedroom has been taken off, notice that a water tank is sitting on that 3 pieces of wood, it looks scary to me (whose knows it will fall down one day :(, so we are removing the water tank away from the ceiling and will be replacing one at the back of the house.

chunk and pieces of broken wood taken off from the ceiling and kitchen cabinets

We have set a time line to get the works done by the 1st week of May in order for us to start moving in.