Mr A - a wonderful, flexible carpenter!

A carpenter seems to be pretty much a crafter as well :) He takes the various materials, works on them and fits them together to eventually create a masterpiece! it was extremely easy to liase with Mr A. Although we engaged a contractor, Mr A seemed to come from an ID firm and he even drafted various 3D illustrations of our carpentry so we could see if he understood our concept :) 

we truly thank God for him. firstly, for his flexibility. I wanted a "white-planked" texture (not sure how else to put it) and asked him if it was possible. no problem! he said. he could even work with fabric, eventually creating a beautiful open-concept cabinet with cushioned fabric backing. the laminate options he provided were comprehensive (we took sooooo long to browse through them!) and he even advised on or against certain colour choices. with his experience, we fully trusted him. nothing seemed to difficult for him, heehee. 

we were also thankful for his helpfulness. he was ever ready to help in this or that. he helped to drill in many of our own furniture! 

because of his flexibility and readiness to accede to our requests, we are thankful to eventually have a "home of many textures" :)

the beautiful fabric in the first picture was purchased from Fanny of laughing house. it was truly a blessing to stumble upon her shop! we spent some time at Spotlight and looking through online sources but alas, met with so many hiccups along the way. this was our first option and this was our second, but they were unavailable or rather expensive to ship in. this purchase was delivered really speedily and Fanny was also very prompt in responding to my enquiries. i really like the final fabric bought from her. it has a touch of peranakan and whimsy, and on top of that, is a colour i really like :)

as for the laminates, Mr A gave us catalogues from formica and lam chuan. wow, the variety of options are amazing! it took a long time for us to scour through all the options and visualise the outcome. our suggestion is to first decide the main colours you would like for each room, and hence eliminate all the other possibilities. consider the textures as well. for example, it would not be sensible for a table top to have rough wood grain textures. a glossy laminate would also cause fingerprints to show up more easily. Mr A also suggested that each room has only a maximum of 2-3 different laminates so as to minimise clashes. our living room furniture turned out beautifully even with just two colours - wood and white. it's all about how you want to work the colour combinations and the textures, and i really love the outcome :) don't forget that you can have an option of a different colour backing in your built-in cabinets, just like how we chose to have fabric instead!

it really helps to visit the showrooms so you get to see the laminates in big pieces. formica, especially. its showroom is small but they have huge sheets on display for you to view so you can see the wood grain patterns. as for lam chuan, we were rather disappointed :/ all we got were a4 sheets after request, which i guess were better than nothing anyway :) 

these are sneak peeks :)