Standing Out

We went by the house today, and saw that the granite tiles have been dry-laid on the ground. It looks much lighter than it seemed on the sample and in the drawings - Owl was right! :-) We spent some time deciding if certain pieces needed to be shifted because of perceived defects in the speckling of the granite, but standing out and away from the disturbing spots proved that Owl's granite tiler was possibly "the best tiler in Singapore" as Owl claimed... He had been laying the tiles for the last 2 days - first doing it randomly, then checking against light (different times of the day) and angles (different points in the house) for gradation of the granite. [Granite, being a natural material, has different tonalities throughout, so there's no guarantee of evenness.] When we tried to replace the 'defective' tiles, we got rid of the speckles problem, but created a tonality issue - the entire tile looked different from the surrounding ones.

Stepping only on the middles of the granite tiles, we crept into the bedrooms to have a peek at the work. Sand filled the rooms up to eye level - perhaps one of the few times the rooms will ever be allowed to accummulate that much dirt. The bathroom wall tiles were also up - they are pretty :-) And there were large sketches pencilled on the walls - measurements for different things. Again, perhaps one of the few times graffiti will be allowed on those walls.

Pity that in my hurry to get out today, I forgot my camera. Maybe if I go by within the next days, I'll still be able to catch a shot or two... We went back for the camera after the little granite incident, because we'd planned to go shopping for a few more things and figured taking pictures of stuff would be useful. Along the way, we 'interviewed' Owl to get his thoughts on our strategy for getting furniture. According to him, based on the design of the living and dining areas, our approach should be to emphasize certain items in this order:

1. Dining chairs - should stand out the most. We can look for white chairs (he gave his nod of approval for something like this). We can also choose a skeletal look - wired, in which case the chairs should be black. And we shouldn't go for silver in the chairs - would be overkill. Try not to hide the long, clean line of the table.
   
2. Dining light - since the living and dining areas have clean lines, we should look for a special dining light with a fluid, organic shape. 
3. Coffee table - we can go for any shape, but be careful to keep the table at 1/3 length of the sofa we choose. Best to use full transparent glass, or stick to monochromes (black, white). 
4. Sofa - keep the design as clean as possible, since it's a large piece of furniture. Else, it would overwhelm everything else.

We found ourselves back in the Balestier area (no downpour this time, thankfully). After dropping by the tile shop to make a change, we had fairly good bak chor mee at a nearby coffeeshop to fuel up for the afternoon. Then the search for light began. In darkness. For a while, we were going into every shop, examining everything carefully. Then, we started staring at shops from the outside, and passing on a few. For others, we would literally walk through the shop and out, without much of a hello/goodbye with the shop people. Not even tau sar piah from the House of Tau Sar Piah could take away the numbness from seeing too many similar lights in a short time. For a brief moment during that trek, I thought I would throw up if I saw another chandelier...

But it is true that the best comes last! We finally found something we all liked - in the last shop we stepped into. It was the exact design Owl had suggested us in one of our earlier meetings, but we'd hesitated because it was impossibly costly. We almost didn't go in - the shop we'd just stepped out of was called LC xxx (such a terrible name, don't you think? LC = low class) and we were feeling discouraged. Anyways. Finding it was the sign we needed that we were done. We had seen the light.

Next stop - Beach Road, where Granite Man and Finance Minister had already set their hearts on their dream sofa, and wanted a little Butterfly's view. We literally sat on it, and concluded that the sofa would work, with a few changes - different fabric colour, slightly increased depth and extended length. Sat, set.

Another Saturday.