housethingsgoing
A frog and a duck living in a 4rm resale flat
We spent hours obsessing over these measurements in our resale flat!
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It took Duck almost 20 years after her primary school graduation to realise why she had to learn Math in school - it's to make sure she got all her reno measurements right! No measurements were left to chance during our reno process - Duck (and her poor math abilities) scrutinised the length/width/height of every single thing to make sure they all made sense. In this post we're sharing our thought process behind some of the measurements we were most particular about and all the crazy obsessive things Duck did to ensure that there weren't any miscalculations. 
First up, the top cabinets in our dry pantry! This is where our ID asked us how high we wanted the top cabinets - there's no restriction for this, unlike in the kitchen where the hood has to be a specific distance above the stove so that it can be functional without being too close to the fire. After lots of deliberation, examining shelves and cupboards in other people's house (sorry for poking around your house, Frog's parents!) and mockups on Sketchup, we arrived at the magical number of 160cm! The main reason for this is that it's a whole 2cm taller than Duck, which means she will NEVER hit her head on the cabinet but it's also not too tall such that she's unable to reach the items on the open shelf. As this area is meant to be a dry pantry/coffee area, we also made sure that there's enough height for a full sized coffee machine (and kettle) on the counter without it being too close to the top cabinet. And well, if you're asking about Frog, he's definitely taller than 160cm so he has a pretty high chance of hitting his head - but he's not the most important person in this household, so who cares? Just kidding, he's not the kind to hit his head on random things, but Duck is the kind to fall down all over the place so her safety is prioritised :p 
Also, if you see the previous image, we have these 2 deep drawers at our dry pantry, which are supposed to be for a breakfast bar kind of concept! Here's the fun part - our drawers were split such that both are 31cm deep. This is also the reason why we opted to have 2 deep drawers instead of 3 drawers (like the regular 3 drawer carpentry you might see in most renovations). Why 31cm? Breakfast isn't complete without cereal, granola and milo right - and Duck really wanted all her items to be able to stand upright in the drawer. So she went around the supermarket with a measuring tape (this actually happened for real) and measured the heights of her favourite granola packets (we ran out of it T.T but milo is about the same height!) and milo packets. We concluded that most boxes (of the stuff we buy at least) are around 30cm tall, which is why our drawer is 31cm deep! Also, we haven't figured out what we want to keep in the bottom drawer, so we also ensured that the drawer(s) were deep enough to fit a variety of regular standard sized things (like A4 documents/folders, 2 of Duck's favourite IKEA Kuggis Boxes). We can also safely stuff our airfryer, rice cooker and/or other small kitchen appliances in the bottom drawer if we want more countertop space too! 
And if you thought running around the supermarket with a measuring tape was mad, here's when Duck's obsessive calculations get worse! We have this pull out drawer in the kitchen where we keep our oven - the tray extends outwards when we are using the oven to allow for ventilation from the back. And you might realise that the oven seems to be a little 'small' for the section - this is because Duck, once again ran around the home appliance store with her measuring tape and measured about 5 different steam ovens to make sure that we would be able to fit a new oven into this space in the event that ours broke down and could not be replaced. REGRETFULLY though, Smeg launched their oven in Singapore only after we bought our oven and this section DOES NOT fit the Smeg one :( It does however fit a variety of other steam and microwave ovens from other brands, so we've kind of 'future-proofed' ourselves in that aspect. Our current oven is 20L though, and while we don't think we would ever want a huge oven, Duck was also prepared for that possibility by.... 
... ensuring that we can fit BOTH our airfryer and rice cooker into this section if we want to get a bigger oven and place it on the countertop instead. This was also the reason why we added a double socket inside this pull out section - to cater to the possibility that there might be 2 appliances squished together here one day. So yes, 51cm and 40cm may seem like very random numbers but they are the result of a lot of hard work and... discreet store measurements by Duck. 
Outside of this kitchen, we also had an obsessive measurement moment for our fluted glass panel in the living room. The glass panel is designed to provide privacy for the people (aka Frog and Duck) sitting on the sofa behind the panel, so it couldn't be too short, especially since we had an L -shaped sofa. We were using an 80cm long cabinet for our entryway, and if you can tell from the picture, anything less than 120cm would mean that the L section of the sofa would jut out from behind the panel and be visible from the front door. Anything larger than 120cm (e.g. 140cm) would be too wide and cut into the space for the dining area on the right. So how did we arrive at 120cm? We did mockups in sketchup and had a 3D 'walkthrough' of the house so that we could judge the size of the panel. Once we arrived at 120cm, we also marked it out on the floor of our house with masking table so we could get a real life sensing of how long it was, and whether it got into our way as we walked around the house. 
And lastly, the bedroom! We didn't have any built ins in the master bedroom BUT we also wanted a new socket to be created for Duck's side of the bed. The purpose of the socket would be for her to charge her phone and for her hairdryer, and she wanted it to be 'floating' above her bedside table so she could turn it off and on easily. So.... how did we decide where to put this switch? The distance of the switch from the sides of the room were determined by using the standard size of a king-sized bed, plus a standard 40cm walkway on the other side for the bedside table and for Frog to climb into his bed without having to crab-walk. For the height, we arrived at the magical number of 75cm after Duck.... you guessed it! She tabulated the heights of various IKEA furniture (and her dream mustardmade cabinet) to make sure that the socket would always be above her bedside table regardless of which option she chose. We're using the PLATSA in this photo, but we've also tried this with an IKEA Baggebo cabinet and the socket sits nicely in between the shelves as well. So yes that's our long and tiring journey in determining all the heights and widths of things in our house, especially for all the 'fixed' items like switches and carpentry which cannot be changed easily! We've stuck a lot of masking tape around the house to mark out items and visualise them, so don't be afraid to do so as well if you're planning your reno (but use good masking tape so it doesn't rip the paint off) And of course, your measuring tape is your best friend always :)
22 August
