Day 28 - (1st June) No activity but some afterthoughts about carpentry ...

I was hoping Ah Hock would call me in the morning to tell me that the wrought iron gates are going to be installed but the call never came ... oh well, it appears that my gut feel is wrong.

Uncle also never turn up to chase for payment ... must be busy fighting fire elsewhere ... I also didn't remove the improvised jack because I want Uncle to remove it himself ... so now, there's an ugly contraption in my kitchen ....

After the fiasco with Amax (Ah Mei), I did a thorough check on the carpentry and my advice on how to check carpentry works (in my own experience) is generally as follows:

• Do a visual inspection of the exterior when the cabinets are mounted. Check that the doors are mounted correctly (i.e not slanted, too much clearance on all sides), and the gap between each door is not too much (around 2mm is fine). If not sure, always get the 水平尺to help you check whether the cabinets and doors are mounted properly.
  
• If you have specified certain measurements for the cabinets, use a measuring tape to check the measurements.
  
• Check the exterior laminates for scratches, including the ABS door trimmings - whether it is chipped / damaged.
• Check the interior laminates for scratches, including whether the area surrounding the butterfly hinges are mounted correctly i.e. cannot see ugly dents created by inaccurate/incorrect mounting.
• Check the closing / opening of drawers - whether the soft closing is ok and the rails are mounted correctly.
• Check the closing / opening of cabinet doors - whether the soft closing is ok and there are no visibly huge gaps between door and cabinet after closing.
• Knock on the interior of the cabinets. If you have specified that you want a solid backing, the carpenters should not give you a thin piece of laminate/plywood for backing. The standard norm for carpentry is that the 4 sides will be made of solid plywood (now block board more common) and a thin piece of plywood will be used for the backing. This may not be the best quality because it is flexible and tend to warp if you press against it.
• Check the joints between each section of the cabinet. Ensure that the joints are seamless and smooth when you move your hand across.
• When the product is more or less completed, check that they applied silicone on all the edges, especially the bottom part if you're mounting cabinets on top of the 50mm cabinet base. If the bottom part did not have silicone, you may end up having "visitors" of all sorts residing in the gaps.

Lastly, I did some check on the quality of wood used for carpentry and this website is quite useful: http://diydata.com/materials/manmadeboard/manmadeboard.php

A Pic of block board - the most common material used in carpentry, especially for the doors (they call it 3 piece solid plywood because 2 pieces of plywood will sandwich a piece of solid wood).


A Pic of 3/5/7/9-ply solid plywood - may not be the best material but generally used for surfaces where you need a more solid feel. This is because the quality of the plywood depends on how well the veneer is compressed together.