A song about colours

Earlier we were given a colour chart to select the colours of the exterior and interior walls, as well as some of the other elements such as doors, windows and the steel staircase. We decided to go with a blue theme for the exterior walls, while the interiors will be predominantly white.

It's so hard to make a decision when there are so many options, but once we narrowed down to the blues, things became a little more straightforward. It's impossible to go wrong with colours named Smooth Sailing, Winning Streak and Great Outdoors.

The painters have been working on the interiors over the past couple of weeks, but now it's time to start painting the external walls. Before that, the years of accumulated dirt and grime are washed away with a jet spray.

And in place of the old creamy/beigy combination, we'll soon have refreshing blue!

Even the classroom doors are blue! And they come with a small viewing panel so that anxious parents can take a secret peek into the classroom to check if their children are doing fine.

In most of the indoor areas, we are using the existing marble/homogeneous floor tiles. However, due to the poor condition of the flooring in the N1 classroom, it is necessary to lay another layer of vinyl over it.

This time, we resisted the temptation to add another splash of blue. Instead, Ms Wong suggested selecting a colour that will create a "warmer" environment for the N1 children, so we examined the browns and beiges, and in the end decided on the rather intoxicating-sounding Carthamus Champagne.

And so this is Carthamus Champagne, fully installed. It's a bit dim now, but we'll see the true colour once the lights are turned on.

More cleaning solutions

Our search for technological solutions is bringing us to remote regions. Yesterday we visited the far-flung showroom of Klenco, which is quite an established name in the cleaning industry.

Klenco has a nice building located in Tuas, which is somewhere right at the edge of the Universe.

Entering their showroom, we are greeted by a mind-boggling array of really interesting cleaning machines. It's possible though that people who do the actual cleaning work might not quite share the same enthusiastic sentiments. Great! Just the machine I need to clean more floors (cue rolling eyes).

This little fellow is what we're here to see - the Lava 351B floor scrubber and dryer. No more lugging around a broom, dustpan, mop and a pail of water from room to room. The Lava is a self-contained machine that replaces the manual processes involved in the daily cleaning of the classroom floors.

We are looking at the baby bear of the Lava family, but even this tiniest unit weighs in at a hefty 40 kilos when fully equipped. So, while there are no doubts regarding the effectiveness of this machine, unfortunately the classrooms on the ground floor are 2 steps up from the Hall area, so we'll have to get around this obstacle if we were to acquire this piece of equipment.

But Klenco wouldn't be the professional cleaning company that they are, if they didn't have other solutions. Their helpful Senior Sales guy proceeded to recommend the alternative Duplex series of floorwashers cum carpet cleaners, which at 28 kilos supposedly provides greater maneouvreability. Can't see Aunty jumping for joy.

Here's how the underside of the machine looks like. The machines generally work on the same principles. In a nutshell - water or detergent is squirted from the clean water tank onto the floor. The brushes on both sides scrub the floor, push the wet dust and dirt inwards, to be carried up by the rollers and deposited in another recovery tank, which can be emptied afterwards. Fascinating?

Besides machines, the Klenco showroom contains many other interesting innovations, such as a steam cleaner (hot!) and a flat floor mop that holds disinfectant/detergent along the entire length of its handle (quirky!). Also, a range of floor mats with different functions and different colours to suit any occasion.

A great introduction to the world of professional cleaning technologies. Many thanks to Ranald of Klenco for patiently explaining and demonstrating the various products. We leave today with just the liquid soap dispensers for our two adult toilets, but we'll likely be back for one of those cool machines.