Saturday, September 13, 2008

Valuable Insights

Kelvin Ang has once again done us folks in the Tiong Bahru Estate a great favour by asking a Pre-1970s Tiong Bahru resident for his recollection about the colour scheme back then.

That person is none other than the popular blogger, Mr Peter Chan, from the ever popular GoodMorningYesterday blog.

Here’s the reproduction of Mr Peter Chan’s reply to Kelvin:

Peter (05 September, 2008):

Ok I hope my memory is good.

1. Your present colour scheme for pre-war SIT flats were different from my time. There was no such thing as mustard colour for the trimmings. The beigy colour is still too "dark" shade than the past. The past I mean up to 1980. Of course HDB painted the estate every 5 years, so the beige colour was either darker or lighter than the last painting job. Your mustard colour in the past was a slightly darker beige than the other beige to give an impression of the trimmings.

2. Post-war SIT flats at Lim Liak were never the same colour than pre-war SIT. In fact I believe was white background in the 1960s and light grey for the trimmings. When you compare post-war and pre-war, post-war seem more "modern" in its colour scheme. Those at Kim Tian after King's tend to follow post-war but use light blue for the walls and slightly darker sky-blue for the trimmings.

Much earlier in the 1950s, SIT (before HDB) used black colour as a skirting on all ground floor units and above was beige colour. Now you use the mustard colour. Back then the black skirting was not so high, probably about 1 1/2 ft in height.

The round pillar at the ground floor sometimes gad 2 tone or single colour depending when the painting job was made. If single tone was beige also. If 2-tone was beige at the top and grey at the bottom.

The common staircase in the backyard was beige also.
If there were window grills like the jail-type in the old days, it was painted grey.
I got an old photo dating back to 1973 for the front of our flat.

I saw the latest where there are different colours covering even the bare wall. It reminds me of pop art. It’s horrible when you flash colours like that. Looks like someone got idea from AirAsia.

Besides probing people for valuable insights, Kelvin also snooped around the Tiong Bahru Estate to “excavate” for more clues.

He observed an interesting outcome from the doorway removal. (See previous post: The FRAMES of pain).

When the door frame was removed, layers of paint have flaked off and we can now see what seems to be the original wall colour - which is a pale mustard shade!

Very French/Cambodian/Vietnamese colour” Kelvin muses.....

This picture is contributed by Kelvin Ang

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