Renovating an older Sarawak house

A house that's stood for decades has settled, and it was rarely built dead-square to begin with. Walls lean, corners aren't a true 90 degrees, and floors dip — so a cabinet run drawn as a straight box leaves a tapering gap against the wall and rocks on an uneven floor. Trusting the original plan, or a single tape measurement, is how a good-looking kitchen ends up with a finger-wide gap at one end.

Start with a measured site survey of the real shell — wall lengths taken at several heights, floor and ceiling variation, diagonals to check square — not the old plan. Then design the fit to absorb it: scribe fillers cut to follow the actual wall line, adjustable plinths that level a run over a sloping floor, and a defined tolerance at the wall junctions instead of a rigid box. This is standard retrofit craft, and it's what makes new cabinetry sit clean against an old, uneven wall.

Old waterproofing membranes, tired roof flashing and decades-old plumbing mean many older Sarawak houses carry damp you can't see until you open the wall — a stain that keeps coming back, a musty bathroom wall, salt blooming on plaster. Fit a cabinet or a panel over that and you seal the moisture in, trap it against the back of the carcass, and turn a fixable leak into rot and mould you only find once the damage is done.

Find and fix the source first — trace the leak, renew the waterproofing or flashing, let the wall dry — before any cabinetry or wall panel goes up. Then build in defences for a house that will always run humid: an air gap behind carcasses so the wall can breathe, non-timber materials in the wet zones, and finishes that resist moisture rather than pretend to be waterproof. The waterproofing, roofing and plumbing repairs are coordinated across trades by ELS by ALUMAX; the point is to sequence them ahead of the fit-out, not around it.

Wiring in a 20-to-40-year-old house was sized for the appliances of its day and often extended room by room since — undersized circuits, too few sockets, aged insulation, sometimes no proper earthing. A modern kitchen or a wall of new joinery adds load and hides cabling the day it goes in, and the worst time to discover a circuit needs upgrading is after the wall is closed over it.

Have the existing circuits assessed by a licensed electrician early, and agree any upgrade — new points, heavier circuits, a modern consumer unit — while the walls are still open. Fix socket and appliance positions against the real layout, then let ALUMAX build the cabinetry with cable routes and service access so the wiring stays reachable, not entombed. The electrical assessment and upgrade are coordinated with the electrician by ELS by ALUMAX — done before the finishes close in, never after.

Older houses in Sarawak's climate have usually met termites at some point — in door frames, skirtings, ceiling timbers or old built-in furniture — and the damage stays quiet until a frame gives or a skirting turns to shell. Fitting new timber-based joinery into a house with an active or recurring termite problem simply hands the colony fresh food.

Treat first: have the active infestation dealt with and the failed timber removed before anything new goes in — that treatment is a specialist trade coordinated alongside the works. Then design the risk out by favouring aluminium and other non-timber materials for the vulnerable zones ALUMAX supplies: aluminium windows and doors, full-aluminium and honeycomb carcasses, WPC fluted panels, rather than replacing like-for-like timber that termites will find again. It doesn't make a house termite-proof, but it removes the food from the zones most likely to be attacked.

Retrofits rarely re-floor the whole house at once, so new SPC flooring meets old ceramic tile, terrazzo or cement that sits at a different height — and old floors are seldom level to start with. Left unresolved you get a lip you catch your foot on, a gap that collects dirt, or a door that no longer clears the new floor.

Measure the height difference at each doorway and boundary, then resolve it deliberately: level or feather the substrate where you can, and use a proper threshold or transition strip where two floors of different heights meet. Decide up front whether SPC lays over sound old tile or the tile comes up, because that sets the finished level everything else — doors, thresholds, the bottom of the cabinetry — has to work to. ALUMAX supplies and installs the SPC and sets these transitions as part of the floor scope.

Swapping tired timber or steel windows for aluminium means fitting new frames into openings that have moved and weathered — reveals that aren't square, old render that crumbles at the edge, sizes that were never standard. Order to the old window's nominal size or a plan dimension and the new frame won't sit true, leaving gaps that let in water and draughts.

Measure every opening individually at several points — width and height at top, middle and bottom, plus the diagonals — because no two old openings are truly the same. Make good the reveal, then fit aluminium windows that stand up to Sarawak's sun and rain far better than old timber, sealed properly against the made-good opening. ALUMAX supplies and installs the aluminium windows and, where you want it, insect screens to the same openings.

Many families can't move out for a Sarawak retrofit, so the work happens around daily life — dust migrates everywhere, one room's demolition takes out the only kitchen or bathroom, and a job done all at once can leave you with nowhere to cook or wash for weeks. That strain is what pushes people to rush decisions and cut corners late in a job.

Phase the work so the house stays liveable: keep one working kitchen and one working bathroom running while the other zones are done, seal off active work areas to contain dust, and put the noisy, dirty demolition and wet trades before the finishes go in. How you phase it — which room first, how long you can live without which space, what your budget allows in what order — is your call as the homeowner; ELS by ALUMAX builds the programme around the sequence you choose.