I would advise anyone who cares about their home renovation to avoid Space Inspiration like the plague. It appears from this thread that many have had bad experiences with them. My own experience with them August to October 2008 was one of the worst experiences I have ever had in my entire life & one I would not wish to go through ever again in my life. Like many others, they seem okay upon first impression and nothing is too much trouble for them to do for you. But problems start immediately the work begins. To summarise their (many) shortcomings:
Computer generated impressions were mostly uninspired & not at all what I'd briefed them to give me. It seems they just do not listen and translate what you want into design. It is like talking to a brick wall with them.
I had a lot of custom carpentry (shelves & storage units) for which I requested for line drawings or technical drawings detailing measurements, dimensions and materials. None were ever forthcoming. Consequently, my built-ins were designed and built at the whimsy of the carpenter and often failed to comply with my design instructions.
Because all woodwork was "prepared at their factory to spec" I was assured that completion was merely a matter of "assembling the woodwork in situ" and that it would take no more than 3 weeks to complete my unit. In reality, Space's sub-contractors worked at a painfully slow pace (in the beginning not more than 1-2 days out of each 7-day week) and the job ended up taking more than 3 months, and even then was half baked in its execution. I had to plead, argue, cajole, persuade them to send their workers every step of the way. In the end I plain bulllied them into getting the work moving along. If I had taken a back seat and let them work at their own snail's pace I've absolutely no doubt that the work would still not be completed to this day (and in fact they walked off the job before completing properly).
Little or no project management, supervision or quality control on the part of Space's ID. It was all left in the hands of their incompetent sub-contractors who were very often not briefed on what they were meant to be doing, and often turned up at my place totally clueless (and looking for direction from ME!!!)
During the first 6 weeks their carpenter managed to turn my apartment into a rubbish dump. I found the remains of his MacDonalds lunches and cigarette ends strewn around my place. Consequently I am now facing a cockroach infestation problem. Eventually I demanded that they clean up (with me initiating the lion's share of the cleaning myself).
I received the most badly designed & executed TV console I have ever seen in my life. It was too long, ugly and the base which was supposed to accommodate several heavy DVD, Laser Disk, hi-fi and amplifier components was made so thin that it would have sent my components crashing to ruin on the floor within days had I used it. There were also no holes built-into the design for feeding of wires and such! Having waited many weeks for Space to fix it up, I had to order Space to remove it from the wall. Space's ID sulked cos he realised he could not charge me for this cancelled item.
The materials proposed for the so-called "feature wall" were low quality, cheap looking with few options presented. In the end I told them to forget about doing a feature wall since I was convinced it would look awful.
Space's sub-contractors managed to completely trash my marble floor requiring the developer to do a major repolish (at my own expense).
Space's flooring contractor was brought in to do "a grind" to improve the quality of my parquet but succeeded in completely trashing it through utterly inept workmanship. I chased Space's imbecile of a flooring contractor out of my house when I saw what he had done. Again, I had to bring the developer in to bring the parquet back to its original condition, once again at my own expense.
Space's sub-contractors used my kitchen, kitchen cabinets and kitchen worktop as their personal storage place for heavy tools and abrasive materials, until I finally made the kitchen off limits to them. Consequently, I had to again spend money to have the developer bring the worktop back to its install condition.
Space's plasterer poured the remnants of his bucket of plaster water down my brand new, developer-installed kitchen sink! WTF! My brand new kitchen sink was absolutely covered in one thick coating of brick-hard plaster! I had to get the developer to replace back to kitchen sink with a brand new one, again at my expense.
They fitted the cheapest possible fittings into my place. For example a plastic tap (yes plastic) in the utility area which snapped off the first time I ever tried to turn it, causing a flood late at night which I had to call out a plumber to fix.
After one of my display units was completed it started coming away from the wall and displayed huge cracks and peeling plasterwork. This was because Space's sub-contractor had failed to use sealing tape before plastering over the join between the unit and the wall - shoddy workmanship.
Carpenter drilled through one of my water pipes concealed behind a wall in the living area causing a flood in the unit!
A built-in CD storage unit was very shoddily done by their lazy subcontractor so I had to insist that the work be redone so that it looked acceptable.
Doors that were meant to fit to a storage shelf unit were made too darned heavy to sit safely within the unit's housing - another case of nonexistent design expertise on the part of the ID which prevented them from following through on my design requirements.
I had to wait inordinately long time, many weeks, for various items of tinted mirror, clear mirror and glass work for cabinet doors. Space's glass contractor held my unit up for many weeks because of his slowness.
Towards the end of the contract when I was rushing to meet my move-in deadline, Space's ID (Marcus Tham, also a director of the company) completely dissapeared on me. He coordinated none of the contractor work, did not give a fig about my deadline or my need to have the messy works completed before I moved my stuff in, and generally lost interest in the whole project. There was no final wrap up meeting with him or any resolution of outstanding works which they failed to complete.
Space's Marcus Tham always blamed his contractors when stuff didn't get done properly and made excuses this way. At the same time the contractors always bad-mouthed Marcus, saying he didn't give them proper instructions, etc. I was drawn into a completely unacceptable finger-pointing exercise by both sides! I told them I was not interested in getting involved in their internal fights - I just wanted them to complete their work properly and in timely fashion.
The failure to answer calls has been alluded to a lot. I also found the same problem continually. My solution when I could not reach them was to keep calling and messaging constantly until my ID finally did respond to me. It was tedious and a complete waste of my time, but that was the only way.
In the end I found that I had to be on site to supervise Space's contractors 24/7 to provide at least some sort of informed quality control and supervision. I devoted 2 full months to this contractor supervision to the utter neglect of my business - completely unacceptable! I almost went out of business myself because of spending all my waking hours babysitting and handholding these jokers.
I could go on and cite at least 20 other major things I was very unhappy about but I think you get the general gist. Basically Space do not care, do not quality control or supervise their workers and their quality of work is appalling and runs way too long over the promised schedule. I think it's all about volume with them.. they worry mainly about signing new clients and then leave the worrying about how to complete their work till much much later. Very lousy and unprofessional outfit. Their work is utter crap.
I would rather slit my own throat than ever engage such an irresponsible ID company as Space Inspiration ever again. Total and utter nightmare of epic proportions. I hate to criticise anyone so badly, but I am posting this long report so that anyone who is thinking of using Space Inspiration KNOWS EXACTLY WHAT THEY ARE LETTING THEMSELVES IN FOR. My faith in Singapore ID companies is completely non-existent because of my experiences with them, which is a shame as I know there must be other good & responsible ones out there.
