leechaorui

Hi Hamet, When you have received the email from URA, there is a contact telephone and an officer assigned to your case. You can telephone to check with the URA officer. From my experience, the URA officers are very customer service centric. When I telephoned her (the URA officer that was assigned to my case) about the re-development of my house in the morning, she visited the site in the afternoon (maybe she happen to pass by and is free). On the spot, we discussed about the difficult and logic defying regulatory rules of URA that I encountered in building my house. She was sympathetic and was agreeable to help me with some of the waiver of the URA rules and for other rules, she had to seek the agreement of her senior at URA. I was very impressed. So far, BCA has been very prompt as long as your engineer has given them the detailed plan. After all, we are only building a small house and the construction is really not so sophisticated or complicated. From the experience of homeowners who had constructed their houses, BCA's approval process is faster than URA. This is also my experience. You can check with your QP and contact BCA about the delay in the approval. My neighbour who had just constructed his house got all the approvals done wthin 1.5 months. My approval was more difficult because I needed to seek for a number of waivers to the URA rules and that entailed meeting URA architects and meeting my own architect to discuss the merits of my case, negotiation with URA, get QP to modify the plans, etc.. All in all, it took me about 3.5 months. In the meantime, when I got the provisional approval in 2 months from application, my builder started the construction process. You may want to discuss with your architect or builder to start work when you have the provisional permit (WP). Cheers!

My experience with lighting.com is very different from the rest of the forumers. I tried to make a booking for 7 pieces of wall lights today and gave the sales rep the model number and asked if they have the stock before I make a trip down to collect and make payment. Quite shockingly, the sales rep said that they don't have 7 pieces of wall lights and they also refused to make a reservation of the wall lights for me. When I asked why? His reply was lighting.com can get the lights from their supplier and bring it to the shop but it is not their policy to reserve lights for customers. I told the sales rep that I can give him my credit card number as a form of payment first and he can make the booking. However, he is inflexible and refused to budge, saying that he would not reserve the lights for me. BTW, I did not bargain with him and I have been very specific with what I wanted that Lighting.com carry. Any advice?

Wow... very beautiful transformation of your EA. Really nice!

Thanks for the good advice.

This would be ideal. Save cost and get good design. Cheers!

Very nice wardrobe and 3D design. Cheers!

Yes, you are right. The setback is the bank typically give out only 55% to 70% of the construction amount as loan. The rest of the money has to be from own cash. After construction has been completed, the bank could convert the construction loan which attracts a higher interest into the housing loan which charges lower interests. After the house has been completed, homeowners could also use CPF to repay the housing loan, thereby reducing the cash payment every month. If anyone needs help on construction loan, you can contact the relationship managers of banks to ask for assistance or you can pm me. I can introduce you to my friend who is in mortgage consultancy for a no obligation discussion on your loan needs and plans that are available. Cheers!

Congrats. Very beautiful place.

Hi sharene, Welcome to RT. Very nice design. Cheers!

Congras to you. Finally a knot is untied.

Hi Luckyanli, Very nice 3D pictures. Wish you a smooth reno journey. Cheers!

I like your description/ quote. Thanks for sharing!

Hi Livingstyle, you are right that few IDs are proficient in landed houses that touches on structural works. Eg. This is especially true for older houses where there are steps within the houses. Some owners wish to make the flooring flat and the contractor started hacking, not knowing that the ground structures below the tiles could be damaged. In short, other than superficial hacking of the flooring such as replacing tiles or overlaying tiles, it may be useful to seek PE's help to plan more extensive renovation. White Horse has a very wide selection of homogeneous tiles and stone wall tiles. Besides white horse tiles, the tiles from other tile shops may also suffer from slight mis-alignment. If you get tiles from any shop, white horse or others, it is safer to check whether the tiles can be replaced FOC inclusive of delivery if there were mis-alignment of the tiles. I feel that it is a pity to hack away granite tile to replace with homogeneous tiles, if the granite tiles are still in a good condition. If you are using large pieces of homogeneous tiles, you may want to check for uneven surface especially at the sides of the tile. There is usually no warranty of replacement for uneveness maybe because quite a lot of large homogeneous tiles suffer from this issue.

Aiyo, problem is now purse is quite empty. Contents of purse got sucked up by my vaccum cleaner contractor. Any diy solutions? My place has always been peaceful before the building was teared down. Now, basically only moving back.

I think you may be able to get Cat6 sockets at very competitive prices today. The difference can be up to double the price. You can search for bargains at hardware zones and hear from users where they buy their cat6 sockets, how much it cost and whether they are good. Cheers!

I thought that swallow bird flying outside the house is a good sign. I heard that when big black butterfly (with scary design on its wings) flies into the house, there would be calamity. This could range from very bad luck, somebody passing away, etc... Anyone with this experience?

In my mind. There are much more than these to consider. My knowledge is also limited and I am still learning from the process and through interaction with practitioners in the industry.

I used light brown granite tiles for living and all kitchen and toilet tops are black Galaxy. Hopefully, this is okay for FS.

What about a house that is newly rebuilt? What are the dos and don'ts? Any specific date and time to throw pineapple, rice and green beans? I heard from another source that best to throw rice and salt, starting from the highest floor to the ground floor to chase away spirits (if any).

Thanks for the useful info. Cheers!

Bought a projection TV some years back. They offer free delivery for higher amounts of purchase.

Hi RB, Agree with you. I feel that factoring in Cat6 cables and making your house future ready is a worthwhile investment.

There are good advantages in having built in wardrobe as you can decide on the size to fully utilize the space.

Very beautiful transformation of your house!

Hi GG, Very innovative clock design.