adrian_john

Yes, agreed with Pet. The common sales tactic is to make people 'gian' or feel they're missing out on a 'good deal' or 'limited stock' and make an impulse decisions. If you can't get what you want (price or otherwise), or if they try to throw other tricks like give you your price but charge you additional 'delivery and installation' charges, just walk away.

Interesting thread for mummies and now even daddies. I was initially apprehensive to post cos' most were mummies, so didn't wanna intrude. But since I saw some daddies posting, decided to join in. I'm daddy to 2 very naughty and mischievous boys aged 3.5 (Sept 2005) and 1.5 (Oct 2007) years old. To be honest, I never even expected to have kids because my wife was told by Gynae that it would be very difficult and almost impossible for her to conceive a child due to some woman problem. But for those of you who believe in a higher divine power, I guess the big guy up there was indeed very kind to bless us with 2 beautiful kids out of nowhere. We never planned for it, just took it as it came. I don't know if my current house is to 'blame'. Strangely and oddly, when we were viewing our current place in 2004, the woman of the house told us we sure have a child if we buy the house. She shared her situation that she was told by doctors that she'd never have a child but end up having 1 the minute she moved there with her husband to stay with the FIL and take care of him. Personally, I think in Singapore, its largely due to the lifestyle that prevents couples from wanting and/or having kids. When you spend more than half your day at work, have alot of stress, dealing with difficult people (internal and external), it affects your ability to conceive. Although it has meant alot of lifestyle changes (i.e. no more regular hang out with guy friends, less dating, no more holidays and even missed honeymoon with wife), the joy of returning home to kids everyday is really a blessing and joy. Anyways, nice to meet up with fellow daddies and mummies here.

Got some pictures of the new place to share. Here's a picture showing the entrance to the unit as well as some bits of the future dining area (where the LCD TV now stands) and the kitchen entrance. The hole in the wall where the kitchen is will be sealed. Was thinking to 'expand' the kitchen opening slightly with a half-height glass panel next to the kitchen entrance, where a glass swing door will be placed. Haven't decided whether to put shoe cabinet on the left or right of entrance. Views of the existing kitchen cabinets. Will have to tear it down and build new ones and Maybe change the layout abit. The headache portion - The service balcony. As you can see, there's quite number of annoying exposed sanitary pipes at the area. Am considering whether to just box them up to keep it out of sight as far as possible. The space where the bin, mops and washing machine is are I was thinking of transforming it to a 'wet washing area' of sorts by doing a curb around it or perhaps like a basin there with a tap so we can do washing and place pails there and somehow keep it slightly hidden. In the 2nd picture, the wall-mounted cabinet will make way for a tall cabinet where the built-in oven and fridge will be, with washing machine positioned below the ventilation window of the common toilet. Where the current dining table is, was thinking whether should do an island top or a half-height cabinet for storage and preparation. Still cracking head for ideas. As usual, any feedback/suggestions are much appreciated. Will try to do sketches of the space within the next couple of days to see what sorta options I can play around with.

Heya Smartie and Booy, While waiting for my son who was having his Speech and Drama classes nearby, I also popped by Katong Mall and Casa Italy to just look-see and try out the sofas. Yes, as Pet said, I totally agree the 2nd sofa is by far more comfy. But honestly, IMHO, the white one which Booy mentioned is the best among the lot, and if I recall correctly, its going at a very low price, which probably explains why the ladies were hogging it. Yeah, don't fall for all the salesman's 'last day/only for now' tactics. Its always a hard-press sales tactic to get you to commit. Strangely, when I was there, the sales guy didn't really bother to serve me (which suits me fine so I can look around in peace). Maybe I look to shabby, poor and fierce. Haahahha!

@xherion Thanks for the kind comments. You have a lovely house in the making too. I was inspired by what you did with your layout plan and decided to try my hand and floor planner too and having quite abit of fun there! I sometimes still abit old-school lah, prefer my own hands, a pencil, ruler and eraser as compared to drawing tablet, mouse and clicking. Hee Hee. @Smallboy Hahaha, if Ah Soon can give me 'discount' for helping him with drawings, I'll be a happy man. Great to see your home reno's moving along smoothly. Nice place you've got there.

Small update on the progress of securing our new home: After 40 Days of waiting, our exercised option has finally been submitted and we've got our 1st appointment date, which will be on 5 June 2009. Really glad that things are finally moving along with concrete dates now. Based on the 1st appointment date, I'd estimate our completion date to be around 31 July or perhaps slightly earlier.

XiaoBB, Fondue, PreciousJam and Pet, Its been really informative reading your views and suggestions about the shoe cabinet and keeping them in order. Thanks to your female-perspective inputs, I can probably score some brownie points with wifey by sharing your suggestions. I think we're gonna need a full height shoe cabinet to house all her shoes because I think the number of shoes she has can probably put her in the running to match those of Imelda Marcos. And she complains when I leave 3 shoes and 1 pair of sandals on the open shoe rack .... *Sighz*

Congrats on the new place! Very nice as it is and I guess the view is always something nice to come back to and gaze at when the day's done. I'm sure the place will look even better after your reno. All the best!

I guess you women would definitely appreciate the mirrors. You notice apart from the proposed mirror at the wardrobe, there's also another make-up cabinet with mirrors for the cabinet doors? I have to factor them in due to the fact that I have a wife that takes extreme pride in making herself look good (i.e. Vain), and if that makes her happy, then I guess its good enough for me.

My 2nd meeting with Ah Soon has now been postponed to next week. Uncle says he's pretty busy this week, and understandably so considering he's starting on a couple of new jobs already. Hope to meet up with him soon again and finalise my budgeting.

Heya Pet, Queen-sized bed is out cos' we'll be re-using our existing mattress and bedframe, which is in pretty good shape and will blend in with the new place. Also, the extra space on the King is necessary to accomodate having the younger son sleeping in between, or having both of them sleep on the bed with the wife while I downgrade to a mattress below. I've been telling my wife that practically speaking, perhaps we should not have such a long wardrobe. Don't wanna end up having the MBR look too cramped. The other option is an 8ft wardrobe cum TV cabinet parallel to the wall where the bathroom is.

Based on the new layout, decided to try to do up a visualisation sketch of the Master Bedroom, and add a couple of 'extra touches' to spice the visual up a little. A pity the room isn't square but has an odd sharp angled point where the window is. Based on the floor plan, the MBR can be pretty cramped once a King Size bed is in, with a 34cm space between the bed and the long wardrobe.

Managed to find myself a Rotring house furnishing standardgraph stencil and decided to play around with working out a rough floor plan. With wifey edging me to get a bigger, longer wardrobe in the MBR, I realised the only way to accomodate this request would be to change the position of the MBR entrance and eat into the tiny space between the rooms. This will mean a shift in the current MBR bathroom door to the side and shrinking the vanity top and cabinet in the MBR bathroom to a smaller one. Where the current MBR toilet door is right now will be sealed up and a TV cabinet/wall placed in front. Also tried a hand at thinking of a rough kitchen layout to meet wifey's brief of having 'as much storage as possible' (God knows why??). So have placed 2 tall cabinets in addition to the standard cabinet. There will be a wet/dry area too. Haven't decided on plans for the study/spare room. Still exploring ideas.

Thanks for the compliments Cantona-Fan. Yes, I do hope that my 2 boys will end up in Cat. High. Save me the headache and cost of commuting to Siglap every morning for 8 years and losing many hours of sleep and my life in the process. Hahahaha! You're on St 23? We've got a number of Bishanites around here. Should organise a gathering.

Hey Fan of Cantona and Fellow Bishanite. Welcome aboard. Really lovely place you've got there. Look forward to seeing more pictures.

Confirmed Uncle lost his stuff. I called him yesterday to just follow up on his quotation for my place and he was telling me lucky I call or else he wouldn't be able to match my name/address with the contact number. Its also lucky he didn't lose the floor plans for his current batch of customers that he owes quotes to. He's now just trying to find the matches to the floor plans he's holding. Uncle told me that he'll revert back to me this evening or tomorrow. So I'm eagerly waiting for his quotation. I think its quite a foregone conclusion that I'll sign up with him, after seeing all the nice stuff he's done, particularly at Fondue's place (Which is his 'temporary showroom' - hehehehe!). I think on another note, my mandarin seems to be improving after having needed to brush up quickly to communicate with him. LOL.

I think the withdrawal of sale either by the Agent or Seller is largely very stressful affair for Buyers. Firstly, the Buyer already spends alot of time, brain power and effort to search, view and finally shortlist and narrow down to that single choice of flat which they really like and want. The last thing any Buyer would want is for a spanner to be thrown into the works. Sometimes these situations are even a result of Agents/Sellers who go back on their word before the signing of the OTP. You may feel hard done by but at the end of the day, because there is no legal documentation, you just have to grit your teeth and suffer on your own. My experience was about 3 years ago. I was then helping my parents find a unit around my area. They viewed quite a number before finally finding a unit they really liked. After negotiating with the Agent, and offering a price which was accepted by the Seller. We told the Agent to arrange for us to meet up so that we can sign the OTP and place a deposit. The Agent set a timing that day itselffor us to meet. We arrived early and text her, she said timing delayed and made us wait for almost an hour. Having waited for some time, I tried calling the Agent and she never answered, so we were quite annoyed. Later, the Agent SMSes me and tells me that the flat is sold and the Seller and Agent proceeded to sell it to someone else who offered $1K more. This really made my parents very sad and angry because its not so much the issue of money but the integrity (or rather lack of it). Verbally agreed and already arranged to meet to sign, but suddenly, last minute kenna played out. Frankly, they could have just told us and even though this sorta deal still stinks, my parents would've willingly topped up to match the price because they liked the unit so much. End result they had to spend almost another 2 months searching again before they found another unit, which wasn't really what they wanted, but had no choice because they had a move-out timing to fulfil.

Yes, you can push for that as part of compensation in the legal proceedings as that cost incurred is a direct consequence of his voiding of the contract.

I assume that since you already have a 1st appointment date scheduled, the OTP has already been exercised. If the Option has been exercised, legally speaking, the seller is obliged to sell it to you and if he/she backs out of the deal, you have the right to pursue legal proceedings against him/her for the appropriate compensation as the exercised option is a legally binding contract. Note: HDB will not interfere in any legal conflict between both buyer and seller, which explains wy they bo chup. How this works is that if you are unhappy about him backing out, you seek legal redress and unless you and him/her mutually agree to declare the agreement null and void, he has to compensate you appropriately for another similar unit which you now have to look for since he/she has voided the sale. Example, seller and you agree on a price of $400K for the unit. Now that he/she backs out, you look and find a similar unit which you buy at $430K. He will have to compensate you the $30K difference. So now, it largely depends on you how to work this scenario. You can be forgiving and let it go, or if you really want the unit, you can proceed with legal action. Legal-wise, you have the upper end.

Yes, it is indeed a pity that you're not able to knock down the walls or else I'm sure you'd have enjoyed playing with the extra open space as your layout has much potential for that. Your layout is exactly the same as my cousin's in Bukit Batok. She made the house look very big by placing a half-height mirror that stretched across the entire living room wall. Seeing your place has helped affirm the quality and reliability of Ah Soon. I guess we'll most likely sign him up. If you're having a housewarming and are looking for quality home-cooked mexican food at very affordable prices, let me know, and I can recommend you somebody who does this.

Why knock on the door when you can take a mop/broom stick and start poking the ceiling at 2am?Sorry, evil idea. Hmm .... If hers is a corridor unit, u can cover yourself in a white cloth and walk up and down her corridor window and maybe run your fingernails across the window.... LOL! Guess nobody would wanna have me for a neighbour! But seriously, I can emphatise with you. My neighbour upstairs always walks with heavy feet and I don't know for what bloody reason, they always shift around furniture every night ! ! !

Hi Fondue, Had the privilege to pop by your place this afternoon with my wife and son as Ah Soon asked us to take a look. Was hoping to meet you there, but guess you weren't around. Just wanted to say that your house looks great, everything's well done up and your entrance/foyer has a really nice touch with the mix of pebbles and wood-grain tiles! My wife loves your wardrobe and now I've been nagged to take up the option of a layout that'll see her having a 12ft wardrobe in the MBR ... Oh No! Ahahahaha!

Congrats to you future neighbour! Look forward to see the progress.

Based on experience, I think its is prudent never to take the 4 weeks as a certainty, but rather allow for 2 more additional weeks for delays and rectifications. I guess for all renovations, somehow it works out that way.

Although I haven't signed with them as yet, so far I've had a pretty good experience with Ideal Design Studio. When I first logged on to Renotalk and saw Andy's featured work, I went down to meet him and Ivette at their office to discuss our plans/requirements and how they could help us out with it. That time, wifey and I were pretty clueless about stuff as we haven't surfed the Renotalk Forum, done any research or even thought about any concept to begin with.They were the 2nd ID I met up with. From meeting up with Andy and Ivette, I can tell that Andy is very driven and passionate with his work. Ivette also offers ideas/options that are rather out-of-the-box and refreshing. On the whole, I find Andy sincere, dedicated and patient. Although I have not signed with Ideal Design, he has readily taken the time to bring me to view 2 flats which he has done up to assess the standard of workmanship. He also calls me to follow up and ask if he can suggest more ideas for us. Andy and Ivette are also quite mindful of budget and so far with the initial layout proposal, their approach has been very cost-sensitive but yet at the same time, giving as many nice layout and carpentry options as possible. To date, I've met up 9 IDs, and Ideal Design Studio ranks at the top 3 on my shortlist. Compared with the 9 other IDs, their cost is also quite competitive and reasonable. P.S: As a disclaimer, I have no vested or commercial interests with Ideal Design Studio or its designers. I'm merely giving my feedback based on my encounter with them so far.