sohck

I got quotations for $6,000 for my living, dining, store and balcony (approx 617 sqf), which works out to be about $9.70 per sqf. Just for your reference when you are doing the shopping.

Sure, when I get a chance to be there at night. Already noted in my Centro PDA. Waiting to see you night scenes.

Thanks. Wanted to change to homogeneous tiles, but everybody (including IDs and fellow forumers) objects to it. My wife says there is no reason to pay to downgrade to a cheaper floor :-)

Have been staying the the East the last ten years. But choose Delta Ave because my kids are in River Valley School and we can't afford any of the condo there LOL. Yes the traffic is quite tricky there. Turning in and out of the Delta Ave is quite a challenge during peak hours. Will take a photo of it when I get the chance (noted in my to-do-list).

My invoice says Supreme 2Es range product - is that AC5?

As you can see, the down lights on the false ceiling are all rusty. Time to have a change.

Store room - the rack (left) is strong and still in good condition, maybe we will just keep it. ID said since there is a DB Box (right), the previous owner has already rewired when they moved in 7 years ago, so I can do without rewiring. Is it true?

View of the shoe cabinet with the door close. The little room next to the shoe cabinet is the store room. The wall facing the main door is painted the same yellow as the feature wall in the living room. Note the little piece of wood (don''t know how to call it) coming out of the wall? Good for putting keys or other things that you might forget to bring to work / school.

This is the shoe rack next to the main door. ID will varnish it (with the same colour as the main door).

Now, the Living Area. We quite like the feature wall although it is quite simple. Unfortunately, both the IDs told us the feature wall is not strong enough to hold our 46" TV so we will have to replace it. We will also be replacing the existing TV console with a 9-foot TV console with shoe cabinets. The marble in the living, dining and store are still of good condition. We will just polish it (instead of replacing with homogeneous tiles) to save ourselves $3,000!

Yes, it is high floor, so virtually unblocked. Will try to capture some night scenes later on.

The condition of the windows at the balcony area is not very good. As you can see in the picture, one of the handles has dropped off. We intend to change the Balcony windows just to have peace of mind (don't want the window to fall off and hit somebody).

Afternoon sun! The balcony faces west so we are going to be "toasted". Plan is to install good quality 3M solar film meant for car, as they are more effective in blocking UV, and put up day and night curtains. We bought curtains from this shop at Whampo area ten years ago. Good quality and price and they still send me Chinese New Year cards all these years.. So I guess we will go back to them for our curtains.

View of balcony from the living area. The previous owner has hacked the door separating the living area from the Balcony and now the balcony becomes part of the Living Area. We intend to put up a platform at the semi circle to form our cozy corner. We have already purchased the platform from Supreme, initial quote is $1,800. Guess the price will come down after they have taken the measurement.

It's Idea at Bukit Timah Shopping Centre.

Looking right from the Balcony window, it's all condo till the end of River Valley Road. We re one of the five remaining HDB blocks left on River Valley Road.

Looking down from the Balcony window, you can see the canal at River Valley.

Took the chance yesterday to take some pictures of our new place. Here they are: First on the scenery. View from Master Bedroom overlooking the Tiong Bahru area.

Finally got the keys on Tuesday at 4pm. On Wednesday, we "opened house" and invited the two shortlisted IDs to our new place. We got them to run through their quotations, and do whatever verification they need [on the actual house]. Our observations: The guy from Ideal is very hands-on, once he was in our house, he basically threw away our floor plan and started measuring everything with the measuring tape: the proposed shoe-rack, kitchen cabinet, wardrobe, study table, toilet doors, kitchen doors, book cabinets, etc. We had a very detailed discussion and we spent more than 1.5 hours with him. The guy from Baroque is more theoretical. He was quite happy with our floor-plan discussion and only once he took out his measuring tape to show us how long the mirror (installed at dining area) would be. The entire discussion with him lasted only 30 minutes, with lots of silence in between. Needless to say, we are more impressed with the guy from Ideal. Baroque was quick with his revised quotation. It was emailed to me even before I reached home (went to Havelock to see another contractor then went for a meeting at City Hall). As of now, the revised quotation from Ideal has not arrived yet. Ah Soon called yesterday morning to ask if he could drop by too to take a look at new place. We told him to give us his English quotation that he has owed us for two weeks now first. We did not invite the Bedok contractor to our new place as she didn't seem to be interested to make the visit.

Poor you, got to live with this...

I will PM you the price I got from Supreme as I have agreed with Supreme not to share the price publicly. According to the Sales Manager, the laminate I am getting is from Malaysia. He says that tropical wood is more suitable for Singapore compared with European wood (don't know real or not). Prego's tropical wood is about the same price. But I want to support Singapore company so I have gone with Supreme. The quotation I got from IDs on AC5 is much cheaper than that from Supreme, and some even come with lifetime warranty. But I want the peace of mind so I have gone ahead with Supreme. Two things I can be sure of: the workmanship will be as good as what I can get in Singapore, and it will be real AC5. Till now I still have not concluded if it is better to get AC5 directly from Supreme or through ID/Contractor.

Congratulations on getting your dream girl as your wife and a dream home! Hope you will have a smooth renovation experience!

I worry if we turn on the electricity too early, the workers may decide to turn on the air-con while they are doing their work! Went to see a house doing renovation today, the owner did not turn on the electricity so the workers basically powered off their tools using a portable generator.

Hi, Like to check with you guys - when do you turn on water and electricity for your flat? Do you do it before the renovation or after the renovation?

All the 13 contractors / IDs I deal with advise me to change whole house copper pipes into stainless steel pipes leh.