Rasp

Hi Cher, Saw your black alum windows. They look special. Are you replacing all your windows and grills? We are also considering the replacing with silver ones. Please share your contacts with us. And roughly how much was your damages for them?

Hi Angel81, Your place look very cosy and nice. The wall decals look very good and homely. I like those at the balcony. Very creative of you to think of that. May I know where you get your decals from? By the way, is the balcony door new? Can you share the cost of them with me also? Thanks!

Thanks pinkpetter and metalsubzero. Here's my floorplan. Feel free to share any ideas.

The link is very useful. Thanks Angel81. I saw your renovated house. Very nice. We also view several EM around this area that time. But didn't get cause lazy to climb steps. Heehee. Your place look really spacious. My place had 2 tank of gas currently. Freebies from the ex-tenants. I have been trying to ask the gas supplier to get rid of them but cant fix up the appt always. We bought a small portable induction cooker for temporary use cause I don't dare to use the gas tank. Guess we'll go for induction after reno. Still cant get use of the gas tank, maybe watch too much show with gas tank explosion scenes.

Thanks for the well wishes. I just received the electronic copy of my floorplan from HDB. But its in pdf format. Let me see hw to post it. Actually we had the physical copy of the floorplan already. Bought them on our 2nd hdb appt. But I read that we can request for it online, so I went to try out the system last week. Waste $$ ..

Hi Angel81, Thanks for sharing your experience. The colour is greyish so once its stained, the patches are going to be very obvious. Like the wanton mee sauce. Your beige/brown marble is good also, at least the stainings won't be that obvious. I didn't took any pictures of the terrible flat conditions at the time we first took over cause the whole place was in a big mess and pretty dark. Being quite a timid person, I was afraid that the pictures might capture something weird / strange and my imagination will run wild. Hee... i know i am silly. Can I check with you, if your marble have a top coating like a seal protection or something? Mine seems very 'raw' / rough now. Not sure if the polishing include such a thing.

Thanks. Guess the flooring is there to 'compensate' the lack of government gas piping. Yes, indeed very hard to get rid of the stains currently. So I am hoping that the current condition is due to the 'protective' layer being worn out. But I read somewhere that people use bleach with paper towels to 'suck' such stains out. Maybe I should play test with it since the stainings are already so bad now.

I think most people will just do homogeneous tiling for living room nowsadays. If not for my current place, I don't think I know i can do marble flooring. And after stepping on them for the past 1 yr+, I really think its nice to have marble flooring in a warm climate area like Spore. Really smoothing to step on them. 1 disadvantage thou, I remember there was once when its raining real heavy and very cold. I just don't feel like coming down the bed cause I think the floor is going to very cold to step on. I saw your reno picture. The flooring doesn't look old fashion to me. Hee.. Got your contacts. I will keep them and start brainstorming on the designs first. Thanks again for sharing!

Hi mrspiglet, I just saw your reno pictures. They are NICE!!! And the reno bill amount is also very reasonable. Can you share your contacts and reno quotation with me? I am also looking at redo-ing my toilets, kitchen, rewiring and doing the tv console. Thanks!

Nice to hear that someone else like the marble flooring also. Just to share my experience, I think this type of floor is quite prone to stainings. There was once I dropped a piece of cha siew from my wanton mee. I picked it up in less than 1min. But the floor is still stained by the wanton mee sauce. I am not sure if its because my flooring is already too old so more prone to staining. I wonder if there is any 'protective layer' / seal for such marble flooring. Anyone know?

Didn't know its so good and expensive. How much is it to do such flooring? We quite like it cause its very cooling to the feets after a day of walking. So most likely will keep and polished, unless its condition doesn't permit.

I guess we will just polish them if they are still 'polish-able'. Can save $$ and think quite wasteful to hack them also. Did you keep your broken marble?

I see i see. I learned something new again. Actually I picked the better looking ones (next to the balcony) to take the picture. Umm.. so we can still stay within the house during the reno. We are thinking if we should rent a room and move there for 2 months during the reno. Hehee. But the problem is.. we got so much barang barang, I doubt 1 rented room can hold them.

Here's how our floor look like.. not sure if they are marble. I read from the forum about the term 'broken marble', are ours also termed broken marble?

Hi Pinklady, Thanks. We are planning to do the kitchen, bathroom, rewiring and also buyover the recess area. Most probably going for contractors. So currently brainstorming for ideas and look for some contractors after doing our homework. One headache though, cause unlike most of the couples here, we have already moved in. So not sure how should we proceed with the reno with all our barang barang and ourselves here.

I guess so too. The tenants just cant be bothered and the owners probably left everything for their friend and agent to take care of the house. Thats why the house is in such a terrible shape. We are planning to do up the house. So looking around for ideas first.

Ok, let me try posting the pictures. Yes, hope that the marble floor can be polished. Scare that they cant be polished with dents too deep. testing

Hi pinkiedreamy, How about doing suspense kitchen to prevent your dog from scratching the laminates? Im also interested in Quartz top. Did you ask about the quartz top and how much your ID qoute you for quartz ?

Thanks for the warm replies. The apartment is a 5I at the northeastern part. We are not exactly near to MRT, around 6 bus stops to the north-south line if we walk to the outside bus stop and 10mins bus journey to the North-east line from the bus stop below the block. There's a mini town central just across the street with supermart, wet market, several coffeeshops, clinics and shops. We have moved in for around 1 year+ already. But no overhaul yet. Only did the basics are done like painted the flat, replaced the spoilted lights, remove the scary mirror frame in the mbr, hacked off the concrete based of the spoilt mbr bathroom sink, installed a new instant heater at the common bathroom and threw away those spoilt furnitures. Oh, I forgot to mention that the tenants / the owners' friend did not handover a 'clear-all' flat. We took over it with papers all over the place, spoilt furniture, rubbish-filled wardrobe, spoilt electronics/ furniture and sticky stuff all around. Our dear parents came over to help us clean, wash, wipe, sweep and repair. We are really thankful to them for it. My mum managed to revive the mbr bathroom back to its 'original' look, no more black toilet bowl, yellowish brown stained floor. It's really amazing. And after everything, my mum told us that all the stuff used by the previous owners are good stuff. After all the cleaning, we had a pleasant surprise. We were told that the flooring of the living and bedrooms is marble-flooring. And its indeed very cooling to step on after a day of work/ shopping. I guess the floor is so black and sticky during our view that we didn't even notice its marble-flooring. However, its also in pretty bad shape as plenty of scratches, dents and stained patches. So im not sure if still can be polished. By the way, how do I post pictures at this forum ?

Just to add, my bro-in-law gave us a coffee table from ikea. Its a simple black colour wooden table. I still see them on their shelf during my last visit few months ago. After a few weeks / months, we noticed that the floor seems to have sands or dust.. and when we shift the table, its like powdery on the underside. We went down and look under the table. The underside was not laminated or should said its BARE.. and there's lots of round round mound forming. They are really gross looking. Those powdery stuff are from the mounds form under the table. So hubby took a tissue to wipe them off. However, in around 1week time, they 'grew' back again. And its really alot of those round round mounds.... to cut the story short, we threw the table away as we really cant stand the mounds. We wasn't sure if they will develop into worms or something. I guess that those wood that ikea use is really cmi kind. With such experience, I think we won't buy any wooden stuff from there in the near future.

Harlow!! After lurking around for awhile, I decided to start my own t-blog to get ideas for my place. To begin.. this is hw we come about with our present home.. We bought this place after viewing only 9 houses. And the interesting part is... we didn't really step into the place on our 1st and 2nd visit as it was rented out and the house owners had already migranted to Australia. So most of the time, we went there with our agent to 'try our luck'. The 1st time we really get into the flat, it was in a really terrible condition, dark, sticky floor, spolit lights etc etc... those tenants never took proper care of the place and wore shoes inside the flat. We were not allowed into the bedrooms as some rooms were locked and also due to privacy of the tenants. Hence, on our last viewing, we specifically asked to view the rooms as we didnt want any 'surprise'. We managed to view the rooms and as expected, they are also in terrible condition. The mbr bathroom floor was brown-coated, don't asked me what was that and the toilet bowl was black inside. Yes, its that scary. Despite the horrible flat condition, the owner still wanted more than 15K cov. And the funny part is...we still decided to get the place so negotiated for the cov and managed to get it at 10k cov. I guess what makes us go for it was... its unblocked view, close proximity to ammenties and we have sort-of decided to do overhaul if we were to get a resale, so wasn't looking for a good condition flat. As the owners are selling the house from Australia, so we have never met the owners. We went through the deal with the document 'power of attorney" with the other party's friend. Being 1st time flat buyer, we didnt really know what to take note of. We didnt even conduct the flat inspection as we wasn't aware of any and our agent didnt inform us too. The owner's friend only passed us that huge bunch of keys on our 2nd HDB appointment. The biggest surprise that I had after the purchase was.... there is no government gas piping for this flat. I didn't know there are flats that were built without government gas pipes so it never occurs to us to check for this during our viewing. I don't know if that would change our mind if we had know that during our viewing. If it would have change our decision, then I guess its a blessing that we wasn't aware as we are really very happy with the place and location now. Sorry for the lengthy start. Hope everyone can share their experiences with us. Thanks!

Good Morning Payretep, Thanks for the reply. We're not having anything at that space, just the wall and then the sink. Can you do me a favour to let me know roughly how wide is the space? I am drawing my own kitchen cabinet now, I leave about 20cm for it. Not sure if its sufficient. Thanks!!

Hi Payretep, Your house look good. Got the countryside feel to it. Can I check with you about the gap between the wall and the kitchen washing sink? I am planning for my kitchen cabinet, so wondering how much space to leave inbetween the wall and the basin. Thanks.

Hi Rierie, Read that you are interested in a modern victorian look. I happened to browse the net and saw these from an ID firm which I thought you might want to take a look too. http://www.earnest-interiors.com/pdf/LivingStyle.pdf