stormcontrol

Allbest doing your aircon installation ah blue_diamond? They tell me (and mister_molly got also relate) that they won't put trunking through ceiling beams one hor. So take note when planning your trunking.

shouldn't be any gap unless there's some obstruction bah. Or maybe for ease of installation? But then why no gaps for the other doors? Tell uncle directly lor. I realised that uncle respond best when you make appointment with him in the early or middle part of the day. But then not everybody can do that when bogged down with work =p. Jia you jia you jia you =)

Updates! Tiling in hall, entrance and hallway nearly complete. Now doing skirting and grouting. Tiling in guest bedroom also near completion. Lacking grouting and skirting now. Concrete base for kitchen also complete to my specified dimensions yay! =) And yes! Hacking started today too. Could hear the rhythmic pounding all the way down at the void deck. If that disturbed any neighbours who are happening to read this, apologies! Wah uncle really fast ah. Last tuesday/wednesday apply for hacking permit, less than 1 week get permission and within 1 week start hacking. Maybe chasing him does help =p And oh yah. Bought the cuizino/franke package from Desmond of AsiaExcel on sunday as well. All thanks to smallboy who shared the info. You may be nuts but your lobang sure is good =p

you did all that in the showroom????? wah. The sales staff handling you is very nice leh. =p Yes smallboy, i think you're slightly nuts

got new idea for light placement in hall le. Inspired by zc31 and your suggestion previously =p Will draw it out and see how. Should be cheaper than the layout i have currently too =p Found the dream tub liao. Wife and i aiming the free-standing tub at adamas. But too bad buying only 1 thing from them so can't ask for alot of discount. got quoted $680. Another item on our to-do list solved thanks to mister_molly =) Haven't write anything abt my reno for 2 days already. More updates later today =p

Haha, i thought it'll be next week too with all the last minute rushing that uncle have to do with the others' handovers =p. But apparently uncle's tiling team is free so he just send them to start on my house lor =) the kerb don't think can... the tiling uncle (aiyah forgot to ask name. Short middle aged bespectacled guy. soft-spoken and very clean one. not like your typical contractor/tiler =p ) say the doorway tiling finish le. If he just add tiles on it to make the curb, it'll be very ugly. And I get his point too, it'll look like half a piece here and there. If want to do sui sui, then he'll have to tear off the tiles that are already laid and build it. Like dat Uncle ah soon will have to "jia" those tiles right? Then nevermind lor. It's not as if my doorway is not siu. Its quite good already, so just chin chye and accept that there's no door kerb lor. Almost all my neighbours also never do anyway. Ahh. I see what you mean about getting the colour uneven. I'll pay extra attention when they start. If not satisfied i'll dig out the grouting myself and ask them to put white lor =p familyof4: looks like you're gonna be moving in soon! Congratz!

3ds max?? That's some serious drafting tool there. It's from autodesk, the guys who publish AutoCAD, the main computer aided design tool for engineers across many discipline =p. But got to say that autodesk products usually very newbie un-friendly 1. So good luck and have fun learning. =)

@smallboy: i don't understand. How you abused it to cause it to lose its sheen? . But anyway, the sample i got looks matt leh. That's why i chose it. Wanted it to be a little bit darker and mysterious in my bedrooms (especially since going to use so many mirrors and white already). Conducive for... *romance* mah @mister_molly: haha thank you shifu. without your measurements i will still be in the dark about the ceiling lighting plan for my living room lor. I hope you don't mind if i share with other people who are doing cove lighting + ceiling fan 'k? =p @pinkpetter: Eh? I tot hair can handle with vacuum cleaner? Dunno lah. Gonna be the first time i'm handling other household chore other than just vacuuming and washing toilet =p What do you mean by uneven patches pinkpetter? Doesn't brown grouting come out of a tube the same way as white and black?? @familyof4: I chose already. white/black/grey colour scheme for the house. Except for bedroom floor which will be 'woody' Updates: This was my house yesterday evening. Uncle got the guys to set up "Project Runway" in my house. Roflmao. More progress today as in living room/hallway tiling nearly all up but couldn't take picture cause there wasn't a good place to stand and take pictures in my small little house! 1 sad thing though, uncle promised to make door kerb at my main door but tiler failed to do so. He said uncle told him to make same as my next door neighbour (who didn't have kerb) . But nevermind lah, chin chye can already. Uncle promised to do it FOC anyway, so do or not also no loss to us =p Oh yah, posting this from Ya Kun downstairs of my house. Will go off to jalan besar and balestier to look at cooker/hood/fans etc later. =)

haha. cz i'm thinking very fast right now, got so much on my plate. so just 1 go shoot all lor =p Thanks for the info hor =). 12 trousers isit... hmmm, i'm not even sure if i have 12pcs of lower body wear for go out purposes... I also want to trade houses leh. Fannie want anot? EM very hard to maintain lah. I trade you my 4rm, very easy to maintain one

agreed. and reflect light and make house look bigger and brighter! But not too many lah. I don't want to magiclean until die =p

maybe you can do like me and my wife ah. We set aside ~50K. <40k for home/reno/furnishing and ~10k for emergency. Do up the house this year first. Once house complete, save up another year than go for dinner+honeymoon. Lidat you don't save or rush until "heia heia chuan". Or you could take a reno loan to reduce your initial cash outlay. but since you're servicing one now (still?) maybe this option won't appeal to you. Have to discuss with your htb lah. Don't worries, if you are determined, there's always ways to squeeze out the funds one.

nice pictures! love the carpentry. Eh question, the blum drawers, i hear Ikea drawers are OEM blum. Get from ikea will be cheaper or get contractor to get from blum cheaper? If i want them i need to top up on uncle's quote for kitchen cabinets right? Also ah, how many trousers can that trouser rack hold? It's a great space saving contraption! Now i can reduce my side of the wardrobe and give my wife more space! Wah, these few days there's been like an explosion of updates on everyone's reno hor. I'm reading everyone's threads until i blur liao. Starting to lose track of whose house i'm looking at/reading abt =p

concrete screed can get hdb to do if new flat. But if want uncle to do also can. Uncle mentioned he contract for hdb before and done cement screeding before. He even made an offer to scree my floor for me if hdb couldn't do it fast enough.

gratz on the new house sohck! Hmm delta ave huh... Hey you live near my in-laws! =p Great location but you really got to watch out for the jams on river valley road =)

Aargh... Guess he won't start until next week then. Die, later wife will nag at me to chase him one =p I'm not looking forward to when kids start coming in though... >_<"

Wah, so many replies =). Thanks for all the nice congratulatory msges and well wishes. =) So I'm a sooner now huh? Well i guess in fast paced singapore, sooner is always better than later =p Quick updates: Nothing done to my house today though =(. Although i understand uncle is going through a rough patch with so many manpower changes (especially after reading gaku70's tblog), I still feel a little disappointed. Called Uncle to find out how things are going to go and he said he wanted to finish up a house in the area today before shifting the entire team from that house to mine. Hopefully tommorrow can start work. So which sooner is having their place finishing up today/tommorrow in the greater TPY/Bishan area? Want to find out about the team that's coming to my place =p Oh yeah pics to share: Living room/hallway tile: Bedroom tiles: Anyone have suggestions on what colour grouting to go with the bedroom tiles? Both my FIL (who was a tiler) and Uncle is suggesting white. FIL because he thinks it looks neater, Uncle because alignment and future changes can be more easily carried out. Any suggestions from you guys? Thanks! =)

Other than Ah Soon there are two other contractors famous on RT that you can consider. Patrick of Ho Bee has his own thread here. And you can read about his work in ilmare612 and Applefreak's tblogs. Mace's house was done by him as well but mace's tblog is for something else altogether =p Mr Yeak's thread on the "Renovation Firms and Services" sub-forum isn't that hot but he has a dedicated following as well. =) Checkout rondy, angel81. If you want even more, checkout the link to various Yeaker's tblogs in angel81's signature =) Read more and understand what you'll be getting into with each of these guys before you make a decision. Happy reno-ing =) BTW, they don't actually want you to commit before drawing bah? Most just want a sum for the drawing. Sort of paying them to use the skills they spent years mastering =p. But the sum is still quite hefty, and that's what turned me and my wife off from IDs.

isit? So ma fan ah. i mentioned to uncle abt my lighting my wardrobe, he say will bao in my wardrobe quote so i thought it was a common request. I was thinking of doing motion sensing switch leh. Cz later one of us forget to off the light when we leave the house then jia lat le. Anyways, now going off to check out the progress at my house and wait for the SP meter man. Check back in later. Cya guys! =) btw, one sided cove also no problem. Do your feature wall in dark matt colours and the shadow won't show up! =)

Me too! or else how to choose clothes and change at 6+am in the morning without on-ing the room lights and waking your partner! =) How did you do your lighting in your wardrobe? Share share! I never see in your blog!

I'm doing cove lights with ceiling fan too and it's been giving me headache with my lighting plan. I've been communicating with mister_molly who did a one sided cove lighting along the longer side of her living room and installed a ceiling fan in the middle. She got a shadow on the wall directly opposite the cove lighting but no whirring shadows on the floor. Just to share with you, i conducted my own little experiment with my parents' ceiling fan at home in the middle of the night using a torch light to simulate the t5s and a file to simulate the cove. I found that no matter what, you will get a shadow of the fan stem at the wall opposite of the cove lights. only way to cancel it is to have cove lighting there as well. As for whirring shadows, I found that the closer your light source is to the fan blade tips, the more pronounced the blade shadow on the ground is. The shadow becomes diffused the farther the light source is. For mister_molly, her cove lights is around 8" down from her ceiling while the lowest point on her fan is 15" from the ceiling. Distance from fan blade tip to cove light is around 1m. Hopefully, those numbers can help us in our lighting design!! =) Oh, as to the lighting number, i think uncle quote a higher number just in case. Because the cove lights need to overlap mah, in order to minimize any dark spots in the lighting (flourescent light tubes are dimmer towards both ends). And the lighting design not confirmed yet right? So i think uncle quote a little higher so that when we finalize the lighting design, we won't suddenly be shocked by having more lighitng than previously agreed upon being added to our quote. If use less, he probably will minus it from his quote. But have to confirm with him lah.

Reno Progress update: Well, having decided on Uncle last Friday, went down to Sin Lek with my wife on Saturday to choose tiles. Only supposed to choose living room tiles but the laminate tiles really make us gian. So much so that we asked uncle to change our quote to homo tiles for bedrooms too =p. Will post picture of tile samples either tonight or tomorrow bah. Uncle came to us with the English quote and we signed officially with him on Tuesday. Wah, he was really super busy that day. Met him around 11pm+ and he said he still had to rush off. Got like 3 more contracts he was signing on the same day Wednesday, the workers delievered sand and tiles up to my place. Uncle said that the tiling for the living room will begin Thursday. So excited, I can’t sleep and started this t-blog =p. Will go and check out how things go tomorrow

*edited

While HDB had already done up the tiling in our kitchen and toilets as well as concealed hot/cold water piping and concealed electrical wiring, the rest of the house was left in a raw unfinished state. We needed to renovate the house to bring it to “live-in” able status and thus began our search. For our new home, we decided to do a minimal amount of renovation. But as we intended to stay there for at least 10 years, what little renovation we did, we decided that it must be good and significantly affect the quality of our life in our new home. To this end, we spent a few months scouring various design magazines, manuals, textbooks etc for inspiration. In the end we decided on a mixture of themes for our house. We decided on a modern minimalist look to all the public areas of our home, while our little sanctuary the MBR would take up a modern baroque look. To fit a common thread to these two contrasting themes, we decided on an overarching colour palette of white, black and grey throughout the entire house. Spendings on renovations will be kept to a minimum while most of our budget will go towards furnishing. With these things in mind we began searching for the ideal person to renovate our house. At first, we mainly approached IDs. At exhibitions in Expo, as well as those recommended in RT. We were wary of contractors then as my parents had had a bad experience with one and warned us off them. However, as our search wore on, we became a little disenchanted. The IDs we met simply didn’t have the creativity that justified the premium they charge on their service. The ideas they had were merely ‘blah’ or called for a renovation bill much higher than what we were willing to spend. It was around this time that I became aware of some very prolific users of RT. Through them, I was introduced to the work of the likes of Ho Bee, Mr Yeak, and of course Ah Soon. The pictures they uploaded showed off the good workmanship of these contractors. These users’ posts spoke of the pride they had in their homes which they had helped designed, and lastly the price tag on their renovation fairly shouted out at us =). With these in mind, we decided to turn our search to contractors. We met up with two. Ah Soon, and Gilbert (who was recommended to my wife by her colleague). While Gilbert failed to impress, Uncle Ah Soon did. He had practical advice for the feasibility of our ideas and the confidence and experience he displayed won us over. After 2 meetups to tweak our list of requirements, we decided to sign with Uncle the very same week (last week!) we first met him. (the both of us had become very drained by this long drawn out search anyway, and we didn’t feel up to meeting anymore contractors and repeating our needs/wants list all over again. Moreover, Uncle quoted us well within our budget and that more or less sealed the deal) As asugama requested, this is the quotation I got from uncle (btw, if I shouldn’t post this up, pls let me know hor):

After our ROM, we obtained the keys to our spanking new house on 13th March 2009. Some pics to share of our new place: The living room Bedroom Common toilet MBR toilet Kitchen

Hello all. Many thanks to pinkpetter, Zc31, ilmare612, mister_molly, asugama etc who have made the starting of this t-blog possible. Not sure if anybody will be interested in reading my t-blog, but for those who do tune in, i hope you enjoy reading it and please do participate to your heart's content! =). Oh yes, apologies first if i do bore you to death =p Been with my girlfriend (now wife) for nearly 5 years le. We're sort of like superglue and like to stick to each other all the time. And that has caused us lots of problems these last five years. With the limited space at her home, her shyness and reluctance to go to mine, and my parents' quiet disapproval of me staying over at her place all the time, we've been debating the topic of settling down and getting a place of our own. Thus for the last three years, we've been idly participating in HDB's balloting and walk-in selection excercises, just for fun. However, due to financial reasons earlier ($ no enough a year ago), cold feet at the last moment, and later just plain lousy luck, we've never been successful. This all changed however late last year. HDB changed the rules for balloting and our savings reached a good amount. The time was right and I proposed to her in August of '08. Happily she agreed and we went to try out for the BE under the new HDB rulings. This time we were lucky and managed to get a unit at a rather good location (though very small >_<" )