corgom

If anyone has the contact for Cymons architect, please pm me as well. Thanks

I was planning on starting this blog before the construction got started. But better late than never I guess. Project: We bought a 20 year old landed house and wanted to do minor renovations to get the house in a livable condition. This initially involved: a. Replacing tiles. b. Painting the house c. Changing the sockets and switches. d. Change of toilet fittings ( I didnt want to , but wife was quite insistent on this ) e. Replacement of Kitchen cabinets. f. Lan Cabling around the house - Yes, this is a luxury that I wanted but didnt really need. The house was not in too bad a shape, so we did not intend to change the following. a. Aircon - They were mostly 1 year old, so no need to change. b. Wiring - Wiring should last 40 years. So we werent planning on changing. c. Structure - We didnt want to modify the structure. Otherwise we would need to get a structural engineer, architect etc. d. Parquet - The parquet was still in decent shape. So we decided to keep it for now. e. Doors and Windows - They were still in decent shape. We were just planning on changing the handles. That was the plan of course, but we ended up changing more than that and our budget doubled . But thats a story for a later post. So, now that we had a plan on what we wanted changed, the first step was : Step 1 : Choosing an ID This was an interesting experience for us. We managed to get 3 references from different friends and actually hoped to get 5 quotes. But because we didnt have enough time, we ended up picking one of the three. a. ID Firm A - Construction Firm with an ID arm b. ID Firm B - Carpentry Firm with an ID arm c. Construction Firm - Purely builders, but able to do simple construction jobs. The first ID firm A was recommended by a colleague and they advertise quite a bit. Their work was ok, but we were told that since they were also a construction firm, they used all their own people and had more control over the project. The second ID firm was one that a good friend was using right now and we were told that they were willing to negotiate on price. The construction firm did my friends A&A work a few years back and happened to be family friends with another friend of mine. When we first selected these guys, we expected the construction firm to be the cheapest, followed by ID firm B and then ID firm A. But strangely enough, it turned out that things were reversed. The Construction Firm was actually the most expensive as they proposed that we change everything ( e.g 40K to change all the windows ). ID Firm B actually gave us quite interesting designs. But we fainted when they told us that changing the railing would cost 30K. Just railings for goodness sake. So they were out. ID Firm A actually tried to save us money and tried to keep the proposal to a minimum. So we ended up using them. In the end, I suspect we would have been happier with ID Firm B if price was not a concern. ID Firm A was really more a construction firm than an ID firm. Their designs werent that great and we ended up having to buy ID books to show them what we wanted. So lesson that we learnt is that we should have finalized the design before committing to a firm. We would have had to pay more for the designs upfront, but that would have allowed us to make a better choice. To be continued

Hi there, Can anyone share their experiences with me on home automation. I have done some research and it doesnt look like there are any shops in Singapore who still specialise in this area. There appears to be an X-10 vendor in hong kong, but I am not a huge fan of X-10. But aside from that there dont seem to be that many options around. Cheers.

There are a few shops in Sim Lim Tower ( Not Square ) where you can get lan cabling in reels and also faceplates. From what I could see, the prices were quite reasonable, but I am no expert, thus cannot really comment too much.