steelze

Plumber and painter just called me to inform that they are coming down to my place to rectify the problems. hope most of the things can be rectified before i make my last payment on this sat. [Vacuum Cleaner] Oh yea, i am getting a vacuum cleaner. Any recommendation? Need a reasonable good one for daily use. Budget ard $300.

i am also concern about this. it's really heng suay thing. if the ID cares about his reputation and long term career in this industry, he will surely serve all his customers well especially after sales. but if the ID only trying his luck in this industry, then we also L L leh. I was supposed to pay the last payment on the handover date, but i proposed to this sat. so that i have 1 week to stay in and point out all the faults. i also dun wanna own him $$$$ over CNY. bad luck.

i bought my sofa (3 + 2) full leather from guanzhou last Sep 2010. When my sofa arrived in Dec 2010, the colour was lighter different from what i hosen in the showroom. but for the low price, we cannot complain much also lah.. kekeke.

yeaa.. contract did state 5 yrs waranty. maybe for the first 3 months, ID will still be a bit noz. imagine after 1 or 2 years u start to call him complain certains things, i doubt he will still put us on priority. when i signed the handover certificate on last sat, my hand was trembling. i asked him 2 times that after i signed le, will he still care for me? hahhhaa.. machiam sign divorce letter with id like that. very scary..

hi peers, reading this thread really blows my mind off. guess my journey to "own pte, rent public" is still far from where i am now. Just completed renovating my 5i unit @ sims dr for nearly 60k. though we didnt take up any loans (except interest free one from parents), i still find it a waste to dump so much $$$ into the non-asset column. this house purchase also wipe out our entire CPF. as we are only started out working for 3 .5 yeas, almost 85% our monthly combined CPF OA contribution will used to finance the HDB loan. if our salary (suay suay) stay this range or increase slower than property prices, does this mean that we will have to work until nearly 60 years old (finish paying my 30 years hdb loans) before we can really accumulate our OA balance before we can buy a pte condo which is at least $1m now. hahaha.. this sound crazily sadzz.. i wanna ask you guys, how much should we have comfortably in our OA before we can starting looking at pte properties? any other approaches that i can take to fulfil my dream of staying condo by 35 years old?

ARGHZZZ my Master bathroom hot water piping to shower mixer is also LEAKING. this is maddness! i wonder usually after 1 complete make-over reno like my house, how long will these things last? 5 years? 10 years? dunno whether reno got product life cycle one or not... if reno is only meant for short life span (e.g. 5 years), mean we need to start saving for next reno again!?

me too.....

yeaa,, agreed with your saying. it is rather impossible to have perfect reno. No matter how good the ID or his workers are, there are bound to be areas which fall below owners' expectation. The painters are coming this sat for a 3rd round painting. I am as anal as you on painting work as well. I hate uneven paint line on door frames, uneven paint colour on bathroom pipes and so on. dun understand why painting job can never be smooth for most onwers. is it becuase ID firms /contractors just hire any any tom, dick and harry as painters? give them the brushes and paints and let them suka suka paint the wall like spread kaya on bread? haizzz. my initial impression of plumbing work by LuckyKoon (engaged by SDS) was a good one. After barely 1 week, things are falling apart as well... both hot water piping are leaking badly until have to shut off the entire water control in my house. sorry to complain here... hehehehe... anyway, can see urs is coming to an end too. jia you!

yea, i learnt from neubie a lot on this area. You can refer to this post here.

waaaa.. i love your curtains! especially the hidden track using your flase ceiling @ ur living room windows. i am soooo sad that mine supposed to be like urs nicely hidden but was not informed duly by my ID. sobz sobz..

We bought only the metal drainage holder part below the sink from One-Stop Gallery (balestier) which my ID brought us there. The saleperson never tell us that this didnt include the metal piping that run from this metal drainage holder part to the floor drainage. End up after plumbing work, we saw metal part connecting to pvc below our sink. hahaha.. but my ID has been nice here. he went back to the shop and scolded the saleperson for not informing customers on this. He FOC the metal piping for us for both bathrooms. the choking issue so far so good. we been staying for 4 days 3 nights le. no complain from my maid and my wife.

Post-Reno Rectification Checklist No Job Nature Defects / Additional work A1. Painting Door frame paint lines not even and straight for all bedrooms with HDB original door frame A2. Painting Living room main door frame painting got bubbles at top left hand corner A3. Painting Water Pipes for both bathrooms to REPAINT in thick white glossy. Don’t want to see the previous owner’s stickers! A4. Painting Remove painting stains both bathrooms wall tiles near top piping area. A5. Painting To touch up paint on baby’s bedroom wall where Ah Soon used cement to patch up a big hole A6. Painting To paint another coat on dining wall opposite dining table. B1. Plumbing BOTH bathroom hot water piping to shower mixer LEAKING (this is maddness!!!!) B2. Plumbing Common bathroom accessories rack not installed firmly B3. Plumbing WC cover & seat for both bathrooms not installed properly. Seats are moveable when sit on. B4. Plumbing Replace white PVC piping below sinks to metal piping for BOTH bathrooms. C1. Tiling Grout lines to be touched up on living room homo flooring C2. Tiling Grout lines to be touched up on kitchen flooring C3. Tiling Grout lines to be touched up on both bathrooms flooring C4. Tiling To conceal /patch up holes along living room skirting (e.g. small sofa there; foyer area) C5. Tiling To patch up kitchen entrance skirting area. Uneven cement residuals are visible on the bottom skirting and kerb. C6. Tiling To smoothen L-box cove light holder in living room. Many small scratches. D1. Electrical Ceiling fan switch @ living room not sensitive when switch on. D2. Electrical Change 2 foyer PLC cool white lighting to warm lighting E1. Carpentry To add 4 shelving panels to master bedroom sliding wardrobe. 2 shelving on each side. E2. Carpentry To provide the clothes hanger rod for study room wardrobe.

thanks. all my bedrooms will have a LAN point. These LAN points will route back to main living room TV console and terminate at the point for my router to be at. few renotalk peers have been doing this too. such connection is more stable than wireless, and neater than wired lan cables that run across your house flooring. SDS will refer their partner electrican, Ah soon. yes, my 3.7k is re-wiring plus these data points installation. u pay directly to ah soon, that's why SDS dun include this in their quotation. =) if u can find other electrician, i think SDS is fine with it de. which ID u engaging? think SDS doing well lately... seen few good reviews abt their reno work. good luck to ur reno journey as well!

haaa.. i dun think anyone can answer ur question leh, unless he /she engaged all 3 IDs before. kekkekeke

i assume u r referring to the balestier area one. yes, we been there to buy 1 shower set (normal brand), 1 pozzi shower mixer for common bathroom, 1 Pozzi sink tap for common bathroom and 1 pozzi kitchen sink tap. total damage was $550. Gotta said that the things there are maked up higher than other places like Poh Joo or Univeral Union. the ONLY reason why we purchased there was the free $500 vouchers given by my ID. And we thought that $500 can buy alot, until we saw the marked up prices, we sian 1/2. anyway, free items, we dun care lah.. we also went into the lighting shop @ one-stop and gotta said that the varietie are limited and also costly too. tt's my personal experience there. =)

hi peers! those starting reno, my personal opinion is that you should spend more time reading t-blogs rather than other topics like [Renovation Firms and Services]. Reason being t-blogs are posted by real owners with pics and their daily activities /encounters with the IDs of any firms. But other threads in [Renovation Firms and Services] can be easily self-posted by fake owners which is soooo common. my sims dr 5i reno by SDS is only 34k, excluding electirical work, windows, doors and glass work. before i sign with my id, we went down to expo for a final comparison of quotations with my ID's one. to my surprise, there are soooo many IDs hanging ard the booth trying to hard sell. The first question that comes to my mind. how the h.e.l.l. can these IDs afford to spend 4 luxury days here when those renotalk recommended IDs /contractors) are nearly dying from over-stretched in their time. My thinking is... if these nicely dressed IDs are good, shouldn't they be also busy tied up with managing their con-current projects and simply have no time for idling here for 4 days? hmmmm... hope u guys get my point. As i tried my luck to enquire them (5 of them from different booths) on my scale of reno, all gave me the same impression: 1. hard-selling by asking u to sign before the expo promotion is over. -_-! dude, i am talking abt a 40k to 60k project and these people are machiam selling thumbdrives in IT shows. minus point! 2. they are not knowledgeable in their field. As i probed for cost per ft for carpentry, tilling work and etc etc, they couldn't give me the pricing off their mind. some eve need to refer to their nice nice hand folder to flip to the right pages of the brouchers to find the anwsers... 3. impatient and restless. when they knew that i have did my homework before asking them on their promotional packages, they began to act impatiently and just wanted to put me off, so that they can go find other poosible carrot heads to chop. in a short 30mins walk around the expo hall, my conclusion is that expo reno exhibi is definitely a BIG no-no avenue for me to come back again to find IDs. their booths and show rooms are nice, but that doesnt mean your reno will be like that. well, this is only my experience and opinion.

hahaha... ur house is sooooooo identical to my house in the layout!!! if only reno can be copied and pasted like in the computer ah... anyway, i am still in office now... will talk to u tonight.. or u can share your questions here so that other bros and siss can share their views too!

yeaaaa, csingeu. u girls will be surprised how tidy some men can be.. ahheemmpp.. like those who blog here.. ahempppp.. especially spending a fortune of our saving on the house, some men can be very paranoid and anal when things r untidy and not used in their intended purposes. haha.. i always give my wife the look when she drag out the dining chair from the table...

haha.. thanx gimz. Yea, i am still planning to do my headboard. this is a d.a.m.n cheap and good idea. will head down to ikea "AS-IS" section to find loose wood and material soon.

Post-reno work Carpenter came down today @ 1pm to install my master bathroom sink bottom vanity (piano glossy white), and also install 2 drawers with lock sets. the drilling frightened my little boy as my maid told me that he cried so hard when the drilling is on. The moment the drilling stoped, he also stoped crying. so poor thing. Will upload the photo when i get home tonight.

Although overall i am satisfed with my renovation work and happily moved into my new place, it doesn't mean that i am totally happy with my reno journey... Things which i would have done it differently Lesson #01 - Air con piping to be run first before the installation of bathroom tiles. This is to conceal the air con piping under the floor tiles. I know some IDs /contractors would say that this is illegal and against HDB regulation. but i see many people are still doing it, and it really keep the bathroom clean and neat. my current master bathroom flooring perimeter is surrounded by greyish pvc air-con water pipes. hmmmm... greyish pipes definitely don't go well with my wall tiles colours. i asked my id whiy he never inform me. he said it is illegal, that why never bring it up. anyway, it's too late now. gotta live with this sight. Lesson #02 - Reserving allowance in false ceiling to conceal my curtain tracks ID never highligh to me that track can be concealed since i am doing false ceiling above the window areaa for living room and master bedroom. as i asked him why he never bring this up this earlier, he said he did in his quote which i believe he wrote in some invisible pen ink. he proposed that the solution is to ask workers come back and create a opening. but gotta top up $200. nahhh secondly, the electrician also dunno why so smart to place the MCB box at the corner of the wall which will surely obstruct my curtain track. resulted in my curtain track to run funnily. alternatively, i can still do a pelmet to hide the track. but i find this solution stupid because i could have concealed this track for free if ID has planned and factored this area in during the ceiling work, why should i be paying for this oversight now? gotta live with this sight. Lesson #03 - Replacing original HDB door frames As a layman to reno, most of us obviously wont know that some HDB door frames may be slanted and can impact on the erected walls or flooring to be slanted. Secondly, the paint work on these steel fram is horrendous. ID told me it's like that. i know it's like that. But maybe he should have told me earlier before the reno start, then i can make a decision to change the door frame mah.. now completed le then tell me hdb door frame is like this. those uneven paint line along the frame and funny paint bubbles on the frames really ugly... well, gotta live with this sight. My opinion: Probably the above scenarios may not have occurred if my ID could have spent a little more time on my job and update me regularly on each milestones as promised b4 we signed the contract... I think i have been a very good customer to him who doesn't demand much for progress update meeting onsite every weekend. Throughout the entire 8 weeks, we only met 4 times on job site. 1. One night before the hacking to rush thru 1st payment and stuff (1 hour only) - requested by me 3. carpentry meeting on week 6 at 8pm (2hours) - he scheduled it to collect 3rd payment 4. pre-handover inspection (1 hr) - requested by me 5. hand-over date (1hr) - he scheduled it to collect last payment and sign HO agreement I dunno if the above meeting sessions are considered sufficient for a 8-weeks whole house reno project. but definitely a weekly meeting would be useful and educational for us. most of these reno pointers were discovered by myself thru reading renotalk and feedbacks from my relatives, friends and colleagues along the way.... i'm still wondering how much i have still missed out as i continue to read this forum...

please check if u doing any ceiling work above the windows that u r doing curtain, . If yes, must inform your id /contractor that u r putting curtain track across the windows. so that when they do the ceiling work, they will reserve some room allowance to conceal ur track. if u never do that, your curtain track will be expose like mine. too bad my id never advise me on this point and i have to learn from true experiene. alternatively, u can ask curtain people to do a pelmet to conceal the track. but pelmet is not cheap. if u doing ceiling work thee, might as well factor this thing in. save $$$ and nice. courtesy from jaskel on his post which i only read it today.

congrats on your soon to be completed reno! hope u all can move in before CNY!

i chose KDK for all my 4 ceiling fans. it's a old and reliable brands i guess. from colleagues and relatives who have been using those older models, many concur that kdk fans are lasting as compared to others. hopefully mine can see out their lifespans for at least 5 years. for kdk fan, u can get them from EverJoint @ AMK. they sell the cheapest as far as i have reckeed all over the island. small 3 blades one for $159. 4 blades one (living room) for $350.

heyy adah! nice homely place u have there. very warm and relaxing sia... wanna ask u if that wireless door bell steady or not? i saw it selling at Home Fix and DIY shops. but dunno reliable or not.