aegis0129

i ran two cat 6 lines (in case one fails) from study to living room. my main router is in the study and i have a spare router set up as a repeater downstairs to extend the range. http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/diy-it-guy/diy-extend-your-wireless-range-on-the-cheap-with-a-second-wireless-access-point/

lvl 1 is the powder room right so probably just do biz and go, nice to have windows but probably not as crucial as those upstairs. i do have lourve windows though.

I have an osim, a smaller and more portable vacumn and a handheld one for kids play area. the osim is a pain to lug ard so i think would be good if you invested in another smaller or handheld one. it is never a bad idea to have more storage space if budget permits. we use the yard area to build a large cabinet that extends partially into the 2nd floor. i moved to an em for almost 3 years and unless u regularly dump stuff you will need that space. for some reason there are empty spaces underneath the windows in two of my bedrooms, we have converted that into storage areas as well. the staircase storeroom is quite horrible for storage, small and weird shape.

I think it's about 1560 sq ft. 2+1 in our place but still running out of space!

Welcome to the club, I just passed my 2nd year living in an EM. I'm sure you will appreciate the space! Living not too far away from you, at toh guan road...

Agree with the other forummers here, don't try doing any major reno after move in. I had to change my AC half year after move in and it was quite a nightmare with the clean up. Carpentry still not that bad, I had a new bookshelf and minor carpentry done and it was ok as the noise/dust was quite localised.

I don't have a maid and can only do laundry after work or on weekends, with the weather the way it is now it really is a huge boon. With a maid I think the need is lower as someone can take care of the laundry during the day. Are you asking me about the drying racks? I do have a small single rack one which I use to hang stuff that cannot be put into the dryer.

Or you can refurnish your current place every year. A lot cheaper than buying another property.

AC installation its best to go to a reputable shop that has folks who know what they are doing rather than just clinching a sale. It is best if they are willing to send someone down to take a look onsite and assess what you need then give recommendations. Poor installation can be a nightmare, a friend of mine nearly had to take down his false ceiling! Jap brands should be pretty ok, I was only advised to stay away from korean brands. My L1 is completely open and we have an 18k and 12k unit, enough to make the place cool. L2 IIRC was 12k, 9k and 9k BTU.

For those of you who worry about cost, you can just go to NEA's website and verify for yourself that the additional costs will not be that excessive. Even if you get a 2 tick dryer, the worse case scenario is that a 7kg dryer will consume about 5.14kw per wash, at 30cents per kw, even with 20 washes it adds up to about $30.

I just jumped on the dryer bandwagon, figured that with a baby on the way I don't want to spend so much time on washing and drying. I did some research on the NEA website and got a 4 ticks Tecno dryer for only 400 bucks. The other dryers with the same ratings are all way above a thousand bucks, I was actually quite sceptical and emailed NEA, they assured me that the tests were done in an accredited lab. If my calculations are correct each wash will only cost me a dollar or less, if you put that in perspective even with 15-20 washes a month your bills are not going to be that much more.... Having said that, I've been using it less than a month and hopefully there isn't no shocking bill next month.

It looks similar to the picture in the link but the sides are aluminium and not timber, of course the scale is much bigger than in the pic as well. http://www.hdb.gov.sg/fi10/fi10324p.nsf/w/HomeMaintMaintenanceGuide?OpenDocument#TimberLouvred Take a look at your block and see what people have done, some put casement and even sliding aluminium windows and I have no idea how they reach them. Those with bigger budgets can have electronically controlled shutters. Of course there is the roof also... I can't remember exactly how much I paid, I think it was in the 500 ballpark? Didn't shop around was recommended by my id so I' not sure if there are better deals out there.

I installed fixed lourves above my service yard, it is certainly not the most pretty but it's cost effective and practical. Two of my condensers are already hanging up there so the view is already blocked I figured might as well install that so that the rain is blocked out but there is still ventilation. Helps that it is fairly cheap too compared to other solutions.

My place not that new already, moved in for 1yr 4+mths just that I was too lazy to do the t-blog thing! It's at Toh Guan Road...

If you are really on a budget, just try to prioritise things that needs to be done at the start. I delayed some carpentry work in my study and spare room until about a year later. If you can afford it of course try to do it all at one go. One of the SNAFUs I had was with the aircon. Initially I thought the AC was working fine (owner told us he changed 2 years ago) and we didn't change it, half a year later we started all sorts of problems with it. You can only imagine the nightmare of changing aircons when you have moved it and lived in a place for a while. So a word of advice would be to change all your ACs unless it is brand new. As for wiring, we did overhaul the place but on hindsight my parents place didn't have any wiring problems for 20+ years so probably not a must also.

Avbeng, you at blk 28xx? I've seen some reno being done recently in my block... Em reno easily will cost in excess of 50k for an overhaul, plus furnishings likely to add another 20k or so. all I can say is, it's all worth it! Love the space!

We hang out clothes in the service yard right under the air conditioners, there is no provision to hand them outside of the house. I've seen some neigbours hanging stuff outside of their bedrooms with some after market pole holders which can be installed on windows. Why don't you take a look around your neighbourhood and see how people do it? The family beside me hangs their clothes outside of their living room!

Does anyone here have Tecno TCD-7551? It is fairly cheap for a 4 ticks dryer, in fact way cheaper than the competition so I'm a bit skeptical about NEA's ratings. Any comments?

Wow, a million bucks good value for HDB? I gotta admire the guts of the youngsters nowadays. While we all know that space is an expensive commodity and that large HDB represents fairly ok VFM in today's world. There is no chance that I will commit that kind of money for a HDB flat. When I was house hunting two years back, we looked at anything from 3-rm HDB flats to condos in the million dollar mark. I'm glad that we settled for an EM and I'm probably gonna hold on to it for a while. I just looked at the resale prices and noticed that someone in my block sold his high floor em for 800k, just 1.5 years back it was still in the low 600k mark. Scary.

Considering that one doesn't spend a whole lot of time (at least I don't) in the service balcony except for washing and drying, why waste the money on tiles? Just give it a nice coat of paint and be done with it. I built a pretty large cupboard at my service balcony to box up the pipes and also for additional storage.

Wow didn't know even got so many patterns, my place is in toh guan and I thought that was the last batch of EMs built. The loft units in Punggol looks really awesome! On a slightly different note, I have a chandelier on my stairs and it's obviously quite a challenge to clean. Did any of you guys buy and speciality ladders that can be used on staircases? I saw http://www.littlegiantladder.com/ whilst I was in the US a few weeks back but its very ex here. 600+ for a ladder!

I got the OSIM one, price IIRC is about 1.2k.

I just installed closet design's 'pole' system, in my opinion worksmanship can be better. They had 2 indian workers came over to install the closet and I was only able to pop by during lunch to see. There were places where things were not installed securely and I had to touch it up myself (missing screws and things not secured). When I texted my salesperson he did not get back to me. Given a choice I probably would not go back to them again for anything else.

It is not too hard to change it yourself, I just did it last week. All you need is a screwdriver.

No prob, hope someone will find the info useful. I'm tied up with juggling my reno, wedding, work and a part time advanced degree so don't have too much time on my hands as well. Anyways, memorial day is next week so look out for deals on the US forums!