whisper

I am looking for this artificial grass carpet as well. I had visited few florist at Thomson road like Far East flora. With fixed width of 2m, the selling price quoted per meter length is $89, $99 and $100 from different sellers.

the tall unit at the left hand side looks a bit weird to me. Maybe because of the colour contradiction.

Money or time, which one can you compromise? How much longer can you stay with your brother? How much unhappiness it has caused by staying together? If you really have budget constraint for resale, if you don't find renting a flat is worth to do, if you find waiting for BTO is too time consuming, perhaps you have to think a better way to communicate with your bro so you both can stay peacefully under the same roof. If you can't do it, get a friend or relative to help. If you don't really feel like staying longer with your bro, then you have the following options: 1) move out, set a budget to rent a place for 1 yr while looking for resale flat 2) move out, set a budget to rent a place for 3 yrs while waiting for BTO 3) straight away look for resale flat. Start to work out your budget. There are all kinds of resale flat available. If you can't afford a big one, then buy a smaller one. You can always upgrade to a bigger unit in future. If you can't afford high COV, some areas are still offering low COV. Some low floor units or north area or units with fair condition are not requesting too much cash. Location, floor number, unit condition or seller's urgency to sell can affect the COV. Things can always be compromised. Just weigh each factor, which one you want it to give way. Then you shld know roughly which is the best solution for yourself. The best for us doesn't mean the best for you.

yup. Mine is energy savings. Didn't go into LED because too expensive. We thought of buying LED at the first beginning because we thought energy savings = LED. Since our ultimate purpose is energy savings, then just go for energy saving bulbs. Hard to afford LED lights during renovation period. Buy one or two can be considered but not for the whole house.

They will come on the next day whenever I have complaints on works done. At first I thought they will come everyday but in fact they are really too busy to come down. At first I thought I will visit the site to check the progress daily but I also ended up didn't do it this way.

If you are going to DIY the painting, you may check at Nippon Paint & Dulux paint website. They have this paint calculator which can advise you on how many litres of paint required. Check the series of paint you want and its price then from here you can estimate your cost. Add maybe another $100 or lesser for the tools required. Total will be few hundred bucks. If you want to engage painter, it will cost $1200~$1600 for your big 5I unit. They will allow you to choose 5+1 (white for ceiling) colours.

No. The price per pcs is for the whole thing. There are two sizes available for each different casing type of philips downlight. Smaller size comes with only 1x14W bulb while the bigger one comes with 2x14W bulbs. We bought the bigger one because we want sufficient brightness to the area while reducing the number of downlights install on the false ceiling. Reason is hardly on all together at one go so trying to save cost on wiring point & installation. Survey each of your room, think where you gonna put your furniture, understand your reading habits or any activities at home that required enough lighting source. After that bring your floor plan or your tentative lighting placement plan when doing shopping for lighting. By plotting the lighting point on the floor plan, you might thought you need more lighting to fill in the blank. But when you study the plan to actual site, you might find out some lighting points are too near to each other which can be omitted.

Better think about how many downlights do you need. I bought philips downlight ard $46/pcs and the final bill cost over thousand dollars exclude hanging pendants/chandelier. I can't imagine if I buy the $110 downlight from the shop you visited...

I wanted to do false ceiling and install a kdk baby fan in my master bedroom. Contractor agreed to it. But when we studied dimension of the fan from its drawing, we feel uneasy to install the fan under false ceiling due to the height allowance. Also worry next time kids jump on the bed which is quite hazard. My in law install ceiling fan on false ceiling, after 3 years we can clearly see a long crack line across the false ceiling. The ceiling fan is hardly on because it serve as guest room in weekends only. Consider all these factors, at the end we gv up the idea of doing false ceiling. The fan will be mounted on ceiling directly. If try the method of mount the fan directly on ceiling by going through an opening of false ceiling, you should check what is the height allowance between fan blade and ceiling. Best is to check the drawing. Can do or cannot do I think is highly depends on the dimension of the fan and installation method. I don't want to compromise on the model of fan I choose so I rather compromise to give up doing nice false ceiling.

I guess this one can be DIY with a few more persons to help you.

For hanging pendants with LED, they generate soft blue lights. Too little lights for reading, lost the brilliance compare with halogen bulbs but it is good to create quiet ambient. If you want to archieve decorative purpose, I would like to suggest you to proceed with the chandelier or hanging pendants at your ceiling but at the same time buy another one or two floor lamps to compensate the brightness for reading purpose. This also create an option at times when you want to save $$ on electricity while having sufficient light source.

2 x 200W sounds seriously high power consumption. I will be using 2x14W philips downlights. Imagine even I on all 10pcs of them (which is unlikely to on all everyday) together, the power consumption compare with your 1pcs of lamp is....quite big difference. The normal ceiling light we use in bedroom only 2x 36W which is bright enough for a bedroom. Also I am wondering how much heat this lamp will be generating since it is halogen. Did you ever try to put your hand near to the lamp when it is on? To me halogen = heat + high power consume. If you use it as main light means you are going to on it for quite long hour everyday, you will easily feel the heat in your living room and also your utility bill.

LED lights are usually more 'hard' while T5 lights are much softer, therefore it is more suitable to create the soft effect of cove lighting. I am going to do a full rectangular cove lights. Some ppl do only 1 side, or 2 sides or 3. Up to what kind of design you want to create for your living room ceiling. I will be doing the conventional 4 sides one and thinking will use switch to control it. Perhaps one switch to on only 2 sides of 4, the other switch to on all of the tubes. Hope can achieve at least a little electricity savings. Unless you are a LED lover, else I think T5 is good enough. Good LED means expensive LED?? I don't know ah...be careful huh. We ever consider LED strips (only consider very short while, ) but some ppl told us if one or two of the LED burnt out in the whole strip, it will create a dark shadow. Ugly leh. T5 easier lah, any tube burnt then just use ladder climb up change the burnt tube, done. We thought of the energy savings in long run also. Long run....sigh, really need to run very long leh. Who knows after MOP we might sell the house leh.

Hi, I am going to do cove light too. Just like you, I didn't know what is T5 until I read the following: http://www.renotalk.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=42979&st=0&p=661057&fromsearch=1entry661057 There is a link to a site where you can get the picture of T5 tube. Actually it is like the conventional fluorescent tube lah. Just that it is much slimmer. In fact HDB is using it as lighting at corridor or void deck area. If your area is new or upgraded, go take a look of it. Market is selling $15~$20 per tube for the longest 4' T5. You can find it at any DIY homefix shop also but higher price, around $25~$30. If you want to do cove light because of its soft beam, go for T5. Never wrong, no need to worry so much. Btw it is energy saving too.

super ex... the unit price is killing. Do you mind to refer to this thread? Because I am lazy to repeat what I have just input not too long ago... http://www.renotalk.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=43897&st=0&p=668769&fromsearch=1entry668769

Please don't hack away the storeroom unless 1)you have plenty of storage cabinet in your house 2)you hardly go shopping 3)you don't have any collection My current house's storeroom was hacked away by the previous owner and the space is extended as part of MBR. It is a nightmare to us. We have too much things. It all landed in the 3rd bedroom, wasted a greater space. Imagine where you want to put these if you have no storeroom: bicycle, tool box, vacuum cleaner, boxes of 3C stuff, luggage, bags....and even the oldnewspaper before the karung guni comes...

Follow the instruction and do testing here: How to upload photo in renotalk

hi musicbox, the problem is about 'cove lights' but yours is L box.

Purple matching with black should be nice and look classy. Just like the colour tone in your kitchen. Do not worry too much about it. I think black ABS will make the gap between cabinet doors look even slimmer/closer.

That was what I thought so. At first I only set my budget for 2 toilets as $6k. The 2 bathrooms package I got is already about $7k (hacking, removal of debris, piping, painting, door...) exclude all fittings. So the $10k came out this way: 1) Package exclude fittings: $7000 2) Shower screen: $500x2 = $1000 3) Vanity top with mirror, laminated cabinet & solid top: $1250x2=$2500 4) Not yet include heater, shower head & mixer and other fittings.. And you stated 'full revamp' so I help you to set the budget at high side. The price could be negotiated and reduced if you minimize the work required.

I try do the itemize budget for you as follows: 1) Overlay with laminate for my 2 bedrooms and the living hall ~$2000 2) A tv console with feature wall ~$1400 3) Full revamp of the 2 toilets ~$10,000 4) Kitchen cabinet and re-tiles for the entire kitchen walls ~$7500 5) a sliding glass door in between the kitchen and living hall ~$750 6) plastering of the entire house ceiling ~$2000 7) L box or cove lighting in the hall and simple L bx in the 2 bed rooms ~$600 8) the main door frame and gate will be change 9) hacking of the kitchen wall tiles and existing cabinet and hack away 1 pillar at the kitchen entrance ~INCLUDED with item 4 10)wardrobe for master bed room ~$1200 11)1 window grill to be change to the same one as the rest of the rooms ~$500 12)painting of the entire house ~$1200 Total about $28k, haven't add electrical work and aircon. So probably you really need $30k budget if you want to do all of the above. Suggest you reduce the reno at kitchen. i am not familiar with pricing of item 8. Another suggestion, since you want to do plaster ceiling for all rooms then you may not need to do L Box at bedrooms because L box is more expensive than false ceiling. Unless you are talking about cornice rather than false ceiling. Anyway all these budget could be adjusted since you didn't mention about dimension here.

I got the following quote for doing up partial flooring of my 5 room flat, estimate equivalent to a 3 room flat size: 1) Overlay laminate flooring: ~$2k 2) Tiling:~$2.5k 3) Hacking: ~$2k So if you are only doing overlay then it is much affordable. But with hacking...mm...

I am a buyer of resale flat too. I got the following info from the correspondences between HDB and my seller when there was toilet leakage problem happened and repaired during the period of OTP to second appointment. If later the leakage really happen and cause by upstair unit, you may report to HDB branch office. They will send an officer for inspection at both units. If repair work is required, HDB will assign a contractor to perform the work. You will be informed in writing on which day the work will be executed, and the contractor's contact. Payment wise, HDB 50%; upstair unit 25%; downstair unit 25%. Hope it helps you. One thing to take note is I am not sure whether this is a by default payment method, or you have to go through some channels to apply for it.

Hi, since you are doing up so many things for toilets I suggest you take up those '2 bathroom package'. It should be cheaper than you do item by item. Package price varies depends on ID. 2C, price of the bathroom vanity is too ex. You can negotiate down to $1100~$1400. 2D, also at the high side.

huh? Do you mean the design of the fan or fan+window is ulu? If not wrong installation of bathroom ventilation fan required HDB approval so the design will be limited.