My hubby and I had an overall pleasant experience with Urban Design and we had a very much hassle-free renovation process, thanks to our ID – Alex! Before engaging Urban Design, we shortlisted about 7-8 ID firms and eventually, met up with 5-6 of them. We almost wanted to sign with one firm at one of the Expo Fair when we received the quotation from Alex. He gave us quite a good price based on the requirements that we want, with an initial budget of $20K, excluding electrical costs. Of course, a good price doesn’t always equate to good workmanship but again, we’ve decided to hold on with our ID confirmation and meet up with Alex. Our initial meet up was at the office of Urban Design. When we stepped into the office, it gave us a very nice feeling. The overall look was black and white, which is exactly what we wanted for our house! Saw Alex for the first time and he has already printed out our quotation and floor plan (2 sets – one for us and one for himself), putting it nicely on the table. We thought that was a good start for being thoughtful. The meeting went on very well and Alex gave us a very warm and comfortable feeling. Knowledgeable, non-pushy and with a great attitude, he gave his advice on some of the ideas that we had. It was a 2 hour long meeting but a very fruitful one. Subsequently, we met up with him a few more times to make changes to our quotation and Alex even brought us to one of his client’s place (of course, with his client’s approval and presence) to show us the workmanship of his carpentry work. We were generally quite satisfied with it and not wanting to look any more IDs’ quotation, we signed with him. After we signed on the dotted line, like some others may shared, certain IDs will have a change in attitude once they clinched your business but we are glad to have one who is still very attentive to our request and change in renovation ideas. There was a rather long gap of 2 months between our key collection and after we signed the contract. We made full use of this time to keep in touch with Alex and also, to choose all the laminate materials for our house. He has been patient and pro-active to give us suggestions on the type/designs of laminates to choose for different parts of the house. Renovation has started in early Jan and minus away the CNY before-and-after holiday period where his workers had to stop work, our renovation was done in about 3 weeks! We were in a rather urgent need to move in because our son has to start his new childcare within the vicinity and Alex has helped us to arrange a very tight renovation schedule such that we can see progress going on in almost every day, if not every 2 days! There were some minor hiccups here and there but he managed to help us to resolve them eventually. He is the only person that we have to liaise with, and this made our job much simpler! Anything that we’re not happy with, we will just whatsapp or call him and he will respond accordingly. Our renovation quotation came to a total of $26K+ (including electrical costs) because initially for the rooms, we have decided to do only carpentry work for the MBR, leaving both BR1 and BR2 empty. He has a good carpenter (who is from Malaysia) and he is very good at proposing how the wardrobe shelving can do done based on our needs. For example, in our son’s bedroom, we told him that most of the clothes will be folded for the time being and he proposed to do removable shelves in a pigeon hole style with a metal rack on the top shelve such that in future when our son grows up, the shelves can be removed and his clothes can be hanged on the metal rack from the topmost shelve. Also, I have wanted a place to put my long umbrellas and the carpenter has also proposed a nice way for this to be built inside my shoe cabinet. As such, we decided to up our budget abit more and let him do another 2 built-in wardrobes for us, one in each of the bedrooms. Overall, there’s no regrets at all engaging Urban Design. Personally, I think an ID makes a big difference. Good chemistry, coordination work and after-sales services are all what we as customers will be looking out for. We have just shifted in to our nest 2 weeks ago and even till now when there’s some minor touch up work to be done (we have paid up 100% to the company), our ID remains very much contactable and prompt in his service. We were quite lucky to have found Alex! =) Here are just some pictures of our place to share... http://kelvinlirong.multiply.com/photos/album/33/Renovation_of_Our_Lovenest_-_Punggol_Sapphire
