Pirvan

BALCONY TILES Remember these? YUP! we decided to bite the bullet and give the go ahead for these tiles to be laid in the balcony floor. Donny pushed us in the right direction by giving us a good price as he felt the tiles look too good to pass up. Donny discussing with the tiler regarding how the tile should be best laid. This guy's skill is powerrr! TADAHHH!!!

TILING WORKS Hacking basically proceeded for 2 days (21/22 Feb). During this time, all the hacking were done except for the small portion of the MBR toilet. Somehow, HDB sent their inspector down to the flat twice but the case was still under 'pending'. On other news! Tilers started work on the 23rd. There were also a guy making good on most of the walls that had to be hacked. From the onset, there was always 2-3 guys in my place doing work. Swweeeett! Peektures! The activity in the house started ramping up on the 27th, there were 5 tilers all working on different portions of the house! 1 in each toilet, 2 for the kitchen and 1 doing up the balcony. GO GO GO!!

HACK AWAAAAYYYYYYYYY As I had to be in Bangkok to participate in a soccer tournament (SO my most ardent fan decided to support me as well) we couldn't be around for the very start of our renovation. HOWEVER, we were kept updated by Donny watsapping us every step of the way including discussions for some of the niggly issues.

MATERIALS DELIVERY! Before i go any further. I have to pay compliments to Donny for his time and man management skills. We collected our keys on the 15th Feb, Hacking permit was applied on the 16th. Materials arrived on the 20th, 21st we got approval (due weekend) to start hacking and his guys were already there in the afternoon of the 21st hacking away. Real tight

WINDOWS Sigh after inspecting the house closely, we realised our initial impression regarding the condition of the window was wayyyy too generous. Half the handles were falling off and the windows in the kitchen can barely be opened fully. Serves us right for being too 'chin chye' during the viewings. Oh well.. no choice but to look around for window quotes. My SO handled window contractor selection as i was away for a week. Alex came highly recommended by alot of forumers so we decided to ask him over for a quick site survey. According to SO, Alex came with his brother and gave her a very veeerryy comprehensive lesson on window selection eg, what to look out for, pros and cons of casement vs sliding etc. After a measurement, the onsite quote they gave us was $4850.... thats like $4850 over our budget. :help: She whatsapped me immediately and as it was only 4am where i was, it woke me up like a jolt.... basket. couldn't sleep anymore. Took out my budget excel sheet again to see where i can squeeze out more money. zzzzZZzzz In the meantime, donny also asked the window contractor he has always worked with to come give us a quote. My SO liked the fact that Uncle B (thats what everyone calls him) was those old cheeky but kind looking kindda uncle, easier to work with LOL. Before choosing Donny, he brought me to one of his previous client's place (Snoopy2006) to have a look at resilient flooring. Incidently, i asked the owner who did her windows as they looked pretty good. Long story short, i have a pretty decent impression of Uncle B's work. Final quote came in at $2700 without toilet windows. Whoa... SO made sure that everything was as close as possible to what Alex was giving us. In the end we went with Uncle B (also told him to change our toilet windows) and we're keeping our fingers crossed that our bid to save 2k won't backfire on us. We're not hoping for the same quality like what Alex can probably offer, just something that won't affect the looks of our place. YEO(s)

1 luggage?? powerrr!!

SHOPPING FOR TILES After hearing stories of how people spend hours or even days choosing tiles with their IDs, we were gearing ourselves up for a loooongg day. Mineral water? Checked. Tidbits? Checked. Phone fully charged? Checked. Bowels and bladder emptied? Checked! 1 hour later... everything was settled. Anti climax!!!!!! Well, can't really complain much since we didn't really know the exact color theme we wanted for the toilet. So other half choose 1 tile she really liked, and Donny worked his magic from there. Me? i was told to sit in one corner and look pretty. What do i know right? since i'm only there to pay the money muahahahahahahah.....zzzzzZz... One particular tile did catch my attention thou.. i knew i liked it, just didn't know where to put it. DAMNNNN CHIIIIIIIIOOOO!! but as you can see. The ballsqueezing price of $7.80 really... well... literally... squeezed my balls. KIV

Thanks Ayazumi! yeah, its in pretty original condition. Guess it was just a simple dwelling for them so they didn't spend much on doing it up. The sellers are very very nice people thou. And the COV was within our budget, so can't really complain. Just hope our reno budget would be enough

ID / CONTRACTOR SHORTLISTING Didn't think we'd have the patience to sit through 10-20 IDs trying to find the right one. So we took the 'lazy' way out by first shortlisting 3-4 IDs whom have had good reviews on this forum. Sitting through the few sessions were very enlightening to say the least. From the various discussions, we knew what can or cannot be done, what kind of monies we are looking at for various design features of our place (which made it easier to us to prioritize and decide what we wanted to keep/discard). Below are a few short summaries of IDs/Contractors we've talked to over the past 6-8 weeks. 1) ***** : ID Melodie We decided to pop into ***** as we were walking around getting a feel for furnishing. ANDDDDD i have this strong attraction to the colors black and orange. LOL! oooo i can't type company names here? nevermind. the color hints above should be pretty clear muahahahaa Like what others have mentioned, they have a pretty impressive showroom. Their working style is to have a Site Managers attached to IDs. So basically once the design stage is complete, the site managers take over. Pros and Cons, and it sounds helluva professional. She followed up with us without the need for much prompting and quite attuned to our requirements. Drawings and quotations were back after 2 weeks (over the CNY period). Just slightly over our budget thou. SO liked the chemistry she had with Melodie and i guess one of the advantages was that she used to work for the same company i am in now and knew the amount of traveling i'd be doing over the reno period. We liked the fact that she was very practical as well and constantly reminded us of future family expansion plans. Shortlisted! 2) 3D CONCEPTWERKE Called on 3 seperate occasions to make and appointment and was told that someone will call me back. YUP they did... 2 weeks later. Didnt think i could take this kind of response time over the course of the reno process. Too popular i guess. Oh well, will take my small wallet elsewhere. 3) I.D +A : Design director FRANK TANG I'd start by saying we didn't choose Frank ultimately. HOWEVER, we were the most impressed by his professionalism and flair for colors, lines, concepts. 30K above our budget 4) ARTIST ROOM We were initially very very excited about meeting the designers from artist room. As one of their portfolio project belonged to a good friend of my SO. They had nothing but good things to say about them. During the meetup, after listening to a very short brief of what we wanted in our future home. We were told our budget of $50-55K was definately too low. Their interim quote was northwards of $80K :jawdrop: 5) DESIGN PROFESSIONAL : Kevin Kevin was introduced by a lifelong friend of mine. The short initial meet up with him yielded alot of ideas being thrown around. Felt a very good connection with Kevin. His abilty to break design ideas down to technical applications impressed me. We spent 3-4 weeks throwing ideas, quotations and floorplan at each other. Shortlisted! 6) SUMMIT DESIGN : DONNY From the onset of our ID selection, we wanted very much to talk to Donny to see if he would be able to take on our project. However, due to 'technical difficulties', we were not able to get in touch with him. However, up to the very last week in which we were about to choose an ID from the shortlisted pool, we managed to talk to Donny. Found out that he had recently joined Summit Design. The 2 quick sessions we had with him were very positive. He seemed to understand what we wanted in our future home and was very much ready to adopt this as his pet project. His reputation on this forum as a responsible ID/contractor stood him in good stead. It was a hard tossup between Kevin and Donny, however, what swayed us towards Donny was that he had recently wrapped up all his previous projects prior to joining Summit hence would be able to devote a lot more time to us as compared to Kevin who was working himself to the ground handling 7-8 projects at the same time. Donny it was!! Fingers crossed! YEO(S)

BEFORE PICS We didn't get a chance to take many before pics, many of them are still on my SO's camera. So i shall post the rare few that i have here. Agent talking to agent during handover Master Bedroom 2 other common rooms Kitchen Otherwise, the toilets and storerooms don't really need much mention. YEO(s)

Hi Snoopy2006! I was the one that visited your place with Donny the other day to look at the resilient flooring. Finally see you updating your TBlog. Heard you are also very happy with UncleB

MASTER BEDROOM + STUDY MASTER BEDROOM Missy wanted a walk in wardrobe. Seeing how happy missy = happy home, space planning for the masterbedroom centered around how we can maximise the space we had without totally sacrificing a room. We decided to convert bedroom 2 to MBR and hack away the wall between MBR and Bedroom 2 to create the 'walk in' in WIW. Partition board + Carpentry takes care of the open wardrobe (11-13"). Relocation of the door was designed to create a small foyer/feature wall concept on initial entry to the bedroom. This also provides some form of privacy (i hope! ) Dry portion of the toilet (double sink and mirror) will be extended out of the original toilet by about 5 feet, this will be seperated from the WIW by a glass door. We decided to put the sink and cupboard on the other side of the main wall as sunlight will be at a premium and we wanted to make full use of the natural light that enters the walkway thru the small window on the main wall. Bedroom will be a simple bed+tv affair. STUDY This will be the area where both of us will spend the most amount of time. Hence we wanted a cozy and inviting atmosphere. A day bed (at least 1.8-1.9m long) will adorn the wall along the window. This will serve as a cozy reading corner and doubles up as a guest bed. No Sofa beds for us. To minimize cost, we would be buying bookshelves off the rack (pardon the pun) and getting the contractor to help us build a box up area around it to create 'that' illusion. As we would be spending so much time in here, a design feature we stole off a magazine would be to create a 9-10ft window that would open up the space into our living room. This should satisfy our design brief of space and dimension. Fingers crossed!

KITCHEN BASICS Seeing how i'll be spending the most amount of my time in the kitchen. I needed something that is functional yet easy to maintain. Nothing too fancy, just needed a fair amount of worktop for prep work, no top cabinets and lots of walk space. Seeing how there are small windows on the same wall as the common toilet, i decided to locate the hob there. No hood. 2 Sinks, one for heavy work and the other for light duties. 8-9 ft table top (weekly poker sessions ) that can double up as a prep area for baking. Wet prep area will be closer to the heavy duty sink. As in the picture below, walls of storeroom will be hacked to create flow of air directly from the front of house all the way thru. Hopefully the view from the main door will be a bonus.

Hi NeoBy, thanks for the heads up! edited!

MORE IDEAS Too many pic for me to post but those were some of the more important ones. As you can see, its prodominantly wood, cement, white and browns. I wanted the modern resort(y) kinda feel and other half wants raw industrial. Going to try and make that work fingers crossed.

IDEAS

DESIGN BRIEF NOT repeat NOT modern contemporary Bright "Livable" - we're not the neatest human beings around. Hence we need something that doesn't require godlike effort to maintain Minimum Carpentry - Cost control and also flexibility Texture and Dimention - Dont really know how to explain this, but we really wanted to design something that gives illusion of space, room beyond rooms. We know false ceilings are commonplace nowadays, but we wanted to inject something else that will be able to give us more dimension/texture on the ceiling as well. Cost / Cost / Cost - Discipline is key!

From the onset, we decided to try and keep as much of the space planning and design process to ourselves as we had tonnes of ideas swirling around after multiple brainstorming sessions (and of cos, money not enough ) However, both SO and myself didn't have much experience with renovations nor any design background hence there was always this apprehension that we cannot properly execute what we wanted. We decided to break our renovation (at least the initial part) into a few stages 1) Defining a design brief for ourselves, this would include looking at our present lifestyle and trying to fit what we do NOw and what we want LATER into a concise brief that would more or less help us in decisions down the road. 2) Space planning - GOOGLE SKETCHUP here i come! 3) Consolidation of themes 4) Looking for ID/Contractor who can execute!

First up, more information regarding our unit. 26yr old 5rm unit in tampines, 11th floor, corner. Lift upgrade recently completed. We love our unit (being biased! ) cos its 5 mins from transportation and amenities but well shielded from the hustle and bustle of the ever growing tampines crowd. Floorplan!

Greetings! Our house hunting journey started more then a year ago. Adding a big dose of negotiations with unrealistic sellers, sprinkle with dashes of cash rich distant cousins from my ancestral land and all we got were disappointment and angst after a whole year of searching. Long story short, we finally found something we really liked, at a price we were comfortable with. 3 mths down the road, we've finally collected our keys!! Through our following post(s), we wish to share our reno journey together. As a show of appreciation for the vast amount of information other kind members of renotalk have unselfishly volunteered. Stay Tuned! YEO(s)