cj07

Hi Jas28, Dropped you a PM.

72 sqm is good! Hopefully the kitchen will be bigger than ours. I think I know which one you are talking about...the SERs one right? Yes we shopped A LOT and I will share our experience soon. We literally ran around the whole of Singapore for that one.

Nope, our tiles in the toilet are given by HDB. We did not do anything more than to make a kerb to prevent the water from flowing out of the bath area. No work can be done due to waterproofing under warranty by HDB, so cannot touch. Overlaying tiles are ex, my friend told me hers costs 2k for 1 toilet... therefore we decided to keep it as stock. All other tiles can be hacked.

Haha...maybe same tiler hor? Actually I also dunno his name too.

Hi pinkwhale Thanks! Actually our floor plan was not 100% accurate, the door swings the other way instead. Anyway in the end, our ID say that the bar counter in front of the kitchen will be too small, we will be doing it on the opposite wall instead.

My wife found some "before" photos in her room, just to share a bit... Common Bath MBR Bath MBR, from the door entrance Bedroom Corridor, standing from the MBR. Common bath on the left, the other bedroom on the right. This was on the day we laid our cardboard!

Thanks! We are excited about our new place too! Where is your new place? BTO?

We got our keys near end of 2011, but we had hired an FSM and had to wait for him to be available to check out the place before any designs could be finalised. That took place 2nd week of Jan, and by the 3rd week we got our ID to finalise the layout and the carpentry requirements, laminates, colours, etc. Due to CNY, we couldn't start work until last week of January. Our schedule so far... 31 Jan - Reno to begin officially. However no workers were around, our ID came with a helper to drill holes for us and also lay all the corrugated cardboard. 2 Feb - Our aircon guys came to do the trunking. Bi-fold door and carpentry contractors did measurements. BTW our house came WITHOUT any doors...usage of toilet was quite a problem then. The bi-fold door was specifically for our common toilet, glass door for our MBR toilet. Tiler came too, to do our cabinet base in our kitchen as well as our kerb + settee in the MBR bathroom. We purposely used white tiles for this as a contrast to the all-yellowish bathroom. The wife prefers coloured glass mosaic tiles with white tiles used in newer HDB projects however ours was earlier. Anyway, according to our ID, he says it is nice! lol... One thing we learnt from our tiler is that it is important to check the water flow before doing up the kerb. Our tiler realised that there will be a "ponding" issue beside the toilet bowl if we put the kerb, and suggested to insert a pipe in the kerb to allow the water to flow OUT of the kerb and then flow back into the drainage under the settee. Our kitchen base! Cooker is on our left side out of the picture. Square part is for our full height cabinet and the other side is for the sink. More on our choices later.

Hi Potatoes, Thanks. It's at Telok Blangah. We decided to keep the house layout as original as possible, so that means zero hacking works. Our ID had a tough time helping us design the kitchen layout, especially with the involvement of our FSM. I will post some photos later on after I take some nice photos of the works currently on-going.

Hi May_dream1, Yes, the kitchen is really small.. if you see the floor plan, there is a part of the wall that "eats" into the kitchen space. That caused quite a constraint on the layout of the kitchen.

Actually we have already started on our renovation, and realised we forgot to take proper photos of the empty place before the renovation... nevertheless, we will try to share what we have learnt from our renovation process. Choosing ID was the easy part. We contacted a total of 3 IDs for quotation with our intended works: However, it seems that we overestimated the space! The kitchen is too small to accomodate so many of our requirements and according to our ID - we drew them too small. The ID we selected in the end did not give us the cheapest price, but we decided to go ahead with him because of the amount of experience he had and also it was easy to communicate with him. Besides, he is very patient (even until now as reno works are ongoing) and provide suggestions to us as and when required.

Finally got our keys after a 4-year wait, finally our BTO is up! Here's our floor plan: As it is a premium flat, flooring is provided throughout the house, toilet fixtures are up. Our renovation is mainly on carpentry, as well as some wet works in the bathroom. Anyway, 65sqm is not much to play with, we try to keep it as simple as possible, with the mantra, "Less is more".

I bought my hob, hood and oven from Zero. for the good service, prompt delivery and competitive pricing.

Thanks adidaem, Reno has not started yet but so far the process is both fun yet tiring.. sometimes I wish that everyday is a weekend so that I can visit lighting shops, electronic shops, sanitary fitting shops and sofa shops.. Thumbs up to your place.

Happy New Year to you too, May. If this is a FB post, I will sure "like" it

Hi froggy, I am looking for such a storage bedframe too. Can let me know its quality and durability? Tried to PM you but I think your PM box is full. Thanks.

Hi, The white mirror definitely looks better as the contrast is there!! I would like to thank you for having such an informative T-blog. Luckily I have not started my reno so I can go through the info in your many links.

Hi Howly, Can PM me the contact details of the shop? I am looking for such a cutlery tray. Thanks!

Hi Defelio, I have some questions that I would like to ask you. I am not able to PM you. Could be that your mailbox is full. Can PM me instead? Thanks!