Hi all, my wife and I just gotten a 4-room resale flat at Bishan. It is a 4A, 21year-old unit, rather big at 112sqm. Last week was our 1st appointment, everything went rather smoothly. 2nd appointment is scheduled early March. Now, we got a bit headache with renovation, and furnishing. I shall post our floorplan here. It is stairs door-to-door unit, which lift landing on 1, 6, and 11 floor. The whole place, basically need quite a lot of works. Current owner smokes, so some parts of the place are kind of yellowish. Their reno was done 16 years back, so most things are rather old now. But, our major problem is with the balcony now. It is a big balcony, as big as a single room. However, the structure is weird. It is a balcony under the HDB roof, bacially it is "indoor, outdoor". From inside, we just see HDN pillar, wall. The unit under ours, do not have such balcony, instead is it a room or part of the licing room, because our balcony is right on top and provides the roof. Units above ours, do not have such part in the unit, it is empty. From the balcony, we can see balcony of our opposite door neighbour, and all the units on top of us. Which means, all those units can see our balcony directly. Things, rubbish, can be thrown into our balcony, without any problem. We went around to check out similar units in the same block. Some actually build their own windows and roof, to make it an indoor space, which they can fix an aircon inside. Some just fix some grills on top of walls, and as roof, to prevent people from entering the space, but doesn't prevent things from being thrown inside. We talked to 2 IDs, and 1 contractors. 1st contractor, recommended by a friend, which we like the way they do things, clean and clear, looks responsible. They said if want to do work with the balcony, must submit to HDB and URA because there is no roof on that part of space, so it is under URA, and submission to URA need drawing and signature of PE, which may cost upto 2, 3k. Later on, they told us that they would not do the balcony for us, but can recommend their contractor to us to do it. We feel that they are not sure if the work can be done, and do not want to go through the trouble to verify for us. If we do not choose them in the end, this will be the major reason. 2nd ID is recommended by a relative whom is a major customer to them. Good thing about them is they got inhouse carpentry, and we go direct to the boss, so any problem, we just talk to the boss and will get it solved. This ID is also not sure if our balcony can be done up or not, but their stands is, most likely can, must submit to HDB, no need go through URA. We feel rather safe with this ID, but the prelimary quote from them gave us a shock. It is way over our budget. 3rd contractot is also recommended by a friend, who stays in Bishan. This contractor is also staying in Bishan, and done many works in the area. He asked if other owners did work to their balconies. He thinks that if others had done so, most likely no problem. He more or less how the balcony is. We just contacted him, and haven't had detailed talk with him. We only knows, if we let him do, we need to have the exact details of design we want in mind, because he doesn't do design. We have shown the 1st ID to the house, and talked to them again. We will be showing 2nd ID to the house again soon, and most likely showing the contractor after CNY. (need to arrange with current owner, kind of paiseh to keep going and view for too long) We really want to do something to turn the balcony indoor becuase it will be a waste if we just leave it like that. And we don't feel safe that way. This is what current owner doing, leave it, use as storage area for some old stuffs and the sliding door to the balcony is locked always. Another issue is Lift Upgrading. It is already announced that there will be LUP in this block, but not voted yet. If there is new lift, most likely, the direct walkway from lift will pass through my balcony. This makes us even want to make it indoor more. I would like to ask if anyone have experience with similar units like this and how you did the work? Secondly, we are in the middle of choosing furniture. We went to La Cafa at Furniture Mall and saw a few sets that we like. Prices are alright but we were not ready to commit, so no deal yet. Then we did search of this company and saw all the bad reviews. Just want to check, if we like something that is simple, minimalist style, MUJI like, which are the retailers that we should go to? Of course, with reasonable price, we have rather limited budget.
