sumobear

Hi to all, I need some advices urgently, can someone help? The story is that my home's aluminium grilles are completed and the grille contractor is asking for payment already but I realised that there are scratches here and there. Is it a norm to expect fine scratches on the grilles? Dunno whether to release the last payment to him. Someone please advice, thanks...

Hi imakan, You have a nicely done up home...mind if I know how much did you send on your renovation for? What is the size of your flat? I think you need to sprinkle some drugs for your ants to get high!

Hi Midiman... Wow your home looks cool. I love the daybed with blue covering in your study room, the colour scheme is very unique.

Hi all, Well...I think it is not easy to be in the boots of Mr Phua Chu Kang unless you have the knowledge of the renovation trade well. By going directly to a contractor, you have already cut the cost of the ID but you have to be the "designer" or you can ask the contractor for some suggestions because he may have the experience working with an ID before. Engaging a contractor is good in the way that he can help you monitor and manage all his subcons, and most importantly he can lay his head on the chopping board for you if anything happens to the renovation. Getting individual subcons may cause some conflicts as you do not know the quality of works and do not knows whose fault will it be when something happens. You have to be answerable to yourself. As for myself, I have only engage a subcon to do up my windows and grilles because I found out that my contractor markup about 1K for that. Don't try to save the few cents and end up getting more problems.

Erm...maybe you can try to "bounce" the light source if you can adjust the lighting angle or shift your sitting position to avoid direct light. Or maybe you have too much lights on at the same time...

Coming up next on our renovation list will be the painting work that will start in a few days time. Colour selection is not easy for me when it comes to picking a colour from the standard paint color brochure from Nippon Paint or ICI Dulux because none of them is to our liking. The colours that I like belong to a special range of paint that requires some professional mixing but what worries me is the additional cost that I may need to fork out. And so it was a struggle for me during the last few days thinking which range of colours to choose, forcefully accept the standard range or pick my own speical colours. In the end, my bosses had encouraged me to follow my heart and choose the ones that I like. So now, I am very happy and excited to see how our home is going to look like with colours.

More pictures of our upcoming home. The latest things completed will be the construction of the L-Boxes, window grilles and some wall retouching.

Oh no...I think I am getting abit stress up or should I say that I am in the blues because of renovation...mentally drained from thinking what to do every moment. For the time being I am just going putting the issue of the toilet accessories a side and wait till the contractor give me an answer. Gave him a nasty feedback. As for now, I am required to decide how I want my kitchen cabinet to be constructed and what are the paint colors that I want for the rooms. I do not feel inspired to choose a right color right now, maybe because I am losing focus or cannot make up my mind. Tomorrow is the deadline to finalise the design details... Did the kitchen layout planning last night but I am not quite happy with it yet.

Something went wrong today and in fact it happens since yesterday. I have a feeling that something bad is about to happen since yesterday, felt really uneasy and could not sleep well yesterday. Woke up really early today and decided to drop by to check on the renovation status and true enough that things went wrong, the workers had mounted all my bathroom fixtures wrongly even with proper instructions and markings. I am real upset over it. In the end I rang my contractor to express my unhappiness with his waterwork workers and he told me that he will provide me with a satisfactory answer and will fine tune the mistakes. Master Bedroom's Toilet - Towel Rod mounted at wrong position and have intersected into the space for my mirror. Common Toilet - Basin's mounting has mis-aligned. - Clothes hanging pegs mounted at wrong position. ****...my sixth sense is so deadly! Arghhh...I simply hate things that are mis-aligned! :S

My thoughts: 1) Frame it up as a canvas art 2) Make Lamp Shade 3) Sew a Bear 4) Cushion I got them from PLUCK at Haji Lane...if I can still remember clearly, they should be imported from UK! The material is very good.

erm...I actually kind of like the original tiles which you had hacked, quite retro looking...hehe:P It seems like you hacking job is quite minimum, can save a bit on hacking right? Your place look very spacious! That is what I like about old flats...all the new flats are like chicken farm!

I love prints! Bought this fabrics few months back...waiting for my home to be ready before I can have a space to start my craftworks. Total Damage = SGD$150 for 3 metres of fabrics.

Wah...5 halogen like abit hardcore, will you get burnt by it? I think can BBQ already. So far I think my lighting formula consists of 5 x 1m track + 2 halogen, 1 x 3m track + 3 halogen, 1 x solo halogen.

Oops...my apologies...got confused between the blogs online.

Hihi... Haha....I have bright citrus orange wall tiles for one of the walls in my current home's kitchen and the rest are white including my floor, it makes me feel good and freshing whenever I walk in. My current home is renovated 6 years ago when people are not so daring with the usage of bold colours or the most used as a decorative strip on the wall. There was a shortage of tiles when making the order from the supplier...need alot of orange tiles for the big wall. Speaking of lighting...I am just laying a few track lights around the house. My electrician questioned me "Thats all for the light in your house?!?!" and I replied "Haha...yah...why? Cannot Huh?" He gave me a very puzzled look. Anyway lightings is never neccessary to be on the ceiling because you can always have foor lights or table lights to lit up the space and to create the ambience. So far in my whole house...I only have white light in storeroom.

Hi Joy, Come to think of it, the kitchen setting was inspired by a children craft magazine by Martha Steward. I visualised my kitchen as a "Happy Kitchen". Generally my home colours will be the pastel range and I will create a contrast with bold colour accessories or furnitures. You have a great home! Browsed through your blog and realised that we have alot of things in common like the passion of fabrics and doing craftworks. I am planning to DIY some stuffs for my home...like converting a retro chair to a side table, canvas murals, lamp shades and table lamp.

Haha thanks for the compliment...many people think that my colour choice is kind of strange as they are not the fashionable colours. Anyway I think that is no such thing as a bad colour but only bad colour coordination. As for now i am just keeping my finger crossed and hope that everything will move on smoothly. I chose the colours with my guts feeling

Hi again... True to say that we must be willing to spend in order to make the world continue turning. But as a home owner, I have to secure as many items as possible within a budget and anyway the contractor will also give you some buffer at the final payment. I am not as detailed as you and so far I have only approached a grill contractor.

A sneak preview of the walls...we will be using a pastel range of colors for our home. We fell in love with our plastered wall, so smooth and the raw cement is cool.

Hi Ben, Yes I do agree with you on the time coordination but I think it is worthwhile because the lesser the level of people involved means lesser level of mark-up pricing....everyone want a piece of the pie. Imagine the ID marking up the contractor's price, contractor marking up sub contractors, then the contractors mark up material cost. It is a chain reaction on price marking up. So I am not keen in giving an extra share of my hard earned money to an extra party. This is the second home that I am doing, and so far so good because I find it a thrill and fun to do up your own home. Anyway I am not doing very major design to my skeleton home, it will be as plain as a cube but I will doll up the place with furnitures and accessories. So far so good...everything is going smoothly and I feel good with this home. I can feel the chemistry with this home when I was looking for a home.

Hi... Before the process of plotting of lighting points, you have to understand the nature of your home like what is function of each room or space and the characteristic of different lightings. After that you have to find the appropriate kind lighting to suit the function of the room or space to give you the ideal lighting effect that you want to achieve. If lighting point is affected by furniture, then you will need the furniture specification and decide the location of the placement before you can plot the ideal lighting position. An example will a hanging light above the dining table.

Stayed up late last night to do planning and drawing for the lighting points and woke up early today morning to do proper measurement and marking on site. It is tiring and brain-whacking. It is a GREAT DIFFERENCE between planning using floor plan and on-site planning...the measurements varies but floor plan planning do help me to speed up my work today morning. Upon the completion of my marking around 9am, both my contractor and electrician walked in...and they helped me to see my point plotting and give me advices. Good tools to bring along when doing marking: 1) Measuring Tape - Most IMPORTANT! 2) Masking Tape - To plot the points of lighting or furniture size, easier to visualise the result 3) Calculator - Don't stress yourself with numbers! 4) List of furniture specification - Helps you to position your lightings or power points. 5) Pencils - To do marking.

Hi, Well I will not claim all the credits that we are the ones who do the design and specification for the house because the contractor will play a part in advising you what to do, and after all he is paid to provide such service to you. The possible problem with contractor is that he may not have good sense of aesthetics. But sometimes you maybe lucky to bump into a contractor who may have worked with ID firm before and provides you with a few cents of knowledge of design. VERY VERY IMPORTANT...you must never make assumption that your contractor knows what you want because you only get to know him not long and he is unable to read your mind.

Damage??? hmmm...not so sure at the moment but I think I am hitting 30K, reno is abt 24K. Well...I dun have a budget for an ID firm and anyway I also dun believe in them. I found a contractor and I will do the design myself! I have engaged TT Design & Renovation and so far I am quite happy with the service...very fast and sometimes it is tough for me to catch up the pace.

Went for an inspection on our renovation-in-progress home on wednesday and saw quite a number of workers working. The walls are super smooth which I think the lizards-in-residence will be using my wall as a skating ring. I suspect the workers are using SK-II water to wipe my walls or to mix with the cement...haha. Thumbs up for the wall-smoothing! As for the floor....erm....er.....I do not know how to describe my feeling. The cement screet is completed but waiting for it to dry before I can see the final effect...so i think the final outcome will be either I love it or hate it. Keeping our fingers crossed!