princessandhergeek

ooo technical drawings are good too! it doesn't really mean anything if you have 3D.. in the end the 3D can only help us so much, the rest still depends a lot on what we choose o.o ooo i din noe about the PRC tilers o.o but i have seen a lot of the bangladeshi workers doing tiling work.. and high five on the experienced malaysians! anyway, i heard from my hubby that ur hubs passed him the sample of the wood floor u guys r having~ he said it looks really good! unfortunately we wouldn't get to change anything even if we wanted to.. sobsss hoping ours will be ok though >.<

omg.. i went to ask my hubby whether he knows a colleague in the midst reno for em and having 3rd kid soon and he says yes!! lol.. ur hubby so smart to figure out o.o faint* so now we are wives of fellow geeks hahaha as for the flooring.. ya.. there's that option of wooden tiles.. we were eyeballing one at the shop, but in the end we chose another type due to contractor's comments.. and as I was typing, i suddenly remembered - someone on the forums once mentioned that the origin of the tiles is important o.o China-made is not that good.. but does it really matter..? btw, when would your cabinets be installed?

oh no.. i seriously can see my hubby n me doing the exact same thing as well.. but my mum will sure me... hahahaha.. she's eyeing my room for other purposes already..

ooo white kitchen! i like the look of a white kitchen! I was looking through your t-blog (hehe) and found you did the wooden flooring for your kitchen.. love it! i wanted a darker wood feel flooring for the kitchen, but my contractor told me it wouldn't look nice =( i was actually quite depressed.. we settled for something else in the end.. looks nice too but if I had my bossy way, i'd definitely go for the wood feel hahahaha..anyway it seems like you have an amazing kitchen to look forward to! What else are you spending on? I'm also considering having a white kitchen, but i do not dare to get a white kitchen.. knowing how clumsy i am, i'll probably soil the kitchen very easily and the cabinet laminates will probably suffer at my hands.. and i'm wondering.. i have heard my colleagues complaining to me that their white laminates will turn yellow after some time.. is it really true..? =X

ahhhhhh!!!! we r getting quartz too! non-porous property was the main thing that won me over.. and it seems to be scratch proof too!! We are thinking of getting the white quartz for counter top as well =D =D any recommendations as to which white? hahahahahaha.. if our kitchen is blum-installed, it'll be a dream come true >.< but u're right - this will tip the budget by a far scale... sobs

lrt track =) now that you mention it... there doesn't seem to be any noise at all hahahaha.. the only thing would be the lights that light up the house at night -_- but we are gona install curtains and blinds for the whole house, so that shouldn't be a problem =D =D night creatures we are, my hubby and i - don't need that much sunlight haha..

even with the discount, I'm not sure if we can get it.. we are already spending a lot on the house >.< i feel like a leaking money tap with no limitations when it comes to the house.. haha.. but it does look cool! if i can have a techie house, other than digital lock, phasing window screens that can auto regulate light, Eubiq will be the next on my list.. but not now

MBR bathroom (weirdly enough, when we first got to the house, we were wondering where the shower was - we opened the door really wide and bam! the door hit the shower.. is this normal?) Peeking into the MBR (but we have no idea why there is a pile of sand there - did Roy get his guys to put the sand there or...? and we found life!

View of kitchen and service yard common bathroom (the ventilation window leads to the service yard - is this a normal design? why would the toilet ventilate air out to where your clothes are?)

Looking back at the photos I've taken, it seems like I have no sense of which angle is the best to take a picture at. New resolution: to position the camera better for house renovation pictures. Some photos that were taken when the house is still naked and walls are still intact =P View from the gate View of kitchen entrance beside gate View of entrance View of walkway and household shelter beside kitchen

ya.. Eubiq really very ex.. wonder when will the price drop

yay~~~ someone who agrees with me!! right now i'm drooling over having a blum kitchen, but i think my hubby is only willing to compromise to have blum runners instead of drawers - but i so love the feel of blum (or hettich)!! and yup, Eubiq is not yet widely popular, however we do see people using it - we have had relatives buy the Eubiq system from our friend, and seen some offices set up the Eubiq system as well (i think they bought it from some big hardware shop at a much more expensive price - 3M?) anyway, it looks like it's fun to shift the plugs around *itchy fingers*

Looking at all these electricals, I was sorely tempted to ask my hubby to do away with all the powerpoints and just get the Eubiq powerpoints.. These would be so much better and neat.. plus we have a friend who is distributing the Eubiq system in Singapore.. unfortunately, my hubby convinced me to not go ahead with the Eubiq system as this would set us back easily by another two or three thousand if we were to do the system in our whole house where we need powerpoints this is bearing in mind that both my geek and this princess here are gamers, i'm satisfied with one alienware and a wonderful kitchen, while my geek needs three laptops and pending one more I guess normal powerpoints will have to do for this house.. my grand scheme is to save on this and spend on the kitchen hahahahaha! (i'm so not letting my geek vet or see this post hahaha)

loving your reno!! the brick walls and the floor is just... so nice! excited to see more =D

My hubby did some scribblings based on discussions with Roy from IR =D (yup he's our guy!) Really excited to see everything start to fall in place!

ooo! sapphire is nice! we were eyeing sapphire during the sobf 2010, but it was all snapped up before it was our turn to select a flat - congrats though! hehehe.. ya i heard about the matilda house duno if it is really haunted....

In the end, after multiple rounds of discussions (and with my geek knocking some sense into me - i was reallllly stubborn), I finally dropped the idea of a wet and dry kitchen and this is the final layout that we will be having~! Final Layout: when my hubby found out I wanted to post, he decided to do a zone representation of the img above (see below), insisting that this will help people to understand - sooooo cute!!hahaha Final Layout by zone: So sweet right? more pictures coming up! =D P.S.: we are planning to make the guest room into a music room =D

omg.. 6 months is a really really long time..... thanks for the advice! okok will go take note of it.. got to go plan a date >.< do you think september will be a good time to have everything completed? o.o a bit scared of moving in o.o the thought of moving my junk stuff from parents' place to our new home is daunting but excited to have our new house soon~~~~~ hahahahaha

hi sccy! thanks~ from Damai Grove haha.. the one in between Treelodge and Punggol Breeze =D what about you?

liking your reno! i'm also looking at a haiku fan - but am torn between having the white haiku or the black one o.o both looks nice!!

Hi Jshome! Can share where you got your kitchen tap and the basin taps from? They look wonderful! =D

=D thanks for the comments! I'm excited to keep on typing replies, but I'm limited by my capability - I was waiting for my geek knight in shining armor to come home and help me with the setting up of the multiply/ flickr account so that I can start posting pictures =D For a start, we actually got our house from the 2010 Sale of Balance Flats Exercise (Yes, not a typo – we have been delaying the start of the renovation since we collected the keys in June 2011). The flat we chose is from the Damai Grove Project in Punggol, 10 mins walk from the Punggol MRT and 3 mins walk to the Damai LRT. Our Queue number was 23x out of 5xx 4rm units (vague numbers – this is purely an assumption as it took place soooo long ago..) and we ended up picking up the low level units in Damai over the high floors in Breeze as we wanted something within walking distance to the MRT (but this means we sacrificed the view.. which still makes me a little sad thinking about it at times) Being first time house owners, there are a lot of things that we didn’t think to note when choosing a house – it’s not just the east/ west facing that is important – for lower level houses – you need to note where the rubbish chute is/ if there are street lights and if your service yard is facing the road/ sun/ other people's service yards. We might not have made the best choice at that time, but at least now we know better =D and then again - We're considered blessed to have been able to get a house on the second try >.< so we're counting our blessings! =D Anyway, here is the floorplan of the house we chose (dimensions are distorted - sorry!): It was after the taking of keys in June 2011 that my geek and I suddenly realised that we do not have enough time anymore - we have not started preparing much for our wedding in October 2011, and we were the type who wanted everything to go well (as much as possible anyway) - which was the main reason why we decided to postpone the renovations of the house till after the wedding (and honeymoon). After much forum reading and talking to friends and colleagues, we realised that getting the RIGHT contractor/ ID was the first most important step in a house renovation, so we decided to make sure we got the right person who will be able to get the job done well and whom we are comfortable with. Unfortunately, we took our own sweet time in finding the right contractor/ID. While finding the right person, we also did our own space planning (we had like 10 different types of layout in the beginning - no kidding - I was obsessed with getting a layout i was happy with (a wet and dry kitchen - had to scrap it in the end due to lack of space)). The whole contractor/ ID searching process was grueling - but as my geek likes to say, wedding planning and house renovation are projects that bring us closer together as we have to learn to work together and compromise =D In order to get the right contractor/ID, my geek and I (again taking our own sweet time) went around asking for recommendations and contacts from our colleagues, family members, renotalk forumers, punggol org forumers, damai grove forumers. Some forumers even allowed us to visit their homes =D Really appreciate the generosity of fellow punggolians and forumers in hosting us at their houses and enduring the multiple questions thrown at them online as well as face-to-face =D We ended up speaking to 20 plus companies (again - an estimate), these companies include the bigger players (Weiken, Chew Interior, Classic Design, Meng Design (don't know if these guys are considered big - but they are starting to have adverts on the tv so...)), the regular trade show goers (Cissern, Rezt and Relax, Y-axis, Unimax Creative), others we found online through forums or posts (Baroque, 9 Degree Design, IR Design, ID Note), recommendations from colleagues and family (Jade Land Design and Renovation, XXX company (my mum's contact - not sure name of company)). Our friends were also undergoing the whole ID searching process (or still waiting for their flat) so they were unable to advise much. And we also spoke to many of the companies at IMM.. After contacting the different contractors/ IDs and looking at their initial quotes and proposed floorplan (only those who bothered to take action after the discussion), we shortlisted a few contractors/ID: Bxxx from Jade Land Design and Renovation Kxxxx from Chew Interior Jxxxx from Weiken Txxx from ID Note Kxx from Meng Design Gxxxxx from 9 Degree Design Rxx from IR Design We had a lengthy discussion with some of these designers/ contractors, and were impressed by them.. but as my hubby and I were discussing about their strengths/ weaknesses and who to choose, we came across this website that advised us on what type of designers and contractors to be aware of - e.g. beware of contractors/ designers who promised you the sky, who talk bad about other customers in front of you and so on..of cox, price was definitely a factor to note.. The renovations we wanted for the house included hacking of bedroom walls, kitchen wall and so on, so the price will make out to be quite steep.. and also because we took our sweet time, we had a contractor revise his quote and increased it by more than $10,000 - was inflation really that bad? o.o Some weird incidents that we encountered - Designer badmouthing other customers in front of us (the potential customers) which makes us wonder if he will do that to us eventually. Same designer offering to knock off more than 10,000 from his quoted price as long as we be his customers on the side (no records) (eventually he told us to follow him to his new company and be his first customer). Designer promising the sky, but ended up saying things that defame himself (that he is notorious) Designer trying to force a layout on us that we didn't like In the end we didn't dare to take up the above designer/s as we were worried that the renovation experience would turn out bad..we were very tempted though - sgd10,000! that's a lot of money o.o but weighing the consequences (possibility of losing the money (if we were to be customers on the side without records of us existing) and getting scolded vulgarities in the course of the renovation (something which he was doing really often)), we decided to forgo that designer..(plus the workmanship we visited was not good, and half the time he was scolding the customer behind their back o.o) --> disclaimer: please do not flame me! just sharing experiences here.... >.< maybe to someone else this is normal.. but for me it was a scary experience o.o >.< In any case, I should clarify that the above was just a one-off case. The other designers/ contractors that we met/ shortlisted were very sincere and good hearted people, and they really tried to listen to your needs. We were pretty impressed with some of them, but had to strike them off the list due to budget constraints or poor workmanship or not having enough faith in them..after all that drama rama, we thought that this was the end, our house will never get renovated.. that was when we decided to try an old contact that we got from the forums here at renotalk - Rxx from IR design. We had written his name and contact down since 2011, but only contacted him this year..Forums said that he's a good chap who works for your benefit and to your satisfaction, just that sometimes he responds slowly and doesn't follow up with quotes.. but we were thinking, one more option is a wise choice, so we decided to ring him up and arrange for a meeting.. that first meeting, we felt comfortable talking to him.. (a bit of background on my geek - he knows only 2.3 languages - english, computer and 0.3 mandarin - which means he finds it difficult to communicate with some designers/ contractors who insisted on talking in perfect Chinese even after we requested for singlish haha). but Rxx was really nice, my husband found it easy and comfortable to communicate with him even though they weren't exactly speaking in English all the time. After that first meeting, our evaluation of Rxx was that he was sincere, easy to talk to, experienced, can man his people well, humble man. We left that day wondering if the quote would come soon or if we would accidentally be ignored.. but the quote came after 2 days! He later explained to us that he knows he needs to pick up his speed, and is currently doing so, but because he is a one-man show in his company, that is why sometimes he has to choose his customers - and he normally chooses those who were recommended to him rather than the walk ins.. we were attracted to the fact that because he is a one-man show, there is no danger of us being shifted to the next designer in the company (which happened to us at ID Note).. Anyway, for our next meeting, he brought us to a customer house. Unlike our previous experiences where the designer did all the talking, his customer (a lovely husband and wife couple) did most of the talking after Rxx was done with the initial introductions. Rxx looked embarrassed while they were singing his praises haha..but they did warn that he was a busy busy guy o.o We were impressed by the workmanship as well as how he managed his customers.. and after more forum reading, further discussions and some quote revisions, we decided to go with him! We wanted the job to be done right and well by a person like him who (according to forumers) is responsive to correcting mistakes promptly. Fortunately, time wasn't much of an issue (we didn't have to move in by X date so...)

Hi fellow forumers! This blog is specially created to track the renovation progress of our first home - we've been actively scouring the forums for advice and have benefited a lot from fellow forumers, so we hope to be able to contribute back in the same way by sharing with everyone our experiences =) A bit of fun fact before the actual blogging starts: We decided to call ourselves 'princessandhergeek' because of how it defines us - princess is the hebrew translation of my name (and also because the idea of being a princess is really appealing to a woman who still has girlish daydreams occasionally), and my husband is a true blue computer geek (in a very cute and smart way - haha). He is my geek and my knight in shining armor *wink*. We are newlyweds in our mid - late 20s (thus explaining why I seem to be so hyper). In Memoirs of a Princess and her Geek, we will be touching on mostly everything house related - from purchasing of the house to renovations to house purchases =) and you'll get to read (perhaps) how a princess and a geek will work together to build a house suitable for them both. NOTE: This princess here does not want to have a castle in the sky decorated with rainbows and diamonds, so you do not have to worry about reading fluff =P With that, I shall conclude the introduction to our 'Memoirs of a Princess and her Geek' and start the blogging of our house purchase, renovations and more! The princess and her geek, TS Yip