Makanology

Not sure for jaykr cos his is a EA. for our 3-roomer, the difference is about $13-15k. Glad to know that you have chosen K. Think for BTO, there is not much hidden / unnecessary cost like resale so I think K's cost for BTO would be quite attractive.

Nice inner black laminate! You are right, it makes it more classy

Yours not a prefab flat like ours? Then better to plaster but we heard it can cost a few thousands:( hope I am wrong

Oh yes comfort food is always a strong motivator but we are making a trip to ikea tampines soon to get something so might as well familiarize ourselves with the area heehee

Wahahahaha!

Black bathroom accessories do look very attractive! How's life settling in at your new place and at Clementi?

Hi jaykr, hope your carpentry comes out in time before you leave for US. Oh ya go check out Howard's World Storage @ Vivo. If you like what you see there, chances of finding the same stuff in US is higher and at better rates!

Hi hi can someone here share how to get to Good Year BKT? This reminds me of another eatery that has the word 'Good' in their name. Good Chance Popiah at Bukit Merah where you can DIY your own Popiah. Not that cheap but fun experience.

On a brighter note, our stairs will be done by today! New stairs by Makanology, on Flickr Haha this wasn't planned so Ah Meng used whatever tiles that were in excess. Pro - color super match/ con - hmmm bears some resemblance to Malay culture but luckily Mr E has Malay blood from his ancestors so pass!

Hi jaykr, no worries I know you are not defending Alan and I agree with what you have said. We went into this contract with open eyes and know we have to be more involved in the whole renovation as compared to the others. We also like the fact that without the presence of an ID, we have freedom to coordinate directly with the sub-contractors, thus giving us much say and control. However what we didn't like of Alan was: - empty promises. From day one, he was aware that we were renting a place and that the lease is ending. We earlier spoke of living inside the place during the whole renovation period (which Alan was aware as well as all other contractors / IDs that we have met). But to avoid disruption to their work, we paid extra to extend the lease. Alan said 'no problem' for us to move on 31 May but today is already 20 May. Exclude today, Vesak and weekend, we have exactly 7 days and we are still in the wet works stage. Certainly this is alarming?! - Uncontactable at times. Alan doesn't pick up calls or reply SMS regularly. We can understand that he may be on the line or engaged in another meeting but he doesn't return calls/ SMS after it. Even if the reply is a day late, it is still better late than never. We have to resort to Mr E being the good cop and me as the bad cop and take turns to text him first (in case he is busy) and then call him if no response. Now we even bet among ourselves to see if he will reply. The most sianz part is that on Whatsapp, you can see his status as 'Online' and that he has read the message but still no reply... Haiz...

Thanks! Haha i used to be a professional event planner so that part, I am not too worried.

Ok for the renovation business, we now have Beng as project manager, jus4fun for designer; now who is going to get customers? Hahahaha

From MK 'Mrs E': Our contractor is the boss himself, errr hard to find someone to take over our project. So the best person to take over is ourselves! I think after this, we can open renovation business liao!

Ya the lift upgrading and I think they also redo all the cement flooring for ground floor and every floor. But we are the ones paying for this cos HDB didn't managed to bill my seller in time! Lucky deduct from CPF...

Before their renovation, that kopitiam quite 'sad'; many stalls not opened and variety pathetic. Hope this will improve when they reopen. Now looking at their progress, we won't be surprised if kopitiam renovation will be faster than ours lol

From: Mr E.Hi retch, yeah. I can understand that. Try picture this. We are afterall layman/laywoman to the industry and its work or terms. We paid for a contractor who could assist us to lessen our burden. Now, I have to be there once every two days to understand the developments and with me physically there, the workers felt glad that I m there to liaise and "troubleshoot" design issues. It is true that we have a small part to play here, mostly with design layout, style and miscellaneous oddities. But certainly not here to "micro-manage" stuffs like: when's the windows coming? Dang, if the windows isn't coming, the tilers can't tile or do wet works on it??? Seriously, I don't think that's my jobscope or heck, not even supposed to be my worry too! Other than being unresponsive 90% of the time, we were left wondering abt the progression stages. In fact, many of the stuffs we had no idea about, luckily we had a very good friend named Google! Who managed to get our enquiries solved 90% of the time! To be honest here, this is to allow us the convenience. Right now, we are on the verge of being "inconvenienced", with the possibility of incurring costs for rental, while we did allow the part of taking his sweet time to install whatever is needed, cabinets and all so long he complies with whatever we need in the first place. We all have our busy-ness with our own work but, in no way should we impose our convenience on others' inconvenience. Mr E.

From: Mr E.Yeah, I m monitoring REAL close. Rescheduling the movers isn't an issue, the bigger issue is that my current room/workshop rental has been already overdue by 2 months as the landlord was really nice enough to turn down other prospective tenants. Likewise without my working area, I cannot do my projects as well, art pieces and paintings and all. To extend another month would mean extra rental and wouldn't it be ridiculous to actually take 2 months for a 3roomer renovations? A contract is a contract, once stated 4-6 weeks, any form of negotiation is purely out of good will and should not be exploited. So if I were to incur extra rental charges, should I bill him? Imagine trying to nego a contract with a bank instead. I did re-confirmed with Alan with this abt getting the conditions "livable" and he too has also re-assured us as well. It is more like a case of over-promised and under-delivered. I want to still have good faith in him, but his lack of responsiveness is totally absurd. For a fact, the tilers were happy to see me because as quoted by them: "it is good that u r here, we can confirm everything with u on the spot." And yes, the ROM as well. Maybe we should do an industrial or derelict - punk style wedding with broken bricks and tiles, dust and all, due to the mess we ll be living in. Quite cool yeah? Haha... Mr E.

Edd, on a side note, just found out the home-made dim sum stall below your block has closed down haiz, only managed to try it once and it was quite good

Hi we are looking around for metal storeroom racks and have seen the prices on racksingapore and storagerack. Also saw UNS website. All seem to offer the same stuff - OEM?

Interesting layout - functional and good division of space and flow. Hope HDB will grant you the permit soon!

Anyways start of a new week and we are recharged to take things in our hands now. Gonna be very firm, call Alan for real answers and speed things up ourselves. Wish us good luck peeps! We also can't wait to see the completion of our wooden cabin kitchen to be up

This is Mr E here. Some personal feelings and updates about how I perceived the progress. In fact, I m rather upset. Very disappointed with our contractor and the actual progress. I know that we aren't necessarily the top tier kind of paying clients but I still dont think we should be subjected to or deserved such negligence. Basically, there is nearly no updates of any kind, such as <insert-name-of-work> starts or stops etc. Followed by <insert-name-of-work> will start before or after <insert-name-of-work> ends or begins. We started the renovations in 2nd May and today is the 20th, I believe the pictures we posted is pretty much the tiling and wet works, probably at 50%. The actual tiling and wet works started on the 14th May. As mentioned a few times, we DID mentioned that the MBR and its toilet along with the study has to be in "livable" conditions. My movers will be there in the morning on the 31st May, whereby several reminders has been made, and also several re-assurance has been given. However, as of date, it is already the 20th and with 8 working days left and with the current progress, I believe this may yet be another case of empty promise. I will be going into details at a later date. Mr E.

Mine worse, Saturday also don't work

New house so new motivation to be neat Reno progress soooo slow. It doesn't help that we are using tiles of different dimensions & designs in each room so it complicates the process.

Oh dear, sick for a month? Hope you manage to get some time off work to really rest. The whole house renovation & moving must have taken a toll on your health! You are very neat - can tell from your new shelf