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I bought Grohe purifier and concealed shower set from insani. I chose PayPal option for convenience sake so can't comment on bank transfer. Delivery was very fast. Arrived in one week. I was expecting to have to pay GST but didn't need to even though items all exceeded S$400. Oops just saw you got another thread being answered. Duplicate?

Painting Boo-Boo and DIY DIY 1: Painting Our Own Cement Screed Effect A little bit of rehash – we were leaving the wall tiles in the kitchen, service yard and common bathroom untouched and had them screeded over with cement to go for a more industrial look and to save on hacking costs. For painting, my FIL offered the services of his close friend (let’s call him Uncle X) who is in the construction business and said all we needed was to buy our own paint and pay them a token sum. I was a little reluctant as I would rather let the ID handle the painting, but my husband wanted to save a little bit more and said he will co-ordinate the painting. Just as our ID took a break for CNY, Uncle X asked if they can start the painting works. At that point in time, the wet-works just started, and our ID said it’s too soon. We also said it’s too soon. But Uncle X said that they will paint a base coat/sealer for the ceiling because the existing colour is very dark (we’re gonna have white ceilings) and it needs a few coats anyway. My husband reasons that Uncle X’s workers were free and he wanted to better utilise his manpower. So we bought 2 cans of 5L sealer for them to paint the ceiling in the living room. This will turn into my biggest regret for the renovation… We only discovered the mistake 1 week later when we brought the in-laws over to have a look at the house during CNY. To my horror, I realised the painters had painted the sealer all over the cement screed in the kitchen, service yard and bathroom!! And the best part is, because they ran out of sealer, they didn’t manage to completely paint over the dark parts of the ceiling in the living room (WHICH WAS THE WHOLE POINT IN THE FIRST PLACE). Even talking about it now still brings pain… Uncle X's workers sure kena scolded by my husband and my FIL. We had to ask the ID to re-screed the common bathroom (at additional cost, ouch!!), but we decided to paint the walls in the kitchen and service yard. And since the walls are kind of rough, we thought perhaps we should try to do some special effects paint, like Momento. This is our own version of a special effects wall… Firstly, we had the painter paint the kitchen and service yard walls with a light grey colour: I was very anal and pasted “DO NOT PAINT” Post-it’s on our common bathroom cement screed walls, because God forbid the painters eff up another time and I will be inclined to commit murder! The next step required some sea sponges which one can easily buy from Art Friend: Using the same light grey colour which the walls have been painted to, I also mixed in some white and also a darker grey-blue colour (which we got as leftover paint from a friend who just recently renovated), and randomly sponged on the different shades of color: My handsome husband savouring his chance to express his minimal artistic skills hahaha...! As fun as it was sponging, the effect was not very impressive… I decided to just paint over the embarrassment and forget it ever happened. But funnily, I had attempted to use a damp roller with some light grey paint and as I rolled over the sponge effect, it created an accidental dreamy effect which the husband really liked! Wowza! So the last step, which was an accidental finding, was to use a stiffer-than-normal roller with some water and to lightly roll over the sponge effect, essentially blurring over the previous effect. Not really the cement screed effect I was hoping for (and I think it’s mainly due to the paint I used having a bluish tone rather than cement grey) but looks alright I guess! DIY 2: Spray Painting Switch Boxes Having a HDB unit means the sockets and switches cannot be flush mounted into the wall, so they will have to be surface mounted onto plastic switch boxes that only come in a standard white colour. Since we decided to go for a darker colour for the switches, white switchboxes would be an eyesore. LeGrand Mallia colour choices. What a variety!! I remember reading @bie18's blog about spray painting the switch boxes after it was mounted, which sounds like a lot of work, so I told my ID upfront about passing me the switch boxes first to spray paint: I used Krylon Fusion White as a primer mainly because a lot of the DIY stuff I read online emphasized on the use of primer, so I thought no harm having it, especially since my ID warned me that scratches will remove the spray paint and it will look ugly, so I want to minimize the risk. I got Nippon’s Pylox 47 Matt Black since I recall someone recommending Nippon spray paint on RT. Seems to spray on quite nicely and has a matte, powdery finish! Important things to note about spray painting: Don’t be impatient and don’t get too close when spraying! 20-30cm away is good. Keep moving the spray can up/down or left/right - don't stay at one spot. A nice, firm pressure on the nozzle to prevent splatter of paint drops - otherwise will form bumps on the surface Multiple thin coats is definitely better than one thick coat!! Do in a well-ventilated area! The smell is quite awful

Thanks @fifteenmay! Hope to see the end result of your renovations soon Best of luck!

Hi there @Belle26, Following your t-blog to see the outcome of your house. Very interesting selection of tiles you've got! Just thought I'd give an idea regarding the pipes beneath the vanity sink. Like you, we're not getting any vanity cabinets so I had to purchase my own brass basin bottle trap and a chrome L-pipe for the plumber. We want the pipes to look like this: We got ours from Wasserbath which was where we got our WC and sinks from. They threw in both the bottle trap and L pipe for $50 each set (so $100 for both bathrooms). Hope this helps! Otherwise you can consider painting the white PVC pipes with a nicer color?

Painting We really like Dulux’s Colour of the Year – Denim Drift, so that made us choose Dulux for our paint! And they sell this really cute testers on Lazada, so I got quite a few different colours and painted them on some A4 art paper to have a better idea how the colors would be like, rather than rely on the catalogue or brochure as that may be quite inaccurate. Each box of 3-6 comes with a $15 voucher to use when you buy a 5L can of Dulux paint. 3 testers sell for $9.90 while 6 testers are $15.90 on Lazada. So we shortlisted these 6 colours for our place: The testers also were helpful in marking out the walls: We bought our own paint from Everglow Paints 287 Changi Road S(419766) because we're getting our own painters (more on that later) and Everglow was the cheapest and seemed trustworthy (we liked the fact that their invoice got Bible verses on it, so cute!) They recommended us to get the Pentalite series (Nippon Vinilex equivalent) as it has a matte finish and is easy to touch up. As much as we would like to get the better series such as those washable type, those need the walls to have very smooth finish so probably best for those who are doing plastering. And they also informed us that if any part of the wall need some touch up, the whole wall has to be painted in one go. Their 5L matte paint (Dulux or Nippon) is about $45-50 each, depending on colour. 1L cans are about $15 each. 20L can is $110. 1L can is good for one feature wall, while 5L is sufficient for the whole room. Based on the brochures, each litre of paint has an average coverage of 10-11sqm. They recommended Mouldguard instead of the standard Matex paint for ceiling. Mouldguard is $45 for each 5L can, while Matex is $45 for 18L can. They accepted our $15 vouchers, but informed us that they need a while to get those vouchers to AkzoNobel/ICI, hence they will refund us the money once it's processed... so we had to pay the full amount first. No issues with us since their shop is quite near to our place. In total we spent about $500 on our paint. Final results: Nova White has a very slight bluish tinge which we really liked. Surreal Blue turned out way lighter than we thought, and we couldn't tell the difference between Fine Silver and Surreal Blue. So even though we used the colour testers, there were still some unexpected results! Case in point: Gentle Green turned out more aqua than mint! #fail Luckily we got a lot of Nova White leftover (since we bought a 20L can), will get the painter to paint it over the green... Moral of the story is... always expect the unexpected!