chococat

Hi Wmayeo, Could you please PM me the contacts for your contractor? Thank you very much!

hi daddywinder, I am surprised you still keep a look out here! my reno is almost done.... still left small parts here and there for ID to complete before really really really conclude the reno progress. It's been 4 months since reno started and was exhausted with the waiting (i personally think my house reno design is not too complicated), thus stop updating my progress here. hoping to be able to move in before CNY..... haha

GR Link at Jalan Besar. We were served by Uncle Benny.

The house will repaint when all reno are done. Total 2 coats of paint.

.....continued Storeroom Light: Basic and small square LED light. One of my favorites. I don't using mind this for bathrooms and service yard too if choices are limited to choose from. Kitchen: Basic, big and no design. This light up the kitchen very brightly which I like! I personally feel that kitchen is a working place in the house so lighting cannot be compromised. This did not have laggy problem with the switch. Service Yard: Our most special lights of all..... LED Spotlight! This idea is from my brother who accompanied us to JB to get the lights. Hub wanted something robust (no glass) and no design for the service yard. My bro suggested this and hub & I decided to give it a go. Lucky it turns out very well! This spotlight can be adjusted to specific angle how you want the light to shine. (side track a bit, we were practically turning blind as we were staring at all kinds of spotlight size to decide which size to buy.) Dining Lamp: We got a simple mushroom dining lamp. There isn't much choice in the JB shop for dining light with basic design. The rest are complicated kind which will take too much trouble to wipe clean in future. The installation is alighted to the center of the ceiling which theoretically is correct. However we have minimal space to put our dining table, so the table have to move more to the right to allow space for chairs. This as a result need the light to be misaligned from the ceiling center else the dining light will be shinning on the person seated near to the kitchen. We had asked the electrician to adjust the dining light location accordingly to the table specs so it will shine at the center of dining table. We also asked him to pull the lamp lower. (Pic GREATLY not drawn to scale) This is the biggest flaw of this BTO (except for 5-roomers). So little space for dining area unless we put the dining table along the wall with the TV feature wall. Learning points: Always good to label which light is for which room. Placed them in their respective location to reduce confusion. Light casing with some clear and translucent design will cause shadow casting on the wall. Provide dining table dimension to electrician/ID to allow estimation of dining lamp location. Print out drawings of the lighting points as discussed with ID and paste it in your house to show the electrician how lighting is run. (we took a photo of the lighting plans which Mr J drew on the wall. after painting, the drawings were gone.... so we pasted a print-out of the lighting plan on the wall for easy referencing)

Updates as of 30 Oct 2014: All the lights are ups except for the downlights and T5 lights. Pretty happy with our light purchase (at the moment). Our downlights were bought from TMall (thanks to sis-in-law's hub) and the rest are bought from Malaysia. We will be getting a T5 light from another house owner when we meet him this Saturday. Will be showing pictures of our lights and a short review about them.... Living Room: Holes had been cut out. Electrician want to confirm with us that the light point is accurate before installing the downlights. Apparently, if he cut the wrong place, he can easily fill up the gap and cut another hole. Appreciate such convenience. Apologies for the slanted pic! Passageway and Master Bedroom Passageway: The only two downlights that is up. Initially we doesn't want any downlight at the MBR passageway. Since it had already been install, we can make do with it. Lucky we bought extra downlights for any shipment defects or emergency use. MRB downlights were all supposed to be warm light. The current one is now white, so electrician will help us to change. (In Pic: Nearest one is MRB downlights, followed by living room passaway) Master Bedroom: Only had cut holes at the moment. Bedroom 2 & Bedroom 3: LED light with some design on the casing. We didn't choose lights with exposed metal parts in case of rust problem in future. Love the design! The problem with these lights is that it took 1-1.5 seconds to light up after we swtich on. Not sure why it's like this. Most prob is the product problem as our kitchen light do not have such issue. Nevertheless, we can make do with it. The design (some transparent part) on the casing give some shadow effect on the wall. Some people may like it as a design on the room wall, while some may find it irritating. As for hub and I, we are fine with them Look closely at the wall and you can see the uneven colouring which is cast by the light. Toilets: We used exactly the same design as the bedroom's light, except the small brother version. The smaller one didn't give any lag time to light up when we on the switch. to be continued......

hi daddywinter, thanks for the tip! we found a good deal to get the T5 lights. will be checking out the lights on Saturday before we confirm the purchase. if you need painter, can find hub and i to do! charge u friendly rate. haha

Hi, sorry for the late response. Toilet Sink: $118 Kitchen Sink: $199

Quick Updates: House had been washed and tidied up. No progress for the past week. We just brought over our lightings and ceiling fan yesterday night for today's installation . Will be going over to check this evening to check out for progress. Something About T5 Lights: Hub and I just realized that we actually need to provide our own T5 lights for cove lights. Not sure why both of us synchronously think that T5 is supplied by ID and didn't purchase any T5 when we did our light purchases. So now we need to source for our own T5, unless we want to buy from ID. If you have noticed, some cove light are more yellowish while others are not. I'm not so pro towards very yellow cove light as I find it a little dark. I asked our ID if T5 got different type of yellow tone so we can get the less yellow kind and he said there is no different tone. However, he told us that we should purchase from the same brand as different brand give different yellow tone. So now we are in search for light yellow T5 lights. If you happen to know T5 lights with light yellow tone, do share with us the information please? Thank you, thank you!

so envious! your house is becoming more like home and almost ready to live in!! NICE!

Yep, we bought our dinning table.... from IKEA! It's dark wooden brown, which somehow look similar to the tv feature wall laminate. Waiting anxiously to fix the table up when our house is ready! Happy that you liked the service yard colour. Initially I thought it was a little too bright. But the more I see it, the more I willing to accept the colour! Maybe you can ask your ID to help paint it FOC for u if you and your wife want? If not you and your family can have a little activity time DIY painting too!

thanks for the advice! we had already bought our lightnings... hope they are good enough to make the house homely

OOOoooo, really quite similar colour! Of course I don't mind! We are more than glad that you are sharing your thoughts here!

didn't know yours also grey concept! did you paint grey for your wall? I noticed your grey mainly comes from the laminates.

Went over yesterday during noon when sun was bright and shiny. We noticed that our light grey wall can give different shades of grey (though not up to 50 shades ) with different angle of sunlight and shadowing. Entire house had been washed and tidied up. We are now due for next 30% payment, which concludes the end of our Wet Works. Looking forward to see lights and ceiling fan up!

i think they did, though i never seen them working during varnishing work. this bedroom floor will be varnished after reno. so will be able to see them how they do varnishing then! Thanks for the tip!

Looking good! Nice laminates choices!! Love the curve corners of your tv consoles, very human friendly. I used to stay in house with sharp corners furniture and it cause harm to all my family members.

continue..... Now coming to the best part...... the Living Room! Dauphin Gray, 1198 for left wall in pic. Ash Gray, 5037 for rest of living room wall, passage way and ceiling. White for false ceiling I'm most happy with the living room colours. Especially the light gray on the original ceiling, contrasting with the white false ceiling, thanks to Mr J's idea! The two contrasting grays on the wall looks rather subtle. We should have choose a more darker gray, but we scare it will darken the room quite a bit... Closer look on the Dauphin Gray. This wall is where we will be doing TV feature wall. False ceiling

Updates as of 20 Oct 2014: Painting was done single-handedly by a very nice and friendly uncle over the weekend. We were very happy with his paint work and delighted to see that our house is getting more like home. Will try to share the paint colour name and number code, though we are not very sure if we got it correct. The last time we confirmed the colours was at Mr J office and the details were with him and we forget to jot it down . Tins of paints ready to colour the house. Using Nippon matex paint, which is the cheaper grade. Colour looks pretty okay to us. Hope they can last a long time before we do a repaint in future. Bedroom 2: Vanilla Creme, 1150 Study Room: Maldives Sand, 1116 Master Bedroom: Latte, 1115 (super unsure) Service Yard: Stream, 8137. We wanted a colour very different from our current house color theme (calming) to create a little 'wow' factor. So we used a small service yard to play with this idea. Chose blue since it is a laundry area, so it can create a watery (swimming pool) effect. to be continued..

Yeah! we had the same MBR false ceiling! Do you have the end product of your reno pic? looking forward to see your end-product reno! Do post a pic of your trimmed aircon pipe! Hubz and I have yet to decide to retain the original pipping or remove it... Thanks Eno!

Hi wyx03_2002, i think the best way is to cut away the piping which runs on the floor all the way to the drainage. Just let the water drip on the floor since it's the wet area (if your toilet wet area is the same as mine). I am afraid those piping on the floor will allow mold to grow between the wall and pipe since it is a bit difficult to clean. and not forgetting the hair trapped in between.

Updates as of 15 Oct 2014: False Ceiling False ceiling was installed on Monday. Everything was completed within a day which amazed us as we thought this part of reno will take a few days. We're very happy to see the end result and our house looks more 'homely' with the presence of these ceiling! Living Room Electrical board (is that what it is called) cabinet door was removed due to the installation of false ceiling. Think they will replace back once they got the cabinet door trimmed? Master Bedroom trucking concealed! Master Bedroom Ceiling Mr J said it will take a few days for the plaster to dry before painting works start. Looking forward to see colours in our house!

Updates as of 13 Oct 2014: About Air Conditioning Had a quick discussion with the aircon guy on Thursday evening to discuss on the trucking and aircon placement. We initially were more pro towards having the AC trunking run along the passage way, instead of through rooms. The reason for this is that we do not need to hack away our bedroom cabinet (which conceal the trucking) for repairs/replacement if one day the AC KO. It seems less disastrous if the trucking runs along the passageway. The aircon guy discouraged this and instead assured us that it's perfectly fine to hide the trucking behind cabinet for these reasons (based on my understanding): It's better for the trucking to run along the room with AC as the room will be colder. If trucking were to run along passageway, which is warmer (unless you switch on the living room AC), the chance of trucking to "sweat" (i think he meant condensation) will increase. This sweating will shorten their shelf life. Mr J added on that in case the trucking needs replacement, the cabinet silicone can be cut, allowing the cabinet to be pulled out for trucking replacement. The trucking must be placed lower than the AC unit in order for water to flow along the trucking. As a result, the trucking will have to be just above the door frame along the passageway which doesn’t look as nice, and boxing it up may look funny?So far most of the people did their AC trucking through rooms and there's not much complains. It's sensible to listen to him, afterall he is the AC guy! Furthermore, hubz and I had not much experience in AC throughout our life. Aircon installation was done on the very next day. Happy to see our aircon units are all up and looking good on the walls! Master Bedroom. I hope our ID will box up the trucking to make it look nicer. Trucking runs along Bedroom 2. We are not installing for Bedroom 2. Bedroom 3 (Study Room). Trucking has to be run below AC unit as mentioned previously. Living Room Our pipping in our Master Bedroom toilet. Dunno if there's a way to conceal? Lighting and SCV point wiring was done over the weekend as well. Next up: False ceiling!

Hi ingss, Yes, it's at yishun

(.....Continue) We will be installing our half glass wall on the edge towards the living room (Blue Line). Yellow line shows the default way which do not need tiles and just plastering (my guess). As a result of this, Mr J had informed us that we will need to top up money for the extra tiles used to tile the half wall and on the wall beside the kitchen door hinge (which used to be part of living room without tiles).. Will clarify with ID this Friday to find out the details and how much to fork out. Tiled Area Skirting was removed. I hope they will put them back to bring back uniformity in the living room wall. , Kitchen light switch was re-wired from living room to kitchen entrance