mrslee07

slightly below actually

TODAY IS KEY COLLECTION DAY! 15.05.14 a day to remember.... Started out early today, and got to HDB hub by 9am (our appointment was 9.10am). Went to get our fire insurance sorted at level 2 before heading for the key collection appointment. Yes, you need to buy the fire insurance first before going for the key collection appointment! After spending about 40mins signing many, many forms and wiping out our CPF OA-account, we were done and keys collected! We then later headed to level 3 SP services to activate our SP services account. Hubby and I then headed to my parent's place and picked up my Dad, and set off to our new place to see it for the first time! Upon opening the door to our unit, we were greeted with a bright and spacious living area. We were pretty glad with the space in the living room area, so that was a nice sight to be greeted with. However, we were quite disappointed with the size of the kitchen and the rooms... really smaller than we imagined! Floor plans really can be quite misleading... haha. Also another disappointment was the piping area and clothes rack in the service yard!! We have absolutely no space to stack our washer and dryer... so sad. ID confirmed it also. Washer and dryer will have to separated... really bummed. So our ID and his site supervisor then came and join us about an hour later at our unit to assist with the checking of defects of the unit. All in all, there were no major defects. No cracks on walls or tiles (we opted for doors and flooring by HDB). Main problems were chips on the doors and walls and some uneven-ness on the walls here and there. Hopefully these are not major defects and HDB will be able to rectify shortly. After hanging around at our place for 3 hours, we then left the place and submitted the defects form to the BSC office a block away. We read other people's tblog and were advised to lock up our unit with a numbered lock and chain... however, the BSC office of our BTO told us they do not accept numbered locks due to 'safety issues'. Don't know why they so troublesome! Duh... wasted our time and money to buy this numbered lock and chain specifically!! So had to hand over a key to our main gate instead. Generally quite pleased with our place! Even the hdb flooring looked pleasing to us... not as bad as people described. Sure, not as nice as homegeneous tiles or parquet or marble flooring if we had the chance to choose it on our own. But for the price we paid, and looking at the workmanship i think it's acceptable and we are happy to live with this. Still unsure if we are going to do Evorich HERF/Krono-o-floors vinyl flooring for our bedrooms... likely yes haha but haven't confirmed. We also headed to Royal Fanco at Jalan Besar to get the Baron WC and basin package... for $390 it's indeed a steal!! Lite Fusion unfortunately doesn't offer package anymore... when we visited they said just because we are a returning interested customer they will sell us the same Baron set for $480. Crossed them out - so Royal Fanco it is! Thanks to guojiawen for her recommendation on her tblog! heehee. ID has also sent over the revised 3D drawings, so i'm going to attempt sharing them on tblog now. 1. Living room area 1 Shoe cabinet will be the partition to prevent our whole house being overly exposed at the main door. Will also have some pockets of empty space in the shoe cabinet as shelfing to put keys/display stuffs etc. Shoe cabinet also then links to a bar counter. Bar counter area will have a loud NYC-times square type of wallpaper at the background to contrast against the black and white theme. Bar counter stools will also not be white... likely will choose a loud colour like yellow or orange etc. The bar counter is meant to be a stark contrast to the mostly white and black colour theme in the living room. Sofa is likely to be black instead of white, and coffeetable is white instead of black. 2. Dining area behind sofa. We will be doing a craft stone brick wall (white) and will be including a tinted mirror in the middle of the wall. Bomb shelter area will also have a feature wall and a tic-tac door to cover the bomb shelter door. 3. Kitchen area Chose a green and light grey color in the kitchen. I really love how green and grey comes so nicely together. Wanted to do Green and white but felt that that was a little too common. Notice we have a breakfast counter in the kitchen for quick meals before going to work/instant noodles before rushing out the house/supper or for someone to just sit around when the other party is doing the cooking etc. I will be decorating the wall tiles with stickers/posters as well for the breakfast counter so that it doesn't look so plain. 4. MBR toilet - the chosen tiles and design after overlaying. Aboslutely love the mosaic wall... thanks to hubby for agreeing to this little splurge! That's all the pics for now! Heading back to our place on Sat and Sun this weekend with our respective families for them to take a look since they are also equally excited about our new home. Maybe take more pics again this weekend...

Hi there, so did you eventually lacquer over your brick wall or not leh? I'm also doing a brick wall and interestingly my ID also mentioned about putting a layer of lacquer over it to prevent the sandy feel... Wondering how that would look. If you can let me know that will be great , thanks!

hihi still no review of your rainshower? hehe

hihi can PM me your new electrician contacts for reference?

In preparation for key collection on 15th May, hubby and I met up with our ID today to go through and correct our 3D drawings properly. Hopefully the next time we receive the 3D drawings, it will be as close as possible to what we want. Will be sharing the 3D drawings once we are happy with it... so cross fingers ok! haha. Our living area is the key highlight for us...and is also the one area which we keep going back and forth with our ID on the 3D drawing because most of our money for the reno really is spent in the living area. We're adopting a modern theme (meaning not scandi/industrial kind which I understand is the rage right now) because it looks like hubby and I seem to prefer features that are more "modern" in nature. However, we are doing a craft stone brick wall in the living area - so it'll be interesting to see how our black and white modern living area is going to fuse in with the brick wall concept. Most of the pics and ideas I read on renotalk as well as online are usually industrial/scandi/country/retro theme when people adopt the brick wall idea. Have seen some on Home & Decor where brick wall got infused into a modern concept... hopefully we will achieve a unique living area we can call our own. Can't wait for the 3D drawings now!!

Songz, is that a question for me or kstoh? hahaha.... we got the Bosch Washer 28448SG model (8kg) and Bosch Dryer WTV-74100SG (7kg). comes with free stacking kit.

Hi Dwinsplace, thanks for the advise! We've chosen our 5.1 sound system set up already - managed to get an extremely good deal for a Denon AVR and Boston Acoustics satellite speakers and subwoofer all for $799 from Courts a few weeks ago. When we went to Adelphi, we were introduced to this same set up for easily $1.2k therabout... so really glad we managed to find a good deal. Meets our budget for a simple yet worthy 5.1 set up. Very excited, and can't wait to have them set up next time!

Hi guojiawen, So where did you buy your downlights from eventually?

Yippeee yayy!! Finally gotten an update on our key collection date! And that's on the morning of 15th May!! Woohooo~~

Can share which shop in jb you bought your fanco fan from?

congrats on the key collection!! So exciting, hope your reno works go smooth and according to expectations!

Some updates from me! Realise I usually post in the beginning of the week and then go MIA... haha... weekends always see us doing something or buying something for the house, that's why. We checked out Mega Discount Store at KLP on Saturday, and managed to finalise some items for our house because the pricing was really good after comparing with GAB and Parisilk. After all the research, and weighing out what we need... we have decided on these items. 1. Washer - frontload Bosch WAS-28448SG (Made in Germany, slightly high-end model but because we are such clean freaks we foresee that we need a sturdy and reliable washer more than anything else in the kitchen. So hence, budget increased and washer decided). Mega managed to match the price we saw from outside so we were super happy about it! 2. Dryer - since we got a Bosch washer, it then makes sense to get a Bosch dryer so that the stack-up look is complete. we got a 7kg vented dryer from Bosch. Excited about this stacked up look. Yippee! 3. Fridge - Hubby and I researched and decided that we should just get a basic fridge with a trustworthy brand. Hence we decided on a Mitsubishi Electric 2-door stainless steel fridge MR-F62E (traditional top freezer). We don't foresee ourselves doing heavy cooking anytime soon so this fridge should be more than big enough for us. 4. hob - Bosch PBD7331SG, black tempered glass 3 burner hob. I'm so happy to get a good pricing from Mega again for a Bosch product. And I've been eyeing this hob for the longest time... yayyy! Judging from the above, hubby and I are fans of German-made products... hahaha. Many Bosch items in our home next time, including a Bosch vacuum cleaner which we already have now. Lol. We haven't got the key collection date yet... sian... but other people from our block (same floor somemore) will be collecting their keys on 15th Apr. I reckon ours will be in the next 2 weeks or so. Very exciting! Hubby and I managed to sneak into our BTO project and for the first time saw our unit front-door. It was such a surreal feeling to see our very own place... even though it was just the front door. The unit was locked so obviously we couldn't see anything else besides the front door... and maybe the service yard. Hahaha. Happy to say that our block is close walking distance to the carpark, and our unit is not far from the elevator. Our rooms and service yard also do not face neighbouring blocks directly which helps in the privacy of our unit. Yippee yayy, so far so good, loving everything we see (from the outside at least).

hi OceanEleven, Yes please share... as we're also looking at Fisher & Paykel who is well-received for their fridge. And bottom freezer compartment... hmm really never experienced this before because traditionally used to top freezer compartment... not sure about it still...

congrats on the key collection news! so exciting! where are you studying? hope the flight shuttling isn't going to be too shiong for you... cheers

haha think we meant 2-door. not the side-by-side door fridge kind. Putting fridge in the corner meaning we don't have space to have 4-door fridge that open both ways.

So the weekend has been another busy busy weekend for hubby and I. We meet up with our ID, to review the 3D drawings (made many changes to design and colour) and also to choose our laminates. We will be overlaying the MBR toilet so we also went for tiles-shopping. ID brought us to Hafary @ Balestier Road... spoilt for choice indeed. Heard about Hafary from other forummers and finally stepped foot into it. It was a BUSY day... with many people tile-shopping with their contractors or IDs. So after spending 2.5hours there, we finally selected our tiles. So much time JUST on toilet tiles for one toilet! Can't imagine having to do a full tile selection for the whole house... but I imagine it to be fun albeit tiring. We have already opted in for doors and tiles by HDB earlier so that's not necessary for us. Really hope the tiles by HDB are not too fugly. I'm pretty pleased with our toilet tiles selection and very hopeful for it to turn out well. Will share the tile selections soon after I get to take a pic and upload them. We're going for a modern black-and-white theme in our living/dining area, which is also what our ID felt we should go for. hopefully the revised 3D drawings will make us agree with this choice even more. ID also brought us to *** Gallery for toilet sink and WC selection... so expensive!! ID mentioned this shop is good because they offer on-site warranty and will go replace anything on site if there's any defect with their good. I'm not sure if we really need that. Heritage and Lite Fusion weren't even that expensive... not sure if it's the brands that led to the price differentiation... but seriously that's just nuts. So we told our ID that we will source for these items on our own. ID also brought us to a lighting shop further down the road at Balestier... can't remember the shop's name suddenly. Also has this on-site and 1 year warranty thingy. Will come down to our place to replace any defect goods or bulbs blow etc... quoted us $1.9k for downlights for the whole house (besides the rooms) and lights for bomb shelter, kitchen, service yard, and bedrooms. One ceiling light for kitchen costs like $400+.... i can't come to terms with it!! So again, told ID we will source for lights ourselves separately. Geez... Can't wait for key collection! And seriously praying that the defects found in our unit will be kept to a minimum.... *crosses fingers*

Thanks Lala81... makes sense. We spoke to many friends who shared the same sentiment. So I guess a normal LED (perhaps SMART tv) would do for us. But bigger the better... hahaha

Wow interesting! Particularly interested in the touch sensor electrical switches. Was eyeing this on TB instead http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=2013.1.0.0.o2I0jW&scm=1007.10009.518.0&id=36917870670&pvid=1ccabb34-3ca7-44c4-9299-ad14b3e6d5a3 Will be very keen to hear your review on how practical the touch sensor switches are...

Haha thanks Songz! But just my 2 cents' worth... getting these hood and hob separately from those famous neighbourhood shops will give you a cheaper pricing compared to what's posted here.

I don't see it via links or website... i realised there's Bosch promo when I visited Parisilk, Goh Ah Bee and Lion City Co... all have stickers in their shop on the Bosch promo going on. Besides Bosch i think there were other promos... can't remember though.

Thanks Makito! yup am aware of the promo... hehe...

So for the samsung digital lock which you bought off Q100... who helped you with the installation may I ask? was it difficult?

Can PM me the contact for your LED downlight ? Thanks also!

Hi plainsharon, i'm also thinking of doing this digital lock but just for door only, and leave it as it is for the metal gate. And we were looking at the gateman one, which comes with a handle for the door. Does it mean they will need to also modify my current door/handle for the wooden door? Cheers