HnM

Yep babymonsta, think all of us have that window but with that, it does pose some problem with the placement of the cabinets etc

Hi Donno, No actually, that will involve changing the location of the water piping and the depth of that ingress at the current sink area is smaller than the other side.

Yes you are right. Our fridge will be blocking the louver window. But after weighing the pros and cons, that’s the most ideal location to put the fridge we think. The casement window if fully open, my wife will not be able to close it. For me, I will need to stretch to close it. I will buy her an umbrella to close the windows… hehe cheers, H

Hi Donno, Indeed the kitchen is really small. I guess HDB don't encourage family to cook at home nowadays? lol Anyway there are a few layouts for the kitchen the IDs and contractors we met proposed. Main difference is where to put the fridge. Put the fridge at the window location - which we objected straight away because our home is very WARM and currently wind is coming from that direction. And we want a bright kitchen so will try not to block any natural light sources. Hack away the wall to the service yard and put the fridge in the service yard. This will make the kitchen looks bigger. But will also means that we will have to install windows at the service yard. If not, the fridge will be dusty. – option out too because I cannot accept the concept of having a fridge in the service yard. Just looks weird to me. Maybe only me I guess. At the location we've chosenHere is the layout of our kitchen (almost completed. Left only some plumbing work to be done): …view from service yard… …view from entrance… cheers, H

hihi everyone... really sorry.. been real busy right after our vacation with multiple business trips… finally can “eat a small snake” during office hour again.. hehe.. Our home is almost ready!! At least our wardrobe is up… Workmanship is not as perfect as what we hope for.. but overall look and feel we are loving it! Here is a pic of our wardrobe: Have a good evening! @ Donno, will share with you on our final kitchen layout in the next post. …H

No problem! Haven't gotten down to using the stuff yet hahaha

Okay, after a long hiatus, the Mdm is finally back to post on her shopping haul. First of our purchases came from Amazon and all of them came with FREE international shipping! All items arrived within less than two weeks Kyocera Revolution Series 5-1/2-Inch Santoku Knife and Y Peeler Set, Black simplehuman Wall Mount Grocery Bag Dispenser, Stainless Steel T-fal C111SC Signature Nonstick Thermo-Spot Heat Indicator Cookware Set, 12-Piece, Black KOHLER K-596-CP Simplice Single-Hole Pull-down Kitchen Faucet, Polished Chrome Corelle Livingware 16 piece Dinnerware Set, Service for 4, Classic Café Blue If anyone is going Japan, the Kyocera seems to be sold much cheaper there! Blades are made in Japan

Thanks Looneygas, we did think of that as an afterthought but guess it was too late and well... ... we took the easy way out to pay

H, the Hubby said that I have to post on aircon before I can post on shopping (even though that’s my favorite part of renovation). So here goes, everything happened too quickly and Mr C was rushing us to have all the drilling done for the bathrooms before he start on the cement screed so we had to get the proposed piping layout from Mr C and below was what he proposed. What we saw later was We didn’t foresee the huge casing that meet us when we went to visit after the piping were up. We know the trucking will be big but we didn’t realised it was that HUGE. And the other thing that slipped our mind was that the wall for Bedroom 3 was supposed to be knocked off to be replaced by glass hence the piping would need to be enclosed within a beam. (Along the Hallway) (Within the MBR) After much sulking, we decided to bit the bullet and ask Mr C to box up for the trucking within the MBR and to conceal the piping for Bedroom 3 within the beam. We also got the aircon man to re-run the trucking within Bedroom 2 so that the hallway looks neater. It was a painful and expensive lesson learnt.

This is M, the Madam posting H, the Hubby did not mention the countless discussions we had for the critical items in the house. So after all the discussions, we settled on the items below which were of utmost importance to us: - Half glass wall for bedroom 3 to make the living room looks bigger- Overlay of the toilet tiles because our original tiles were similar to the tiles used for the coffee shop near our blocks. - Craft stone brick walls for the living room- Sufficient wardrobe space for the Madam- Cabinets for the kitchen- FANs for the super duper hot home- The Scandinavian theme

Hi roberttty, you must be our neighbor? have you started your reno?

Oh Aircon Aircon! Why you like that! Our first regret.. (Hope not too many left to come..) It didn't take too long before we had our first regret! .... to be continued....

Many activities happened after we got our key and here is a summary.. Time seems going so fast that we asked ourselves if we should slow down? LOL.. but thought we can't wait to have our own house! Summary: 1) 13 May 2015 - Key collection @ HDB. After that went straight to the house to check for defects 2) 22 May 2015 - First meeting with C from Posh Home @ bugis 3) 27 May 2015 - Verbally accepted the quotation 4) 30 May 2015 - Officially signed the contract and paid the 10% deposit @ Posh Home and went to Hafary Showroom @ Eunos to select the tiles for our 2 toilets overlay. We took 1hr to select only ONE tiles type (this shows how indecisive I am) 5) 4 Jun 2015 - Aircon piping done -> A real NIGHTMARE after we saw it! (will describe in the next post) 6) 5 Jun 2015 - Cement screed of the walls in the toilets and overlay of the tiles started 7) 8 Jun 2015 - Demolished of Wall @ Bedroom 3 started 8) 10 Jun 2015 - All our "made in china" (taobao) items arrived and almost filled the Master Bedroom 9) 12 Jun 2015 - Our craftstone TV feature wall completed 10) 13 Jun 2015 - Selection of Laminates for the wardrobe and cabinets and choosing the colors for the paint 11) 15 Jun 2015 - Re-run of the Aircon piping done Isn't it too fast? Our home is like half way completed! ... All our "made in china"...

Choosing the right contractor/ID is really very difficult for us. Maybe because we are very fussy (want cheap value for money and good) or maybe because we have a budget that did not get them excited? Anyway, we selected quite a number of contractor/ID to meet. Some are recommended in renotalk, some are from . G from Story of Us – The most expensive quotation we got, but in term of design it is also one of the best. Both of us were impressed. But too bad… the quotation after revision still exceeded our budget by a significant amount… If we signed with him, every day I will have to go downstairs eat grass!) L from Icon – One of the worse we met. We told her what we wanted to do, and she just provided us with a quotation. No additional design proposed or any value added advice given. In this case why we choose an ID instead of a contractor. She was the first to be out of our selection. Contractor J & E – No chance to meet up with this popular contractor. He refused to meet us before we got our key. And when we got our key, he didn’t turn up on our first meeting. =( C & H from Diva’s – C is the ID and H is the project manager. First quotation seems reasonable but 2nd quotation varies too much. Contractor N from Renoguyz – I don’t want to judge by his outlook because I am also very sloppy… haha… He is also very blunt and honest. If it is not nice, he will voice out. His quotation is the lowest we got. L from Chapter One - L introduced us to new material (mild steel) for the Bedroom 3 glass wall and we seem to click well with him. But the quotation before GST is already over our budget. D from D workshop - D “put us aeroplane” for 2 times! We saw his design portfolio from facebook and were really impressed by his work. So we arranged to meet up with him but few days before the meeting he called and said he could not take in more projects. (Maybe it’s because he got scared away by our budget we have). Out of our expectation, a few weeks later he called and asked us if we are still interested in getting him to do our reno. This got us excited again!! We are even prepared to increase our budget because of his design. BUT on the same day, he rejected us again saying with the budget we got, he cannot do much! =’( C from Posh Home - Actually we are very tired to meet anymore IDs/Contractors. We wanted to award the project to Contractor N but were afraid that we could not work with him so decided to try the last one at the very last minute. C introduces us to many different mechanism for the wardrobe and shoe cabinet that got us impressed so we gave him a tight timeline to provide us with a quotation. Didn’t expect the quotation to come out to be quite reasonable. Not the cheapest but we decided to pay the extra for the difference mechanism and design. Not sure if we had made the right decision but we had signed with him.