ricepapergirl

Hi twinklecloud! Loving the updates!! Did you solve your balcony swing issue in the end?? Also, for toilet accessories, don't forget to check out Song Cho! Lifetime guarantee or something for like non-rusting accessories!

Love the concept and also that you have made many plans that cater to your kids! Hanging around to see the final results!!

Hi twinklecloud!!! Haha I can only be fast leg fast hand for this kind of thing, I can only wait for my house keys otherwise! Also camping out to see what is happening for your place! How is it going? Smooth so far? So excited to see your place when it's all done up!

Ooh the renotalk forum update/redesign is kinder to IE users! I didn't used to be able to copy-paste into the forum posts or do quotes etc when I used IE from my work computer. Nice! Anyway, still twiddling my thumbs here one month + 1 week away from getting our keys, so I thought I would continue talking about our proposed purchases for the house... The kitchen is the place that we've thought the most about in terms of layout, and also the most expensive in terms of actual stuff we have to buy for it. As mentioned previously, I am still quite intent on having an Ikea kitchen, partially for the looks and partially for the price. Thanks to everyone who chipped in with comments on Ikea kitchen along the way! Firstly, here's a mock-up of my intended kitchen layout (via Ikea's kitchen planner): Basically it's an L-shaped kitchen with the fridge immediately to the right when you walk in through the door, followed by sink (and above-sink dish drainer behind casement doors), a movable extra unit (with the open shelving), the hob facing the door and a tall unit for the built-in oven and microwave. The area next to the tall unit is left empty because I don't intend to cover up the large pipes there in case next time there is HIP upgrading and they insist on changing the pipes there, and the block to the left of the pipes is the area where the rubbish chute is, which I also don't intend to cover up. The weird white block opposite the rubbish chute area is going to be my washing machine! The kitchen cabinet themselves, you may notice, aren't actually L-shaped, even though the kitchen is. Basically I don't have confidence that I will be able to use the corner-part of an L-shaped cabinet sufficiently well so I'm using the corner to store my LPG tanks. When I need to access the corner I will then move the movable unit with extra shelving away. This is just my preference, I understand some new ways of configuring corners can be quite good. Onto the actual items! For our fridge we are aiming for this Hitachi 5-door Made In Japan RE-5000S fridge. Our requirements of fridges was basically that it ought to last relatively long (and therefore need to have good reviews), best if it is from a Japanese brand (my personal preference) and it should be good at energy efficiency (best if 3-ticks). Turns out fridges which fulfill all three requirements are generally the Made-In-Japan 5/6-door fridges, which are around the $3000+ range. After discussing with the husband, we agreed that if Made In Japan gives us more peace-of-mind as they generally seem to last longer than the non-M-I-J ones, we wouldn't mind forking out the extra money, especially if they are 3-ticks and we would save on the annual cost of electricity as well. We picked Hitachi over Panasonic after staring at the features for a long time, and since we are having a black kitchen this black fridge would fit nicely in. We were given advice from several different colleagues rather early on in our house-hunting quest that they have Fujioh brand hoods and that the oil-collected tray works well. Although I would probably also get an air fryer as well, having a good exhaust hood would be great for stir-frying, so we looked around the different Fujiohs, and taking into account some other comments we've seen on the forums, picked the FS890R because its one of the Fujioh models that are still made in japan. We also had a rather impressive demonstration of how strong the suction can be at a Hoe Kee outlet when the uncle quite gamely took out a large and slightly hefty piece of plywood and showed how the hood's suction was good enough to hold it tightly against the hood itself! For hobs, I'm quite okay with either Fujioh or Rinnai hobs, but we'll probably go for the glass-bottomed ones (my mother-in-law has been using her glass-bottomed one for years and without any issues) for easy cleaning with a three-burner layout. Possibly either the Rinnai RB-39VSV or the Fujioh FG-3773 SVGL. Couldn't really decide on what kind of factors made sense for the built-in oven so we're thinking of getting the Bosch HBN331E2J. I've seen some other posts on baking websites where they mentioned it was pretty good. One thing I did decide for the oven was to mount it at waist-height instead of below-counter, for safety reasons and also to preserve my poor back lol. Finally, we will likely be drying our laundry the old fashioned way (bamboo poles, mounted at our balcony) so no need for a dryer for now, but we take heed from other people who mentioned that we might want to someday get a dryer if we have kids, so we're going for a front-load washing machine for now, in case we need to stack a dryer on top of it in the future. We were at a Harvey Norman branch one day when one of the salespeople very kindly decided to give us a quick rundown on washing machines, where he mentioned that European brands might be better than Asian brands for washing machines. Anyway, whether that is true or not, we do know of multiple households whose Electrolux-branded washing machines and dryers have served them well, so we've decided to go for the Electrolux EWF85743. That should be all for the kitchen for now! I do intend to, one day, get a mixer with a dough hook for making bread, but that's probably a phase 2 if not phase 3 or 4 purchase lol. Basics first!

Glad to be of help! We like Jottergoods too, though in the end we are buying our sofa from Castlery instead (we originally aimed for the Camper Sofa previously). We saw their stuff whilst walking around Jurong IMM, but we've never been to the Labrador one. Do tell whether the showroom there is any good!

I just checked out Jottergoods, most of their 2.5 seater Sofas are all 175cm. Can consider! Their stuff is quite nice. URL here for the catalogue and check out their FB for nicer photos. Think they only display their physical stuff at the Labrador and the Jurong IMM Star Living outlets. http://ecatalog.co/jottergoods/files/mobile/index.html

I should also mention that if you don't mind not being able to do a proper butt-test (like pure online shopping) I've been seeing quite a lot of smaller-sized nice sofas on Rakuten Global websites. They are mostly for the Japanese market so they take into account the much smaller room sizes. Let me know if you want some links!

Hi! Have you gone around to walk some of the stores themselves? Commune tends to have quite nice sofas, there's also Sofa Outlet (they are at Gul Circle but also at Marina Square which is great if you're not an extreme westie). Castlery.com also has pretty nice sofas, nice price range, and I just checked, their Spencer Sofa is 175cm wide, can consider. Other brands could be like Star Living or Jottergoods, similar look and feel for their sofas to what you are looking for, price range also should be within budget.

Wow! What a lovely set of photos! You have a lovely home! Your kitchen is lovely! Is it custom? Or... Ikea?

Living up to my fast hand fast leg reputation, we put in an order for our basin mixers, bath mixers, showers and kitchen tap yesterday! We decided to spring for Hansgrohe since the price is not that much more expensive than some of the taps we've seen around Hoe Kee etc, and the husband agrees that at least with Hansgrohe, it's a relatively stable brand with good reviews. The last thing we wanted was a tap that broke down or tarnished within the first 5 years or so, so we decided to get all our stuff from Hansgrohe. We went down yesterday morning to check out one of the dealers in Singapore (Aqualife in Beauty World Plaza) and really quite liked the basic Hansgrohe stuff that was also on sale. It's nice to be able to see them in real life and actually move the handles and stuff, I must say we were impressed by how sturdy it felt. Unfortunately for them (they were very nice!) the pricing even after discount was more expensive than what we would have paid if we bought it from Xtwostore.com, so we went home and put in an order. The disadvantage is that Xtwostore.com would ship the goods, so it would take upwards of a month or so, but since we had time (our key collection is end next month!) this wasn't an issue for us. If we needed the stuff relatively soon we probably would have bought from Aqualife. We bought these from Xtwostore.com: 3 pieces of Logis Single Lever Basin Mixer 100 with pop-up waste set: http://www.xtwostore.com/hansgrohe-logis-single-lever-basin-mixer-100-with-pop-up-waste-chrome.html 3 pieces of Logis Single Lever Bath Mixer: http://www.xtwostore.com/hansgrohe-logis-single-lever-bath-mixer.html 3 pieces of Crometta 100 Multi Shower Set 0.90M: http://www.xtwostore.com/hansgrohe-crometta-100-multi-shower-set-0-90-m-white-chrome.html For our kitchen, one Focus S (260) Single Lever Kitchen Mixer: http://www.xtwostore.com/hansgrohe-focus-s-single-lever-kitchen-mixer.html We must have narrowly just gone under 31.5kg because the shipping cost was 299 euros instead of 499 euros which I had gotten in a previous set of planned purchases. All in all it was about 850 euros which comes up to around S$1400. This is around $500 cheaper than the Singapore prices... Hopefully I don't get hit by extra taxes!

Wow that is some view!

Gong xi fa cai to you too twinklecloud! Looking forward to seeing the transformation as well!

Been really quiet because not much has happened over the lunar new year! I am however internally quite excited that key handover is going to be end next month which means things can get started! Our hacking permits have been approved already and Andrew is coming up with a reno sequence and timeline soon. Also realizing recently that although we have informed HDB that the owners are extending their stay in our place for two months, there's still some small stuff that we forgot we needed to do after the 2nd appointment, like go down to the Town Council to start paying our conservancy charges (to be reimbursed by the owners) and to change our address within 28 days at the NPP (even though we are not living there per se!). Things to do! Also will be checking out the prices and range of taps and mixers and showers this weekend to see whether it's more worth it to buy locally (we're aiming for Hansgrohe) or to buy online from XTwo.com because although the latter is loads cheaper, with the shipping in and the one month shipping wait it may or may not make the most sense. We're also slowly checking through which places we can start making purchases for etc. Exciting times!

Picture looks amazing! Happy CNY and congrats on moving in!!

Met with Andrew today to walk through Hafary together! We actually went down to the Hafary at TradeHub21 by ourselves before, and then to Liang Seng Hin at Balestier (and picked up some samples) and then to the Eunos Hafary, all before choosing an ID! So we had a rough idea of what kind of tiles we wanted already. Even so, it was quite useful having an ID around, and he really did help value-add to the experience! Firstly, our tiles selected! We chose a light grey concrete-like 60x60 tile for the living + dining room, and a rougher dark grey slate 30 x 60 for the balcony. The kitchen floor will be made out of wood-like tiles with long 3D white subway tiles for the backsplash. Rest of the walls in the kitchen will be plastered and painted. The toilet wall tiles gave us the most headache! We initially wanted a much darker grey/black slate floor for the toilets, when our ID mentioned that soap scum will easily show up on tiles that are too dark, especially since we chose a tile with a rough texture for the non-slip-ness. When soapy water flows past our floor tiles, the rough texture will trap some of the water and the soap scum will show up when the water is dried. I've heard of this being mentioned on the forums but I told him I really didn't want light coloured floors because they would be **** to maintain (I used to be in charge of washing all the toilet floors in my parents' house and used to curse the white floor tiles for how easily it got dirty and how much work I had to put in to clean the grout lines), but fortunately he said that the soap scum issue wouldn't be that obvious so long as we didn't choose black tiles, so we got a grey coloured tile instead, which worked for both the situations! Yay! But as a result, some of the light grey toilet wall tiles we were contemplating didn't seem to contrast enough with our slightly-more-light-grey floor tiles, so we spent most of our time there just trying to find toilet wall tiles that would work. A few of our possible options were out of stock, but eventually we decided on the white hexagonal tiles, with some blue and black ones interspersed in the walls. I am quite excited! What we thought was really useful about having our ID around is really the real-world-use advice he could give us, like the soap scum one. He also helped us check the texture of the matt floor tiles we chose, to see whether the roughness would trap dirt etc over time and make the tiles duller. For tiles we picked for non-slip effect, he even ran and got some water to pour on the tile and rubbed it to check whether it really would be non-slip when wet. Sometimes when we were contemplating one tile vs the other, he would pull up photos of other projects he's done before to show us the effect of a similar tile, which helped us envision how it would work on a larger scale basis (we decided not to go for white tiles with a slightly more marble look because of that). When I mentioned I wanted white subway tiles as my kitchen backsplash, he showed us a recent example and mentioned that his client had used black grout with the white subway tiles, an idea I actually already decided on but wasn't too sure whether it would work in real life, so it was nice to know that it turned out well for someone else. All in all, tile selection was actually pretty fun for us, since it meant we were one more step closer to seeing our new home!

Been really quiet for the last few weeks but today was officially our 2nd HDB appointment/completion date! Our lawyer went down for us though because the owner asked for 2 months extension so we also cannot collect key etc. But at least on paper we now own an EM! I guess I can talk a bit about the IDs we have approached, and about the ID we are about to confirm this weekend. We started planning our house really early since we had a long period of time after signing the OTP till completion date (From early Oct 2015 till now, almost 4 months!). I didn't really have time to sort through all the different calls and SMSes that might come if we used Renotalk's Get a Quote or similar services from etc, so we decided only to ping people who have been recommended either by friends or by renotalkers. ID#1: Emily from A** S**** D***** We got the contact from one of the renotalkers but didn't end up with the same person from the company. Emily was quite patient with us and was one of the first IDs we physically spoke to. We sent her our floorplan and an entire detailed list of what works were needed, and she also quite patiently explained many things to us, like advising us on the different prices of different types of doors and windows. I think she could tell that we didn't really need an ID for the space planning or the design/look and feel of the house so she also never made suggestions on those lines. In the end we never really clicked with her, but her quote helped us to modify our expected budget higher. I can't actually pinpoint anything we were unhappy about with her, just, no connection? So dropped. ID#2: Byron from H******* H******** My colleague's ID, who was also her mother's ID, so came with very high recommendations. One of the first to send us back a detailed quotation based on our detailed list of works, but went on long holiday after that so we only met up with him a month later. He has a good eye for design, but also quite strong on what should or should not be done. We took on some of his suggestions but I was a bit deterred by how much he would insist on his way. For example I mentioned that the existing cornices were quite pretty (and retro) and also that the existing window grilles are quite nice and if we could keep it I wouldn't mind, but he was very shocked and commented that it would definitely not fit, even after I said I really like the window grilles. His quote was lower than Emily's and he seemed quite competent, and was shortlisted. In the end we felt more comfortable with our chosen ID, so we dropped him. Carpenter#1: Dylan from Classic Furniture Carpenter with good handiwork recommended by my old JC mate who just had his kitchen and wardrobes done by them. He also said his parents' kitchen and wardrobes done by Classic is still going strong. Although I wanted an Ikea kitchen we gave them a try. Dylan was responsive and did a few sketches for us, but in the end the quote was too so we gave it up. ID#3: Patrick from I****D***** Recommended by my colleague. He seemed rather refreshing when we met up with him, very open about how if we wanted to save money we could just get our kitchen from Ikea, our lights and fans installed by Chan Huat, our aircon installed by Gain City, our vinyl flooring installed by the supplier, and the painting done by Nippon, and he will help coordinate everything. This, he mentioned, would help in the pricing. I was quite willing to do so though my husband felt like that might be more work than expected. Finally though, his quote was super non-detailed, and missing so many details that I got too tired dealing with him. Dropped. ID#4: Andrew from D*****G*** Recommended by fellow renotalker and reno-twin twinklecloud. Called him up and the first thing he said was whether we could speak in Mandarin, so if you have issues with Mandarin it might be difficult working with him. Fortunately my spoken mandarin is passable. Met up with him and immediately felt very comforted that he understood our EM unit very well, since he's done renovation for many EMs of the same generation some years back. Even when we described the indented spaces in the walls above the staircase landing, and how we wanted to "fill in the holes", something which we've had to resort to showing photos and drawing pictures when we describe it to other IDs, he immediately got it and asked whether we wanted to fill it in. He also was very knowledgeable about other things with the EM and also understood some of the demands we wanted and seemed to be on the same wavelength. His quote was also surprisingly low (so much so my husband got worried that it was too good to be true!) but still quite detailed. After some weeks of thinking it over, we finally settled on hiring him, so we're going to meet up this weekend to sign and also go look at tiles together. So that's it! I left out some of the details on how we prepared the original detailed list of works etc, and actually there were two IDs who we contacted and who contacted us for meetings but we kept not being free on those dates (or the location was very out of the way for us) so in the end we gave them up without ever meeting them...Oops. Haha.

Hi twinklecloud! You mentioned some posts back on how to add your blog link to the bottom of the post. It's actually your forum signature. You can edit your forum signature by scrolling to the top of the page, top right-hand corner where you click on your username (twinklecloud) and in the menu you should click "My Settings". Then in the My Settings page you should click on "Signature" on the left hand side column. There you can just put whatever you like in the signature box and it will show up at the bottom of every forum reply/post you make. This includes links (like a link to your T-blog). Hope that helps!

Oooh your balcony roof is up!! Nice nice! How do you intend to clean it? Reaching out from the MBR window? Cos yours is glass so if you don't clean sometimes you can see the shadow of the debris etc from below. We thought about it for a bit but my husband says he prefers to clean the floor of the balcony than have to clean the roof of the balcony from above. I just checked back on your picture of your stairs, just wondering whether you would be building anything underneath the staircase? Like storage area? Maybe if that wall is up it would look more like your original mood picture?

Hi twinklecloud! The swing! Wow! I really hope you can do it! wouldn't you have to suspend it from your new roof at the balcony? So long as the new roof can sustain the weight it should be fine? Alternatively how about those swings that come with the frames themselves? Like the swing chairs here: http://www.fortytwo.sg/living-room/seating/swinging-chairs.html. I think Hipvan also has some. Or the old school garden swings?? I had one of these when I was a kid and it would be really fun to have one I think: http://www.ongkianhim.com/products/residential_garden_swings/

Hi twinklecloud! Don't worry, there is no such thing as overcater for electrical points like Ks Toh said! You never knew what new gadgets will become super important in the future that you suddenly need power for. 5-10 years ago we didn't all have tablets and laptops and smart TVs in every room etc. Agree with the TV point issue that Ks Toh mentioned, I was referring to cable TV point. If you buy a TV recently most of them should have digital antenna for free-to-air channels if you don't want to connect to cable or Mio TV or to Viewqwest etc. For furniture, just ask the shop. We usually will just ask them for how long they can keep the furniture for us after purchase and have gotten varying duration, the longest we've heard is 3 months. Most places will hold for 1 to 2 months, but not too sure about sale items.

Ooh thanks for the tip! Is AZ Interior the same people at Ikea who do the kitchen? Or different?

Hi foxygal! Yeah I think Ikea kitchen works well in my case because I don't intend to box up my kitchen pipes and don't intend for the kitchen to cover the entire wall (mine is going to be sort of like an L-shaped kitchen), so no need to worry that much about needing to use cover panels to box up the unused areas. Also, no gas pipes cos got no citygas . I just wonder whether the issue is just getting the contractor to help run the water pipes low (under the cabinets where the legs are) and to run the electrical lines below the top cabinets, or there's more systemic issues than that. In our case, I'm the one who cleans more but I actually prefer non-customised carpentry! Haha to each their own? But we look out for other things when considering cleaning, like our bookshelves and TV consoles need to have doors, and we look for lights that don't accumulate too much dust. Hi Changbp! Thanks for the information!! I managed to pick up this price list from Ikea itself, sounds like they do already take into account the possibility of cutting the frame for the water outlet for the sink. I wonder whether it's just the electrical cables I have to worry about if so (as I have no citygas lines to worry about).

Wow wow wow! So much new information! I'm totally like you, I want to do all my shopping now! I even know where I want to buy them and how much they are! But cannot ;_; because I can only collect my keys in March. Weep. Haha so many similarities! We love Commune too but have a rounded-corner restriction on our furniture, so we will probably only get their dining table. So excited about your kitchen right now! Really hope to see it when it's done! Living vicariously through your blue kitchen!!

Nice to catch up on your reno! Seems to be coming along quite well, so many small decisions to make! Glad that my suggestion of the sliding door for the MBR worked out! For the electricals, like others have mentioned, it's useful to just tally up what gadgets you currently use. One good way is just to walk around your current place and count the number of sockets you're using, separated by rooms. For you, because you have kids as well, need to take into account their electrical needs when they grow up as well for the kids rooms (so need to allocate modem, computer, printer, desk lamp, speakers for kids rooms too?). For me, because I intend to change the layout of my rooms in the future, I also have to take into account that my sockets would need to spaced throughout the rooms so that in the future, if I move where my bed or my table is in the room, there's still a power socket nearby. So I am already planning for quite a high electrical cost, because for some rooms I will have more points that I would need at any one time. Same with TV points (so I intend to get two TV points in the living room, one on each opposing wall). Not sure whether that helps. Just a quick look at your electrical estimates: - any extra points for fans? I remember you mentioned you might have a wall-mounted fan for your kitchen? I would put at least one point at the dining area just for the fan since I'm not having a ceiling fan elsewhere from the living room. - yard - no power point for the washing machine? Dryer? - kitchen - this is one of those places I could count my devices. And roughly figure out how many would need to be plugged in concurrently (rice cooker, maybe air fryer, maybe water pot/kettle, microwave? mixer?) - I had some powerpoints on my second floor hallway in case I needed to charge my Roomba there or put some lamps/fans there. Love the wooden blinds (though we're likely to have curtains for ourselves) and actually prefer the white painted under-staircase look. Or whatever colour is your wall, match the colour. Easier to maintain, if dirty just paint over! Loving the roof, hoping it would turn out well for you! Did you have to get some sort of permit to build it?

Been away for a bit, sorry for the silence! We were in Japan for a 10-day holiday and are finally back! Not much to update except that we are possibly going to confirm our ID/contractor this weekend if all goes well! Meanwhile, whilst we were in Japan I managed to settle a piece of furniture! It's quite an esoteric piece though haha. I've been collecting second-hand kimono since my teens and have amassed quite a collection, and one of my dreams was to have a proper japanese kiri tansu (paulownia wood chest of drawers) to store it in. It's really difficult to find proper kiri tansus in Singapore since you can imagine there's a lack of demand for them (they are very specialised to keep kimonos in them and are good for the humidity and to keep out bugs and to protect the kimono in case of fire). There are some places online that sell them but it's not clear whether they are selling proper kiri tansus (built by master craftsmen) or knock-offs, plus many of them don't really ship furniture overseas (they cater to japanese domestic market). So I was very lucky that on our trip, I happened to mention that I was in the market for a kiri tansu to the kimono rental place, and the lady in charge said that she could help to sell us one! She uses the same brand in her own shop so I could see for myself the quality (hers had been in constant use for 7 years!) and the price was within my budget, even after including shipping to Singapore! I only needed it to be shipped after my place was ready so we got them to ship it in time to reach by July. I paid in full there and then in Japan. Now super excited for it to come! I don't even know where in my house I'm going to put it! I'm getting two of the 5 drawer ones!