yarwood

Our budgets worked out to be about $320psf after some good PR to the builders from my hubby to include more premium marble and some other oak flooring materials.

Please know that it's very much possible for the architect and contractors to speed up the TOP paperwork process. For our own renovations, we had made some minor changes along the way (but our architects said we gave them quite a headache... :-) .... ) and they managed to handover to us just 2 days before our stated movers date. We also saw them send in an army of cleaners and they magically managed to sweep, wipe all the big glass windows and clean the whole house and toilets in a moments notice. They definitely showed a sense of urgency to allow us to move in without changing our mover's booking date.

sad for us too; it was a sunk cost that was totally necessary to enable us to build out to the maximum, the extended rear part of our new house.... at least our builder did a good job of it without any additional delays during the construction.

we spent >$60K to protect the government's sewer that ran straight through the back of our house.....! : )

Some forum members (myself included) have actually been discussing this on a similar thread: Builders Vs Architects. Please jump in on it and share your thoughts there together so we can all consolidate our experiences and benefit others, especially for the newcomers to this renovation world. We've all already started and even completed on our our individual journeys and what an amazing adventure it's been for all of us.

TRUE! We're very happy ( and a lot more relaxed now ... sometimes luck is necessary in these things ... ) to have found all these posts in renotalk to eventually "meet" our designers+builder for our recon. haha...... we used to always bring them korean snacks and tabao from the tiong bahru market (the Creative Director is a korean lady from italy! ) when we visit their studio for our meetings. As i have mentioned before, we are very thankful and don't take them for granted at all because we have seen the worse or worst in this building world -- re: our case against that st&pid id#ot (PM me for updates on this!). But at least now everything is peaceful and we are very house proud with the current outcome. We've also had "inspired & cost savings" experiences with the their project manager and architect as they are very experience men who has helped us save $ along the way through their use of intelligent materials to achieve our visual expectations which is to build a modern contemporary designed "villa" in the tropics. Good Luck and i wish everyone a continued positive journey on their builds!

Precisely! after the whole debacle with that selfish architect, we let our lawyers (still ongoing...!) and the BOA sort him out and left the rest of the construction and designing process to our brilliant Design and Build Team who has been responsible and exemplary in every way. PM me if you want more info.

hi Serangoony, Happy to see mrsyuki here and I think we have the same builders. i believe she is also using chen+choi collaborative. So can you also please include me in your group buy as i am sourcing original designer pieces to put in certain living spaces to our new home. My hubby and I have just returned from a Bali buying trip and now sourcing for modern designer ORIGINAL pieces. Our designers source from SPACE and XTRA but the Singapore prices are high. Sourcing from overseas can be cheaper but freight is the problem? I think a group buy is the solution to this! THANKS VERY MUCH!

Our designers build 2 large beautiful loft areas in our home! No small feat as we eventually also decided to change the roof tiles and increase the original ceiling height. All said and done, after many meetings for materials and oak floor colour selections (i am sooo picky!), I got my dream 2nd-3rd storey feel. I highly recommended everyone to go for introducing loft spaces into their homes if you are able to. It really gave us extra living areas for my hubby's private office and kid's reading area. You can find pictures of my house on my other posts.

Which type of sliding panels did you choose? wonder if it's the same as us!

Hello turnerdhr, how much were you able to rent out your Pinnacle 5-roomer after you got your ID to renovate? Please PM me? Did you renovate completely? Hacking of walls? added walk-in wardrobe? We are quite interested in a unit we recently viewed (for investment), but feel we need to change the theme as current owners taste might not be too suited to expats when we rent it out.

Oh my goodness...! tell me about it...! Our idiot ex-Architect was such and probably still is a selfish greedy man! We hired him and initially he was ok, but it was a matter of time before he slowly revealed his true colours. We are still filled with regret and anger as it was our fault in hiring him directly to save cost. He was just suppose to do his part and we wanted our main designers to do the design and planning of our bungalow. Aiyoh...! he started to slowly bill us additional for things that is supposed to be already included as part of his fees and scope of work. So low class! He also tried to chase away our really great Designer and hardworking Contractor because he wanted to control everything. Seriously we want to complain about him and his one-man show company to the Singapore Institute of Architects and the Board of Architects in Singapore. He is so cunning and rude. We caught him being rude and scolding (talking down to) our Designer and Builders (who have >30 years experience ok!). I wonder if we are talking about the same crap architect? We were so lucky our designers saved us and prevented situation from escalating into a catastrophe! Boo!!! to our ex-architect! Does anyone know how to make a complain against the architect?