althevin

Hi! So sorry about the late, late reply. I hope this reply is still helpful! We've been busy moving in, and haven't logged into renotalk for a while. I'll try to post some pictures of our place soon, but to answer your qn: Yes the hannah sofa is lovely Costwise, I paid slightly under 3k for the sofa but had to wait about 3 months for it to be delivered as each piece is made after confirmation, hence the ability to customise the different parts. You should check out their showroom, the other models are really beautiful too!

Hi kslicious, We didn't find anything fishy with our package from Scandinavian Design Center, service and delivery was extremely prompt! Item seems genuine and we're happy with the lights. If it's a popular design you're going after, chances are you'll find tons of replicas/knock offs on other sites, especially tao bao.

hi @trcd, the past few weeks have been filled with managing the defects, but everything is almost done now. Hits and misses all around. Will update with more pics and details soon!

It does! Thanks for the info! It's a much more economical alternative to the menu ladder which we've been eyeing. At least now we have some other options

sorry to hear about your bad experience, I hope the problems have been rectified by now. My friend went through a similar experience, which ended up with the contractor closing shop and disappearing. I guess they just reopened under a new name. Luckily they didn't pay the balance, and were able to use that difference to seek out other contractors to solve the problem. Can I have the name/ID as well? Thanks

Thanks for taking all the effort to show us around your house I really like how your kitchen turned out, the colours go together really well. Love the second charm console too! Did you get that towel ladder in your MBR locally? It looks really nice! I've been looking for something similiar

Week 11: Problem Solving Been a while since I've posted due to some hiccups which happened to our flooring So, our engineered wood flooring which we hired an external supplier to install took an extra week to install because 1) they underestimated the amount of material needed, and we had to wait 2 days for new material to arrive; 2) we removed the lights for our false ceiling and and there were days where they could not work due to the overcast skies which caused visibility in the house to be horrible. In addition to the above mentioned hiccups. upon our inspection of the completed flooring we found this: planks fit like a badly arranged jigsaw puzzle... difference of about 1mm, enough to trap the dust and dirt from the renovation works. Apparently, the planks had magically expanded in the 24 hours after they had finished the flooring (we did the inspection the day after we were notified it was done). What made this extremely upsetting for us was that the planks had been left on site 2 weeks prior to the installation for the planks to acclimatize, and such a problem should not have happened, or at least not to that degree. The uneven planks were not limited to one area, and the same problem was found across numerous planks in the living, dining and bedroom areas (which is almost my entire house lah). Upon further discussion with the boss, he concluded that it might have been because the planks were kept in a sealed plastic wrap in the boxes, so it was not able to acclimatize properly In the end, the compromised solution was for them to buffer the floor down, and to extend their workmanship warranty on the flooring. Not the most ideal solution, but we didn't want to drag it on for too long. We thought the problem was over, but we were once again surprised by their buffering team, whom did an excellent job on the flooring, but failed to not damage the newly laid skirting. After another discussion with the boss, we decided that they would replace all the damaged skirting after our carpentry is installed to avoid the scenario where the replaced skirting gets damaged for whatever reason. Hopefully once that is done there won't be any further problems! Compared to their other projects which we had personally viewed before engaging their services, the workmanship/project management for our flooring was not as ideal as we would have liked. Thankfully the boss is responsive and accountable, and responded really quickly to all of our complaints and requests and tried his best to resolve the problems for us. I can't imagine what we could have done if they denied all responsibility and refused to make the corrections without additional cost (like some other horror stories I've heard). Hopefully our decision to go for hardwood flooring vs tiles is worth it Carpentry is going up in the next couple of days, can't wait to see how that turns out. My fingers, toes and hair are crossed.

Thanks kslicious! Thank you for your kind words! We're reaching the end of the reno process, and we feel the most important qualities the ID should have are; 1) responsiveness 2) accountability. I believe no renovation will be 100% smooth, so it's important the ID reacts quickly and helps to solve any potential problems. Glad our experience helped with your choice

Week 9: Board of Waiting, Finally the Wood Floor is Here! Our biggest investment of our entire house is being installed this week, and it's so exciting For a consistent look, we opted for engineered oak planks to be laid in a herringbone pattern throughout the entire house (sans toilets and kitchen). It was half done when we visited last Sunday, and we can't wait to see the finished product the coming weekend. Flooring guy hard at work. After watching him work for 5 minutes, I understand why laying anything in herringbone costs extra. It's a lot of work! Also note the exposed air con trunking, which is where the fan coil unit will be for the dining area. I'm very pleased with both the air con and false ceiling works, you can hardly notice the trunking. a grainy picture of the almost completed flooring in bedroom 3. Tv console wall, with the ugly L shape trunking, of which we have decided to box up! Master Bedroom partition wall, doubles up as a headboard/pigeon hole for us to place hand phones and other miscellaneous stuff, as well as to create a space for a walk-in wardrobe. Unfortunately there was some miscom, and the wall went up before the flooring was done. We're unlikely to ever remove this wall, but if we do there will be an exposed gap in the flooring Everything is finally coming together, now we just need to finalize all our purchases and get them in time for installation. It's gonna be a busy weekend... shopping

Congrats on starting your reno! Might have missed out some parts of the prior discussion, but you might want to think about what you'll use each area for, and how much light are you used to having. E.g, if you plan to double up your dining area as a work/laptop area, you might want to consider an additional lighting source via a floor lamp, to be used when working. Personally I do not need my living area to be lit up, so in my existing place we only turn on 2 down lights. Floor/desk lamps give you the flexibility lacking from other light fixtures Before my aircon trunking forced me into having a false ceiling, I was considering track lights as it would minimize the exposed conduits. It gives you the flexibility of adjusting the light throw, and at the ceiling distance the current LEDs should cover a decent amount of area. I would recommend testing out the bulbs too, to see how it lights up the space in the shop before you decide. Hope this helps!

Hihi! Yeah we've come to terms with the exposed trunking in our toilet and the other corner of the room, but this one irritates us too much. Well our ID says we still have time to consider the box-up, so we'll stare at it somemore and see if we can accept it Didn't have much choice on the false ceiling though, we had to run the trunking around the entire living room due to our room placement and it looked like the ceiling of some shopping centre capark. Doesn't help that the better quality trunking we opted for is also much thicker than normal haha. Thanks for the advice! Looking forward to more pictures of your place!

Week 8: Decisions, decisions, decisions (and delays) Not much updates the past couple of weeks due to an unexpected crack on the exterior of the flat. The good news: our responsive ID made a quick appointment with HDB, and the HDB officer confirmed that it was just the plaster cracking off, and that there was no structural damage. The damage was repaired quickly by the tiler, who had to get a harness to access the exterior wall. The bad news: all works had to be halted and this pushed everything back by a full week. In other news, the air-con trunking is finally done. Due to the layout of the flat, it was a challenge to run the trunking across the entire flat to reach the 3rd bedroom, something which we didn't even consider until much later. We engaged a separate air-con contractor who was recommended by my parents, and I guess it does pay off to engage someone who specializes mainly in HDB installations - he came up with a couple of brilliant ideas which allowed us to hide most of the trunking, albeit with a false ceiling. However, there was a little delay due to a miscommunication between my ID's electrician and the air-con guy and some of the electrical wiring had to be re-done to make way for the trunking. What we did not expect was just how...ugly the remaining exposed trunking would be. So we're still considering doing more box ups to make it look less...ugly. Exposed trunking in the corner of our living room. On a positive note, it's the only one which really bugs us. As we mull over the trunking, the carpenter has been briefed and the carpentry should be done in the next couple of weeks. Laminate selection took us a good 3 weeks and countless visits to the site to see how it would look like in the areas to be applied. And we learnt to always, always choose more laminates that you think you need: sometimes what looks good in the booklet may look drastically different on a bigger sample piece. We picked only 3 samples as we were confident one of those would suffice, but ended up choosing another laminate which our ID ordered to make up the numbers. Over the weekend we headed back to GR Link and ended up confirming our order for: 1) Baron W888 WC for the master bedroom toilet. Even though we both love the Toto WCs, it's hard to beat the Baron W888 for value as it hits the sweet spot in terms of comfort, price and design. 2) The cheapest Inspire brand WC for the common toilet. Figured we wouldn't be using this one that often, so it didn't make sense to spend too much. 3) Joven 25L storage heater - to supply water to 2 toilets. May upgrade to the 35L in the future if we have kids, but 25L should serve for 2 of us given that we do not take long showers. We chose Joven as the dimensions fit the allocated space - we're hiding the heater in the false ceiling, and creating a cut out trap door (for the lack of a better word) to allow access. Glad we chose a storage heater; it makes the shower spaces look neater without the instant heaters and additional pipes. Our wooden floors are being installed this week, can't wait for that to be done. Will try to get more pics of the place when we visit this weekend, so far we're glad with the progress and quality of work done, not so much with the inevitable delays!

herringbone floors! that's my favourite pattern Did you get your tiler to cut the hexagon tiles in half for your toilet to get the half colour hexagons? If so, that's a really cool idea, never did cross my mind that such an option was possible. Love the effect!

Hi Chewie91, missed out your post, pls see my earlier reply to kamitani7 & d3n

thanks! It looks great, we'll probably be going with the same option as well. We were considering toto but...the price! Yeah the "made in" tag doesn't mean that much nowadays, it just indicates the final location where the item was finished. I would rather go for a established brand with good quality control and a proven reputation. It was actually your post on Hansgrohe that made me consider getting a better brand, so I have you to thank for my beautiful taps hi kamitani7 & d3n, I won't be sharing my quote as it will differ greatly depending on the requirements of your renovation and I believe it won't be as useful as a comparison tool. I would suggest meeting the different IDs with the same requirements, and from there you can do a direct comparison. That's what I did anyway. We're about 50% done with the renovation and so far the experience has been positive. Our ID is responsive and gets things done (with a little delay sometimes), and offers good suggestions and opinions. Price wise, I would say that Artistroom are priced above average and tend to favour the better (and more expensive) contractors/suppliers, but they aren't the most expensive ID around. You do get what you pay for, so far the work done has been great and I've no complaints about the wet works. Can't comment on carpentry as that isn't done yet! Hope this helps! Alvin