dietgalvon

Well, I've decided to do a full grandmother story of our journey with CX instead of a brief review. So it'd be in parts and I'll be writing on it when I feel like taking a break from wedding prep. WHY WE CHOSE CX I got to know of them through renotalk and many raved about their carpentry workmanship. We went to them, and J gives a good vibe probably due to his years of experience. Yup, till today, I do think he is very experienced and surely knows his carpentry works well. The determining factors eventually were: We could tell that J was very experienced Hearsay* of their carpentry workmanship *Hearsay because we were told that there ain't 'almost completed' projects for us to view. We decided to go with them still as I told the fiance with the amount of raves, we don't need to view their projects lah. What we were prepared for: Slow response (from others' reviews); I thought with popularity = more business = busy = slow response, and it's a good thing that they are busy because it means we are in good hands! No inputs on designs, no service (i.e. coordinating our own vendors which we outsourced) Higher costs (surely, their carpentry and overlaying are on the high side); even more expensive than some IDs I met Fiance is someone who values service (i.e. ID) more while I am okay with working harder on my own but I value quality more. My argument at that point was, that CX has a carpentry firm right below his office and it is no doubt that J has the right expertise. I convinced the fiance to go for quality, instead of service because simply put, "service we can do ourselves but quality we certainly need someone with the right expertise". As such, I expect nothing except QUALITY for the price I paid (let's not mention the amount of things we have to take on ourselves due to the lack of their involvement, which we do not blame at all, as after all, they are not IDs). BEFORE WORKS COMMENCED Slow response: Yes, even after confirming that we are engaging them, they took 2 weeks to contact us. We let them take their time because we believe that they are busy. E followed up on getting us to choose laminates and he requested the samples that we wanted. We didn't like how the laminates turned out but instead of getting them to request for us again, we decided to go to Lamintak ourselves because we believe they are busy and feel bad if we ask them to request for laminates again for us. (Yes it was hard having to decide on our own but we asked for it because we chose not to engage an ID lol.) And then there was a little lag in progress - so we requested for a meetup to discuss electrical plans. Some old school drawings were given to us and updated with laminates of our choice for generating the 3D drawings. E brought us to choose tiles Took some time to get back to us on the project schedule (which was not accurate anyway) Honestly, at this stage there was nothing I couldn’t stand about E because we gave them leeway knowing that they can be overwhelmed with projects. As you can tell, we are also very paisei to ask them to help us further because we know they are busy. So we took it upon ourselves in many aspects of this journey, even in the later parts of the journey. Most importantly, we practically free up ALL our weekends and change plans to fit their schedule so as not to cause delay on our end.

@blubugs Thank you for standing on my side! I started a thread here hoping people can benefit from my experience because I benefited from others who shared. I share both good and bad issues I encountered. I try to be as factual as I can but it's up to everyone here to judge.

@plady As mentioned, won't be sharing my contractor's details. On No. 7, PM-ed. @fingerscross Hahaha absolutely thankful for that! @teeteet Yup it is. PM-ed on Ah Jia's contact. @joko PM-ed

Hahaha prior to us making full payment already ignoring us, and after all the blunders during rectification works, we definitely won’t be looking for them anymore.

@Clarence Lye This much, I agree. There were so many good reviews of J&E and I got to know them from this forum myself. Did I not mention that they rectified the other defects or did people choose to only see that I posted about the defects that were unaddressed? I even posted that the guy who drilled stuff for us did a good job lah! However, it is also a fact that E ignored our texts and failed to rectify a good portion of defects. Surely not communication breakdown, because from what I experienced, E takes some time to respond, but will eventually respond when we call him. He replies fast on our questions but not when issues cropped up. @jez2014 Well, I've moved on after CX got the tilers to redo the worst issue i.e. the common toilet grouting. There were other defects caused by them but we were simply ignored. We got HDB to salvage the service yard door issue which was also bothering us and though it was not as perfect as what it came as, I decided to leave it as that. To be fair, 3 weeks after my last text, someone from CX did call me (after they redo the grouting) and I still owe her a call because she asked if there was anything else that they need to rectify for us. I told her I wanted to call her back because there were so many things I wanted to feedback on, but I have no intention of getting them to rectify anymore. I had enough of seeing more dents and cracks each time they come up. Surely my situation ain't as bad as those horror stories, but I think I did enough research to avoid that lah. Of course there are still people who had good experience and you guys should continue to recommend them! I'm just sharing based on my own experience. ANYWAY, I will be doing a review with the good, the bad and relevant pictures so, I guess till then.

@justiceleague11120 Great to hear that you had an awesome experience with J&E. Like I mentioned in the previous post, what I shared here is based on my experience only, and others might feel differently. There were many good reviews of their carpentry in this forum, which was why I engaged them eventually. You can share your pleasant experience and recommend people to them if you like! That said, on one glance, anything can look fine; it takes more than one glance to find a cracked tile. But workmanship is not based on ‘one glance’. In all honesty, J is very knowledgeable in carpentry and I’m not doubting that. That was why for my MBR wardrobe which I paid $4.4k for, other IDs quoted me only $3.3 to $3.5k but I still engaged them. It is no doubt that carpentry was one of the least problematic of the journey, but it is not perfect to the extent that it justifies the price difference and whatever we were made to go through. Thank you for your attempt to ‘educate’ me; but I have done a fair bit of research to know enough. We trust(ed) their expertise in carpentry, hence we paid a premium for it. For the Kompacplus, it was two rectangle pieces, not 2 pieces which was cut in diagonally to the corner, hence it wouldn’t cost more. This much, I’m sure. Thank you for letting me know what E said about our issues like the common toilet grouting and the aluminium window frames. Because he went totally radio silent on us. We approached HDB after E (or his tilers) did a slipshod job in patching the grouts. HDB acknowledged that the job was poorly done. But I did mention that recently CX got the tilers back to redo it and it’s okay now. This shows that the tilers can do a proper job, but they chose to spoil things instead (that’s worse than simply not doing anything at all). As the project manager, he ought to manage his tilers. If I have to manage his tilers, I would have outsourced all the tiling works. For the aluminium window frames, it is not possible I did not spot them before they came up to redo tiling works at the kitchen because I mentioned above I spent 5 hours cleaning the whole area scrapping off paint stains left by CX’s painters. If there were any defects, it would have been surfaced already. Also, when I sent the pictures to E, he did not respond at all. Instead he responded to you on my issue but did not rectify the obvious scratches and dents. I wonder why. Regarding “items are not to be delivered before handover”, I trust he is referring to the glass top which was scratched. Handover was on 29 July, the glass was delivered on 8 Aug, how is that before handover? I’ve reminded him to ask his guys to be careful with our new glass top. All black and white – in our whatsapp chat. Glad that your project was on time. Because unfortunately, ours took 11 weeks and 4 days for a “6 to 8 weeks” project which he estimated. Handover was supposed to be a week earlier but his reason for the delay was “having another handover on the same day”. In fact, even on handover day, the works are not completed and he told us to leave his padlock on so that his guys can complete the rest within the next few days (which they did not until weeks later). Ultimately, their rectification works (minus the common toilet grouting and the unaddressed defects) completed only in end September. Well, I wasn’t done with the review I wanted to write on them but your reply prompted me to write part of it out already. Sorry that this sounds more negative than I hoped. Being someone who does tonnes of research before deciding on a vendor, I am very upset with my own choice because my fiance actually preferred the last ID we met. He gave in to me, but I caused him more trouble because he was always the one who took leave to take care of these.

@boon PM-ed (hope I PM-ed the right person) @Waffles A lady from CX called us up recently and offered to re-do the common toilet grouting, and they did. Previously we got HDB's help to mitigate the damages on the service yard door, but I wasn't pleased that the damages were created in the first place (and they refuse to acknowledge). Nevertheless, it's a pain dealing with them and I would consider it as case closed for now. We weren't wow-ed by their workmanship to be honest (workmanship was the reason we didn't got for an ID despite the similar (or even cheaper) quotes). They did not fulfill the value we believed they could give us (in addition to the many blunders) so I wouldn't recommend them based on my experience. It may be different for others. @Jas28 1. PM-ed on windows, PD door was through my contractor 2. I won't be sharing their contact as I personally do not recommend them 3. Electrician is through my contractor 4. PM-ed

@Blade07 Yup, there are way too many things to pick on such that I'm still not done with the review on them. Anyway, if you're referring to the bomb shelter shelvings, here it is: https://ezbuy.sg/product/20000001769476.html.

@Ng Jia Minh PM-ed

@Lunffy Was told that the batteries can last 6 months to a year. My friend's low batt alert came when it's close to a year. The Samsung one has an emergency key (which I will keep with my mum who lives nearby) and I believe the Gateman also has its mechanism; I haven't really explored it! I used mydigitallock's service. @spikeling The seller is CnK21. @fingerscross We ain't even aggressive towards our contractor, we told them the issues, sent the pictures and put forth our enquiries as a matter-of-factly (no more smiley faces and all but surely not mean to them). But firstly, they denied the damages and when I further explained, they simply ignored us. So, we are quite at a loss, surely cannot be waiting for them forever. They had ignored us for 2 weeks.

Hello all, it had been 7 months since I first started this thread, and 5 months since renovation started. We have pretty much settled with whatever sh*t our contractor had left behind. E did not get back to us on our query on the VO, the damaged service yard doors and the lousy job their tiler had done. UPDATE ON COMMON TOILET GROUTING HDB officer came and left. He said CX's tiler did a poor job in patching up the grouts and they won't be able to rectify it. He advised that the re-grouting is too small a job that he doubt any contractor would do. He advised us to go back to CX. My fiance did consider, but I'm rather worried (hiccups after hiccups when they came over and worse, we are completely being ignored now). For now, we would want to get a tiler to redo it for us so do drop me a PM if you guys know any tiler who don't mind doing a small job like this. Previously, I told fiance that I want to leave a bad review here, to warn others against CX. He didn’t think that’s necessary because everyone makes the final choice themselves. But that day, he told me, “the least you could do is to leave a bad review for them”. LOL. I'll get to it, asap. In the meantime, posting one of the final items we got for our home. DIGITAL DOOR LOCKS This is seriously one of the best things I've bought for the home. I LOVE THEM TO BITS. It is so convenient entering and leaving the home now! Doors unlocked within 2s with one fingerprint, and doors locked automatically after you enter/leave the home. Background: Asking me to bring keys is one of the hardest things. The fiance and I got locked out of my home a couple of times because I rarely bring my keys lol. So, this is a necessity for us. Cons: My mum reminded us of the possibility of being locked out if any of the locks fail us (especially we have it on both the metal gate and main door), but I chose to go all out. Keyless is still my priority. Furthermore, my friend who installed both had told me that so far it's been good for her. I did a fair bit of research and decided to get my locks off qoo10. Take note that not all locks can work on HDB metal gate. I also sourced for my own installer because the recommended installer from qoo10 seller charges a bomb. Metal gate: Gateman F10 $127 Main door: Samsung DP930 $405 Installation: $300 (both) +$100 for Gateman remote control Here's the end product. The Samsung door lock goes well with my taobao door viewer (both are in rose gold)! Although my metal gate and main door locks comes with fingerprint/pin and fingerprint/tag key/pin respectively, you can only use one feature to unlock at any one time. You can deactivate any feature, but not use more than one. Fingerprint feature is my favorite because it takes only 2s to unlock (tag key too, but it's not keyless so I don't fancy). ^^ View from the inside of the home! Can you spot the Gateman remote control at the side? Well, I got the lock off qoo10 without opting in for the remote control because I don't know what it does. Turns out, the installer told us that it would be hard to unlock the Gateman lock without the remote control (they sell it for $100). The two options are: 1) Unlock using pin/fingerprint from the outside when you're inside the house. 2) Open the metal box of the lock using a key, reset 'something' which will open the gate, then lock the metal box back. It's impossible to unlock the metal gate lock from the inside and seriously to use a KEY to reset a digital door lock? Of course we chose to top up $100 for the remote. It opens when we click the 'open gate' button. JUST. SO. AWESOME.

@Songz Here they are: https://ezbuy.sg/product/20000004545478.html https://ezbuy.sg/product/buyforme.html?url=https%3a%2f%2fitem.taobao.com%2fitem.htm%3fid%3d536540657110%26_ezgpid%3d50000001082726

@Pooroldman Delivery to home, but they do charge a delivery fee.

@Peterborough PM-ed @laylign I chose Ice Maple @Songz They sure are comfy; one of them came with removable cover, would be better if both came with removable covers! Both are from taobao - about $150 each. @simks PM-ed @sgdollposse PM-ed you on windows vendor. For taobao purchases, we assembled mostly ourselves, save for the TV console that our electrician kindly helped us. Not all come with manuals and I do admit that it could be quite a headache. But the fiance managed to fix everything up because he can tell from the screws where they belong (lol). It would be a safe bet to get your contractor guys to help, though! As for skirting, main reason was that I like my furniture flushed to the wall and it looks more minimalist like that. Doesn't collect dust too!

@Clarence Lye Evorich did it for me. Initially my liaison told me that too, but I don't believe that trimming will result in the need to trim door because it's really thin. So I told him to get his guy to bring an extra piece for the main door nevertheless (if need to trim then I will not go ahead). But end up, it works fine. Lol. You need to confirm if the trimming is the same as mine though. Heard that there are some bulkier metal trimmings in the market.