snoozee

not sure what you are planning to do exactly. for inter terrace, there's not much room available to move the machinery around. so there's no way you can keep the "garage" and garden and tear down the house. normally everything goes and is rebuilt from scratch. as mentioned, talk to a builder or architect on the design and costing. budget wise prepare at least 1M.

the laminate sheets are printed with the wood grain pattern. the sheets are simply cut at an angle to create the pattern. with this said, you also incur higher cost since the wastage is higher.

your photos don't show much actually. if the part with the roof tiles are extended all the way to the rear boundary wall, then it is not legal. if there is still a 1m gap measured from the outside of the rear boundary wall to the edge where the tiled roof ends, then it is legal. simplest way to find out is to stand at the rear boundary wall and look up. if you see sky, then should be legal. if you see roof tiles, then "ahem". the "meaning" of sheltered is shelter from the sky, not from the sides. with reference to your 2nd photo, your opposite house which has the tiled slopping roof should be legal. the house next to it with the flat roof looks suspiciously illegal as the extension seems to be until the rear boundary wall.

depends on what type of light switch is being used it can be true.

tear down and rebuilt. you can't do reconstruction from single storey to 2.5 storey. the structure is unlikely to be able to take it. for rebuilt, you will need an architect to sign off the building plans. so either you hire an architect directly or go to a builder who can do all the submissions "in-house" for a full rebuilt, it depends on what would be your final built up area. based on current rate, usually for inter-terrace, it would be around 1M for a full rebuilt. since you have a big land area of 3000sqf, I would say 1M might not be sufficient if you are planning to maximize the allowable GFA. best is to talk to an architect or builder first to get a rough cost estimation.

IC = inspection chamber. all the waste water pipes in your house will lead to an IC. the last IC in the house will be connected to the public sewer. if you have only 1 IC in your house, that will be the last IC as well. you mentioned your yard is fully sheltered. I believe this could be an illegal addition done by the previous owner. accordingly to regulations, there should not be any structure built within the 2 m setback from the rear boundary. what is allowed is a roof eave or ledge which can be built up to 1m from the rear boundary. your concrete ceiling should be this roof eave/ledge. so anything after this roof eave/ledge is actually not allowed. Officially, if you want to keep this illegal structure, you can write in to URA to seek permissions to retain this structure since it was erected by the previous owners. if not, you will either need to tear it down or just keep quite about it and hope no one complains about it. else if URA find out, you will be fined.

some of these no hacking waterproofing services are just simply doing a waterproof layer on top of the existing tiled surface. if this waterproof layer is damaged, you are still back to square one.

there might be damage to the waterproofing layer beneath the toilet floor tiles. only way to rectify this is to hack away the toilet flooring and redo the waterproofing and re tile the whole floor and skirting.

hmmm... why is your contractor asking you to do waterproofing for the yard area? the yard area is supposed to be wet area but since it is outdoors, there's no need for waterproofing at all. doesn't make sense to me. also, there's no need to raise the yard level to be same as the IC level. honestly it's wasting $$$ on your side and more $$$ to be earned by the contractor.

the idea of the smoke detector is to warn you of impending fire approaching. would it be useful if the alarm sounds in the kitchen but you are in your room and you can't hear it ringing? depending on the type of smoke detector, false alarms might be triggered by heavy cooking. if you are concerned about aesthetics, there should not be much concern as the detectors are usually about 10cm in diameter and installed on the ceiling. in fact after installation, you will forget about it until it starts beeping due to low battery.

TS is the contractor. Down here say got keys to BTO. Another thread say he just rebuilt his landed house. Don’t know what to believe.

yup. but do check with contractors on the exact costing. what I have given you is a ballpark figure. but your contractor will be able to give you the more accurate quote after looking at your existing house and getting your detailed requirements. you also need to take into consideration on whether your existing 2nd storey layout have place to add a new staircase up to the attic or not. so it's not just about doing up the top floor.

no one installs smoke detectors inside the kitchen. will just keep activating when doing heavy cooking. most common place will be living room or outside the kitchen.

assuming that your house is in a 2 storey zone, you are looking at adding an attic to the existing house? you need to consider if the existing structure can take the additional RC floor/roof or not. need to engage a PE to look at the existing plans to do some calculations. depending on how much floor/roof space to built, I would say you are looking at maybe 300k to 400k. for adding toilet, you will need to see where is the existing toilet on the 2nd storey and then check the viability of having another toilet on the attic storey or not.

just had a closer look at your picture. the protrusion of the existing cabinet seems to be more than 20mm. that wall (I assume which is the one where the gate is mounted to) doesn't look like 600mm wide. looks to me to only about 500mm wide. so even if your new cabinets are 600mm deep, they will still not be flushed to the wall. if you are going to extend that wall to 600mm wide and keep the door opening to be same as existing, you will need to hack the opposite wall which you already mentioned. the stairs will need adjustment but you are constrained by the IC which is at the bottom of the stairs. if you do not hack the wall, your door opening will be smaller by maybe 100mm and you may need to customize a gate, door frame and door which might cost slightly more since this becomes a non-standard door size. the cheapest option is just live with the protrusion and install some corner bumpers to prevent knocking against the cabinet corners.

oven need less than 600mm of depth. search on google on the oven model you want and check out the dimensions.

I would suggest you keep your kitchen cabinet at 600mm rather than 620mm. I was told that contractors will do costing for cabinets based on multiples of 300 or 600mm. anything outside this "standard" multiples will cost slightly more due to more material wastage. this is because the standard plywood sheets comes in sizes of just slightly bigger than this 600mm multiple. for example, the plywood sheet is 2400mm x 1220mm. so if your cabinet is 600mm, the carpenters can cut 4 pieces of 600mm x 1200mm out of the sheet. but if your width is 620mm, they can only cut 3 pieces of 620mm x 1200mm out of that sheet. of cos that last bit of about 550mm x 1220mm still can be used for other things but wastage is higher since the dimensions of left over is odd sized already. hence it would be better to adjust your cabinet size rather than hack the wall to cater for a slightly deeper cabinet. After all, how much gains can you get from the extra 20mm of space?

smoke detector install outside your kitchen or just outside your bedroom so that you can hear the alarm at night even when you sleep. from june this year, all new homes (public and private) MUST have smoke detectors installed

this is the most common way which most home owners do. you will also get moonlight in at night if the moon is shining bright at night.

just install a bright light bulb in the area. turn it on when you need light. turn it off when you do not. most cost effective way.

your house has the ideal north-south facing which would not get the morning of afternoon sun. so not sure why you want to install roller blinds on the windows which are facing north. I also see your house have nice parquet flooring already installed. quite a waste to replace the hard wood flooring with vinyl. remember to buy a super long ladder so that you can change your lights for your new chandelier.

these should be aluminum composite panels which are normally used for roof. my car porch roof would also be using something similar so as to minimise the sound when rain falls on the roof. as long as the joints are all done properly and the flashing from the existing roof to the metal roof is done properly, it should be ok. aesthetics wise, it wouldn't be that nice as having a seamless roof all the way from the top of the roof all the way to the edge of your bedroom wall. one concern I have is the very low gradient of this new metal roof. as the roof is not steep enough, you might get some water ponding issues due to water can't flow properly especially at the joints area if not done properly. question is whether you want to save 10k to 12k to just do this metal roof (I'm assuming this metal roof is costing you 2k to 4k to do) or just spend the 14k to redo the entire roof. at least if you redo the entire roof, you have a bigger assurance that no leaks will happen and your room is well insulated from heat and sound for the next few decades. if you go with the metal roof extension, if any problems occur in future, you will have to spend $$$ to rectify the issues and might end up spending the same amount or even more than redoing the roof in the first place. honestly, if it was me, I would just redo the entire roof. but it's your money so your call on what you want to do. remember the saying, "penny wise, pound foolish".

I think your builder is suggesting using something like Klip Lok metal roofing materials. it won't be something like simple metal sheets. These metal roof will be installed with insulation below for heat and sound proofing so it is ok. for my house I will also be having this type of metal roof as well and my master bedroom is in the attic.

macpherson area have those 88x sqf landed houses which are still below 2M. opera estate don't have any listed below 2M anymore as of today. even for those units of land size of about 1300/1400sqf in opera estate are listed at 2M and up. the only "consolation" for those 1300/1400sqf units at opera estate is that usually they have more relax setback rules which allow for the house to be built on a slightly bigger footprint. as these units usually have a backlane at the back of the house, the house is allowed to be built until the rear boundary for 1st storey and setback of 1m (instead of usual 2m) for 2nd storey and the front setback is also more relaxed at 5m instead of the usual 7.5m.

If you had bought a single storey to rebuilt, it would have cost maybe another 900k or 1M to rebuild depending on your design. A&A would maybe cost you 300k or 400k depending on how extensive it is. so if add up total cost of buying price and renovation cost between buying the single storey and the 2 storey is about the same, then you would have been better off buying and rebuilt since you get a new house to what you design. But if doing A&A to the house can suit your needs and you can save 200k and up, then this would be better.