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I have gathered much tips and information from this forum prior to my renovation, it is perhaps now time for me to contribute. Unit: 5I Resale @ 1184 sqft Theme: Vaguely minimalist Duration: 12 weeks (until 1st handover) Budget: 100,000 (spending thus far: 93,378) We chose this unit after only 6 viewings; we love the layout and window placements, the windows are either north or south facing, and the house is windy and brightly lit all day / all year round. Furthermore, with our kitchen window facing north, we can make a little herbs garden! Floor Plan:

5 years on, with 2 kids in came into our family, we decided with heavy heart to move on from our first humble home. As our family grew bigger with my mum staying with us, we finally made our commitment to shift from a 4rm SOBF at Strathmore Ave to our future new 5rm resale just nearby, Jalan Rumah Tinggi. One might question why do we want to move away from one of the most convenient location to location that has only 1 bus serving the estate. Though is up a "hill", it is just behind Alexandra Ikea, ABC hawker centre, Alexandra Village, Queensway Shopping Centre. What's more, it is a quiet location. Layout of the 5-rm unit. The owner had bought the recess area which we loved it. Good for shoes and umbrellas storage. The owner had also removed the store, but we will be removing the wall between the kitchen and living room anyway and will be creating a store at another location. We are still waiting for the bank to approve our loan then we can proceed with all the necessary appointments with HDB to get the paper work done.

Greetings! Wifey and I applied for a 5RM HDB @ Canberra, which is situated between Yishun and Sembawang. Canberra is a non-matured estate with growing facilities. We hope that things will get better, especially when the new Canberra MRT is operational. So let's start off with our floorplan. As ours is from a SOBF: 1) No flooring is included for living and bedrooms - No issues as we wanted a different tiles design. 2) Kitchen wall is included - We wanted an open & close concept kitchen, so this wall must go. 3) Sanitary fittings are included - After looking at the HDB sanitary fittings (toilet bowls, toilet basins, shower heads), they are acceptable and we will not be changing them to save costs. Here is a video of the "Before" reno: Defects Rectification Fortunately, the number of defects are minimal. We had minor defects. The more notable ones are; hairline cracks on wall, rusty door hinges, low water pressure at service yard. BSC took 2 weeks to do the rectifications. Before planning for renovation, I read through this thread which contains useful knowledge from other home owners. This has helped shaped my plans and is a must read for all first time home owners. https://www.renotalk.com/forum/topic/19954-materials-that-u-regret-using-installing/ We wanted to make our home look bright, open and lively. We did not want our home to have a "hotel" feel. Therefore we would be going for a bright woody/scandi feel with shades of white, brown, grey. Below is an example of our moodboard, some of which were obtained from other Renotalkers here.

My turn, my turn to post finally! same here, has been browsing this forum since i got my unit till i got my keys. This is a hybrid flat. What hybrid? becoz its a mix btw a new house and old, having new and old features, best of all worlds..haha. 1) the unit is 123sqm (only older generation 5Rm flats have this size i guess.) --old 2) i have neighbours on the same level that is corridor unit (new BTO flats are all corner flats now) --old 3) i have a service yard! -- new 4) my rubbish chute is outside the house! (go away cockroaches!)-- new There you go, a Hybrid! haha...i named it myself....please don't go to HDB and say you wanna buy a Hybrid flat!!! no such thing...i made this up! ok, here goes. floor plan. http://

QUICK LINKS 1. Floor plan 2. Floors, doors, and windows 3. Plans, drawings, and inspiration 4. Amazon shopping 5. Post hacking photos 6. Two weeks into reno photos 7. Appliances 8. Three weeks update 9. Nearly finished update

Hi Everyone, We finally collected our keys at the end of March and we hurriedly carried out all the necessary rituals (door opening & 动土) so that technically we have done what we should before Qing Ming festival. Hacking started on last Monday and we are so looking forward to completion and moving into our own place. My fiancé works in the architecture industry so he’s the brainchild of our place’s design. We will only be engaging contractors and doing all the coordination on our own. In order to get me involved and make me have a “we created this place together” feel, he asked for my inputs and we'll be doing some DIYs for our home as well. Our journey starts from here…. Floorplan: Draft design by the fiance: Original condition of the house. Good thing that it’s chui since we will hack everything away: Original condition of Living Room: Original Condition of Hallway to rooms, dining area and kitchen entrance: Original Condition of Kitchen: . Original Condition of Master Toilet: Since we are the one doing all the coordination work, the poor fiance had to do all the measurements and works himself Self measurement indications for the reno contractors: The works has started and all the floor tiles are gone by now. We are currently waiting for the rest of the permit to go thru before further demolition can be carried out. Can't wait!!!!

Hi all, Wish to share my renovation journey with forumers here. After 3 years and 6months, the time to finally get our flat is here. Wifey and I are super excited! However, as we have a young kid (11months old) and both of us are working, it is really tiring to source for all the necessary for our renovation! But I'm sure we will get through this together. Here is our floorplan and our concept for the renovation. Some of you may have noticed the bomb shelter is connected to the kitchen. This is something we do not really like but we got no choice because our queue number for the BTO is too far behind! We are still thinking what to do with it. Here are the things we knew we wanted: 1.Featurewall + TV console 2.Shoe cabinet 3.Carpentry full length wardrobe at MBR, B2, B3 (study), 4.Study table and shelves at B3 5.Place to put piano in living room 6. Top and btm Kitchen cabinets, half wall to be raised + bifold doors 7.Vinyl flooring + overly kitchen and bathroom tiles (HDB ones are really ugly) 8.Ceiling fans + false ceiling with down lights Will post some the pictures we found on the net in our nxt post

I've been reading the t-blogs off and on for quite a bit and I must say, I really love some of the works here! My wife and I had purchased our first place in the western area of Singapore about a year ago (as we all work in the west) and it is an old 5 room HDB flat, conveniently located near a shopping mall, bus interchange and MRT. Because of it's convenience, we paid a truckload of money for it! Because of the amount we spent on the home, and because we are mostly practical people, we didn't really think want a very fancy home that required a lot of cleaning. So a simple, modest, no frills home is what we were going for. This also meant: 1) no cove lights, no false ceilings 2) little built in furniture 3) lots of space around In fact, we didn't even put in any blinds (or curtains) for about a year after we moved in! Because of our needs, I think it made it harder for our ID, who happened to be a relative of ours We did however did a makeover of all the water pipes and electrical wiring, as I felt those were the most important bits of a renovation. We are Catholics, so we had also wanted a prayer room in our home, and for it to be in a place at the centre of our home and I must say that we are very happy about how the room turned out! Anyway, it has been a year since we moved in, and the journey taught us a lot of things, and I thought to be able to share some of them with you here. especially on how things are like 1 year on! So first up, the entrance! The prayer room will be the first room that greets everyone who walks through the door. Don't worry, no one has to bow or anything, but I think it did make our neighbours do a double-take when they see our home when our door is open! To the right of our prayer room, is our sitting area. We did not want a typical living room area, and wanted just a space to chill and read, or when we have guests over, to sit around and chit chat. Because we are also starting a family, we wanted it to be as baby-safe as possible and as you can see, even for our table, it is actually a bean-bag in disguise! The round plates below the living room air-condition is actually some decorations that we bought from SKP for a birthday party that we had. The wife had put it up there and even though the party was over, we couldn't bear to take it down because they looked so pretty! We had also kept the living room floors because it was in such good condition. And too costly to hack it or overlay it! It's still pretty shiny, as you can see from the photos below, which is really kudos to the previous house-owners for maintaining it so well! Beind the sitting area, and on your right if you just step into the house, is our dining area. It's a beautiful deep-brown table bought from Castlery during a sale. They were phasing out this model and thus we got it at a good price. You can head over there to ask for which models are phasing out and ask them to give you a discount! Our lights should look familiar to all, they are the Ikea hotdog stand area lights! Very cheap and we can replace them anytime. Good news is, one year on, they are still white! The area behind the dining room is our kitchen, which we will come to later. From the other side, you can see our Daiso fan and a little shelf on the left. This little shelf is actually a narrow Muji shelf that we flipped on its side. We had used it to house our modem (because shifting the fibre network point to the rooms are so costly!) and also our speakers that are connected to a Chromecast Audio set. It is a must-have if you find Sonos speakers too costly. Just get any normal speaker, hook it up to the $50 dongle, set it up by connecting it to your wireless network, and viola. You can play music remotely on it! Some people ask me why it is better than Bluetooth and the answer is this; Bluetooth just transmits sound from your phone/computer to the speaker. For Chromecast, the dongle actually is the one streaming the music, not your phone. All you do is to send instructions to it. This means that you can continue to take calls and watch other things on your phone while your music is playing! As for the Daison fan, a must have for practical people. Just one Magic-clean wipe and you are done! No dismantling of anything and so on. Yes it is a bit noisier than a regular fan but not that much. Power wise is also good, unless you are standing a mile away. The most important thing is, it is super child-friendly too! It doesn't topple easily, because it kind of sticks to your floor. But it doesn't use tape or anything, so there is no sticky residue left on the floor if you move the fan. Next up is the kitchen! Like every young couple, we don't really use the kitchen much! I had contemplated a kitchen island because we have such a big space for the kitchen, but looking back, other than the costs, it might not be that child friendly so I think retrospectively, it is a good idea. We wanted a cement screed wall so that it will be easier to maintain, compared to tiles, where we have to clean and I must say that it was a good choice. We didn't need to have a backsplash too, because our stove actually came with a cover that can be used as a backsplash. We did have some learning points though; always cater for electrical devices in your kitchen and if possible, don't use your counter, especially if counter space is limited. We didn't really factor this in, and thankfully we don't cook complex dishes, if not, it will be a problem! Because our kitchen doesn't get a lot of light as we narrowed the entrance to our laundry area, the black shelves might not have been such a good idea. We had wanted this colour theme as it was similar to our church, but we realise that it doesn't work so well for small spaces with little light. We probably should have chosen a different colour. We also installed a fan in the kitchen, and I must say, I will be putting a fan in as many kitchens as I move into! It is so useful for dissipating smells and when cleaning, everything dries up faster! This is our sink area. Once again because of the wide space in the middle of the kitchen, sometimes we have to travel quite a bit between the sink and the stove! Not that it is a big problem, but we could have better used the space. But because there is such a big space, it really feels very airy and we can probably fit a movable island in the future if we need to. We have a double sink from Tekka, also a must-have because I think single sinks make it so difficult to wash dishes! However, I wouldn't recommend Tekka sinks because they scratch easily. Tekka taps however, are simply the best! You might have noticed the yellow plates, those were a gift from my parents, the old Mobil plates that you used to get if you pump petrol with them all the time. We inherited a whole bunch of them! Many of our friends, especially the older ones have them. You can also see a simplehuman sponge tray, which is really fantastic and looks really slick and even one year on, it still looks shiny! Now we do have a laundry area but because there is actually laundry there now, so I will post it up at another time. Our MBR is up next. Nothing fancy, it is the only room with a false ceiling (other than the MBR bathroom). We had a false ceiling done and build up cabinets to cover up most of the air-con trunking so it isn't really obvious. We had a bay-area set up, which we don't really use (does anyone have any ideas on what we can do with an un-used bay area?). I was thinking of converting it to more storage space actually! Our ID had also done up these movable side drawers, which are really good for cleaning and if you want flexibility. Especially if you have plans to set up a cot/playpen beside your bed for a future kid. I got the bedside lamps (the ones that every has) from a random shop in Balestier and our bedside switches control the bathroom lights so that it's more convenient for us. It also makes it easier for me to pull pranks on my wife when she's using the bathroom! I just wish that I had also made the switch to be able to control the main bedroom lights (which are the only lights that are dimmable in the whole house). Dimmable lights are super important for bedrooms. Next up is the MBR bathroom. I think it is gorgeous, especially at night. My ID had made a special compartment in the mirror so I can put an upside down tissue box, to dispense tissue. There are also shelves below, which I somehow missed out when I was snapping pictures. Open shelves are so important! And the Muji baskets are really helpful in storing stuff in those open shelves. I also got the usual Ikea transparent boxes to keep toilet paper! I also insisted on Grohe taps and shower heads for their (advertised) durability. So far the rainshower has been great, and it feels strange showering without one! The inset shelves in the bath area is also very helpful, just remember to build it slightly tilted so stray water doesn't stay! Now the remaining 2 bedrooms are pretty much renovation free, no built in furniture at all, as we want to keep it flexible in case our needs become different in the future. We currently have one designated room for a future child, which now houses a wardrobe and that's about it, and the other one is our TV/computer room. We got the beanbags from the same place that we got the ones in the living room, and that is from Ambient Lounge! The only tricky things about beanbags are the cleaning part. While the beans can be removed rather easily, cleaning them is quite tricky as the cloths are quite bulky! We had actually gotten the cloth mural from Disneyland, Florida, when we were there for our honeymoon a year ago. My father-in-law had set it up for us and done so beautifully. The hanging lights were cheap lights from Ikea and gave the room a "cafe-like" feeling. It's good to put the TV and computer together, as my wife and I can do our work and relax at the same time in the same space! Pretty useful when there are only 2 of you at home! The wooden table was also purchased from Ikea, which is basically a combination of a flat piece of wood with 2 supporting A-frames, all for just $100+ at that time. A really good deal as the piece of wood is very solid and thick, and I've no worries about bending. It's quite big and deep and as you can see, it houses many stuff! The bookcase was actually left behind by the previous house-owners. Once again, it is in such good condition that we just continued to use it after cleaning it! The semi-glass door is also really helpful and the stuff inside doesn't get dusty at all! I will update again about our nifty laundry area (which has a sink of its own) and also the cleaning supplies that we use!

Yeah!! Finally it is time for me to write my very first reno T-Blog, had been reading T-blog for like near 1 year, and had been patiently waiting for the time for my key collection so I can start on my T-blog soon. As per tradition, here is my 5 room Floor plan, got my keys on 3rd Jan, my reno (hacking first) will be starting on 2nd Feb. Now is the rectification period with the BSC folks. Already 2nd round, hopefully coming week can clear all the defects. I guess it's pretty standard layout for most of the BTOs, below is the HDB suggested layout. And this is my 2D layout, this is not the latest, there are some changes, yet to get the updated layout plan from my ID. Because this layout plan was done before i got the keys, so after getting the keys, realize that there may be some space constraint, so waiting for the latest copy.

SCANDI So the wife decided to finally start the t-blog, but I'm being forced to post. So as usual, at the start of our home making process, I decided that she would make the decisions, since she had all the arty-farty ideas. But i guess this saves me all the trouble of hearing her nag in future, if she decides that she doesn't like any aspect of the house so i guess i'm making a very smart and tactical move. My only requirements to her were that I wanted a fully functional kitchen, since i am the masterchef, and even bookshelves for the bookworm that is me =) So here goes. As usual the arty-farty wife decided that we would call our blog - Colour our Scandi Home, and our first post would be called "SCANDI" or Super Colourful And Novel DIY Ideas Why? U should have guessed it, Scandi but with pops of light pastel colours. Similar to what some of the t-bloggers here have, just that we would have elements which we hope to DIY ourselves. So like many of us here, Pinterest became our best friend. And my wife started pinning into tons and tons of boards. Well, see good choice there. This is what we started out thinking how her house would look like. p.s. Pls don't be misled by the pictures - these were what the wife was dreaming of when she started out as she was very very excited to be making all the decisions =) So as u can see, she wants it to have light brown, pastels, grey and whites. As usual the skeptical me was like okay, whatever makes u happy. so we started going around talking to IDs to find out more about how to make our her dream house come true. Here's the sample layout of our place. Time to sleep will update another day - if the wife doesn't kill me for making fun of her that is =p

Hey guys.. Need some input for these few queries that we have.. We are planning to renovate our Kitchen & toilet only. What is the reasonable costing for these works... If there are contractors reading this please PM me with your contact and quotation. MASONRY WORKS 1. To supply & construct 50mm cement mortar kitchen cabinet base PLUMBING WORKS 1. To supply & lay conceal drainage piping for kitchen sink. 2. Extension of copper piping for kitchen sink 3. To supply labour to install 2 nos. of instant heater or 1 no. of storage heater 4. To supply labour to install 2 sets of bathroom accessories. 5. To supply labour to install kitchen sink & tap. CARPENTRY WORKS 1. To design & fabricate L20ft kitchen cabinet using solid plywood in laminated finish c/w a. Length 10ft solid surface kitchen worktop. b. Blum hinges c. 2 tier stainless steel dish rack. d. Cutlery tray e. labour to install cooker hood & hob ELECTRICAL WORKS 1. To supply & run 10 nos. Of exposed lighting point @ living/dining. 2. To supply labour to install lightings (max of 15 nos).

Hi there! Decided to start this t-blog to share my renovation progress with everyone as I have been actively scouring many forums for advice and have benefited a lot from fellow T-bloggers! As I embark on this Bali-Resort themed home, I hope all the tips and tricks as well as contacts I've learnt or known would contribute to those who are renovating their home or getting keys to their new place! For a start, choosing this theme was a rather big decision for my wife and I as this is not a popular theme and I found out that it's not the cheapest as well! How we got the idea to do this theme is because my wife and I love the sun, sand and sea! Thus, when we took our pre-wedding photos, we chose Bali. We immediately fell in love with the place because it's so beautiful and so happening! There are so many things you can do and there's always some hidden gems that you haven't heard of everytime you talk to someone about Bali! After we got our ballot ticket to choose our flat, I immediately consult my fengshui master, Master Tong to help me in choosing the ideal flat. Unfortunately, the best unit in my new BTO estate is a corridor unit but thankfully HDB had changed the design where there's no more windows by the corridors to prevent theft. Fast forward to today, I've already collected my keys and have inspected my place. Now waiting for them to finish up on the defects and Master Tong to audit my place in Early March! Here's my original floor plan! Content Page: Choosing your ID Choosing your Hob & Hood