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The search for a home for my fiancé (S) and I began around 10 months ago. Knowing that we would be planning to get married sometime in 2017 and that we would want to move into our home right after our wedding, we wanted to get an early start on the house-hunt. Fast forward to July 2017, and as of two days ago, we are now officially (both on paper and in practice too – we just received our keys!) home-owners of an HDB executive maisonette in the west side of Singapore (: We’ll be doing some pretty extensive renovations (pretty much a complete makeover) – hacking, shifting layouts of the existing rooms, flooring, electrical works, a whole great deal of carpentry etc. The original floorplan: The 2 biggest changes to the layout will be: 1) Kitchen: As an avid baker, I know I'll be spending a great deal of my time here. So one of the prerequisites in our house hunt was to find a place that could accommodate a big kitchen. Thank God that HDB has approved our proposal to knock down the existing wall between the study and kitchen, so that we can convert the entire area into 1 giant kitchen (: 2) MBR: One of the first things we noticed when viewing the flat was that the existing corridor space outside Bedroom 2 is pretty much a dead space. So we decided to wall in the entire area, "reclaim" the dead space for a walk-in wardrobe, build a door from WC2 to Bedroom 2 and use that as our MBR instead. One more layout change is to make WC3 into a slightly more squarish layout, as this would improve the layout for the kitchen, and what will become the "corridor" to the yard area doesn't have to be quite so wide anyway. This is still pending HDB's approval though, but we're keeping our hopes up and praying hard!

Hello everyone! My wife and I are avid readers of renotalk and have been reading all the amazing home transformations, taking pointers from all the experienced gurus here. Now that our renovation journey is about to come to an end, we thought we would like to give back as well by sharing how the whole process went by. A short introduction, we were house scouting back in 2014, and completed all the paperwork in mid 2015. After our ROM (HDB's requirement), we embarked on our renovation journey in September 2015 and completed everything just before Christmas last year. It has been a roller coaster of a journey, and we have learnt so much from everyone in renotalk, contractors and IDs. I'm sure it has been, or will be for all of you too. So, without further ado, our floor plan. We knew we wanted to get a resale 5 room flat, so we spent quite some time deciding on what floor plan we would like to have, and after extensive reading, we decided on a maisonette because we like to host guests and everyone could hang out downstairs while we could keep our privacy upstairs. We also browsed through many pages on renotalk with 'interesting' floor plans, good and not so ideal floor plans for designing, and figured this was probably one of the better layouts available for EMs. Basically we liked big spaces and wanted to fully maximise the space usage available. We kind of decided on how we wanted our house to look like even before purchasing the place. Haha. So we chanced upon this house after 3 - 4 months of home viewings, non-stop propertyguru surfing and bought the place! Some before photos: Actually the place is pretty much move in condition, just need to do some minor renovation in the toilets and refurbishment works for the cabinets and it would be very good already. But then you see all those pretty pictures and renovation plans from hipvan and other tblog chats, wa.. we decided to do a complete overhaul. Heh. So, next was ID hunting!

18 March 2015 Our entry starts midway through everything, our renovation is just beginning and its slated to complete in about 2.5 months. We completed the purchase of our Serangoon Maisonette mid December 2014 and decided to wait till after CNY 2015 to begin the renovation. Will take this space to document the reno journey and share our thoughts and purchases as well. The next post will provide the catch up for the initial few months before present day.

Hi all Just want to highly recommend Daniel Wong (9661xxxx) from New Nyew. He is in the finishing stages of doing a full renovation of our apartment. We have been very pleased with his drive and style, and overall build quality. Unlike some others in the industry, Daniel does not impose his taste, and takes the customer's input seriously. Daniel is well-trained - he is a NAFA graduate. I would urge those interested in engaging a well-priced interior designer with good taste to consider Daniel Wong. If interested, please contact him directly to view high-quality photographs of this project. Please also do not use the sample projects on New Nyew's webpage as a gauge of Daniel's work - this project looks very different. I have no stake in New Nyew or any of its interests. I am also not related to Daniel Wong. I just want to help profile an upcoming and talented designer. This is also my second project with Daniel. I was his first confirmed customer in 2011, for a much smaller HDB renovation. I secured his services again, having been happy with the first project. For less than the price of an entry-level Japanese car, this is the range of work Daniel did for us. - Hacking of 6 non-structural walls for bedrooms and kitchen. Replacement of all these non-structural walls with glass walls or sliding doors. - Relaying of all existing floors, using only designer Italian non-homogenous tiles. Tiles were laid in staggered patterns. - Removal of false ceiling, and incorporating of a 6m-high void with raw brick surface as a design feature. - Remodeling of kitchen. Blum hinges. Corian private collection solid surface. Full length glass backing for island. Installation of dishwasher, oven, ceramic induction hob. - Toilet works. Replacing of normal WCs with suspended/concealed WCs from top brands. - Work for two balconies, one of which was a 300 sq ft roof terrace. Replacement of canopy with an aluminium-polycarbonate canopy. Installation of bathtub on roof terrace. - A lot of other solid surface. All Corian. Solid surfaces for four bay windows. - Pelmets. Both window curtain pelmets, and tiled pelmets for concealing glass door mechanisms. - Doors. Replacement of toilet doors with glass sliding doors. Re-laminating of ugly bomb shelter entrance. - Lighting. Full LED lights. Cove lights, down lights, outdoor. - Carpentry. Full wall bookshelf with LED lighting, kitchen carpentry, queen sized bed set with glass surfaces. - Full electrical work. Schneider switches. Happy renovations! (Daniel has the capacity to take on new projects now!)

After months of lurking here (or maybe years, I was here back in 2007 when I was renovating my current unit too), I think it's time to start my t-blog! We plan to start the reno a month from now, and aim to complete by mid-October which is when I have to move out of my current place. The unit we purchased is a Tampines EM. It was actually our family home, but now that my siblings and I have moved out, my parents felt it was time for a downgrade and it was a good opportunity for us to upgrade from our current 4 room. Floorplan Having lived here for 20 over years, I kinda thought this layout was very normal. But both my ID and the HDB valuer said that they had not seen a unit like this. Renovation plan The last major renovation was done about 15 years ago, to the toilets and balcony. The kitchen, perhaps 10 years ago. But we wanted to make this OUR home, so it will be undergoing a major transformation, at least the downstairs, that is. Nothing major to bedrooms other than electrical and painting. Our target areas - balcony - kitchen - toilets - study room - dining room - living room We're playing mahjong with the downstairs rooms, shuffling the areas to fit our lifestyle. Design concept/theme Our main driving force in the design of our house is......practicality! Haha...I don't have a helper, my kids are still young, I don't like housework (other than laundry), so I wanted a house that would be easy to upkeep. First thing to go were the glass shower screens. No cove lights. Reduced storage to discourage hoarding and clutter, so no overhead cabinets in the kitchen. We also wanted a feature bookcase, because we love our books and want an area to display the various trinkets from our family holidays. Oddly enough, this bookcase will be open = dust collection = not practical? However, glass doors are a greater nemesis LOL. Some ideas: Must...have...blue...cabinets... Our initial idea for the study was shelved due to impracticality. But when I saw this....I thought it was beautifully done. *sends to ID* Our feature bookcase will occupy the long wall at the living room. Approx. 5 m kitchen barcounter...my ID's plan was to use kompacplus but I couldn't get over how thin it was. So my ID said, OK, we can make it a thicker countertop, but use laminate to cover. Then I saw this guy's counter and felt, well, it doesn't look too bad after all. ID selection When we renovated our current place, due to time constraints we just went with the first ID we met. What a big mistake. The guy was so immature. Lesson learnt! This time, ID hunting actually started in April. I submitted a request for quotations on Renotalk but didn't get any replies leh. In any case, I figured less is more, and heard that word of mouth is the best so we asked around for recommendations. We visited 4 IDs, and only received quotations from 2. However, Andrew from Designer Guys came highly recommended by twinklecloud and ricepapergirl who also had their EMs done by him, and when we met up with him, he came across as someone we could get along with so I guess you could say it was love at first sight, haha! Andrew was also a little older, more experienced, he was generous with his advice and life stories. Already we've met him 4 more times since our first meeting, 1 site visit, 2 trips to do tile shopping and 1 afternoon spent in his office choosing laminates (while my kids tore up his office/showroom!). Our current quotation is a little over $70k, which excludes the fittings and electricals. Can faint? Budgeting an additional 20% for the 'unexpected'. Everytime someone asks me where we are going for vacation, I tell them "Tampines lor".

I chanced upon Renotalk's t-Blogs while doing research for own renovation and thought it'd be a good idea to document this exciting process and our experience. Let me get started with some background info first! Home will be a maisonette in Clementi with my husband (let's call him Mr K) and our playful Burmese cat. We bought the place in January 2015 and started shopping around for interior designers shortly after. The house was in very good condition and was very well-maintained. Truth be told, it was in move-in condition but there were quite a lot of design flaws (in our opinion) and it just didn't suit our taste at all. Mr K and I like a similar aesthetic ie. minimalist but his taste veers more to the masculine side ie. industrial, while I prefer white and airy ie. scandinavian. Not wanting the fittings/bare structure of the house to look schizo, we decided to just go with one theme and stick with it. So, industrial-minimalist it was. The catch was that I get to choose softer loose furnishing to make the place look less like a man-cave. Before I talk about our ID selection process, here is the original layout and some before pictures.

I had sign up with A&D for my 5rm resale flat renovation and my ID is Elijah Yeo Renovation completed for almost 1 month and I'm very satisfied with the work done, some minor rectification that need to be done are done. Elijah was punctual for all our meetings. He kept his promises and knowing that we had to get the renovation done quickly, he went all out to help us achieve this. We were away for a week and he made sure that work was done properly while we were away. He's very easy to work with and helpful - he volunteered to wait for the delivery of our equipment eventhough it's not his job. When we texted him at 10 plus at night on a weekend, he even called us back to give us feedback. Afterall, the job was done so smoothly and without any fuss.

Hi, I'm new to Renotalk but i'm excited to share the experience of my renovation with someone, anyone... EVERYONE! Lol Just got an EM in the West & started my reno last week... Reno contractor's Desmond from KHS http://www.khsdesign.com/ who's given me a reasonable quote... Anyway, does anyone knows what's a suitable motor suction for an open concept kitchen? And the cheapest yet efficient chimney hood i could find?! (Btw, we seldom cook at home, only on big occasions.) Thanks for your time reading this & in advance for any advice/s... Hear from you guys soon... There's a link to my new nest, do have a look. Comments, advices & remarks are welcome!