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Table of Contents M O O D B O A R D 3 D P L A N C O N T R A C T O R S E L E C T I O N T A O B A O B U Y S B A R E U N I T A P P L I A N C E S H A C K I N G M A S O N R Y A I R C O N T R U N K I N G P A I N T I N G P A R Q U E T R E F I N I S H C A R P E N T R Y C A R P E N T R Y ( F I N A L ) L I G H T I N G G L A S S B A C K S P L A S H P L U M B I N G T A O B A O B U Y S 2 C O M P L E T E D L O O K ( L I V I N G, D R E S S I N G, Y A R D ) R E V I E W O F C O N T R A C T O R ( R E N O G U Y Z ) L A T E S T U P D A T E 1 L A T E S T U P D A T E 2 hi guys, so this is the start of my reno journey! pretty excited to have my own thread as i've always been awed by many beautiful homes here. for starters, floor plan! the wait for our 3 room BTO has been very long (5 years). i'm not exactly happy with the size as i've seen a couple of 3 room btos here and they all have way bigger living room and kitchen than i have. i probably have bigger toilets and maybe slightly bigger master bedroom but whats the point? i bake so i need an island this time round. will be very challenging but mostly likely it will be where the dining area is, and there will be no space for a proper dining table.

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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.

Hi all! After roaming renotalk t-blog for so long, it's time for some contribution. Like everyone else, after years of waiting, i finally got my keys. Below will be my floor plan: Next... Selection of ID time!

3.2m L-Shaped Sofa Bought at $1,900 from IMM -Still in solid working conditioni and will rate it 9/10. -Machine washable fabric. -Sits >6 people. Great for entertaining. -A part of the fabric has loose thread but otherwise not noticeable. -Some colour variation when taking the picture. True colour is the darker gray shade. Dimensions shown in picture. Measurements include arm rest and back rest. Please arrange for your own delivery.

Hello everyone!!! Beginning I've been a silent reader for many months now and I thought it should be my turn to contribute what ever I can back to this community! I had this sudden urge to pen down my experiences since we are 3 days away from the ACTUAL renovation. I am surfing the net for all the nitty-gritty stuff for our house, stressing myself out over those and thought coming here might be a good idea at 3am! So here goes! How it started... After my 'then' boyfriend proposed to me last year, we started looking out for properties in the eastern and north-eastern side of Singapore! R (now husband) and I prefer a newly empty space for us to build a home together so naturally our first choice was to ballot for a flat through "sale of balance". We didn't pin our hopes too high cause our queue number was out of the number of available units and there were little units among them which we shortlisted. We started browsing through resale flats for months while R was still optimistic about our ballot (never say die). Months and months of waiting and finally our prayers were answered! We got one of our favorite units! Search Early this year, we finally locked in our first 'love nest' at TPY HDB Hub and we started searching (almost frantically) for both ideal moodboards and ID/Contractors. Before we started anything, we sat down and had a serious discussion about finance. Zero loans. So we have extremely strict budget to work with and we broke it down into 3 sections. Renovation (quote given by ID/Contractor) Electrical (wirings, sockets, switches, lightings) Furnitures & Appliances (Bed, W/C, fridge etc) I must say this budget has been working extremely well for both of us cause we made it as detailed as possible, itemised, and did quite a fair bit of comparison! Be as realistic as possible and ask around with your family or friends for quotes! Most of them are more than happy to share! Back to the search for ID/Contractors. Thanks to renotalk, my knowledge about renovation widened, deepened and saved me from looking too noob infront of those guys. lol. Both R and I prefer engaging an ID because we both lack quite badly in the creative department and we are hoping to minimize the need to liaise between different suppliers or contractors. Nevertheless, all in all we met up with 4 IDs and 2 contractors (semi-ID) over a period of 2 months. This is by far the most tedious process for both of us cause it fried our brains so badly. It's not until we met these professionals that we realised renovation has A LOT, A LOT, A LOT of details and factors to consider. 1) ID A A was the very first ID we met and we had no idea what to expect from the meeting! We met up near my place, he was early, dressed well, pretty young and speaks well. He nervously took out few sheets of papers with drawings on them and I could see his hands trembled a bit. When I saw those papers infront of us, I like him already! He came prepared with proposed space-planning sketches according to my specifications through a 20-mins conversation prior to our meeting! Of course, he also prepared a drafted quotation based on what he drew and the quotation wasn't too bad! Though not all details were captured, he was really patient in jotting down our needs/wants and identifying any potential difficulties in our ideas. We were having our hopes high on this ID and really excited in receiving his revised space-planning sketch and quotation but sadly, he did not send us till almost a month later. 2) ID B We met up with B right after ID A and we weren't really pleased. First of all, he was late for our first meeting, I refused to wait for another 30mins so I called the meeting off. R was being kind and suggested we should give him another chance since he apologised genuinely, we did. Okay, so our first meeting happened and unlike ID A, he is very down-to-earth in both his dressing and his personality! He was punctual, cheerful and very approachable. He also came to us with a draft and he is definitely way more experienced than ID A. As much as he would accommodate all our crazy ideas and wants, he would stop us nicely to inform us of the pros and cons of materials/ placements/ appliances etc and the potential roadblocks we may face. The first meeting with him took 2 hours and he didn't even at any point sneaked a peek at the time. I couldnt remember how long, but he came back to us within 3 days with a hand-sketched space planning + 3D of EVERYTHING we discussed via whatsapp. We could feel his eagerness in our projects and was pretty sincere. I shall continue the rest another day. it's 3.20am now and I should catch some sleep! Will try to post the visuals next time Night night!

Hello renotalkers! I have benefited from this forum immensely and it's about time for me to pay it forward. I bought a resale apartment and obtained the keys only in late July. It's a 1 BR, only 52 sq metres (560 sq ft) in size. I was drawn to this space as it was relatively square-ish, not many bay-windows, no balcony, 2.9m ceiling height and floor to ceiling windows in the living room. Knowing that size was a limitation, my challenge is to make the space feel bigger than it is. The original floor plan (ignore the PES - the apartment does not have any PES) This was how I envisioned the new layout Red lines indicate the walls which I wanted to knock-down Blue line is where I would like the new wall to be erected Yellow lines is where I envisioned a concrete plaster appearance Besides the challenge of opening up the space, I wanted to keep the budget low and time-line relatively short, yet achieve a specific industrial look. I'll be dedicating quite a bit of my blog on how I kept costs low while maintaining decent quality. That means I will describe my thought process for contractor selection, material selection, purchasing from taobao etc Hope new home owners that plan to renovate will benefit from my blog. I shall post the before pics soon and some interim pics as reno is currently on-going. Happy reno-talking! EDIT: I realise that it is very cumbersome to go through an entire thread without a contents page. So I have compiled the links here 1. My thoughts on ID vs contractor. All home owners struggle with this question and meeting IDs/contractors can consume a lot of time and effort. 2. How I shortlisted and chose a contractor. The key considerations which led me to chose among the shortlisted contractors. 3. My taobao shopping list. With all the links from taobao sellers which I bought from. 4. My before pics. Demolition pics if you're into that sort of thing. 5. General Info on shipment of bulky taobao items to Singapore. 6. Since it's very difficult to estimate how many cubic metres each item is and the shipping charge is based on cubic metre, I came up with a way to estimate total cost of the bulky taobao item based on my first shipment when I purchase through peeka. 7. Some chinese keywords for shopping on taobao. Although taobao is cheap and therefore tempting, there may be instances of dissatisfaction. To provide a balanced view, Another poster's negative experience with taobao items. How I minimize risk of purchasing low quality items on taobao. 8. Info on the fibreglass concrete panels in my living room. 9. A guide on choosing paint colours for your wall. 10. Kompactop final pics 11. Info on artificial turf for balconies/planter/baywindows 12. Final pics - after 6 months of living in my place, this is more or less the final look of my place, though it tends to evolve with time (and clutter). To be included at some point.

Will be moving into a new apartment soon and we realised that there this Scandinavian theme homes are very suitable for our 90 square metre space. Downgrading from our parents 30yo HDB to a new BTO is painful but can't escape. Would like to find some like-minded individuals to share some ideas on Space [& possibly Cost] saving ideas to achieve this look. Our Living room isn't this spacious but i think by hacking the wall we should be able to make it look more spacious. This is the look that me & my hubby instantly agree on.

My way overdue first entry ... and im finally on the journey to share my renovation experiences We collected our keys a few months back in DEC 2015, but decided to postpone our renovation due to CNY. Sadly due to personal reasons, we had to drop our first contractor/designer just a week before our scheduled start of renovations. YESSSS MADNESSSSS ... so we had no choice but to scurry around trying to get another new contractor to handle our renovations! All in all, we met another 2 contractors before our decision! 1. Mr K (very popular here in Renotalk) - Speaks/messages only Chinese, very quick and fast guy, chop chop curry pok kind. We met him only once at our house to tell him about our ideas and what we wanted, waited for his quote which came in pretty fast like within a week. 2. Mr R (recommended by my colleague) - Replies to messages fast, friendly and easy going to discuss with. Also met him once at our house, and waited for the quote ....... and the final decision we decided on him! We just felt the chemistry and we could click better with him *fingers cross, let's hope everything goes well! xoxo, C

After months and months of reading the various t-Blogs on Renotalk, I finally managed to get down to starting my own t-blog to document my renovation process and journey. My apartment is a ground floor unit with a huge patio and the reason i bought it is (besides the location) is actually the big patio that I could make use of for hosting dinner parties since space is a luxury these days. Oh well, if given a choice obviously I wouldn't get a ground floor unit given it's potential privacy issues. Below is the original layout of my apartment: I got the keys to my apartment during mid-June and the renovation started on 5 Aug.. phew! I actually spoke to a few Interior design firms before choosing my current firm as I feel that the designer is able to achieve the look i want. My last experience with another ID firm wasn't good at all but that doesn't deter me from choosing to use an ID again. I'm just more cautious this time round , hoping that my ID is able to deliver what was promised! keeping my fingers xx Many people actually asked me why am i doing such a major renovation when the apartment is actually pretty much done up. The reason is becos im really tired of shifting around for the past few years... i think my record is 4 times in the past 6-7 years.... really very tiring! Therefore, i wana make my apartment a place i could call HOME . Given the new property measures, it's impossible for me to sell my apartment for the next few years so i might as well do it up to my fancy and park myself there for the many years to come

3 room resale, 63sqm..in need of dire transformation. Grey in mind and gray and greige....50 shades of grey if i can hv my way

IKEA Kivik couch + chaise combo purchased Oct 2014. Great condition, fabric removable covers in grey-brown color. Self collect at Ang Mo Kio by July 31, asking $200 or best offer. Please contact for any questions, see below link for pictures. http://singapore.craigslist.com.sg/fuo/5127044612.html

Finally, my chance to start a thread of my own after about a year of scouring through fellow forumers' t-Blogs. Was supposed to be able to start my own thread slightly earlier but due to life's twist and turn of events... Well, change of story as well, and... nonetheless, finally gotten another home of my own! Sadly, not the initial BTO as planned but now a resale unit... Hopefully it's a blessing in disguise. Well, to be fair, it is as well, because I managed to get the dream flat that I've always wanted, no doubt had to squeeze my pockets dry and probably go the bread and butter route. Anyway, titled Part I because due to the twisty road that I went down, a hole grew in the pocket and... thus the super duper limited budget I have to work with for now. May not be a really fanciful t-Blog with much surprises though... Can only continue other parts/ stages when vitamin M is replenished. After the wait that caused my neck to grow really long, we managed to clear the Boss stage and obtained the ultimate... Set of Keys! Didn't come in any fancy leather pouch but in a recycled plastic bag though. Kinda unglam but as long as it works, that's the most important. Well start off the traditional way, by... posting the floorplan. lol... But before I start, I'd like to thank the fellow bros and sis' that took time to reply my queries on their t-Blog and respond to my PMs. Ok, here goes..... P.s. Titled Sand Castle In The Air because the initial planned makeover is said to be quite extensive, but due to the lack of funds to make the dream come through... thus, it's still a sand castle in the air project.. Will slowly but surely work to make the castle land.. haha. My plan was to cover this whole house in greys and monochromes. Hints at cement screed, plaster, concrete, you get the gist ya? I kinda like greys, but my wife prefers light and white. Will try my best to mix and create an end result which will be the dream home of the both of us. Will insert some nature, wood grains and brown to break the hard industrial look that the greys might create. Let's hope this will turn out great! Some of the inspirational homes I've came across: