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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!

Finally decided to start a thread after hanging around for couple of months though my reno has started closed to 1 mth already hehe...Think it will be like a reno diary! Let's begin with the original house floor plan. It's a very simple 2 bedroom unit, with a service yard & a store room @ Bedok area. After several weeks of research, i was pretty clear in the design direction I like a modern them, not a very "woody" person..and i dont want industrial or scandi. Also, i managed to find a studio design that i really like. 1. Layout with requirements 2. My reference studio design!!

Item as shown per attached pictures. Items are brand new and have not been used before. Approximately 25cm wide and 25cm tall for the lamp. Will include 1x LED bulb for each lamp. Total: 2 lamps for sale and I intend to sell them together as a set. Price: $30 Interested? Please drop me an email at obliquetravel@gmail.com as I may not log in here often.

These Japanese Minimalistic HDBs in Singapore can definitely pass off as Muji showrooms. e read more at http://screed.com.sg/5-japanese-minimalist-homes-in-singapore-that-scream-muji/

One of a kind custom made industrial look inspired queen size bed frame, with faux black leather foam cushion rests (not pictured, attaches to head-board), and frame wood base boards. Mattress included is the premium Simmons BackCare Advanced S1000 Plush Top + Anti-dust Mite Protector (purchased in 2013 from Simmons at $4000) Mattress is in good condition and clean (has just been professionally cleaned last Dec before CNY. Can refer to the mattress brochure here: http://www.simmons.com.sg/downloads/simmons_backcare_advance.pdf. Only selling as a set, AT JUST $1500 (NON-NEG). Buyer to self-arrange movers. Genuine interested buyer, pls drop me a private message to arrange.

The Nest We had been scouting around for our own place for quite a while and looking back, it did seem that we were taking forever to nail down a place we want to call our first home. Our requirements for our own property then were simple - BIG and cheap... Probably that explained why we were forever looking for our property back then! In Singapore context where land is scarce, it's almost mission impossible to find one that is big and yet cheap... Well... Unless, it's old!!! And so our quest for such property brought us to our current home - an ex-HUDC apartment in the west. At 1,700 square feet going at less than $700 psf, it fulfilled exactly the 2 main requirements that we were looking for in our first home. Never mind the fact that it's coming to 30 years old. To add icing to the cake, all the 3 rooms and the living room have unblocked view of the scenic Chinese Gardens in front of us!

After reading through some of the posts here, my partner and I have decided to add in our experience too. Just a little background, I am in my mid 20s while my fiancee is in her early 20s so we have a tight budget to get our family life started. Not gonna be easy but it would be an enjoyable journey! How It All Started Early 2015, we applied for the sale of balance flats in Choa Chu Kang/Bukit Panjang and the number was pretty crappy so we scrapped the idea of trying for BTO/Balance of Sales since the units are smaller and lesser grants. Factoring in our CPF and savings, we decided to hit the nail and go for resale flats instead since the market is somewhat bottoming now. Flat viewing started around Sept/Oct 2015 and we have already decided on the location which was Bukit Panjang. Simply went to PropertyGuru and shortlisted a few units, arranged with the agent for a viewing and off we went. Yes, plenty of our friends were wondering where on earth is Bukit Panjang but having stayed in Bukit Panjang for 10 over years, it is actually a very convenient location with the upcoming Downtown Line and buses. 20 minutes to Orchard via 972 or 190, seriously?! House Hunting Our fruitful yet tiring house hunting journey took us about 2 months. We started off by viewing flats randomly within the area and realised it was leading us nowhere as none of the units was to our liking. We then decided to view 2 to 3 units per area and once the units were not to our liking, we eliminated that area out of our choices as the units within that area were usually within the same batch so layout and design wise would be similar. We had a few requirements: 1) Corner Unit (For privacy) 2) High Floor (Feels good to be up there ) 3) Squarish layout (Easy to manage in terms of design) 4) Bright and airy (Good for health to have ample natural light! ) Simple requirements yet it was a nightmare just trying to find the right unit. Finally, we found one to our liking but the owner was reluctant to sell at our price and the agent told us that the house was previously sold at $465k but the buyer screwed up so the deal didn't go through. Considering how bad the market condition was, we decided to go ahead and offer a price of $435k which kinda shocked the seller I guess. The agent told us that he could try for $460k but we had no interest in paying over the market for the unit considering there was quite a bit of renovation to be done. Credits to my fiancee for being firm by telling the agent that we would settle for $450k, take it or leave it. To cut the story short, we finally settled for $450k and valuation came about to $450k so there was no COV on our part either. Gotta give the credit to my fiancee as I was pretty alright with paying $460k which was $10k more but we really liked the unit and the house hunting was really tiring. I just wanted to get it over and done with! DIY Procedures We decided that it was pointless to engage an agent since he will just be doing the paperwork for us when we could do it ourselves which saved us at least a few thousand since buyer's agent usually go for 1% of the selling price as commission! Seriously, pay them $4k plus just to do paperwork for us? Nah! Signed the OTP and exercised it with a total of $5k as deposit. First appointment scheduled in Feb 2016 and keys collection in March 2016. We decided to take up all the grants available to us which summed up to $50k from HDB and ROM was not an issue since we would be solemnized before our second appointment. The procedures are pretty simple as it is all documented in the HDB website, I spent about an hour digesting the website and we were good to go. The seller's agent even told us not to bother with engaging an agent to save on the fees and we could approach him if we needed help, just that he could not represent both sides. Well, if we screwed up and the deal falls through, he will be on the losing end too. Feel free to call up HDB if you are unsure of certain things and they are pretty helpful I would say. Tadah! Here is the floorplan of our house. The house has minimal renovation except for wall cornice and floor skirting since it was the first owner. Flat is about 18 years old so a major renovation was in the plans with a budget of $30k and another $5k odd for furnishings & furnitures. Original Floorplan Modified Floorplan (After hacking of walls)

After reading through some of the posts here, my partner and I have decided to add in our experience too. Just a little background, I am in my mid 20s while my fiancee is in her early 20s so we have a tight budget to get our family life started. Not gonna be easy but it would be an enjoyable journey! How It All Started Early 2015, we applied for the sale of balance flats in Choa Chu Kang/Bukit Panjang and the number was pretty crappy so we scrapped the idea of trying for BTO/Balance of Sales since the units are smaller and lesser grants. Factoring in our CPF and savings, we decided to hit the nail and go for resale flats instead since the market is somewhat bottoming now. Flat viewing started around Sept/Oct 2015 and we have already decided on the location which was Bukit Panjang. Simply went to PropertyGuru and shortlisted a few units, arranged with the agent for a viewing and off we went. Yes, plenty of our friends were wondering where on earth is Bukit Panjang but having stayed in Bukit Panjang for 10 over years, it is actually a very convenient location with the upcoming Downtown Line and buses. 20 minutes to Orchard via 972 or 190, seriously?! House Hunting Our fruitful yet tiring house hunting journey took us about 2 months. We started off by viewing flats randomly within the area and realised it was leading us nowhere as none of the units was to our liking. We then decided to view 2 to 3 units per area and once the units were not to our liking, we eliminated that area out of our choices as the units within that area were usually within the same batch so layout and design wise would be similar. We had a few requirements: 1) Corner Unit (For privacy) 2) High Floor (Feels good to be up there ) 3) Squarish layout (Easy to manage in terms of design) 4) Bright and airy (Good for health to have ample natural light! ) Simple requirements yet it was a nightmare just trying to find the right unit. Finally, we found one to our liking but the owner was reluctant to sell at our price and the agent told us that the house was previously sold at $465k but the buyer screwed up so the deal didn't go through. Considering how bad the market condition was, we decided to go ahead and offer a price of $435k which kinda shocked the seller I guess. The agent told us that he could try for $460k but we had no interest in paying over the market for the unit considering there was quite a bit of renovation to be done. Credits to my fiancee for being firm by telling the agent that we would settle for $450k, take it or leave it. To cut the story short, we finally settled for $450k and valuation came about to $450k so there was no COV on our part either. Gotta give the credit to my fiancee as I was pretty alright with paying $460k which was $10k more but we really liked the unit and the house hunting was really tiring. I just wanted to get it over and done with! DIY Procedures We decided that it was pointless to engage an agent since he will just be doing the paperwork for us when we could do it ourselves which saved us at least a few thousand since buyer's agent usually go for 1% of the selling price as commission! Seriously, pay them $4k plus just to do paperwork for us? Nah! Signed the OTP and exercised it with a total of $5k as deposit. First appointment scheduled in Feb 2016 and keys collection in March 2016. We decided to take up all the grants available to us which summed up to $50k from HDB and ROM was not an issue since we would be solemnized before our second appointment. The procedures are pretty simple as it is all documented in the HDB website, I spent about an hour digesting the website and we were good to go. The seller's agent even told us not to bother with engaging an agent to save on the fees and we could approach him if we needed help, just that he could not represent both sides. Well, if we screwed up and the deal falls through, he will be on the losing end too. Feel free to call up HDB if you are unsure of certain things and they are pretty helpful I would say. Tadah! Here is the floorplan of our house. The house has minimal renovation except for wall cornice and floor skirting since it was the first owner. Flat is about 18 years old so a major renovation was in the plans with a budget of $30k and another $5k odd for furnishings & furnitures. Original Floorplan Modified Floorplan (After hacking of walls)