At Long Last, A Place To Call Our Own

[stormcontrol 0]

Hello all. Many thanks to pinkpetter, Zc31, ilmare612, mister_molly, asugama etc who have made the starting of this t-blog possible. Not sure if anybody will be interested in reading my t-blog, but for those who do tune in, i hope you enjoy reading it and please do participate to your heart's content! =). Oh yes, apologies first if i do bore you to death =p

Been with my girlfriend (now wife) for nearly 5 years le. We're sort of like superglue and like to stick to each other all the time. And that has caused us lots of problems these last five years. With the limited space at her home, her shyness and reluctance to go to mine, and my parents' quiet disapproval of me staying over at her place all the time, we've been debating the topic of settling down and getting a place of our own. Thus for the last three years, we've been idly participating in HDB's balloting and walk-in selection excercises, just for fun. However, due to financial reasons earlier ($ no enough a year ago), cold feet at the last moment, and later just plain lousy luck, we've never been successful.

This all changed however late last year. HDB changed the rules for balloting and our savings reached a good amount. The time was right and I proposed to her in August of '08. Happily she agreed and we went to try out for the BE under the new HDB rulings.

This time we were lucky and managed to get a unit at a rather good location (though very small >_<" )

Edited June 25, 2009 by stormcontrol

[stormcontrol 0]

After our ROM, we obtained the keys to our spanking new house on 13th March 2009. Some pics to share of our new place:

The living room

Bedroom

Common toilet

MBR toilet

Kitchen

Edited June 9, 2009 by stormcontrol

[stormcontrol 0]

While HDB had already done up the tiling in our kitchen and toilets as well as concealed hot/cold water piping and concealed electrical wiring, the rest of the house was left in a raw unfinished state. We needed to renovate the house to bring it to “live-in” able status and thus began our search.

For our new home, we decided to do a minimal amount of renovation. But as we intended to stay there for at least 10 years, what little renovation we did, we decided that it must be good and significantly affect the quality of our life in our new home. To this end, we spent a few months scouring various design magazines, manuals, textbooks etc for inspiration. In the end we decided on a mixture of themes for our house. We decided on a modern minimalist look to all the public areas of our home, while our little sanctuary the MBR would take up a modern baroque look. To fit a common thread to these two contrasting themes, we decided on an overarching colour palette of white, black and grey throughout the entire house. Spendings on renovations will be kept to a minimum while most of our budget will go towards furnishing.

With these things in mind we began searching for the ideal person to renovate our house. At first, we mainly approached IDs. At exhibitions in Expo, as well as those recommended in RT. We were wary of contractors then as my parents had had a bad experience with one and warned us off them. However, as our search wore on, we became a little disenchanted. The IDs we met simply didn’t have the creativity that justified the premium they charge on their service. The ideas they had were merely ‘blah’ or called for a renovation bill much higher than what we were willing to spend.

It was around this time that I became aware of some very prolific users of RT. Through them, I was introduced to the work of the likes of Ho Bee, Mr Yeak, and of course Ah Soon. The pictures they uploaded showed off the good workmanship of these contractors. These users’ posts spoke of the pride they had in their homes which they had helped designed, and lastly the price tag on their renovation fairly shouted out at us =).

With these in mind, we decided to turn our search to contractors. We met up with two. Ah Soon, and Gilbert (who was recommended to my wife by her colleague). While Gilbert failed to impress, Uncle Ah Soon did. He had practical advice for the feasibility of our ideas and the confidence and experience he displayed won us over. After 2 meetups to tweak our list of requirements, we decided to sign with Uncle the very same week (last week!) we first met him. (the both of us had become very drained by this long drawn out search anyway, and we didn’t feel up to meeting anymore contractors and repeating our needs/wants list all over again. Moreover, Uncle quoted us well within our budget and that more or less sealed the deal)

As asugama requested, this is the quotation I got from uncle (btw, if I shouldn’t post this up, pls let me know hor):

Edited June 9, 2009 by stormcontrol

[stormcontrol 0]

*edited

Edited June 25, 2009 by stormcontrol

[stormcontrol 0]

Reno Progress update:

Well, having decided on Uncle last Friday, went down to Sin Lek with my wife on Saturday to choose tiles. Only supposed to choose living room tiles but the laminate tiles really make us gian. So much so that we asked uncle to change our quote to homo tiles for bedrooms too =p. Will post picture of tile samples either tonight or tomorrow bah.

Uncle came to us with the English quote and we signed officially with him on Tuesday. Wah, he was really super busy that day. Met him around 11pm+ and he said he still had to rush off. Got like 3 more contracts he was signing on the same day

Wednesday, the workers delievered sand and tiles up to my place. Uncle said that the tiling for the living room will begin Thursday. So excited, I can’t sleep and started this t-blog =p. Will go and check out how things go tomorrow

[sohck 0]

Congratulations on getting your dream girl as your wife and a dream home!

Hope you will have a smooth renovation experience!

[preciousjam 0]

congrats!!!this is the start of an exciting journey.....post more pictures.....

[growler 0]

Congrats Thursday is today Hope everything start swee swee for you.

[familyof4 0]

I was still wondering if your reno had started...CONGRATS!!!

[booy 0]

Welcome to the Sooner's club..

[familyof4 0]

Welcome to the Sooner's club..

sooner's club? does it sound funny? hehe...

[mrspiglet 2]

congrats! Welcome to the Ah soon club!

U were too excited to sleep last night and posting at 4am?!

[Smallboy 0]

Congrats on the new house!!!! Read that you joined in the Ah Soon wagon

[Angel81 1]

Congrates on ur new home! Looking forward to see ur reno pics.

[asugama 0]

Congratz on your new home.. And hope you have a pleasant renovation journey...