Home Of The Blessed @ Renotalk

[angelous666 0]

Hi All,

Me and my wife have been reading the various posts of our fellow forum-ers and thought that we'd also share some of our experiences having benefited from everyone else's. We started our own blog in Blogspot earlier in the year, shortly after purchasing our resale HDB. Having gained much insight into the renovation world through this forum, I thought that I'd post some experiences and thoughts here as well, in hope that it can help others just like us, embarking on their first home renovation.

We started hunting for ID firms around mid Dec 2009, taking about 3 months, 10 ID firms and 2 dozen quotations to finally decide on our ID firm, Earnest Interiors. We chose them for the following reasons:

• We were very comfortable speaking to (and eventually working with) our designer (who has requested not to be named)
• our ID had good design sense
• and they had competitive pricing (thou not the cheapest)

Work started finally started at the beginning of May 2010, after the approvals from HDB, 6 design revisions and quotations with our ID, and the payment of the 10% deposit upon confirmation with Earnest.

Below is the original and propsed floorplan (decided not to put up the space planning schematics until our entire place is done up)

Original Floor Plan

Propsed Floor Plan

Yes, there was tons of hacking to do and this was definitely not for the faint hearted. Our parents, along with a host of our relatives were questioning why we wanted such "openness" and doing so much hacking. Part of the concerns were what we were gonna do when we eventually sell the place, then there were concerns of the openness of the kitchen, etc etc.

It never ended.

My advise to the young couples like me: "Listen to what they have to say, and let go of all the unhappy stuff you will definitely hear. Some of the comments are words of wisdom, but ultimately, IT IS YOUR HOME." I took in some advise and completely ignored the other more "conservative parent/relative" concerns (much to their dismay).

Anyway, this will end my first post to this T-Blog chat... I really need to get some sleep before starting work tomorrow. Will try to get some time tomorrow to post up pictures of the demolition, and the wet-works that followed. Otherwise, my blog link can be found in my signature below.

Good night people.

Edited May 30, 2010 by angelous666

[newnyew 1]

wow so envious of ur long island!

[sff 0]

Hi,

Welcome. Just realised that your floor plan is exactly the same as my aunt's when she was living in Serangoon. Anyway, have fun and do update us with pictures.

[gimz63251073 0]

good! if we listen to their advise, our homes will end up looking exactly like theirs! (usually not nice, )

yours is private property? looks huge!

[pinktini 0]

wow, u really got lots of space to play around with! esp the dining/kitchen area.

and ya, when it comes to all the advice rolling in, just listen and do what you want to do. after all, we'll be the ones staying in the home for who knows how many years! when its really time to sell, then go and think about what to do.

[angelous666 0]

Some replies first... And of course, thanks for the welcome, guys

@Newnyew: There was alot of "resistance" to our island and open kitchen concept.. Took me a lot of effort (maybe even in the future) to get past all the nagging..

@gimz & sff: Its not a private property.. just a normal HDB

Its an executive apartment hence the slightly larger floor area.

@pinktini: We bought this place as it was "unrenoed" and sizeable. Blame our ID for being so creative.. Hahaha. Hopefully everything turns out nicely!

[angelous666 0]

Selecting IDs 101

I thought I'd begin by sharing our ID reviews, and will list some of the IDs that we had initially short-listed. After much consideration, I decided against putting in the ID's names, in case the wordings somehow come across negatively. Also, I'll not comment on Earnest Interiors, as I hope the following posts will speak for themselves.

(As per all other advertisements, user experiences may vary. This is very specific to the IDs though it generally gives you a good idea about the firm)

Intra-design

The Good: We had certain wants and the ID was very through about ensuring we knew about the trade offs for practicality vs. aestheticism. Basically he dared to say no. He was okay in the design department, but the problem was that his proposals looked like all his previous projects.

The Bad: Rather high quotation with a lack of transparency in their pricing. Its hard if you can't figure out what to exclude in the design plan if you don't know what each component costs.

Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Gracious Lodge

The Good: ID was friendly and accommodative. He have very fresh an interesting ideas that had a unique touch to it. 3D drawings came really early on just so they can help us visualize their plans.

The Bad: The design department and quotation department seemed very dis-joint as the quote and the initial space planning didn't really match out. The initial quote was one of the cheapest, but also had the most loop holes.. Basically, we were not comfortable with the inconsistent quotations.

Rating: 6 out of 10

Baroque Dezign

The Good: Experienced ID that immediately knew physical problems to certain ideas. It seemed he came from the contracting background into the design space and was as practical a designer as we had got amongst them all. Very competitive pricing.

The Bad: Design sense was average and his proposal was not as special when compared to the others. Good space planning but a little lacking in the creativity department.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10

Spacious Interiors

The Good: I'd say one of the strongest in the design department, and the proposals were very impressive. Can't really say more after this can I?

The Bad: Expensive. The ID was also a little like a "yes" man, meaning that it was very likely we'd end up saying "Why is there extra charge?" and him saying "cuz you wanted it like this"

Rating: 7 out of 10

We contacted another 4 other firms but will not elaborate further as we did not interact enough for me to give them a fair comment.

Please note, I score 0-5 for pricing and 0-5 for design, adding up to the final ratings for these guys.

[matashi 1]

wow, very nice! dining room can be converted to another room!

[angelous666 0]

Hacking 101

The first thing before reno will almost always be hacking. While it seems pretty simple, there are quite a lot of things to be done prior to the actual hacking.

1. ID must prepare a schematic on which walls require hacking and where will new walls be put up (if applicable)
2. Although the beams (no-hack-zones) are clearly stated, please note that certain floorplans may not indicate the presence of a "stiffener". The stiffener is like a column. only not as big and is reinforced by only a small number of steel rods and they do not connect to other floors like the beam does. Stiffeners can be hacked, but require approval from a PE (professional enginner) and the PE has to supervise the hacking. (Shouts "extra costs" or $$upz)
3. HDB will not approve sealing of doors if it means you have to get through 2 doors to get out of your HDB. i.e everyroom must be connected to the room (usually living room) with the main door. This is for emergency use.
4. Please carefully read the HDB reno guidelines that come with your HDB purchase in case your ID is not experienced.

Ladies and Gents, please ensure that your ID and his contractors do not miss out the toilet floor. It is absolutely critical for a thorough hacking of the toilet floors.

Example: when purchasing a new place, the MBR toilet floor has a 100mm drop from the MBR. Hacking tiles off the MBR floor is simple, and you will hack in quite deep. Toilets usually have harder cement and a layer or two of water proofing, the former of the two will cause it to be difficult to hack properly. As a result, you might hack off alot of the MBR floor and not enough of the toilet, resulting in a toilet floor that is level with the MBR. (speaking from experience)

At least our ID was cool and asked the workers to re hack the floors. Its not the 100mm we wanted, but with 80mm it was enough to keep water from spilling out to your MBR. (I think)

Notice the lack of a drop between the toilet floor (foreground) and the MBR floor (background).. This one fail..

Our own experience wasn't what I'd call smooth. We had the stiffener problem, and approval costed us time and money. The hacking was quite straight forward though, as the whole place was completely unrecognisable after I visited the work-site after the 3days of hacking.

View of our living, kitchen and dining (stitched up photo). Notice the stiffener at the kitchen, 1/3 from the right of the photo..

View of our living, kitchen and dining (stitched up photo) after the stiffener was demolished..

View of the MBR after tearing down the wall, from bedroom 2..

Bringing down the toilet wall to make more space.

(BTW i just found out through the process of this post that I can only post max 5 pics per post... Bummer)

[angelous666 0]

Wet Works 203

This reno-talk posting is finally catching up with my actual reno! Anyway, we finished the screeding of the entire house tdy, including the leveling of the balcony, kitchen and yard to the rest of the house. As I type, the electrical wirings and aircon-trunking is getting put in place, along with the false ceiling. That will be for the later posts coming over the weekend once i get some pictures taken. hehe

Screeding and leveling.. We originally had tons of sand and cement mixes piled up all over the floor in every room and that made the place look really cramped up. Three weeks into the reno, we finally had the cement screed nicely poured and laid out across the apartment

Our Balcony finally levelled and the entire place screed. Place looks much more spacious now!

My missus wanted a different kind of feature wall in the living room and we found these nice brick looking homogenous tiles to put up against the wall. I was unsure of the outcome, but after the tiles got put up, it actually looked quite ok to me

We also had some of the water piping done, after having thought long and hard on where to place our washing machine... There was also this big fugly drainage pipe hanging at my kitchen wall that we had to hide! (we never realised it until we took down the odd looking built-in cupboard that was hiding it.......should have checked) anyway, more details of this in my blog.

One thing I'd like to share.. Please ensure that the workers lay the waterproofing not just on the toilet floor, but also up to at least half a foot up the surrounding walls...

Waterproofing up the wall...

Toilet wall tiles done up!

Our little niche in the shower area for toiletries

Okay.. tt's it for tdy.. time to go slp.... yawnz..

Good night people..

Edited June 3, 2010 by angelous666

[angelous666 0]

Just updated my blog.. Adding some new pictures of the job-site here as well.

We've finished the MBR Toilet at last, and doing up the false ceiling. Pictures below

New look of the common area with the false ceiling up

Steps design on our false ceiling in the dining room

The shower area and toiletry niche is finally done!

Anyway, just to share with you guys some thoughts on built-in / concealed stuff. While all the concealing of pipes/wires/trunking is nice and all, please do keep in mind the problems you might face in future maintenance works. Your ID may or may not think about all these possible problems for you so please stay involved and engaged, and carefully think about what you need to do should a pipe leak / electrical wire burn up / aircon pipe "sweats". Your "experienced" parents, aunties and uncles may have been nagging at you to consider this already, making you somewhat annoyed (I went through that too) and you may decide to ignore them, but please, for your own sakes, think about it. I almost made the grave mistake of turning into the "I don't care about what you said" mentality before my wife knocked some sense into me.

For those who plan to have concealed water piping, please ensure that your plumbers weld the pipes instead of using white tape and joints. Joints may leak after being exposed to constant water pressure over a period of time, and the last thing you want is for your neighbour to come up knocking on your door and say, "eh, lao zhui ah" (hey, your bathroom is leaking to my ceiling"). Most IDs should warn you about it, but should they miss it out, please remind them to tell your plumber, or tell the Super Mario guys yourself.

Well, its way past mid-night and time for me to grab some sleep. Let's see if I can find time tomorrow to post more pictures. (meanwhile, my blog is here ->HomeOfTheBlessed)

Good Night people. Happy Sunday

[angelous666 0]

Updated my blog today... And adding some pictures here to share.

We've completed the tiling works for the toilets and are almost done with the marble flooring. Next week, parquet flooring of the bedrooms and homogeneous tiling for the kitchen will be schedule to complete.

Our living-kitchen-dining panaromic pic with the half completed floor and finished false ceiling.

Our mum's seem to love the common toilet tiling, saying our ID did a pretty good job to be creative and using just simple materials to make something special. Kudos to the tiling masters for their great workmanship as well.

I'm really bad with the cam so could not seem to photo the entire wall

This one had too much flash

Same for this one... And we really need to pain that pipe

The marble flooring should finish tomorrow and the sanding/polishing will start only next week after the entire flooring is completed. Hoping for the best.

[lilithfiend 0]

interesting tiling in the common room bath..what are those? marble with slate or?

[angelous666 0]

interesting tiling in the common room bath..what are those? marble with slate or?

the tiles are two different homogeneous tiles, arranged out to create a "artistic" look. Our ID had the tiles layed out in various angles to achieve that look.

[angelous666 0]

Its been a week and we've got slightly more progress. All the flooring had been laid and the marble was being polished when we visited on saturday. The grains of the marble was not 100% to our liking though, as there were streaks in the volacas that was rather dark, almost close to black. The polishing process was quite noisy and it kept ringing in our ears as we discussed the finer details of the carpentry with our ID.

Chengai Decking in Balcony

Marble in living room

Parquet in MBR

Our feature wall was also finally done... Grhhh..