Sims Drive 5i

[steelze 0]

Hi all, here is our first house. IT will be for myself, my wife, my first baby boy (coming out anytime in Oct10) and a maid.

1st appt: 22-Sep-10

2nd appt: 16-Nov-10

Offical key receiving date: 10-Dec-10 (we are letting the seller to stay for a month out of goodwill)

Our budget is really low. Yet we do not want to compromise on the design as this is our first house. Therefore, thorough planning and sourcing are very important. To date, we have sourced more than 20 IDs and contractors. This is still an ongoing process and it's really tiring which many of you have also gone through. We have received more than 15 quotes in total, and have narrowed down to 2 quotes currently. 1 is from an ID company, while the other one is a contractor. I will disclose their companies once we have finalised with the agreement and start the reno. Stay tune.

Floor Plan

We are lucky to have a squarish layout. Easy for us to play around with space planning.

Current condition

The previous owner didn't install the studyroom and he hacked away the storeroom. We will want to restore these 2 items back. After considering various ideas from the IDs, we have decided to go with this layout as of now:

Proposed layout

We will combine the mstr bedroom and bedroom 2 into a huge mstr bedroom. Reasons being that both my wife and I love to slack ard in the room most of the time. TV, 2 computers (for dota-ing together), baby cot, big wardrobe, toilet, queen sized bed and big windows (we love natural lights) are few of the mandatory items. The original mstr bedroom is small and dark.

Reno task list

Our reno task list involes a whole unit overhaul. These include:

1. Hacking of bathrooms, kitchen, living rm and bedrooms floor tiles and wall tiles (bathrooms and kitchen).

2. Lay wall and floor tiles for bathrooms, kitchen and living room.

3. Lay laminate flooring for all bedrooms.

4. Hacking of walls. Building of walls (using hollow block & cement).

5. False ceiling @ foyer and dinig area.

6. L-box and clove light holder @ living rm and all bedrooms.

7. Plumping work

8. Painting of whole house.

9. Carpentry work (wardrobes for all bedrms; kitchen cabinet; tv console & feature wall for living rm and mstr bedrm)

10. Electric work (whole house re-wiring); and

11. Ceiling fans and air con.

We wanna contain our budget to 35k for the above reno. Some IDs and contractors didn't even bother to reply us after hearing our budget. But we will persist with this budget. Fortunately, there are still few nice IDs and contractors out there who can compromise with our budget here and there.

We have just received our 3D drawings from this ID. See next post. =)

Edited October 16, 2010 by steelze

[steelze 0]

3D drawings for our reno. Overall, we are pretty satisfied the design and colour theme. We want our house to be simlple and a bit of luxury feel with earth warm tone.

Living room

Master bedroom

**To be continued in post #3 below.

Edited October 16, 2010 by steelze

[steelze 0]

Bedroom 3

Study room

Master Bathroom

Common bathroom

Kitchen

I wanna ask you guys for advice. For 3D drawings, is it ok for us to keep asking the ID to redraw until we are satisifed with even the smallest detail like change in laminate finish for 1 small carpentry? Or add more perspective drawings from other view angles? I don't seem to have enough comfort with just several drawings before we kick start the actual reno. You guys usually have how many drawings?

Edited October 25, 2010 by steelze

[january 0]

Hey there... welcome to RT. Congrats on your new place! It looks decently spacious... what's the floor area? I used to live in Sims Drive... love that hawker centre.

You can definitely ask your ID to make revisions to the 3D or layout plan of the house... I think 2 - 3 revisions (1 major change in design, 1 to fine tune) seems fair to me.

The dining area seems really small compared to the rest of the house! I'm guessing you don't eat in often?

Colours looks very warm and inviting... good choice.

Anyway, since you're on a tight budget, I think you shouldn't do the TV feature wall + console in the living room. Cuz that will set you back about $5K to $7K, and from the looks of it now the feature wall doesn't do anything much but to conceal the cables and to provide some display space. If you buy a TV console you'll have more flexibility in changing your players, cables etc. Plus the workmanship and finishing of bought furniture is likely to be better than custom carpentry work. If you think the wall at the back might be too bare, you can either wallpaper it, or stick wall decals.

This way you have more budget to select better tiles, fittings and furniture for the house.

Oh. Remember to ask your ID/contractor if they can show you ex-client's houses so you can inspect their workmanship before you commit!

Happy reno...

Just some thoughts.

[steelze 0]

Hey there... welcome to RT. Congrats on your new place! It looks decently spacious... what's the floor area? I used to live in Sims Drive... love that hawker centre.

You can definitely ask your ID to make revisions to the 3D or layout plan of the house... I think 2 - 3 revisions (1 major change in design, 1 to fine tune) seems fair to me.

The dining area seems really small compared to the rest of the house! I'm guessing you don't eat in often?

Colours looks very warm and inviting... good choice.

Anyway, since you're on a tight budget, I think you shouldn't do the TV feature wall + console in the living room. Cuz that will set you back about $5K to $7K, and from the looks of it now the feature wall doesn't do anything much but to conceal the cables and to provide some display space. If you buy a TV console you'll have more flexibility in changing your players, cables etc. Plus the workmanship and finishing of bought furniture is likely to be better than custom carpentry work. If you think the wall at the back might be too bare, you can either wallpaper it, or stick wall decals.

This way you have more budget to select better tiles, fittings and furniture for the house.

Oh. Remember to ask your ID/contractor if they can show you ex-client's houses so you can inspect their workmanship before you commit!

Happy reno...

Just some thoughts.

Thanks for the advice! Yea, good point tt u bring out abt seeing the ID's completed work. Which key areas in particular should we examine the workmanship?

We are staying at blk 40. A bit deep inside the estate. U used to stay at the en bloc units? So, u r the lucky ones who moved to kallang heights few yrs back right? =)

[january 0]

I used to live at Blk 40 too! It's a nice quiet neighbourhood.

For workmanship issues you can refer to this thread...

But for carpentry generally you should look at the edges... it should be neat. If using laminate there should be ABS trimming for the joints to be neat. Also make sure things are not wobbly. Check that cupboard doors are level... things like that.

[leechaorui 2]

Very nice 3D pictures. Wish you a smooth reno journey.

[berry_surprise 0]

nice job on ur mbr and i'm looking forward to ur house.

[steelze 0]

I used to live at Blk 40 too! It's a nice quiet neighbourhood.

For workmanship issues you can refer to this thread...

But for carpentry generally you should look at the edges... it should be neat. If using laminate there should be ABS trimming for the joints to be neat. Also make sure things are not wobbly. Check that cupboard doors are level... things like that.

Wow, so qiao. Wanna ask you how long you took to walk to Kallang MRT and Aljunied MRT. I have checked out your t-blog. Nice condo you have there. Congrats for the upgrade. Tough to get upgrade nowadays. =)

Very nice 3D pictures. Wish you a smooth reno journey.

Thanks thanks. I hope so too. Now still at a very preliminary stage. Gotta do more research and sourcing.

nice job on ur mbr and i'm looking forward to ur house.

Thanks pal. Yea, we are also looking forward to our mstr bedroom.

[steelze 0]

Wanna ask you guys for direct sellers' contacts for the following items:

1. Tempered Glass (for my fixed glass panel in mstr bathroom; 3ft by 6ft; 10mm thick) & (kitchen swing door; 3ft by 7ft; 10mm thich)

- my id quoteing me $320 (fixed glass panel) and $400 (swing glass door)

- too exp i guess

2. Bedroom doors (veneer)

- current quote i have is $248 nett

3. Main door (Solid nyatoh)

- current quote i have is $450

4. Main gate (solid wrought iron; galvanised for anti-rust)

- around $350 from CNS (heard bad reviews about this company, but it's cheap)

5. Carpentry

- wardrobe (casement swing door) quote is $230/ft

- wardrobe (sliding door) quote is $250/ft

- TV Console quote is $150/ft

- Feature wall is $230/ft

Please PM me if you have better quotes for above items. Thanks!!!

[january 0]

Wow, so qiao. Wanna ask you how long you took to walk to Kallang MRT and Aljunied MRT. I have checked out your t-blog. Nice condo you have there. Congrats for the upgrade. Tough to get upgrade nowadays. =)

I used to walk to Aljunied MRT, took about 10mins. But that figure may not be accurate since I moved 10 years ago...

[steelze 0]

Not much progress now as it's still in an early stage. Currently pending the ID to revert me on my kitchen and common bathroom drawing.

Still very headache where to find carpenter for my carpentry work. The ID's quote for carpentry freaking exp. The other contractor which i have shortlisted doesn't want to do my carpentry business unless i let him do the whole unit. -_-!

ID

- Overhaul (see above posts for the task list) + electrical work = approx $35k

- Free gifts: bathroom sink X2, WC X2, shower set X2, accessories X2, kitchen sink, hob and hood, free false ceiling and L-Box @ living room, dining room, foyer area and passage way.

- caprentry (3 wardrobe, 2 tv console, 2 feature wall) is top up of another approx $8k

- workmanship unknown. not many reviews on workmanship in renotalk.

- hdb licensed

Contractor

- Overhaul (see above posts for the task list) + electrical work + carpentry = approx $38k

- good review about his work attitude and workmanship. but he has not replied me since my last proposed quote of $33k for everything.

- not hdb licensed

As of now, we are thinking of engaging the ID for overhaul, then outsourced the carpentry work (except kitchen cabinet as it's in the ID's package) to other parties. What do you guys think? Wise choice?

Edited October 19, 2010 by steelze

[gimz63251073 0]

Just dropping by to say hi!

still pondering over selection of ID?

I would say go with contractor or go direct is better if u already know what you want and have the time to coordinate.

Coordinating also includes dropping by the house every now and then to open door for different sub-cons. You would not want your ID to shriek responsibility by saying "your other sub-con damage my work"

also, how tight is your budget...? its the kind where you die die have to keep below a certain amount?

during the reno process, we are often quoted the lowest price, any "better material" or "more beautiful stuff" cost a lot more. E.g. my carpenter would charge me $200 more using "metal lookalike laminates" vs "normal matt laminate". Soft closing system requires additional top ups, standard quotes would not included soft close.

The norm is that most people end up spending more (or much more) than the initial quote given. So u might want to consider that when deciding on works to do.

oh yes, Electrical works have to ensure they use new wires and not re-use old wires.

[steelze 0]

Just dropping by to say hi!

still pondering over selection of ID?

I would say go with contractor or go direct is better if u already know what you want and have the time to coordinate.

Coordinating also includes dropping by the house every now and then to open door for different sub-cons. You would not want your ID to shriek responsibility by saying "your other sub-con damage my work"

also, how tight is your budget...? its the kind where you die die have to keep below a certain amount?

during the reno process, we are often quoted the lowest price, any "better material" or "more beautiful stuff" cost a lot more. E.g. my carpenter would charge me $200 more using "metal lookalike laminates" vs "normal matt laminate". Soft closing system requires additional top ups, standard quotes would not included soft close.

The norm is that most people end up spending more (or much more) than the initial quote given. So u might want to consider that when deciding on works to do.

oh yes, Electrical works have to ensure they use new wires and not re-use old wires.

Apparantly, the contractor's quote has many missing items. To include those items into my quote, the amount will be higher than the ID by couple of thousands bucks. I will still keep searching for quotes bah.

My budget is 35k. buffer 3k. furniture not included.

currently also trying to sort out my kitchen layout and tiles selection with the ID. cause i already put deposit with him. might as well get some products /services out of him.

[steelze 0]

hi kenlim, thanks. PMed you the ID.