26 Yr Old 5Rm Resale In Tampines

[chocoholic84 0]

Some other pics that sums up the work that have been done over the past 3 days.

Donny and Guoxin (my electrician) posing for their glam shots

Craftstone wall facing our main door. How nice it would be if we could do without the window!

Main entrance, wood tiles with feature wall. Ugly pipe would be boxed up.

A bit off topic, but we are thinking of this hanging lamp for the balcony. Accommpanied by 2 sets of LED lights, one on each side.

Last pic for the night!

Windows up

Plastering went on over the weekend. Next week will basically be more plastering, rewiring, false ceiling. Shopping for fixtures and lightings too. Give us strength!

Cheers!

YEO(s)

Edited March 4, 2012 by chocoholic84

[chocoholic84 0]

windows are up ! a mixture of sliding and containment windows.Happy that we chose not to have grilles ,luv the open airy feel .

Plastering of the walls has also started as well..I now have smooooth smooth walls... Its def a better canvas for Donny ,Guoxin to sketch their plans for the lighting points etc compared to the previously rough surface !

A preview of where my walk in wardrobe will be..erm..I meant OUR walk in closet

There is babe doing some measuring with his trusty tape, this wld mean that we will have to shop for sinks ,taps,mixers,shower sets,WCs very soon... can forsee looong walks and headaches from choosing which is which . though we have shortlisted a few places from scouring the forums,there is still quite a few like..

1.Royal Franco

2.Poo Joo

3.Sim Siang Choon ( just for the fact that it is a 1 stop place where u can just buy everything)

4. Asia exel

5.Hoe Kee

just to name a few..

then there are many factors to think of, 1 or 2 piece WC,brands of sinks,taps and most importantly ,PRICE!!

No complains though..lol!

babe fell in love with BlANCO's granite sinks

gotta admit it looks sweee, any reviews anyone?

Edited March 13, 2012 by chocoholic84

[chocoholic84 0]

Is anyone aware of that there was a International furniture fair 2012 from the 9-12 Mar? Designer furniture from all around the world are put together in a space to showcase talents from all over! Now unknown to many ,the exhibition was open from 5-7pm to the public . My ID was there and happened to see some dining chairs that would suit our theme,even took pics of them to "tempt " me

As the exhibition was coming to a close,the remaining pieces are being offered at slashed prices .Needless to say , it wld be a fantastic deal since most of these unique pieces are imported from overseas!

BUT, I was working and cld not go down immediately much as I wanted to .. By the time i reach expo .. All would be finished ! but guess what ? Donny and J( another ID )came to pick me up ,he even persuaded the salesman to reserve the chairs till I got there..so cool right !

When we reached , I was so tempted to buy all! SO had to work and my phone's batt totally died sooo.. I had to make the decision whether to buy or not! Luckily Donny and J was there to advise moi man...With him by my side , I bought 6 dining and 2 arm chairs in creamy white leather for....*drumroll ..$800 bucks ! Now ,I just have to find a spot for all of them

Next, as all items are cash and carry, we had to arrange for our own transport . Donny just said his fav phrase "not an issue" and called forth movers quickly to assist . Efficient or wat !On our way outside,Donny worked his magic again when I set my eyes on a solid teak divider .. Got it ! He even helped the mover to lug the heavy bugger to the lorry ..lol

We drove back to 289 to direct the movers and had a well deserved dinner after that .. Thanks a lot Donny and J ! Will post pics soon..

I will def take leave to go to the exhibition again when it opens next yr !

[romeltic 1]

You use google sketch up to do the drawings? That nice. Do you know of any tutorials I can follow to create drawing like what you did

KITCHEN BASICS

Seeing how i'll be spending the most amount of my time in the kitchen. I needed something that is functional yet easy to maintain. Nothing too fancy, just needed a fair amount of worktop for prep work, no top cabinets and lots of walk space. Seeing how there are small windows on the same wall as the common toilet, i decided to locate the hob there. No hood.

2 Sinks, one for heavy work and the other for light duties. 8-9 ft table top (weekly poker sessions ) that can double up as a prep area for baking. Wet prep area will be closer to the heavy duty sink.

As in the picture below, walls of storeroom will be hacked to create flow of air directly from the front of house all the way thru. Hopefully the view from the main door will be a bonus.

[romeltic 1]

Just curious by hacking down the wall between the master bedroom and bedroom 2 to build the walk in wardrobe.

Will there be loss of privacy? As in the noise/voices I master bedroom may be overheard in the bedroom 2 and vice versa

MASTER BEDROOM + STUDY

MASTER BEDROOM

Missy wanted a walk in wardrobe. Seeing how happy missy = happy home, space planning for the masterbedroom centered around how we can maximise the space we had without totally sacrificing a room. We decided to convert bedroom 2 to MBR and hack away the wall between MBR and Bedroom 2 to create the 'walk in' in WIW. Partition board + Carpentry takes care of the open wardrobe (11-13"). Relocation of the door was designed to create a small foyer/feature wall concept on initial entry to the bedroom. This also provides some form of privacy (i hope! )

Dry portion of the toilet (double sink and mirror) will be extended out of the original toilet by about 5 feet, this will be seperated from the WIW by a glass door. We decided to put the sink and cupboard on the other side of the main wall as sunlight will be at a premium and we wanted to make full use of the natural light that enters the walkway thru the small window on the main wall. Bedroom will be a simple bed+tv affair.

STUDY

This will be the area where both of us will spend the most amount of time. Hence we wanted a cozy and inviting atmosphere. A day bed (at least 1.8-1.9m long) will adorn the wall along the window. This will serve as a cozy reading corner and doubles up as a guest bed. No Sofa beds for us. To minimize cost, we would be buying bookshelves off the rack (pardon the pun) and getting the contractor to help us build a box up area around it to create 'that' illusion. As we would be spending so much time in here, a design feature we stole off a magazine would be to create a 9-10ft window that would open up the space into our living room. This should satisfy our design brief of space and dimension. Fingers crossed!

[romeltic 1]

Does the Id actually provide the drawings free of charge? Cos I only talk to one Id and I remember that she mention that the 3d drawings are chargeable

ID / CONTRACTOR SHORTLISTING

Didn't think we'd have the patience to sit through 10-20 IDs trying to find the right one. So we took the 'lazy' way out by first shortlisting 3-4 IDs whom have had good reviews on this forum. Sitting through the few sessions were very enlightening to say the least. From the various discussions, we knew what can or cannot be done, what kind of monies we are looking at for various design features of our place (which made it easier to us to prioritize and decide what we wanted to keep/discard). Below are a few short summaries of IDs/Contractors we've talked to over the past 6-8 weeks.

1) ***** : ID Melodie

We decided to pop into ***** as we were walking around getting a feel for furnishing. ANDDDDD i have this strong attraction to the colors black and orange. LOL! oooo i can't type company names here? nevermind. the color hints above should be pretty clear muahahahaa

Like what others have mentioned, they have a pretty impressive showroom. Their working style is to have a Site Managers attached to IDs. So basically once the design stage is complete, the site managers take over. Pros and Cons, and it sounds helluva professional. She followed up with us without the need for much prompting and quite attuned to our requirements. Drawings and quotations were back after 2 weeks (over the CNY period). Just slightly over our budget thou. SO liked the chemistry she had with Melodie and i guess one of the advantages was that she used to work for the same company i am in now and knew the amount of traveling i'd be doing over the reno period. We liked the fact that she was very practical as well and constantly reminded us of future family expansion plans. Shortlisted!

2) 3D CONCEPTWERKE

Called on 3 seperate occasions to make and appointment and was told that someone will call me back. YUP they did... 2 weeks later. Didnt think i could take this kind of response time over the course of the reno process. Too popular i guess. Oh well, will take my small wallet elsewhere.

3) I.D +A : Design director FRANK TANG

I'd start by saying we didn't choose Frank ultimately. HOWEVER, we were the most impressed by his professionalism and flair for colors, lines, concepts. 30K above our budget

4) ARTIST ROOM

We were initially very very excited about meeting the designers from artist room. As one of their portfolio project belonged to a good friend of my SO. They had nothing but good things to say about them. During the meetup, after listening to a very short brief of what we wanted in our future home. We were told our budget of $50-55K was definately too low. Their interim quote was northwards of $80K :jawdrop:

5) DESIGN PROFESSIONAL : Kevin

Kevin was introduced by a lifelong friend of mine. The short initial meet up with him yielded alot of ideas being thrown around. Felt a very good connection with Kevin. His abilty to break design ideas down to technical applications impressed me. We spent 3-4 weeks throwing ideas, quotations and floorplan at each other. Shortlisted!

6) SUMMIT DESIGN : DONNY

From the onset of our ID selection, we wanted very much to talk to Donny to see if he would be able to take on our project. However, due to 'technical difficulties', we were not able to get in touch with him. However, up to the very last week in which we were about to choose an ID from the shortlisted pool, we managed to talk to Donny. Found out that he had recently joined Summit Design. The 2 quick sessions we had with him were very positive. He seemed to understand what we wanted in our future home and was very much ready to adopt this as his pet project. His reputation on this forum as a responsible ID/contractor stood him in good stead.

It was a hard tossup between Kevin and Donny, however, what swayed us towards Donny was that he had recently wrapped up all his previous projects prior to joining Summit hence would be able to devote a lot more time to us as compared to Kevin who was working himself to the ground handling 7-8 projects at the same time. Donny it was!!

Fingers crossed!

YEO(S)

[romeltic 1]

Who is tis uncle b and Alex? Both are window contractor? Mind pm me their contacts? Thanks as I would like to change the windows of my house also. Saw that you did not put on window grills but I future when u have kids will still put on for safety reasons right?

WINDOWS

Sigh after inspecting the house closely, we realised our initial impression regarding the condition of the window was wayyyy too generous. Half the handles were falling off and the windows in the kitchen can barely be opened fully. Serves us right for being too 'chin chye' during the viewings.

Oh well.. no choice but to look around for window quotes.

My SO handled window contractor selection as i was away for a week. Alex came highly recommended by alot of forumers so we decided to ask him over for a quick site survey. According to SO, Alex came with his brother and gave her a very veeerryy comprehensive lesson on window selection eg, what to look out for, pros and cons of casement vs sliding etc. After a measurement, the onsite quote they gave us was $4850.... thats like $4850 over our budget. :help: She whatsapped me immediately and as it was only 4am where i was, it woke me up like a jolt.... basket. couldn't sleep anymore. Took out my budget excel sheet again to see where i can squeeze out more money. zzzzZZzzz

In the meantime, donny also asked the window contractor he has always worked with to come give us a quote. My SO liked the fact that Uncle B (thats what everyone calls him) was those old cheeky but kind looking kindda uncle, easier to work with LOL. Before choosing Donny, he brought me to one of his previous client's place (Snoopy2006) to have a look at resilient flooring. Incidently, i asked the owner who did her windows as they looked pretty good. Long story short, i have a pretty decent impression of Uncle B's work. Final quote came in at $2700 without toilet windows. Whoa... SO made sure that everything was as close as possible to what Alex was giving us. In the end we went with Uncle B (also told him to change our toilet windows) and we're keeping our fingers crossed that our bid to save 2k won't backfire on us. We're not hoping for the same quality like what Alex can probably offer, just something that won't affect the looks of our place.

YEO(s)

[ayazumi 0]

Hi. Did you also buy the dining table? The table looks very nice!.

[chocoholic84 0]

You use google sketch up to do the drawings? That nice. Do you know of any tutorials I can follow to create drawing like what you did

Hi Romeltic , thanks for stopping by =p Yup.. The drawings are done by my babe using Google sketch up .. no? I dun have as much patience as him ! If you go to the website , there are videos od tutorials to help you get the basics flat .. good luck ! hope to be able to see ur designs too

[chocoholic84 0]

Just curious by hacking down the wall between the master bedroom and bedroom 2 to build the walk in wardrobe.

Will there be loss of privacy? As in the noise/voices I master bedroom may be overheard in the bedroom 2 and vice versa

Hi again , Hmm..I dun think that will be an issue coz there will be doors btw the walk in wardrobe and the new MBR hence whatever noise will be contained .As for the (inital MBR converted to a smaller room) it is currently gonna be used as a storeroom of sorts to keep our sports equibment, odds and ends blah blah.. since we hacked our original one away

[ahlipz 0]

I knew about IFFS but cannot make it on Monday from 1700-1900hrs for the public viewing to get some good discount for sofa & chairs

[chocoholic84 0]

Who is tis uncle b and Alex? Both are window contractor? Mind pm me their contacts? Thanks as I would like to change the windows of my house also. Saw that you did not put on window grills but I future when u have kids will still put on for safety reasons right?

Yo Yo.. both are indeed different window contractors .. We found out abt Alex thru scouring renotalk, and gotta say ,they did give me a positive feeling during out first meeting.There was no hard selling and he was volunteering all kinds of advice of what kinda windows to install and etc though he was fully aware we would be looking at other quotes .

For Uncle B, He is a straightforward no frills guy. You gotta know exactly what you want,he does not really make small talk but will explain stuff should you ask.( think I peppered him with many questions then) will pm you ! Yup, realised the possible issue of not installing grilles ,will probably install if there is a need although I survived though my mum did not have grilles too !

[chocoholic84 0]

Does the Id actually provide the drawings free of charge? Cos I only talk to one Id and I remember that she mention that the 3d drawings are chargeable

Ours provided the drawings FOC,but then i think it depends on whether you have signed on with them . If you have, most likely the 3D drawings will be complimentry .( at least that was what we were told in our quest for ID. However ,if you have not, they would prob charge you a fee to produce the drawings . This is to protect themselves ba from ppl who may take advantage of their expertise and not using them in the end . Hope this helps !

[chocoholic84 0]

I knew about IFFS but cannot make it on Monday from 1700-1900hrs for the public viewing to get some good discount for sofa & chairs

Hi Ahlipz,

I was lucky that my office was ard expo else i would def not be able to make it down as well.They should extend the public viewing till after office hours no ? Next year , the exhibition will happen again ard the same period . Gonna mark it on my calendar and take half day or something. Even if I dun buy anything. Just browsing is inspiring enuff !

[chocoholic84 0]

Hi. Did you also buy the dining table? The table looks very nice!.

Hi Ayazumi , I agree.. The table was solid wood with very unique legs ! very rustic and one of a kind ..but we already have a dining table sooo nah.. did not get it . Thanks for stopping by !