20 Year 4Room 'a' In Simei

[Pesadelo 0]

My reno started yesterday and i thought of sharing some experiences I've and some before and after pic for those with similiar model type of house owners and having headache doing it. I used to browse a lot and was glad there's few owners here who share the same model as me.

Not making it long, this is my current flat (however the storeroom is gone and i've to spend some money to build it back) i can't imagine anyone who can do without a storeroom, i personally stores a lot of junk lol.

Design is 20 years old with rockstone wall and those conies well... i think you guys know..

Testing this image ulpoad before i continue on 2nd post.

[Pesadelo 0]

Anyway this few pic is how it looks like before reno.

Our living room

DIning room. It wasn't really clearly defined as dining as with different design, it can be a living room as well

Our kitchen... old kitchen are bigger especially this one when the storeroom was torn down

Our 2 common bathroom and masterroom bathroom.

Next post will be our mini journey to diff ID and purchase of items. Last pic cant be shown as post dun allow me to

[May_dream1 14]

Congrats in getting a 4A in simei. I really like simei for its convenience..... been to a few units at simei green but then it was too ex.

anyway, each post only allow 5 pic. that is why your last pic cannot be shown. you have to post in new posting if you have more than 5 pic.

[casa 0]

Welcome and hope to c more of your house reno pics

[Pesadelo 0]

ID hunting and cost

Was lazy so i didn't ran around a lot of ID firms to ask for quotation. We asked around 3 ID firms and 1 contractor and found price to be quite similar though... unless you come down to item by item.

Wouldn't write too long basically i think end of day it's all about you feeling comfortable with the ID and generally good reviews

1) Uhome

2) Orangecube

3) Submit

4) Hoh Fatt reno or something Offhand didn't remember)

Ultimate end up with Submit. Price wasn't really the lowest but the ID seems responsible. Manage to get back to us within timeframe as promised, and i did not hear them talk big like able to promised this and that etc. Down to earth, no hidden cost, all lied out. Other firms i see they managed to get within my budget but left out this and that... ultimately hoping to secure the deal if i'm not careful with going through item by item maybe.

Anyway , i wouldn't breakdown my cost item by item but generally what i'm doing and the cost. Anyone interested to know more can PM me.

Living room

Hack off half of it for tiling, the other half laminate wood

8 ft feature wall

L box and false ceiling with downlights

Kitchen

Hack off everything

New wall tiles and floor tiles (including those behind cabinet) Some quotation seems cheaper but they did not put wall tiles behind your cabinet, which is quite a lot

10 ft top and 7 ft bottom cabinet

1 full height cabinet

1 3 ft concrete washing (for sink)

Quartz top (there's generally 3 type, quartz is most expensive but hardy etc)

A new storeroom erected inside kitchen

2 bathroom

ALl hacked away

New wall and floor tiles

New piping of course

3 Rooms

Nothing much done, just floor laminate

Master room there's 1 7 ft warbdrobe sliding (When been quote it's standard door type, cost a lot more if change to sliding, take note)

Addtional works

I hacked away 1 part of a room s the previous owner(indian) put an altar there, so all wall tiles, conrete steps etc... cost a bit to hack them, cement it in order to do floor laminte

As mentioned before as the wall are all rockstone, i am doing a plastering for all my walls and ceilings

I placed a few wooden blocks around to seperate living and dining.

Some standard like changing all doors

Painting

All these comes out to about 44K which doesn't include some which i used other contractor like electrical works and changing of window grills and few window panes

WIndow grills works etc - Around 3K plus with 8 window panes and frames changes

Electrical works - 4K (full re-wiring and changing everything and well... a lot a lot of sockets.

In total around 51K spent in reno and doesn't include furniture, lightning, electrical appliances.

At this point that time i almost faint leow LOL.. inital budget is only 30K

This is what we roughly comes out using floorplanner and we present this to ID for execution

Edited September 26, 2012 by Pesadelo

[Pesadelo 0]

3D Drawing

I wouldnt go thorugh a lot with my purchase of furniture and elec items which i dun think many will be interested. Here's a few 3D drawing my ID comes up with and most (I'd say 90%) of the lights, furniture etc are the real thing as i've already purchased them and send to ID before the rendering of the drawing for more accurate look and feel.

Living room

Dining room

There's a few block of wood as you can see in the pic as i mentioned eariler in my costing, this seperates my dining and living. If you noticed, my whole living room is seperated into tiles and wood laminate. I did asked in forum if anyone did it but seems no one did it, i didn't find much sample on the net as well but i still go ahead as ID says it should look fine.

Kitchen

Open concept as initial suggestion is glass door etc... 1stly costly and 2ndly, we feel it would block off all the natural wind that is flowing through from kitchen to dining. Only minus point is to take care of the oil smoke etc when cooking. Extra care. I may look into some form of sliding door in future though if it really gets worse.

Master room and common room bathroom

Simple and basic, nothing fancy or special but we decided to build a low wall to place our shower form, shampoo etc instead of buying those thing that screw into the wall to hang.

[May_dream1 14]

Nice 3D.... A few nice ideas too.

[Pesadelo 0]

Week 1 - Hacking

End of week 1, Pretty on schedule, they finished the hacking for all tiles, skirtings and finished my storeroom. Whole place is in a pretty mess

This picture below is one of the special place in my room where it require additional hacking to the tiles and concrete steps built by previous Indian owner

Week 1 - Plastering

Supposed to be starting next week but i could see them doing it to 1 of my room already. The effect is much better than expected as ID says ours is old flat so do not expect a very flushed and smooth surface. As you can see from my photo below, left side is my old 'rockstone' surface which is very popular 20 years ago. Right side is the newly plastered surface (without painting). For new owners who are wondering roughly how much plastering cost. My whole 4 room flat was quoted 2K.

Week 2,3 will be tiling works etc. Will update further.

[winup22 0]

Hi,

Can share with me yr ID and the quote? Thanks

[frigginfuchsia 0]

Hi!

Welcome to Simei, We've the exact same layout and we've moved in for a year now

[Pesadelo 0]

Yes, in fact I saw a lot of us living in Simei n tampines 4A type all similar design. Other one is living room more squarish type with square mbr. I prefer that type though but settled on this ultimately due to high cov

[May_dream1 14]

Yes, in fact I saw a lot of us living in Simei n tampines 4A type all similar design. Other one is living room more squarish type with square mbr. I prefer that type though but settled on this ultimately due to high cov

in hougang also have the same type of floor plan as yours. i think its the same batch.

now, all the new flat also same floor plans..... no matter what location. so its just the batches of floorplans by hdb.

[Pesadelo 0]

End of week 2

Kinda slow but before i bring it up, ID sms me that next week will be full blast and will be able to complete within schedule. So far a bit here a bit there i also dunno what's the process?

My Kitchen basin arrived today together with the tap. As I'm going to built a concrete stand for the basin, this is going to be needed to arrived 1st for the tiler side to built it in.

My Basin

COST : 200+

Location : Geylang area

My wife is hunting long time for this design, she wants a small rubbish container sothat it's easier for her to throw small stuff when washing etc. Some might find it unhygienic etc but i think it should be fine as long as it's cleared regularly like every meal etc. Of course we had another bigger one installed below the basin.

Length is 80cm, kinda small but my wife says it's enough, she doesn't a need a 2 sink type. Well.. it's her area, it's her say.

My tap

COST : 80+

Location : Geylang area

This is my simple tap for my basin. Doesn't cost $200+ like other i've viewed. This one only cost $80+ but well similiar function as those above 200s.

[Pesadelo 0]

End of Week 3

Changes made in midweek

In the midst of tiling, we made changes to our design, we swopped places of the fridge and the full height cabinet, do away with it and install a normal 4 ft cabinet instead with solid top as we thought the cooking area of 10 ft is too small and we still need to place kettle, rice cooker etc.

Here is look i generate from floorplanner.

Our ID didn't complain, made some calls and fixed it before the tiling starts at that area. Nice...

However, some tiny regrets as our kitchen design isn't so... egronmic in design now. We've thoughts of doing L shape but decided not to as we do not want the hallway in between cabinet and wall to be too narrow.

At the end of the week, this is the look

You'll notice we build concrete instead of wood cabinet for our sink as we want it to be more lasting. Didn't like the idea of water spilling sometimes and damage our wooden fixture and have to get it replacec after just 2,3 years

Next week will be some final tiling works, plastering and floor laminate.

Edited October 15, 2012 by Pesadelo

[Pesadelo 0]

More Purchase - For kitchen cabinets

Total cost : $340

Location : IMM level 3

Over the weekend, we visited some shops to look for sliding drawers etc for the cabinet so that we can make necc measurement for the carpenter to know.

We view in IMM mainly, didn't shop around, went to 3 shops and settled on these. There's one brand called Welmi , can see that the quality is very good but it's very costly as well. We settled on these as they're more friendly on the pocket and doesn't look too filmsy. Can't find any good item to place my forks, spoons, knifes etc... may decide on those in IKEA.

Sliding drawers for some pans and such. We bought 2 of these.

We had one of this so that we do not need to place those bottles of wine, vinegar etc on counter top, it'll be stored in the cabinet with this sliding storage.

The last one we had is more for slightly bigger bottles, some hanging utensils etc.