K's Home

[kooky 2]

Thanks everyone who have shared your renovation journey with me and in this forum I have learned a lot (and still learning) from most fo you.

My husband has been staying in a rented unit for as long as he is here and after we got married and with a baby arriving, I finally managed to convince him to purchase a unit as it make more sense to pay rent for place where we owned it then paying for something that doesn't belong to us and confined to many other rules set by the landlord.

I started to look at property websites for a 5-room flat early last year and we were disappointed with all the horrendous COV and selling prices; yet we had not view any unit as husband's job requires him to travel out of Singapore bi--weekly. Finally in January last year, we decided to try ballot on SOBF exercise with HDB. My mentality then was if we don't get a chance to choose a unit, all we lost is $10 in the balloting system and we just continue with our rent in the current place since we had just started a new lease.

As the husband is used to living in a place that is spacious, our choices on the types of flats are limited to either 5-room or EA/EM (which of course we know chances of getting a unit direct from HDB is like being a 1st prize winner in 4D/TOTO).

Anyway, in last year BTO/SOBF exercise in March, we went in and threw in $10 to ballot Queenstown area. Upon closing date, there were 126 applicants against some 13 5-room/EA/EM available. We thought well, better luck next round. Then in May, I received an email from HDB, informing us that we were given a queue number to select a unit in Queenstown area!

Our 1st appointment was in September and on the spot we paid the option fee to lock down the only one EM available in Mei Ling street. Heard from neighbours that many people had came around to check out if this unit has been taken.

We engaged the service of a contractor through recommendation from someone but after 2 months of reno saga, we decided to terminate his service and look for another one. My current contractor is a bloke who is strongly recommended by my brothers who used him to reno their flats. We both work full-time and He is efficient but due to all the festive seasons (e.g. Xmas and CNY), the reno is delayed....such is life eh?

This is the floor plan and I reckon it might be a 2nd generation EM layout.

K is the initial of my 20 months old Miss Muffet

Edited April 18, 2013 by kooky

[kooky 2]

Living area

Edited February 22, 2013 by kooky

[kooky 2]

Kitchen, Service Yard

The door between the kitchen and the yard will be removed and the pipe will be boxed up.

Edited March 20, 2013 by kooky

[kooky 2]

Staircase

Staircase will be reconstructed with different type of material as we do not like the 'woody' feeling

Due to budget and safety reason, we keep the parquet floor but repair damaged ones and then polished the floor. Having a young kid does limit our choices; such is life!

Edited February 24, 2013 by kooky

[kooky 2]

Hallway

[kooky 2]

Bathroom - level 2

[kooky 2]

Master Bedroom

[May_dream1 14]

congrats! really lucky for you to get a queue number from HDB for SOBF. like what you said, its really like kena 1st price for toto..... hahahaahaah.... then you won't need to worry abt COV, its already a good discounted price from HDB if you buy direct from hdb

[kooky 2]

Thank you :-)

I will try to upload a few pics which I manage to take during the demolition period.

There are still lots of work to be done and I am not sure if it will be ready by mid-march as committed by the contractor. Christimas and the CNY sure delay the completion date.

[spikedoll 2]

Congrats!!! Nice unit at queenstown!!!! OMG lucky !

[kooky 2]

Demolition





The wall that's separating the kitchen and service yard will be removed

View from the dining area into the living room - pic 1

View from the dining area into the living room - pic 2

Edited April 18, 2013 by kooky

[kooky 2]

Thank you, spikedoll. We are indeed blessed

Congrats! Nice unit at queenstown!! OMG lucky !

[Teofamily 0]

Can't wait to see more pics.

[kooky 2]

Teofamily, thank you :-)

My surname before married is also Teo but my dialect is cantonese.

[kooky 2]

Like all the owners, we have set aside a budget for renovation. As we are currently renting a place that's fully furnished, hence, we need to take into consideration the cost that's required for purchasing new furniture, home appliances and other stuff which are required.

The husband and I had discussed about having a particular theme for our home but then as we are from different cultures and backgrounds, we can't seem to come to an agreement as to what theme to choose. Of course this has created some inconveniences for my contractor and ID. As we go along, you will notice that my flat is pretty a 'rojak'; it not as well-thought out......LOL

After getting a ballpark figure on the reno cost from my contractor, we have decided to do away with lots of carpentry works which we can do later and on do the ones that we need to use daily. As my mum who has gout, high blood pressure and other problems due to old age will come visit us and might at some point, likely to spend some nights with us, we have decided to redo the staircase which cost the most in the overall quote of the reno cost. Other than carpentry works, we are also delaying some stuff or reuse certain things that's in the flat. We do not change the layout of the flat much as some hacking of walls require PE endorsement (thus incurred addition cost) or HDB approval (time wasted), of course, labour cost and hacking will increase too. Basically these are the things which we will keep:-

• Main door and all bedroom doors (we like the solid doors and the condition was good, hence, we decided to repaint them to match the colour scheme in the flat)
• Keep the Study's room as husband works from home and he needs a room to store documentation
• Keep the parquet floor on the 2nd floor but repair those damaged ones and polish after completion
• We didn't do plastering on the wall since the most visible part in the flat is the wall in the living area which eventually will be covered with the TV board/featured wall. And likelihood we are going to paint the flat with light colours which we hope that the ugly look on the wall will be less visible - we eventually plastered the flat because husband realised that it will look better with smooth walls.
• We dropped the idea of making a TV console and featured wall at the living area. Will buy the TV console off the shelf.

Having a young toddler who is going through the terrible twos now and mum who going to visit more often after we moved, I have stressed to the contractor that I do not compromise on safety. We are going to install grilles in all the windows and floor tiles we had chosen are all matt-finished. I had mentioned to the contractor that for all carpentry works, we want to have round corners and hopefully he can remember....

Edited April 20, 2013 by kooky