Mission Impossible

[zihui 7]

Haha! Fast! Carpentry up! U (or rather HE) has alot of cleaning to do next week! Haha

hahaha Please, if i leave it to him, I'll live in a warzone / pigsty forever.

Haha I know of another RT blogger who has a spreadsheet to monitor costings too.

Zihui you are making us very jealous if you are not way over the humble budget you set for the reno

Hi sarah,

I'm WAY over the budget already. *emo*

I don't even dare to open the spreadsheet anymore lest it ruins my weekend.

[greglhc 30]

Haha I know of another RT blogger who has a spreadsheet to monitor costings too.

Zihui you are making us very jealous if you are not way over the humble budget you set for the reno

I about to say - I think that's a lot of Reno works for a small budget! Well done!

[zihui 7]

I about to say - I think that's a lot of Reno works for a small budget! Well done!

To be very honest, I've been very blessed and lucky this time around.

We managed to make use of JT and my MIL's contacts to obtain huge discounts on practically everything, from the construction materials down to the different teams coming in to carry out the renovation works.

Seriously indebted to the both of them....

[greglhc 30]

Everytime you say your ID, JT, I keep thinking it's Justin Timberlake. Lol

[zihui 7]

Where to begin? Loads of things have been going on throughout the entire weekend and we're now edging ever closer to the end of this particular reno journey (and t-blog). Let's start with the centerpiece of the house - the staircase! The glass & stainless steel railings were finally up in place by last Friday and here's how the staircase currently looks (photo taken on Friday evening) -

A lot of my friends have been asking me why go with the stainless steel railings in tandem with the glass side-panels instead of using wood, which is the more popular option. Personally, I like how sleek and modern the stainless steel railings look so that's what we went with in the end. The only problem with the railings is that they're going to be a real b*tch to clean LOL

Carpentry was delivered on Friday and the frames were put up (both the WIW and the kitchen). Here's how they looked on Friday evening:

The cabinets and kitchen top on the left side of my kitchen were the hood, hob and kitchen sink will all go. There's also a small little 'prep area' reserved for me

Here's photo of the kitchen cabinets on the right hand side of the kitchen (including the box-up for the ugly kitchen pipes) -

Now moving on to the MOST IMPORTANT PART OF THE HOUSE (in my humble opinion anway) - the walk in wardrobe!

As the glass side panels for the staircase were already up, the carpentry team had to be EXTRA careful moving the wardrobes upstairs. If they had broken the glass panels.... I shudder to think about that possibility. Thankfully nothing was broken during the moving process -

After several hours, the WIW is beginning to take shape!

I CANNOT WAIT TO FILL THE WARDROBE UP WITH LOADS OF CLOTHES!

in fact, i'm in such a good mood that I'll even increase the HTB's share of the wardrobe from 10% to 15%

[zihui 7]

Everytime you say your ID, JT, I keep thinking it's Justin Timberlake. Lol

LOL

So my t-blog reminds you of Tom Cruise and my ID reminds you of Justin Timberlake LOL

[zihui 7]

So we went down to the house bright and early on Saturday as we had loads to accomplish that day. We arrived around 10.30 am (well... it IS a weekend so 10.30 AM is considered bright and early....) to be greeted by the sight of the marble polishing going on. I think this is the busiest day of the reno process thus far - we had different teams working on different things in every single room so I'm going to try and document everything the way I remembered it. To start things off, we took a photo of the marble polisher (is that his job title?) hard at work - don't think he was too happy about our photo taking because I remember him glaring at me -

This was the 1st round of marble polishing and his colleague came down on Sunday morning to carry on with the 2nd and final round of marble polishing. His colleague arrived at 9 AM on Sunday and by 3 PM, we finally have decent looking, polished marble floors!! (No photo of the colleague on Sunday as he looks even fiercer and more anti-social than the one pictured above )

Upstairs, there was a beehive of activity going on. In the MBR, the shower screen guys were hard at work, installing the glass door for the MBR toilet as well as the shower screen for the MBR toilet. Time for photos!

The shower screen team hard at work -

It was quite a lengthy process and the entire MBR toilet took them around 3 hours of solid, hard work. But by the time they were finished, we were thrilled with the final product!

Here's how the MBR toilet door currently looks -

And..... I absolutely love the MBR toilet's shower screen and how the overall look has come together!

Please excuse the bare vanity top - it'll be complete by tomorrow.

Meanwhile, the door guy (not a team as all the doors were being installed by just one man) was hard at work prepping all the doors for installation, including the shaving the door into size (particularly for the storeroom door), the drilling and installing of the doors. He's not finished yet so he'll come back today to finish working on them -

Here's another photo of him carrying the door to the storeroom in order to try and fit it nicely into the existing cavity -

[OceanEleven 203]

Meanwhile, the door guy (not a team as all the doors were being installed by just one man) was hard at work prepping all the doors for installation, including the shaving the door into size (particularly for the storeroom door), the drilling and installing of the doors. He's not finished yet so he'll come back today to finish working on them -

Here's another photo of him carrying the door to the storeroom in order to try and fit it nicely into the existing cavity -

Do get some close up shots of the doors.

Did you change the frames of the doors as well?

[zihui 7]

So after all of his hard work, here's a photo of how the Recreation Room's door currently looks -

Loving the grain!

While all that was going on, JT and the electrical team were in the kitchen , standing on top of my new kitchen cabinet top ( )trying to work out the proper placement of the kitchen track lights. Here's the 2nd (and probably last photo of the elusive JT) -

And now my favorite part once again - the carpentry team were stationed in the Walk-in wardrobe room to work on the WIW. This took a very long time and they were finally finished by Saturday evening, which means they'll need to come back on Monday to continue working on the carpentry in the kitchen. However, I'm super pleased with the final outcome. Without further ado, this is where I'll be putting all of my clothes in the future -

JT kept warning me that I shouldn't go with white for the WIW because it'll gradually turn yellowish in around 3-5 years but I don't care - I love how clean the WIW looks! I've already ordered 500 gorgeous hangers from TB and will fill up the WIW with the clothes after they finally arrive.

I also tried to take a panorama photo using my camera, but judging from the awful warp in the photos, it's obvious that my photo taking skills leave a lot to be desired. Oh well.

Here's the warped panorama shot -

OMG it's even more warped than I imagined hahahahahahahha

Super hopeless lah me *facepalm*

While all that was going on, the IKEA guys came down to deliver our purchased items. However, they took one look at the beehive of activity and suggested that they do the delivery first, but come back on Thursday after all the cleaning has been done to assemble the items. *yet another facepalm* Talk about poor logistics management and time management on our part. Now the Recreation Room is filled to the brim with flat packed boxes from IKEA....

On the bright side - our mattress and bedframe have been delivered and are sitting pretty in our MBR!

[zihui 7]

Do get some close up shots of the doors.

Did you change the frames of the doors as well?

Will try to do so after the door installation is complete.

Yup, we changed all the door frames and painted them all white instead of the garish turquoise color that was previously in place.

[cookiegal 1]

So after all of his hard work, here's a photo of how the Recreation Room's door currently looks -

Loving the grain!

While all that was going on, JT and the electrical team were in the kitchen , standing on top of my new kitchen cabinet top ( )trying to work out the proper placement of the kitchen track lights. Here's the 2nd (and probably last photo of the elusive JT) -

And now my favorite part once again - the carpentry team were stationed in the Walk-in wardrobe room to work on the WIW. This took a very long time and they were finally finished by Saturday evening, which means they'll need to come back on Monday to continue working on the carpentry in the kitchen. However, I'm super pleased with the final outcome. Without further ado, this is where I'll be putting all of my clothes in the future -

JT kept warning me that I shouldn't go with white for the WIW because it'll gradually turn yellowish in around 3-5 years but I don't care - I love how clean the WIW looks! I've already ordered 500 gorgeous hangers from TB and will fill up the WIW with the clothes after they finally arrive.

I also tried to take a panorama photo using my camera, but judging from the awful warp in the photos, it's obvious that my photo taking skills leave a lot to be desired. Oh well.

Here's the warped panorama shot -

OMG it's even more warped than I imagined hahahahahahahha

Super hopeless lah me *facepalm*

While all that was going on, the IKEA guys came down to deliver our purchased items. However, they took one look at the beehive of activity and suggested that they do the delivery first, but come back on Thursday after all the cleaning has been done to assemble the items. *yet another facepalm* Talk about poor logistics management and time management on our part. Now the Recreation Room is filled to the brim with flat packed boxes from IKEA....

On the bright side - our mattress and bedframe have been delivered and are sitting pretty in our MBR!

Bed frame also from ikea?

[zihui 7]

So on Sunday, we had yet another bloody busy day. We're seriously running out of steam here - can't wait for everything to be finalized.

Early in the morning at 9 AM, the marble polishing guy arrived for the final round of marble polishing for the living room floor (we were having breakfast around the vicinity so we opened the 'door' for him). Later on, he was joined by the painting team who came down to complete their touch-ups.

After letting the respective workers in, we rushed down to the Singapore Expo for the Food & Electronics Fair where we purchased our Living Room TV (LG), the TV for the Recreation Room (Samsung) and 2 standing fans (as per our FSM's instructions). After that, we had to rush back to commence with the Great Migration Part 1. Our official move-in date is the 6th of Nov at 9.18 AM, but we have a lot of things to move into the house, coupled with an extremely insane schedule outside of the renovations. So after much deliberation and discussion, we have decided to split up our house moving into 2 parts - part 1 took place last Sunday with my MIL using her contacts once again to arrange for helpers and a lorry to come down to move our stuff. This way, we can move into the house on the 6th of Nov and still have the items in our house to function normally. Then the final round of moving in will take place on the 10th of Nov where my father will use his contacts this time to arrange for the transportation and workers to help us out with round 2 of the Great Migration. I know that hiring movers is an easier option but our budget is so tight that we have no choice but to do it ourselves.

So around noon time, the HTB and his family were hard at work loading up the lorry for part 1 of the move!

This was taken early on when they were still enthusiastic and in relatively high spirits.

This photo was taken around 1 1/2 hours and many buckets of sweat later when they weren't joking around / smiling anymore -

And this is just round 1! *shock*

How have we managed to accumulate so much stuff????

And the best part is... we have more stuff to move during Round 2 on the 10th of Nov.... much, much more. Guess we're really quite the hoarders.

Looking back, we really should have considered spending money on hiring movers instead of doing the heavy lifting ourselves because the HTB somehow managed to sprain his wrist during the migration process....

Thankfully it's a minor sprain and he should be back to normal within 3-5 days *fingers crossed*

So now our WIW room is filled to the brim with all of our barang barang and moving boxes.

We'll be using up several days of leave to focus on the cleaning of the house and the unpacking before we officially move in on the 6th and commence with Round 2 of the Great Migration on the 10th so that we can have room for even more stuff that'll be coming in shortly....

[zihui 7]

Bed frame also from ikea?

Nope.

Bed frame was from Bez Gallery over at Marina Square while our mattress was from Serta.

All the IKEA stuff have been delivered but not assembled at all as the renovations and cleaning havn't been completed as yet. They'll come back on Thursday to do up all the assembly for us.

[ProjectH 0]

U have alot of stuff for two person! Somemore its not house to house!

Can't wait to see it decorated with wedding stuff! I know ur gdl is over but theres a shop in Jurong that sells wedding stuff if u need anything last min...

[zihui 7]

U have alot of stuff for two person! Somemore its not house to house!

Can't wait to see it decorated with wedding stuff! I know ur gdl is over but theres a shop in Jurong that sells wedding stuff if u need anything last min...

I know, we got all of our GDL and AC stuff from that shop in Jurong hahahha

Clara right? She's very friendly and knowledgeable!