Klimoo's Reno Journey

[klimoo 4]

Hello everyone!

We are starting this t blog 1.5 months into our reno to chronicle the ups and downs of our reno journey and to share our experience after gaining so much from renotalk. Let me begin with a brief introduction to what has happened in the past few months.

We collected our keys at the beginning of july and quickly went through a few rounds of meeting IDers and looking through quotations and finally we confirmed our contractor as we felt comfortable with him and liked the projects he has done. Works commenced on 26th September and is still on going now.

So let me share our floor plan! which is not too exciting as its a very standard 4 room bto hee.

[klimoo 4]

More photos of our new house:

Living and dining room

Kitchen

BR#3

BR#2

MBR

Common Toilet

MBR Toilet

Edited November 19, 2013 by klimoo

[Pokz1981 2]

Hi Klimoo, the above pic could not be seen, you need to click the image icon then paste the link inside and hit ok then you should be able to see your image while you are posting.

[klimoo 4]

Hi Klimoo, the above pic could not be seen, you need to click the image icon then paste the link inside and hit ok then you should be able to see your image while you are posting.

hi there, thanks for the tips!

finally got the photos uploaded!

more to come!

Edited November 19, 2013 by klimoo

[klimoo 4]

somethings which we think is very important for all who are planning for their renovation.

1. You need to know what you want to do/reno (overlay, hacking of walls etc)
2. Get a few quotation for comparison sake (sometime they will also give you more ideas on space planning)
3. choose a id/contractor whom you can trust (based on gut feel)
4. you need to factor in the work load of your id/contractor to get a realistic feel of how much time they can spend on your project amongst all their projects
5. make sure that there is good 2 way communication between your and the ID/contractor

[blackpeace 1]

is it just me or do the toilets look exceptionally small?

[klimoo 4]

is it just me or do the toilets look exceptionally small?

Hi blackpeace,

the size of the MBR toilet is alright. But for the common toilet, the space between the toilet bowl and the wall to its right is rather tight.

So the shower kerb will be in the way i.e. your feet will probably touch/be on the kerb when you are seated on the toilet bowl. The contractor warned us about that before constructing the kerb and we are ok with that, but it seemed like a big concern to him lol.

So we'll just have shower curtains for the common toilet instead of a shower screen.

[chubbylobster 1]

waiting for new pics and ur ID!

[klimoo 4]

waiting for new pics and ur ID!

Hi chubbylobster,

I think I've finally figured out how to upload photos..lol. super noob when it comes to these things

and when you see the pics of the reno you may be able to figure out who the contractor is!!

[klimoo 4]

So works began with hacking, which involved 2 areas.

The wall between the 3rd bedroom and living room was removed and we'll be reconstructing a 1.2m high wall and the top half will be glass. HDB didn't approve of us just hacking half the wall and required us to hack everything and reconstruct. Still don't understand why it has to be like this when we have heard of other projects that are permitted to only hack the portions they want removed. Any idea why??

we also removed the wall between the 2nd bedroom and MBR. The wardrobe will be constructed over here, eating into the space of the 2nd bedroom to keep the MBR more spacious..so that 5 years down the road..if we have kids..they can sleep with us in the MBR! hahaha

[klimoo 4]

We retained almost all the flooring in the house, and the mr was in love with subway tiles - which we'll be using for the kitchen and common toilet walls, so tile selection was pretty quick. Only had to decide on tiles for the MBR toilet. I was inspired by this picture I saw while browsing online and chose tiles that hopefully can recreate that look.

Bathroom inspiration

Tiles selection for MBR

Tiles were selected on our second trip to Sin Lek. Made trips to soon bee huat and hafary@tradehub but the tiles at Sin Lek were closest to what we wanted for the bathroom.

Craft bricks

Craft bricks were brought in for the wall opp the half glass wall, which is where we'll be placing our tv console.

[klimoo 4]

Tiling completed

MBR toilet [before]

MBR toilet [after]

Brick wall

Kitchen

When the marble mosaic wall in the mbr toilet was first completed, we noticed some portions were 'blacker' than the others. The mosaic came in 1 sq foot pieces and some had more white parts while others were almost completely black. We were prepared to accept it as it is, thinking it couldn't be helped. But one day when we went to check the progress, we found the tiling uncle painstakingly digging out some tiles from the blacker parts and replaced them with tiles with more white parts!

We were very pleased with how it finally turned out and really respect the uncle for taking so much pride in his work!!

Edited November 27, 2013 by klimoo

[klimoo 4]

Half wall constructed

air con trunking in the MBR

air con trunking along the corridor. we chose to expose the air con trunking instead of boxing it up which should make it easier for future maintenance if any problem arises.

ceiling fan and lighting points in the living room.

addition of switches in the mbr. these will be above our bedside tables and one of them is a two way switch so that we can turn off/on the main light in the mbr while we are in bed instead of walking to switch located at the door.

Edited November 27, 2013 by klimoo

[klimoo 4]

air con trunking in the living room nicely boxed up to be flushed with the false beam of the half wall.

[klimoo 4]

Paint selection from dulux

mbr - grey star

second bedroom - crystal blue

third bedroom - lemon ice

dining room - winterscape

This is only the first round of painting, after carpentry is up there'll be one more round of painting to do.

Initially I was quite disappointed that winterscape turned out to be very bluish, similar to crystal blue, as I was expecting it to be a little more turquoise. The two colors r so similar the painter even thought there was a mistake and on a tiny part of the wall, he painted winterscape on top of crystal blue and found that winterscape is slightly darker. But luckily the blue winterscape gradually grew on me as it looks so soft and gentle and goes wonderfully with the dining lights (which I'll post later) and now I love how it looks! my ability to psycho myself to like smith is quite powerful hahaha and its a good thing!

For the bedrooms, only one/two walls were colored so it wouldn't be too overwhelming. The walls u don't see are painted with the color 'frosted dawn' and the ceiling is just regular white paint. FYI, our quote allows us to select 4 colors, 1 white color and even though frosted dawn is white, it is considered as one color. So we'll have to top up for that. I guess the white color included is the default type which u cannot select.

Edited November 27, 2013 by klimoo