Bringing Scandinavia To Tampines! ~5A Reno Blog~

[mellenur 11]

Hello everyone!

So excited to finally start documenting my reno journey. It hasn't always been a smooth process.

We are very happy in our current place in Punggol but with 2 kids and a temporary live-in helper, we need a bigger space. Kinda regret hacking the common to join with master bedroom in current place as we only have 2 bedrooms now. Kitchen is not very big but has served me well. Living room is large and roomy with no awkward spaces. Overall, very happy with the house and Punggol the neighborhood. But my parents and in-laws are staying in the East so decided to move so we could have a bigger space and be nearer to them.

We picked a 5A unit in Tampines as the pricing is much lower than EM (our first choice) or EA, yet the floor area is similar to EA in Punggol. Too big also I will have problems cleaning it alone. Seller was asking for very high COV initially but hubby fell in love with it so we made a few counter-offers which is a poor negotiation strategy but managed to close at half the asking COV.

Just collected the keys last Friday after my selling's first appointment as the sellers already have somewhere to stay so allow us to come in early to start reno. Hopefully all smooth from here on and will check in often to post progress updates and seek advice from fellow renotalkers!

Below is my floor plan. Yes big floor area = big renovation cost as we are overhauling the 18-years old house to build a home for my husband, me and 2 little girls as well as my 2 ragamuffin cats!

[mellenur 11]

still trying to find the quickest way to upload photos from my Samsung note 3 to here.

now have to download from dropbox, re-size then upload into renotalk gallery then post link.

is this the best way?

[g0mug0mu 8]

I have using flickr account which is easy as they provide the link. It's through a PC thou but I suspect the mobile app won't be too hard!

I'm doing a scandi-American-pop thingy! Will watch this space

You have an ID already?

Good luck!!

[inthechouse 8]

Congrats and welcome! Using an iPhone, I upload photos via the Photo Bucket app, after which I still have to use the PC to post and embed the image links.

[mellenur 11]

thanks g0mug0mu, will check out flickr. they will resize the pic too so it saves me one extra step.

i started out thinking i needed an ID so i went to see Baroque, Designerhouse, Weiken.com, Outlook and also the infamous Mr K. Baroque's quotation was closest to what we had in mind but the ID was so persistent. Kept messaging me day after day to "follow up". I couldn't live with that so we crossed that out. Mr K's proposal was too expensive for me, plus to arrange a meeting, we had to wait for almost 3 weeks since I called in October. He must be very busy with all renotalkers projects! He's nice and knows the stuff but we don't have that kind of budget.

So we settled with another just as famous ID/contractor: Mr Yeak from Basic Image.

Officially a Yeaker now

I love him to bits!

[mellenur 11]

gimme some time to figure out how to upload pics!

Edited December 23, 2013 by mellenur

[Harriette 42]

Hi there, I have hired Mr Yeak to be my contractor too.

[vicx1234 38]

Good luck with the reno! We're doing ours now and will be adopting a Scandi feel as well. Will be following your reno closely.

Cheers.

[mellenur 11]

ok these pics were taken the night we exercised the option, so pardon the low quality.

living room. it has an odd squarish layout with 5 leaves for the windows. without having the sofa jutting in the middle of the hall, there didn't seem any way we could place the TV and sofa with a fair distance in between. so we decided to move the TV area to another spot.

study room which is separated by a wall from the living room. prev owner use this as the TV room instead.

very big and spacious kitchen. which also means more area for cabinets and more spending. haha! compared to my Punggol mickey mouse kitchen, this is like a playground!

service yard right next to the kitchen. love it that it's so spacious and airy.

Edited December 26, 2013 by mellenur

[mellenur 11]

common toilet. longish shape which was challenging as we were planning our space. it was almost impossible to segregate a shower area with a glass screen.

store room which will be relocated to another area. currently it sits adjacent to the kitchen and thus it makes the kitchen dark.

MBR. prev owners were only a couple so they hacked the wall between this and the next room to fit in a wardrobe. i didn't really like that the windows opened up to the block opposite. it's quite close so you can literally see what they are watching on TV.

MBR toilet. this was another challenging one because of the recessed area and 2 windows right above it. we're planning to re-locate the shower area.

Edited December 26, 2013 by mellenur

[mellenur 11]

bedroom 2. another one with the windows opening up to the block opposite. this will be my little girls' room.

bedroom 1. for now this room will be a playroom for the kids/guest room. pity cos the room windows open up to the an amazing garden view below.

Edited December 26, 2013 by mellenur

[mellenur 11]

Last sunday we went to BW Bathroom Warehouse which is just a few blocks away from Sim Siang Choon at Changi South Area. it's a subsidiary of Wan Tai which also supplies sanitary ware to hotels. I haven't done much research here to be honest but the building and set up looks quite established. They were having a $699 promo for Grohe mixer, shower set, tap, Duravit WC and Duravit sink. Not sure if it's a good deal or if this is the "Thailand" Grohe as the staff said it was all from Germany. Promo according to them is because they are new (about 1.5 mths old) and they want to attract customers so this limited offer is only available for 5 sets, and they said we got the last set. The warehouse was fairly empty when we were there for about 3 hours.

this is the tap:

this is the shower set:

this is the mixer:

Duravit sink:

Duravit WC:

[mellenur 11]

we also got another $299 set for the common toilet but not Grohe, it's their in-house brand called h+m for the mixer, tap and shower set with rain shower, and RAK brand for sink and WC which comes with Geberit system. There were 4 choices for sinks but we chose the round one and had to upgrade the tap to a tall one for additional $50. I thought it was a really good deal, and this was limited to 10 sets. you can check them out and look for Philip (he served me but I think he's quite new) or Mac (seems more experienced). Overall a good experience. I went over to Sim Siang Choon to compare halfway and for similar products but using Sims in-house, this package deal seems better.

this is the h+m shower set:

this is the original h+m tap, can't seem to find a pic in my hp for the tall one.

this is the h+m mixer, had to upgrade to this as I need 2 outputs (shower and tap), original set came with mixer with 1 output for shower only. also this seems to be an older stock as the newer ones have h+m imprinted on the tap but this is plain as you can see.

this is the RAK WC with Geberit system:

this is the RAK sink:

Edited December 24, 2013 by mellenur

[mellenur 11]

On Saturday we went to choose tiles as well at Hafary.

Had to leave both kids at my mum's house as they were being disruptive haha!

service yard tiles:

subway tiles for backsplash. initially i wanted black tiles but hubby say i must be more adventurous. hope it matches the service yard tiles above since it's in the same area.

tiles for MBR toilet floor.

for MBR toilet walls, i'm planning to use the black glazed tile below to skirt around on bottom half of wall and normal white matt tiles on the top.

still debating whether I should do blue mosaic swimming pool tiles in the toilets instead. haha!

Edited December 26, 2013 by mellenur

[mellenur 11]

As for living room, bedrooms and kitchen area, we are using HERF from Evorich. I thought it would be very expensive but oddly, it costs almost the same as tiles. I was served by Alvin, a very nice and cute chap. I think he has some sanskrit tattoo on his hands!

Natural hickory for the all areas except bedroom:

and markham oak medium for bedrooms (the middle one). I would much prefer grey but the range they have amsterdam nutshell and a few others didn't seem to be the right shade for me