Our Dream Home @ Woodlands Meadow

[Takaishi 44]

haha, which project are you from? i think different projects have different finishings.. premium flats have timber flooring in the rooms, mine is all cream ceramic tiles with timber skirting.

premium one! timber skirting and timber floorings in room. normal glazed tiles in living and dining and alleyway!

capeview hehe

[guojiawen 101]

premium one! timber skirting and timber floorings in room. normal glazed tiles in living and dining and alleyway!

capeview hehe

haha, since it's premium BTO, should be better quality then our standard ones. will look forward to your pics when your house is ready!

[Takaishi 44]

heehee issit, that i din know. when its ready den i put tblog meanwhile let me admire yours hahaha

[guojiawen 101]

heehee issit, that i din know. when its ready den i put tblog meanwhile let me admire yours hahaha

i assume so ba, at least by the name =p

i also want to admire yours, so let's hope HDB work fast to release all our keys!

[guojiawen 101]

EDIT: ID website is back up and running.

Edited February 10, 2014 by guojiawen

[guojiawen 101]

ID updated that 3D drawings will be ready between 18 to 20 Feb, just another week plus to go!

I took the chance to ask about the website, he said company entire website is down and will most likely be up again tomorrow.

Guess I worried for nothing? Read too many -ve reno blogs and became paranoid *opps*

[guojiawen 101]

Moving on to share on our white goods shopping experience!

Have been ogling at the electrical appliances since the time i started sourcing for contractors (that was half a yr back). Of course, decisions made change along the way as well.

Example I wanted a chimney hood coz it just looks prettier. After discussion with a few IDs we met, it was more practical to get slim hood and have extra cabinet on top + don't need to clean the area beside the chimney hood which is quite high up and hard to reach.

So... here's our purchase from Mega Discount Store - they give price guarantee and good sales service. Highly recommended! If we change our mind about what we placed deposit for, still can change items. If they can't match the price, they will also cancel the order and let us buy from another store (which happened for our TV today so for those who don't believe they are this good, it's really true. first hand experience here). After sales service is good Our sales person even sounded apologetic when he couldn't match the other store's pricing and I felt super guilty. Got hubby to call them to cancel our TV as I felt bad.

Samsung was having a CNY promotion in January where selected products purchased & delivered within a certain period come with $50 NTUC voucher, a Samsung vacuum cleaner & a $688 voucher, to be used for any other Samsung products. So we got a washer dryer and used the $688 for our fridge.

Samsung Washer Dryer - WD0804 @ $1039

Samsung Fridge - RT-35FDACDSL @ $111 (after $688 voucher)

Bosch Built in Oven - HBN-331E2J

EF Cookerhood - CH-9202

Brandt Hob - TG-1273B in Black Tempered Glass

For hood + hob + oven, the sales person helped to mix and match the best amongst all the brands and reduce the pricing for "package purchase" so the overall price is $1400.

He shared that the hood + hob + oven for certain brands, confirm have one item which is lousy which is why they packaged them together to clear stock. It does make sense.

However, I'm still thinking if I should change my hood to brandt too, as it does feel weird to have different brands for hood and hob. Some more the logos can be seen. Like a little japalang. Any suggestions?

After finding a cheaper alternative for our TV at Lion City Co, we headed down to buy. The few differences are that payment at Lion City Co is by cash or nets, and payment must be full. Extra 3.5% charges for CC, which is not there for Mega Discount Store. They also don't really have a showroom, which may be why they can charge lower for the same products as overheads are lower (guessing).

Sharp Aquos LED - LC-60LE631M

Hubby and I are not huge fans of 3D films (gives us dizziness + headache) & thinks that SMART TVs lag the TV since there's additional processor inside (we prefer to use cable to connect our laptop to the TV when needed). So we bought a non-SMART TV but a huge one. 60" at $1699 Super worth

Ok my laptop is going flat. Not sure if I left out anything, but I will update more tomorrow!

Edited February 15, 2014 by guojiawen

[adeqicious 1]

hello! mind sharing ur detailed quotation? thanks!

ng.yuqi at gmail dot com

[guojiawen 101]

Hi Yuqi,

Have emailed you

[guojiawen 101]

Consolidated in post #64

Edited February 12, 2014 by guojiawen

[guojiawen 101]

Have been avidly reading up various reno blogs these few days

Realised there's many blogs doing up Scandinavian styles. Any one here doing modern / minimalist homes in the forum? Need inspiration for design ideas hehe.

Meanwhile, I'm consolidating pics of designs I like and will share them soon! iPhone apps are really useful

[mavicaste 58]

Spent my Sunday sleeping around Centrepoint - Bed shopping!

Had already went to Woodlands Courts previously to try out Sealy and IMM to try out Serta & Simmons. Mum was with me during that trip and after lying on various higher end ones, she could only say... it is really yi fen qian yi fen huo (meaning we get what we pay for). Haha.

As hubby prefers firm mattress as he has back problems while I prefer something cushier, we tried out the medium firm mattresses. Too bad for me as plush mattresses can be soooo comfy!

Our budget is set at $5k as we felt that it is an important investment to get good rest and to support our back. Since it is already pretty high, we are not prepared to burst it unless something really really really good comes up.

Our Causeway Point Courts trip

Met the Sealy salesman once we walked to the bedding section and he shared a lot on the +ve points of a Sealy mattress. Like their double tempered interlinked spring coils, silver ion mattress top, comfort of the mattress and so on... But one thing that struck me (hubby didn't notice) was that he kept insisting that the most expensive bed was the best selling model Elixir - $6,999. It was indeed comfy, but i think due to the price, it was already a huge turn off.... We did try a few others, but did not like the beds. So we left without any shortlisted ones.

Our IMM trip

Heading into Simmons, we met the sales lady who is nice, but offered no explanation whatsoever. Even when I asked questions like which should we try, what are the better ones, whats the difference between the 3Ss, she did not really explain. But one thing she told us which I can resonate with - buying mattress really depends on our own comfort level. Have to test before we know. She's also more Chinese speaking (sounds like PRC), and our Chinese are not v good, so we had difficulty understanding her explanation too.

They had more than 10 mattresses in their showroom though so we were not prepared to lie on every single one of it. So after just walking around and looking at the beds (not trying yet), she finally asked what firmness we prefer and then pointed us to two beds. We were not really impressed by either though.. As they were also phasing out their existing stocks of Advanced Backcare S3000, we felt it was pretty much sales talk to sell that piece, saying how good it is, how worth it is etc. King Sized S3000 with bed frame after discount was going at $5.2k. She added that Simmons didn't have other models within our requirements and budget. O.o. Guess to her we are small time buyers~

I think the saleslady was stunned when hubby told her towards the end, if there's no more stocks when we finally decide to buy, then it's okay, no fate to buy that bed. Needless to say, we left the place without buying since we were not really WOWed by the bed. I then spent time to google for reviews while my mum went around looking for lights and ceiling fans for her own home. Based on what i googled, people bought the mattress without bed frame at around the same price as the current one on offer. So the so called "phasing out sales" was probably just buy the bed and get a free bed frame while stocks last.

Simmons best selling point is that their mattress or using pocketed spring and when one person shift on one end of the bed, the other person cannot feel it - for those who recall, they had the bowling ball ad in the pass where they drop it on the bed and the pins remain standing. After some discussion, we decided that we are both heavy sleepers and won't get affected by each other's shifting on the bed. So... in the end, we decided that Simmons is well beyond our budget, doesn't really match what we want and struck the brand out of our list.

The next shop we tried was Serta - they have the most models of beds in IMM (more than 10) and after going to the branch in Centrepoint today with about 6 beds on display, we were lucky to have went to the IMM boutique beforehand. I guess it could be that many couples go in without intention of buying, so the salesman at IMM was pretty cool and didn't attend to us at the beginning. He just told us to try the ones around the front of the shop. Hubby & I didn't like those beds and asked whether there's others. Only then did he really started attending to us and he brought us inside to try the hotel series. There's one that is super comfy but cost like $8k. Nice to try on, not so nice on our pocket. So we moved on to other beds..

Two of the best sellers he recommended was the Diamond Suite and the Sophistication. After lying down on both, we preferred the Sophistication (soft enough for me yet firm enough for hubby) and enquired on the price and any freebies he could throw in. The end package looked pretty reasonable at $4.2k including bed frame, two pillows, one mattress protector, bed end bench and one Serta sheep. Further negotiation was met with a - I can't do much or I won't get to earn, or I may even need to eat into my own pay - so that was the best he could offer.

Sophistication was the best bed for both of us so far, but we still went off without buying - so I can do more research by googling lol. Apparently, the freebies were much more around 2008. I saw pple sharing on forums that they manage to get 2 normal pillows, 2 latex pillows (hubby love their latex pillow btw, but it now costs $99 each!), 2 mattress protector, 2 sheeps.... you get the drift. I think their HQ clamp down harder on freebies coz we tried again at the Centrepoint outlet but definitely didn't luck out. At the end of our IMM scouting, our mind was pretty much on Sophistication unless something better comes along.

___________

Saw the Robinsons clearance / moving out sale in the newspaper on Friday, and decided to try our luck at Centrepoint today. Again, we met with a Sealy salesperson. He was different from the rest we met though. The first question he asked was - do any one of you have back problem. Coz the recommendation will depend hugely on that. So since hubby was the one with back problems, he got the privilege of trying out the recommended beds and see which is best for him. Though the sales person did say... usually the wife get to choose lol.

The two beds hubby "shortlisted" after trying on was the posturepedic unicased prestige series - Bliss & Pegasus. Robinson is having their promotion of buying a King bed at Queens price plus a nominal $8 extra and on top of that, OCBC Robinsons card had 5% cash rebate too. So after calculating, Bliss works out to $3911 for King w/o bed frame (not including the 5% credit card rebates). We did not ask for Pegasus as the display plate wrote about $6k (I did not try on that too... no point since we cannot afford!)

I loved the feel of the Bliss but we were undecided between this or the Sophistication. So we left to deliberate.

I do agree with some people that buying bed goes along the line of... you will know it when you find it. Haha. We headed out to the Serta outlet in Centrepoint after that and re-tried on Sophistication. Since we laid on both for at least 10 mins, my body told me... Bliss won

We headed back to Gary, the Sealy sales person from Robinsons and purchased our King mattress for the price of Queen at $3911 - KIV the bed frame for $700 if we decide to get it in the future. There's also this price match guarantee. So if price goes up on this model in the future, we will still pay this price. But if price drops due to any other promotion, we will get the price matched to the lower price. All these, plus our 5% rebate on our OCBC Robinsons card. I certainly felt that its a great deal (though further googling seems to say otherwise =x)

So... we have our bed purchased today!

Hi guojiawen,

we actually picked out Bliss as our first choice matteress back in April 2012 at $3898. We went back in December during one of their regular promotions and locked in their then price of $371X as well as Orchard at $30XX (can't recall the exact figure) as another 2 models we had shortlisted were already discontinued. Over the last weekend, dropped by again to check the prices but they were much higher than before.

So, between now and delivery, do check back whenever there are sales and you may save a couple hundreds.

[guojiawen 101]

Hi guojiawen,

we actually picked out Bliss as our first choice matteress back in April 2012 at $3898. We went back in December during one of their regular promotions and locked in their then price of $371X as well as Orchard at $30XX (can't recall the exact figure) as another 2 models we had shortlisted were already discontinued. Over the last weekend, dropped by again to check the prices but they were much higher than before.

So, between now and delivery, do check back whenever there are sales and you may save a couple hundreds.

Hello Mavicaste,

Thanks for the tip, will try to go back during their sales period to lock in lower price. How's Bliss for you so far?

[mavicaste 58]

Hello Mavicaste,

Thanks for the tip, will try to go back during their sales period to lock in lower price. How's Bliss for you so far?

I have just collected my keys last Friday, so it will be another couple of months before it's delivered and another one more to review it.

[guojiawen 101]

I have just collected my keys last Friday, so it will be another couple of months before it's delivered and another one more to review it.

Oh ya, paiseh just recalled you started your reno blog recently too been reading too many of them these few days!

Wow so you bought the bed so far in advance??