Brick Wall By The Floor 5Rm Bto @sengkang

[nickguthe 30]

Nice kitchen, layout is great and efforts had been invested in it.

If one thing I wanna nit pick will be the door. Is it a swing door or slide door? (correct me if I am wrong)

However if the door swing into dining/living and against a wall, then it is fine.

I would have done the exact the same thing like you, except the stove and sink to swap places and use a hood instead of a chimney hood.

Hood offer more cabinets on top, though will look congested.

These, however are just personal preference. Prefer cooking fumes to be near to service balcony than living.

The ample table top is brilliance, imagine with all the electrical appliances and what have you when you move in.

Throw in the preparation of food, especially if you bake, simply superb.

Ample 13A sockets for usage which some will underestimate the need of it.

Oven height is desirable, not on the low where one has to bend/squat to check the baking/roasting.

And consider the weight of the cast iron cookware, oven on the low may prove a little more challenging.

The good mixture of drawers and casement is a big plus!

No doubt casement stores more, however one has to squat and "dig in" to get things.

Drawing slides out and get a bird's eyes view. Ok, this is coming from a old man 's POV.

A undeniable well plan, well thought kitchen.

Wow OceanEleven! Thank you for putting in so much effort to review the kitchen. You are really observant!

Our door swings into the living area. The only qualms is that when it is ajar, it blocks our shoe cabinet, but we decided that we can live with that. Didn't like sliding and we don't have enough space to slide open the entire width of the door anyway.

For the position of the hood and hob. We did have the same consideration at first. We really liked the idea of the chimney hood (purely preference) but having it on the other side means we will have the pipes exposed instead. Hence the current arrangement. Moreover, the original position of the gas and the water point is where it is right now, this means a little less complicated routing within the cabinets if we stick with this configuration. But you are really observant!

And yep, we started buying appliances and space is filling up fast. XD. For now a lot of these drawers and casements have yet to find their use. Drawers are more expensive to have so we wanted to save some $$ and went with cupboards. So we will see in future if we have the right combination.

For now, we are enjoying our kitchen very much!

Edited September 21, 2014 by nickguthe

[bianzi 52]

Hello nickguthe, I did chose my curtains today as well... I went with oscar curtains as I have no energy to compare prices.... Another tiring exercise... I spent 3 hours looking through the fabrics...and in the end I chose the most simple and plain dim out curtains with no patterns ... .. Couldn't take the patterns...

I chose medium gray for master bed room and cafe brown for one of the common room with day curtains as well... My master bedroom have that side window (similar to yours) and it is actually more expensive as the tracks is a curve track... Did blinds for living and study room.. installation this coming sat... Exciting !

[nickguthe 30]

Hello nickguthe, I did chose my curtains today as well... I went with oscar curtains as I have no energy to compare prices.... Another tiring exercise... I spent 3 hours looking through the fabrics...and in the end I chose the most simple and plain dim out curtains with no patterns ... .. Couldn't take the patterns...

I chose medium gray for master bed room and cafe brown for one of the common room with day curtains as well... My master bedroom have that side window (similar to yours) and it is actually more expensive as the tracks is a curve track... Did blinds for living and study room.. installation this coming sat... Exciting !

3 hours!! Awesome! Will stop by your blog to check out the updates when you have them. This also means that you can enjoy your house very very soon. Congrats yay!

[James N Joean 8]

Our 1st shipment of Taobao stuff is here! Will review the loots in a separate post. This post is purely dedicated to the service, Oops.sg, which we used to shipped the big items by sea.

When we ordered the items on Taobao, we chose the shipping address to be Oops.sg Guangzhou's address. After the Taobao merchant dispatch the item, we will register the package with its details (tracking number, value etc) in our Oops.sg account through their "DIY Reship Service".

(screenshot from Oops.sg)

Once Oops.sg at Guangzhou receives the items, the status of the item will be updated in our Oops.sg account. Packages are identified by their tracking number. We won't know how much volume the items occupy until we "prepare shipment", so we use our gut-feel to guess if we have purchased at least 1 cubic meter. Once all the items are received at Guangzhou, we prepare for shipment. It will take roughly 2 to 3 days for them to do so. After which, we are notified to pay for shipping fees (approx 100 sgd per cubic meter) + 7% GST (based on declared value of the items purchased). The whole transportation of the items by sea took about 9 days.

For the delivery of the items to our house, we can't choose the date and time of delivery. It depends on when they need to unload the container. So we had to take leave the whole day and the package only arrived at 4 pm. But granted, we didn't pay the extra compared to other services that allowed that flexibility.

Overall the service is rather systematic and professional with their system that you can track easily on your own...

except I wished they had been a little more "polite" when we were still figuring things out.

We ordered a couple of items from the same merchant and we didn't realised that the merchant used the same tracking number for all 4 items. While I was trying to register these items on Oops.sg, I received this error message. "Failure to register package in incoming folder". After trying a few times, thinking that it could be a problem on the service end, we contacted the admin for help and eventually we received this clarification through email.

Okay okay, yes, we could have been more careful with the tracking number, but they didn't have to be so fierce. Get scolded LOL. And really, from a user experience perspective, this could be easily prevented by having a error message saying that that tracking number have been used before so that it can't be input again.

This is a minor episode that we hope Oops.sg can improve their system with, but overall we are okay with their service. We just document this in case other people who are also figuring things on Oops.sg get accused of playing with their system. Later teacher scold. HAHAH

Hi Nick,

Can I check with you a little about buying from tb and using the OOPS DIY reship service? Just give me Yes or No answer will be good enuff

1) Can I buy something from a seller now (because now got sale), and ask them to send to the OOPS warehouse at Guangzhou 2 months later?

2) Say if u order a table and a mirror from a seller

(A) Do you have to you have to request from the seller 2 different tracking number and register them as 2 different package in the OOPS website?

(B) Or does a tracking number automatically gets sent to my email upon a successful transaction with the seller? (sorry, never buy from tb before)

3) Say if I bought 10 items from taobao and all of them have reached the OOPS warehouse, can I hold it there for about 1 mth before I request for shipment to Singapore meanwhile waiting for my reno to complete?

4) Say if I bought 10 items from taobao and all of them have reached the OOPS warehouse, can I request to send Items 1, 2 and 3 first (things like sinks and lights where I need during the early stage of the reno)? Then send items 4 to 7 one mth later?

Thank you so much~~

[nickguthe 30]

Hello Ptopaz, my response below

Can I check with you a little about buying from tb and using the OOPS DIY reship service? Just give me Yes or No answer will be good enuff

1) Can I buy something from a seller now (because now got sale), and ask them to send to the OOPS warehouse at Guangzhou 2 months later?

- entirely dependent on the seller, you will need to speak to them via Aliwangwang chat. OOPS won't be involved until item is shipped out with the tracking number. And you have to input that tracking number in the oops account for oops to keep track when they receive it in their warehouse.

2) Say if u order a table and a mirror from a seller

(A) Do you have to you have to request from the seller 2 different tracking number and register them as 2 different package in the OOPS website?

(B) Or does a tracking number automatically gets sent to my email upon a successful transaction with the seller? (sorry, never buy from tb before)

- Again depends on seller, depends on how they pack. For small items, they can consolidate into one package. But big items, they might pack as 2 packages. You will not receive an email, have to check via your purchase status in your TB account. Sometimes, they only show one tracking number so if you buy a few big items from same seller and not sure how many packages. Need to ask the seller via Aliwangwang again.

3) Say if I bought 10 items from taobao and all of them have reached the OOPS warehouse, can I hold it there for about 1 mth before I request for shipment to Singapore meanwhile waiting for my reno to complete?

- yes you can choose which items u want to prepare for shipment first. But Oops will start charging for storage after the item is with them for 30 days. :/

4) Say if I bought 10 items from taobao and all of them have reached the OOPS warehouse, can I request to send Items 1, 2 and 3 first (things like sinks and lights where I need during the early stage of the reno)? Then send items 4 to 7 one mth later?

- yes. But will bear storage and shipping cost. Not worth it IMO. Each shipment is calculated starting with 1cbm. So 2nd shipment shipping cost calculated separately. We just ship everything at 1 go and store them in the bomb shelter.

Hope the answers are helpful Happy shopping on tb!

Edited September 23, 2014 by nickguthe

[James N Joean 8]

Thanks nick, that was really helpful !

[xvirusga76 0]

Hihi,

Love ur house décor! Esp ur sofa, we went down to Hommage because of that sofa . Love the brick walls but hubby doesn't not wanna invest $3.8k on "aesthetics" ..sigh...envy u

Btw, can I check if you are using solid surface or quartz for your kitchen top? They match very well with the lamitak laminate. Good choice

Ivy

[nickguthe 30]

Hihi,

Love ur house décor! Esp ur sofa, we went down to Hommage because of that sofa . Love the brick walls but hubby doesn't not wanna invest $3.8k on "aesthetics" ..sigh...envy u

Btw, can I check if you are using solid surface or quartz for your kitchen top? They match very well with the lamitak laminate. Good choice

Ivy

Hi Ivy,

Thanks! We must go claim commission from Hommage lol!

We are using solid surface to save a bit here and there to invest in the "aesthetics" stuff.

[xvirusga76 0]

Paiseh can I check the solid surface brand and code for both ur kitchen and ur vanity top please

thanks.

[nickguthe 30]

Paiseh can I check the solid surface brand and code for both ur kitchen and ur vanity top please

thanks.

So sorry it was provided by our contractor, dunno the brand name, only know that it is a malaysian brand.

[James N Joean 8]

Air con Plan (Part 2)

In pictures...

Let's start from the master bathroom, where the trunking enters the house from the air con latch.

At first we wanted to keep the box mesh in the master bathroom and achieve this effect. (Photos from our neighbours...)

But with the amount of trunking and pipes for 5 aircons, the air con specialist said that it is was impossible to squeeze them into the box mesh that HDB provided. There will be a need to punch a huge hole in the box and the mesh cover, so sadly we decided to remove the box mesh and box it up later wih false ceiling.

With the box being removed on the other end of the toilet, it also means that we will be able to route it out at the position where it was originally blocked by the box structure.

Trunking and partition is up in master bath...

As for the discharge pipe, we had it run along the edges to be hidden by our carpentry down to the drainage below the vanity.

If we didn't remove the box, the trunking will have to run below the box mesh. And when it exits, the trunking will fall below the door frame in the master bedroom. Then it will have to be exposed as we can't box it up. Right now, it exits nicely above the door frame for us to box it up.

Hey Nick, do you have the contact of the air con installer? I'm worried those air con installer from gain city are not willing to route the piping this way, as it doesn't looks like more work....thanks

[bianzi 52]

Hey where did u buy the stove with the crate?

Finally, we have moved in officially~!

On moving, for this we were more hardworking getting quotes since we consolidated a list of stuff that we wanted to move and sent to many moving services for quotes via email and calls.

Only 2 of them requested for site visit before signing. Shalom and Moving Partners. In the end, we went with Moving Partners. Second cheapest out of those quotes we gathered and does not charge by hour. Provided boxes and site visit as well.

Really glad we went with them. They lived up to their company motto of being swift and reliable. Our move was done in 1.5 hours. We had a king mattress, couple of tables and chairs, computers, drawers and 10 odd boxes. All furniture were wrapped up nicely.

Before move...

Everything arrived safely at the new place.

Huat ar!

okay, now back to the most challenging part... unpacking. LOL.

Just want to give a special mention to Shalom, with the additional cost, they do come with very nice features like portable clothes containers so that you don't have to iron your ironed clothes again. And the guy who did site visit is very observant in the things we might have missed out in the list. But we didn't think we will need that level of service. Maybe if I got very expensive, fragile stuff or a piano, I might consider them.

[nickguthe 30]

Hey where did u buy the stove with the crate?

Bought it at a neighbourhood shop selling household stuff at woodlands. I think I see it being sold at rivervale plaza second floor as well.

Edited September 30, 2014 by nickguthe

[Sappyd 8]

hi nick,

can i know... did u use the original regulators for ur petite fans? if yes...can u snap a pic?

if no, which switch brand did u use? and snap a pic as well..

thanks

[binzz 10]

Bought it at a neighbourhood shop selling household stuff at woodlands. I think I see it being sold at rivervale plaza second floor as well.

I am looking for this too.. Woodlands and Rivevale is far for me.. Hopefully other places have..