Our 4-Rm Cubbyhole Reno Diary

[chococat 5]

Hello!!

Like everyone, hubz and I decided to start a T-blog to jot down our ­reno progress, hoping to share some useful information to future homeowners (just like how we learn from bro/sis here!).

We had gotten the keys to our first house in late Aug and almost completed with our BSC rectifying process (will talk more about it later). If everything goes as planned, we will be able to start our reno soon in a week time!

Here’s our floor plan and will go into more details of our reno in later post.

Open Door Day… HUAT AH~!~!

[chococat 5]

ID Sourcing

Hubz did all the research (in fact for most of the reno research ) to source for our ID. Our criteria are very simple: good communication (i.e. same frequency), reliable, satisfiable worksmanship and within our budget. He had extensively read up in renotalk to fish out a number of ID and finally shortlisted 4, which we arranged to meet up to understand them better.

We decided not to disclose our ID contact yet as we feel that it is only fair to make sensible judgement after our entire reno is completed.

ID Number One

Source: Renotalk

Communication: Told him our requirements and he tried to discourage to do this and that to help us keep our budget low

Worksmanship: Below expectation

Budget: Within

ID Number Two

Source: Renotalk

Communication: Sincere guy. Good frequency with us and able to convey our idea easily

Worksmanship: Satisfied, do have minor flaws which we still find it okay and he will be providing post reno touchup.

Budget: Within

ID Number Three

Source: Renotalk

Communication: Straight to the point and did not talk things in details. Able to convey our idea. I was able to communicate with him but hubz was a bit quiet when we meet him.

Worksmanship: Satisfied

Budget: Within

ID Number Four

Source: Sister-in-law’s ID. However the ID we are interested is out of town and was served by his brother.

Communication: Able to convey our idea. I am unable to click with him. Hubz was able to communicate okay.

Worksmanship: Very satisfied

Budget: Exceed

As part of the sourcing phase, each time after a meeting we will have lots of queries if he is ‘the one’. After sorting and weighing our thoughts carefully, we decided to engage ID Number Two (Mr J) as we really appreciate the mutual interactions and his earnest personality. We look forward to have a good working relationship with him! Will share on the details of the reno next.

[DaddyWinter 10]

maybe you want to share whats your budget range and theme in mind for your new home?

[chococat 5]

maybe you want to share whats your budget range and theme in mind for your new home?

hi daddywinter, our budget is $28K and below for reno. will be updating the theme (feel) of our house soon

[chococat 5]

The Feel of Our House

Our initial idea of our new house is woody, cozy, basic and easy to maintain. We were more pro towards light colour wood grains to keep the “feel” light-hearted. Dark colour paints and laminates are a NO-NO to us …….. which bring us to a Scandinavian theme. Mr J generated our 1^st draft of 3D drawings. We revised the paint colours, the laminates and designs of our cabinets a few times.

After rounds of dings and dongs, and critically scrutinising laminates everywhere (offices, shopping malls, etc), to our surprise we felt that we actually like dark wood grains more. Haha.. The more we see it, the more calming and easier it is for us to ‘melt’ into this atmosphere after a long day out at work. With our changing hearts, we asked for a 180 degree change in 3D drawings. We were really fortunate that Mr J had been very patient all along during the brainstorming process together and he had never show any BCC (Bin Chou Chou) face to us before. Hengz!

I guess this is part of the learning process from reno. Idea may keep changing and it’s always good to keep our options open until we really meet the most appealing ‘pattern’ you like.

We are now waiting for our final 3D drawings with some minor changes in the paint colours. Will share it here once we get hold of it!

[guojiawen 101]

Welcome to RT and wishing you smooth reno ahead

[chococat 5]

Welcome to RT and wishing you smooth reno ahead

Thanks jiawen !

[chococat 5]

Defects Rectification

This weekend was spent talking to the supervisor who is in charge for rectifying our defects. We would say that we are pretty fine with the conditions of the house when we were first got our keys. There’s a few major problems which required more attention, other than that we are generally satisfied.

Problem 1:

Main door was badly not aligned with the side door panel.

It seems to be a common problem with our BTO project. We had scout other units and we see that they do also have slight alignment problem in 40% of unit. Everyone in our family can easily spot this problem when they first visit. To deal with this issue, the ‘door specialist’ chop out some wood where they assemble the latch. It’s painful to see our door been knocked so forcefully to resolve this issue. Hope our door integrity is not compromised…

Final Door Adjustment…….. Still not the best but it was 100% worse before that..

That's the very best they can do. The person had adjusted twice and the specialist said that if we want perfect alignment, the whole door won't work anymore. So have to swallow in this flaw.

Problem 2:

Crack lines and chips on wall and floor tiles.

We were told that the tile colour may differ from the existing ones. It’s a choice if you want to see the different colour tile or crack line. We decided that we rather bear the consequences of looking at mismatch colour tones than seeing the crack line which may grow along the years.

One thing to note is that when they change the faulty tiles, they may also affect the nearby tiles, which happened to us. After changing our kitchen wall tiles, we got new cracklines at two nearby tiles, which had to be changed as well.

There is a slight difference in color only if we look at it a bit that closely.

But problem with the replacement is that it is slightly protruded as compared to the rest of the tiles. You can easily feel the uneven grouting when you walk pass...

After replacement of corner cracked tile, we now got chipped skirting

Problem 3:

Hollow parquet floor….

This problem persist. We suspect they had been ignoring this. But we die die want it fixed.

Problem 4:

Drainage cover spoil liao….

One part of the hinge had broken off. It still can open and close normally, but a few more times it will definitely give way. They need to cut open the entire thing to change as the problem lies at the base and not on the cover. Still not resolved yet

Other small small problems:

We were stringent when we first did our preliminary checks for defects. So our house was marked with blue tapes everywhere. I suspect because of this, they re-painted all our walls and re-vanished our parquet floorings. hehe… By the end of 14 working days (note: they really meant by WORKING DAYS), our house looks better than before. The parquet looks shinier and I felt that we 赚到 (earn something good). This psychologically let us feel that it looks good enough visually and not want to pursue into serious checking like last time (we also too lazy to go through the crawling around process again).

They 'promise' to do up the remaining defects by mid of coming week. We are now currently at our 15 working days of the rectification phase. So hope we can start our reno very soon!

From this defects rectification experience, we learnt that when the due date is drawing near and not much have been done yet, it helps if you go down to BSC to create awareness to them and push them a little bit more. We were firm with them and at the same time being very appreciative for their effort. The supervisor had been very nice and recruits more manpower to finish up our house. We were very grateful for his help and it’s absolutely worth it to always treat them with a sincere thankful smile when they did something for u!

[DaddyWinter 10]

that is very detailed on the defects column! haha glad they have it resolved for you..for my side 's project, many of my neighbours are complaining BSC taking ages to rectify or fail to rectify...

[chococat 5]

that is very detailed on the defects column! haha glad they have it resolved for you..for my side 's project, many of my neighbours are complaining BSC taking ages to rectify or fail to rectify...

I see, we have some neighbours who also mention about BSC been taking a while.. I think our in-charge is quite nice so he help to expedite over the weekend. There's like 5 people at our unit during one-time to fix the defects, feels abit like a VIP, or maybe my unit a bit troublesome. haha.. have you started your reno?

[chococat 5]

latest news from the hubz! We will start hacking our wall into half-wall which separate the kitchen and living room this Saturday if everything goes according to plan!

Not keen in doing open concept kitchen as I still wish to do some cooking maybe once a week (i hope!). Wanna minimize the area that will become oily oily, so cleaning up will be faster.

[chococat 5]

Met up with our ID and the 'cutter- man’ yesterday evening to decide on the height of our half-wall for kitchen. We didn't want it to be too high (which sort of defeats the purpose) or too low (which may look abit funny). So the 3 of us discussed the optimal height and when the cutter-man comes, he access the wall and draw lines on it before cutting.

Cutter-man measuring the height and drawing lines at both side

Lines for Cutting

Based on our ID, the purpose of cutting the wall before hacking is to prevent the whole wall from collapsing. For some ID, they recommend to hack the whole wall and build the lower half wall again to ensure the stability of the wall. Our ID assures us that by cutting the wall, they will break the tension of the stacked hollow bricks and thus won’t affect the lower half of the wall after hacking.

Cutter-man cutting the wall

Aftermath

so shiok to see the very first step of reno started…

Things to consider before hacking walls:

1) Is there going to be a major change to lighting switch and electrical point location?

2) Is the ceiling a fake or real beam?

3) The comfortable wall height if doing half wall.

4) When installing glass door, if the height of the door hits a certain height, there will be surcharge incurred on the glass door.

As the BSC has yet to touch up the remaining few defects, we decided not to proceed with hacking of wall to prevent conflicts between ID and BSC. Yesterday, we had pushed and insisted our BSC in-charge that our defects rectification to be completed by today and we will be heading down tomorrow to check and make noise if necessary (hopefully not!).

[chococat 5]

We had officially ended our defects rectification at the moment. We were left with re-varnishing for the parquet floor with previous hollow tiles, which will only be taken care of after completion of reno. The parquet guy said that it will take two weeks for the glue to dry completely before they can varnish. If there is any moisture, the parquet may still pop up if we insist on varnishing, if I interepret him properly.

Do note that when fixing hollow parquets, be expected to see drill holes on affected parquet where they inject adhensive glue. For people with sharped-eyes, they may easily spot it even after varnishing. Right now, the parquet floor is uneven and we hope after varnishing, they will even out and won’t ‘feel’ so obvious when we step on it. We were strongly reminded not to put or drop heavy item at the affected area during the reno.

Photo: The dots are the drill holes which were touched up briefly to cover the holes. The uneven parquet is pretty obvious too..

Previously Chipped Skirting Touched Up

Colouring maybe slightly darker than previous, but we were happy with it as long as it won't cause an eye sore to us whenever we see that area.

It's a relief that we can finally stop visiting and harass our BSC supervisor to get our defects resolved. Will be so excited to see our reno start at full force from now on! Hurray!

[chococat 5]

Toilet & Kitchen Accessories

Our order for kitchen and toilet accessories had been delivered on Wednesday so our kitchen sink is available for our ID to arrange for casting of mold to build the sink support.

We got our purchases from GR Link at Jalan Besar. Overall, we were pretty satisfied with Uncle Benny who showed us around the shop, sharing and recommending what is suitable for our needs.

Here’s the items we bought:

- Towel Racks (X2)

- Toilet Paper Holder (X2)

- Bidet Set and Angle Value (X2)

- 2-Tier Wire Corner Rack (x1)

All looking in good conditions!

- Inspire A105 Basin (for master toilet)

Very happy with the simple design! The demo unit was not in the shop so we choose it just by looking at its picture. Not too big or small and I am quite particular that our basin surface is not flat, so water flow off easily (wash off toothpaste that fall on it ). We did not check the side of the basin as it is too heavy and scare we may mishandle it.

- Crizto 1008 Sink (Kitchen Sink) with FOC Pop-Up Waste & PVC Bottle Trap

There was a dent when we received our items

Called Uncle Benny and luckily there is an additional unit available in his shop. Hubz brought the sink over to his shop to exchange. Uncle Benny also asked Hubz to bring along our Grohe kitchen tap so he can drill the exact hole for the tap making sure it will be compatible (previously we only tell him the tap we had).

Our replaced kitchen sink

Total Damage: $668

[chococat 5]

3D Drawings

Got our final draft for our 3D drawings though they are still not the final product that we wanted, probably due to miscommunication. We had to convey our message to our ID and ID have to communicate with the 3D person. Nevertheless, our ID did a good job in trying to help get the 3D drawings out a number of times due to our uncertainty.

Living Room:

Paint colour is not to the most accurate representation here. Generally it will look like this for our TV feature wall and shoe cabinet.

Dinning Area:

The strips along the aisle will have 'in-and-out' effect which is not reflected in the drawing.

Kitchen:

Master Bedroom:

Study Room:

Minus away the deco and bed.