Home - Where Our Story Begins

[aurora 1]

3 years ago, we managed to get a BTO flat in a mature estate. After a long wait, our flat is finally ready and we collected the keys recently.

To start off, here's our 4-room flat floor plan.

After receiving our house keys, we excitedly went to our flat the next day to check it out. We did a flat inspection and thankfully the built quality was acceptable apart from a couple of small defects. Here's some photos of our small place, pardon the poor quality taken by my phone.

Main entrance (with the pineapple rolling in)

Living room:

Passageway:

Kitchen:

Master Bedroom:

Forgot to take photo

Master Bedroom Toilet:

Bedroom 2:

Bedroom 3:

Common Toilet:

Edited March 6, 2015 by aurora

[aurora 1]

After doing some research, we decided to hop onto the Scandinavian bandwagon that is wildly popular in RenoTalk now, and our biggest challenge was sourcing for ID/contractor who could meet our tight budget of 25k (including flooring and painting).

Through relatives and RenoTalk forum, we managed to shortlist 5 ID/contractors for quotations. Due to the limited budget, we placed our focus on the basic necessities like flooring, carpentry and L-box, and left our toilets untouched. Our only luxury item was the brick wall for TV area, which we deemed it integral to a Scandinavian design home. However, keeping to the budget proved mission impossible in the end, with the carpentry and flooring alone costing us $20k. L

We eventually decided to engage Nicholas from Renoguyz. After reading all the good reviews on RenoTalk, we trust that he would be able to do a good job with our little home.

[aurora 1]

So our renovation journey began with choosing tiles at Hafary. We initially wanted to get wood tiles to perfect the Scandinavian look, but the Spain/Italy wood ceramic tiles that we liked were much pricier so we opted for normal tiles to save costs.

We fancied the white-based matt tiles to make our living space look bigger and brighter, but unfortunately this is a peak period for renovation, and almost all the tiles we liked were low or running out of stock. We eventually settled for grey tiles and purposely chose two shades of grey that are close to each other, as we didn’t want a big contrast in colours between our living room and bedrooms.

After much deliberation, this is what we selected.

Living room tile:

Bedroom tile:

The rainbow sandstone panel at one corner also caught our eye, and we decided to use for our brick wall.

However, upon checking with the staff, it was totally out of stock. L We really liked it, so we asked Nick to help us keep a look-out for it, but we were subsequently told that Hafary no longer stocks it. What a disappointment!

[aurora 1]

Materials ready to start tiling work!

A few days later..

Living room and bedroom tiling in progress, look at the amount of sand!

A week later, tiling completed!

Fridge and cabinet base:

Washing machine base:

Bedroom flooring:

[aurora 1]

After the completion of our flooring, things are slow-moving at the moment because year-end is peak period for renovation (yes this is a back-dated entry), and we need to wait for carpenter to complete his other projects on hand.

So, in the meantime, we started shopping for our kitchen and bathroom accessories. Bought everything in a shop in Jalan Besar because we are lazy like that, and want to save the hassle of getting things from separate places.

Decided on this large double-bowl sink:

And selected an instant heater with rain shower:

Also bought other items such as tap mixer, spray guns, mirror cabinets, bathroom hangers etc.. total damage close to 2k.. *heart pain*

[suikoden 1]

Hi Aurora!!

Welcome to RT T-blog!! Good progress so far..

Do u mind sharing what shop did u go to at Jalan Besar? And what's the brand of the chosen instant water heater with rainshower?

I love rainshower and I need hot hot hot water.. My body is so used to hot water that if I were to have a bit of cold water, I will get a cold very easily haha..

[aurora 1]

Hi Aurora!!

Welcome to RT T-blog!! Good progress so far..

Do u mind sharing what shop did u go to at Jalan Besar? And what's the brand of the chosen instant water heater with rainshower?

I love rainshower and I need hot hot hot water.. My body is so used to hot water that if I were to have a bit of cold water, I will get a cold very easily haha..

Hi suikoden,

We are using Beebest instant water heater, which is recommended by Uncle Benny from GR Link Marketing. Wanted to get 707, but was told by Uncle Benny that the electrician need to be very careful and skillful, otherwise will get electrocuted while bathing.

[aurora 1]

Furniture shopping time! While we await further progress for our renovation, we spent our time visiting furniture fairs, checking out furniture shops and malls for our ideal sofa, dining table, coffee table, and TV console. To keep in line with Scandinavian theme, we kept a look out for white, woody, simple pieces.

Furniture shopping might sound fun, but it’s actually very tiring. We were dead beat browsing shop to shop every weekend, and the wide selection gave us headaches on what to choose. Here’s some of the pieces we shortlisted..

Sofas:

Dining Table:

Coffee Table:

TV Console:

[aurora 1]

After lots more shopping in search of our ideal furniture, we finally decided on these beauties..

Simple, comfy fabric sofa with solid wood frame

White caesarstone tabletop with wood table leg and matching chairs. Didn’t get the bench in the end

Stylish TV cupboard made of solid oak. Love the black drawers!

Couldn’t find an affordable and tall-enough coffee table to our liking, so we took the plunge and bought one from Tmall

Edited March 4, 2015 by aurora

[intonewlife 2]

Can share where did u to view those sofa in ur posts

[aurora 1]

Can share where did u to view those sofa in ur posts

Which sofa? We view the sofa selection at alot of place... Scanteak, lacafa, etc..

[aurora 1]

Updates on renovation progress.. we met up with Nick to discuss on the electrical works such as location of lights, relocation/additional power points, data point conversions etc. He then started work on the electrical wiring and this is how our place looks like after a week.

Living room:

DB Box:

A hole in our pillar after adding a power point for our shoe cabinet area

Got Nick to plaster it up..

[aurora 1]

Kitchen:

Bedrooms:

[aurora 1]

With the electical works done (apart from data point conversion), we got the aircon man in to start on the aircon trunking. As we are not doing false ceiling in the bedrooms, there won’t be any way to conceal the trunking. Our aircon ledge is in MBR, so he proposed the most direct way to run the piping. He did warn us that it will not be pretty because the trunking will be fairly visible on the beam, but being practical, we decide it is better to choose the shortest route than to have the trunking up and taking up more areas.

Overall, we are pretty satisfied with the neat work done by the meticulous uncle.

[aurora 1]

Brick wall tiling under way, tilers hard at work

The completed brick wall after a day..

Sink support also up.. notice how the tiles inside are different from kitchen floor and service yard tiles? This is because Nick thought we cancelled the sink support due to some miscommunications earlier. By the time we reminded him about it, he couldn’t get the kitchen tiles from BSC as it was out of stock. In the end we decided to make do with using our living room tiles instead. Anyway this part will be covered by kitchen cabinet doors in time to come, so we figured it’s acceptable..

Edited March 14, 2015 by aurora