Home Is Where The Heart Is - Reno Journey

[mrsfelicialee 1]

Hello there,

Like many other new house owners, I've been a silent reader of this T-blog ever since hub & I ballot a BTO flat 3 years ago...

And recently we have received our keys from HDB!

So there's the typical floor plan for a standard BTO 4rm flat @ Sengkang Westway.

As expected, the house is really small...

The Living Room Area

Walkway

Kitchen

[mrsfelicialee 1]

Prior to our key collections, Hub & I have decided on a theme... which is the ever popular, "Scandinavian"

So right now we are on the hunt for Contractors / Interior Designers.

We've shortlisted a few of contractors and IDs to compare quotes and gather some information and design ideas.

• Mr K

This contractor requires no introduction cause he is pretty well known in this forums. He came over to my place to take measurements and stuffs. Seems like a man of few words, didn't talk much and just wrote down whatever that I require. Didn't comment whether its do-able or not.. Everything just say, okay... okay..

So we shall wait for his quotation though I didn't have any high hopes cause many has comment that he fees are quite high.

Received Mr K's quote. Sadly I feel that his quotation was kinda of sloppy and on the high side. Sloppy because he listed a few items which I never mention of having so I feel that he isn't very keen on our business.

• Mr J & E

Got their contact from one of our fellow reno-talk member.. Love her house design. Met up with this duo, they were very detailed. Measure everything and even sketch up my kitchen carpentry on the spot!!

Gave me recommendation / suggestions on my ideas and what is do-able and what is not.

However I get to know that they are very busy and has at least 18 projects on head. Luckily we are not in the hurry to move it so we can afford to wait though.

Gotta wait for their quotation and see what are the charges like.

Received their quotes and was very responsive. After the 1st draft, I had some changes here and there and get Mr E to send me a revised one. Happy that 2nd draft fits our budget! I'm already 60% side of hiring them to reno our flat but hubs want to be fair to those IDs. So we are waiting for their quotes to come it.

• Butterpaperstudio

Got to know this husband and wife team while I was browsing her blog. Love their works and I decided to meet up with them! Appointment is tomorrow so I shall update again.

Meet up with this husband and wife team! Very detailed and gave me some suggestion which I never thought of. Received their drawings within 1 week. Informed them of my budget ($25K) however they said that it will be tight.

• Three d conceptwerke

Contact this studio and was replied that one of the ID will get in contact with me... Its been months and no news from them so.. no need to consider.

• Some random contractor that was loittering around our blk (in hopes of getting some business)

​Like some new flat owers who might experience this. There are a few contractors standing at the void deck area, waiting for couples / families to walk pass and check if you all has started renovation. So while we are waiting for the lift at our blk, this uncle came up to us and wanna chio business. As I was unprepared for this hence I just roughly tell him what we need to do and stuffs.

His quotation consist of abt 75% of what we want to do cause the rest I forgotten to tell him. Quote come up to 19k however I decided to strike him off when I told him tat I wanna use kompacplus for my kitchen top and he just say, won't last. Strongly recommend me to use other materials. Not receptive of my ideas.

Will update again when I have all the quotes to compare!

Edited April 9, 2015 by mrsfelicialee

[FATFROG 4]

Kompacplus is aesthetically impressive and lightweight. But five years later you will remember this contractor's words.

[mrsfelicialee 1]

While we are waiting for the rest of the quotations to come in...

Mood board that I gathered!

All picture source from Pinterest.

[mwerkz 0]

Kompacplus is aesthetically impressive and lightweight. But five years later you will remember this contractor's words.

Can emphasize Abit further on this? I believe compactplus is very widely recommended in this forum. Was considering asking my developer to not do my solid top n eventually get my own contractor/id in to do compactplus. But if it's not lasting like u mentioned, than no point to incur this extra cost on my end.

[mrsfelicialee 1]

I'm super loving the SMEG fridge! But I know that this fridge doesn't come with an affordable price tag!

feliciatan_1184, on Flickr

Study Room

Edited April 9, 2015 by mrsfelicialee

[ckwhon 0]

E of J & E came to my resale 4A unit to measure and did not gave me a quote after that.

Due to some personal reason, I have to move in my house while renovate at the same time and therefore I am not in a hurry to so called "move in" and also my renovation is not going to be a major overhaul. Before I move in on mid January, I called J up to arrange to come up my place for a quote but he forgotten about me and did not arrange to come up to my place. After 1 month I called back to J and he has forgotten who am I but he assigned E to call me back. Same thing E was too busy and only managed to come up after 2 or 3 weeks later (That was also after a few reminder calls from me).

After he came up to measure my house and supposedly we had a nice 1 hour chat, yet I did not receive any quotation close to a month (including the period of CNY). I sms E and then only he replied that they are only a small company and already has 15 projects ongoing, therefore deciding not to take up my job and so no quotation will be given to me. E did not even asked me on the date to start my house and assumed that I may be in a hurry and straight away reject my business.

Initially I was very much impressed by the reviews and price they quoted in renotalk but ended up a very big disappointment with the unprofessional way of doing business. During the waiting period, I have a few quotes from different IDs and Contractors but still putting hope on J & E that their quote will be better in terms of pricing and quality. Really wasted a lot of my time. I know their business is picking up due to some good reviews from renotalkers but I just wan to share what i encountered. I have seen one of the renotalker getting quote from them and commenting their quote to be close to what his other ID has quoted.

Anyway just to share my encounter. I plan to to share this story in the later part when I start my own t-blog but hope renotalkers will see more feedback from us in order to have a better picture before deciding who to go for. I comment not because I want everyone to banish them, but at least this is what I encountered and hopefully they treat all customers equally with good business ethic.

[mrsfelicialee 1]

After almost a month of waiting, decision making and reviewing of quotations.. we have decided to award the contract to Mr J & Mr E as their quote fits our budget plus Mr E is quite responsive.

So these are the stuffs that we will getting Mr J & E to do:

Living Room

• Brick wall feature
• Full height (suspended) shoe rack
• Tracks lights on the sofa & feature wall side
• Flooring for whole house with skirting

Kitchen

• Breakfast counter
• Bottom cabinets on both side of the wall
• Kompacplus on all the kitchen carpentry top
• Seal up the bomb shelter box

Bedroom 1 & 2

• These 2 rooms will be left empty as 1 will be used as a study room and 2 will be my daughter's bedroom
• And we like to have the option to shift the furnitures around

Master bedroom

• Full height wardrobe with sliding room
• Install vanity top with mirror in master bedroom toilet
• Vanity Top with kompacplus
• Shower kerb with 1 single panel shower glass

[mrsfelicialee 1]

As the Lee Family is a non pantang family so we don't have any date line to move in but however I still gave Mr E a date that we wish to move it.

So looking at our schedule, we should be able to start renovation works by 1st week of May!! YEAH ^_^v

We start off with choosing the laminates for our carpentry works..

Within 3 - 4 days, we have decided on the laminates.. it's a tough choice cause it's so difficult to visualize.. I hope Mr E can send me the 3D drawings so that I can double confirm our choices

Besides laminates, we have selected our tiles too!

Mr E said that they might be able to start the tile process early since I've selected the tiles!! So yay!! Gonna say good bye to these raw flooring..

[ling3bzr 0]

hello

can you PM me details of Mr J&E?

are they ID or contractor?

[mrsfelicialee 1]

hello

can you PM me details of Mr J&E?

are they ID or contractor?

Hi there,

Mr J&E are contractors.. however they do provide 3D drawings. (a plus point)

[ling3bzr 0]

Hi there,

Mr J&E are contractors.. however they do provide 3D drawings. (a plus point)

Great. I'm looking fr contractors for my 5rm. Can you PM me their contacts? Thank you

[Tay Yew 0]

Hi, can you pm me J and E contacts pls? Thanks!

Edited April 23, 2015 by roberttty

[Jace82 0]

Hi ,

Can you kindly PM me Contractor J contacts ? Thanks a lot

[mrsfelicialee 1]

Just received our timeline from Mr E. Glad to see that we are able to start our tiling by this Thursday! ^_^v

So within this week, we have settled quite a few items for our house.

• Aircon Installation (Meet up with the installer and confirm our piping and layout)
• Purchase our Venetian blinds for LV + 3 bedrooms (from Fabulous Curtain)
• Purchase Blanco kitchen sink from Hoe Kee
• Purchase MBD toilet sink from Hoe Kee
• Purchase PE Veneer doors for 3 bedrooms

Next item off my list.. Kitchen hood and hob!