H&m's Warm Home

[HnM 0]

Hihi,

I am H - the husband...

M is my wife...

and so we are "H&M" (we are not that well known swedish retail clothing company).

Warm - Our home is really very warm!! Or should I used "HOT" instead.. Haha... No wind at all despite that our living room is not block at the moment.

...view from our living room...

Time seems fast forwarded once we got our keys. But before that, it was a looooong looooong....... 5 years wait! Every BTO seems building faster than our project.

We are starting this blog to detail our reno journey for our first home ~ A tiny 83sqm HDB BTO 4 room flat before it's gone without us noticing it.

...our floor plan...

cheers, H

[HnM 0]

Choosing the right contractor/ID is really very difficult for us. Maybe because we are very fussy (want cheap value for money and good) or maybe because we have a budget that did not get them excited?

Anyway, we selected quite a number of contractor/ID to meet. Some are recommended in renotalk, some are from .

1. G from Story of Us – The most expensive quotation we got, but in term of design it is also one of the best. Both of us were impressed. But too bad… the quotation after revision still exceeded our budget by a significant amount… If we signed with him, every day I will have to go downstairs eat grass!)
2. L from Icon – One of the worse we met. We told her what we wanted to do, and she just provided us with a quotation. No additional design proposed or any value added advice given. In this case why we choose an ID instead of a contractor. She was the first to be out of our selection.
3. Contractor J & E – No chance to meet up with this popular contractor. He refused to meet us before we got our key. And when we got our key, he didn’t turn up on our first meeting. =(
4. C & H from Diva’s – C is the ID and H is the project manager. First quotation seems reasonable but 2^nd quotation varies too much.
5. Contractor N from Renoguyz – I don’t want to judge by his outlook because I am also very sloppy… haha… He is also very blunt and honest. If it is not nice, he will voice out. His quotation is the lowest we got.
6. L from Chapter One - L introduced us to new material (mild steel) for the Bedroom 3 glass wall and we seem to click well with him. But the quotation before GST is already over our budget.
7. D from D workshop - D “put us aeroplane” for 2 times! We saw his design portfolio from facebook and were really impressed by his work. So we arranged to meet up with him but few days before the meeting he called and said he could not take in more projects. (Maybe it’s because he got scared away by our budget we have). Out of our expectation, a few weeks later he called and asked us if we are still interested in getting him to do our reno. This got us excited again!! We are even prepared to increase our budget because of his design. BUT on the same day, he rejected us again saying with the budget we got, he cannot do much! =’(
8. C from Posh Home - Actually we are very tired to meet anymore IDs/Contractors. We wanted to award the project to Contractor N but were afraid that we could not work with him so decided to try the last one at the very last minute. C introduces us to many different mechanism for the wardrobe and shoe cabinet that got us impressed so we gave him a tight timeline to provide us with a quotation. Didn’t expect the quotation to come out to be quite reasonable. Not the cheapest but we decided to pay the extra for the difference mechanism and design. Not sure if we had made the right decision but we had signed with him.

[HnM 0]

Many activities happened after we got our key and here is a summary.. Time seems going so fast that we asked ourselves if we should slow down? LOL.. but thought we can't wait to have our own house!

Summary:

1) 13 May 2015 - Key collection @ HDB. After that went straight to the house to check for defects

2) 22 May 2015 - First meeting with C from Posh Home @ bugis

3) 27 May 2015 - Verbally accepted the quotation

4) 30 May 2015 - Officially signed the contract and paid the 10% deposit @ Posh Home and went to Hafary Showroom @ Eunos to select the tiles for our 2 toilets overlay. We took 1hr to select only ONE tiles type (this shows how indecisive I am)

5) 4 Jun 2015 - Aircon piping done -> A real NIGHTMARE after we saw it! (will describe in the next post)

6) 5 Jun 2015 - Cement screed of the walls in the toilets and overlay of the tiles started

7) 8 Jun 2015 - Demolished of Wall @ Bedroom 3 started

8) 10 Jun 2015 - All our "made in china" (taobao) items arrived and almost filled the Master Bedroom

9) 12 Jun 2015 - Our craftstone TV feature wall completed

10) 13 Jun 2015 - Selection of Laminates for the wardrobe and cabinets and choosing the colors for the paint

11) 15 Jun 2015 - Re-run of the Aircon piping done

Isn't it too fast? Our home is like half way completed!

... All our "made in china"...

Edited June 17, 2015 by HnM

[HnM 0]

Oh Aircon Aircon! Why you like that!

Our first regret.. (Hope not too many left to come..)

It didn't take too long before we had our first regret!

.... to be continued....

Edited June 16, 2015 by HnM

[Tay Yew 0]

That's a stunning view from our living room. The 5 years wait could be worth it. Look forward to more updates from you

[HnM 0]

That's a stunning view from our living room. The 5 years wait could be worth it. Look forward to more updates from you

Hi roberttty, you must be our neighbor? have you started your reno?

[Tay Yew 0]

Hi I'm not from your estate. Sorry for the typo. I meant stunning view from Your living room. Haha

[HnM 0]

This is M, the Madam posting H, the Hubby did not mention the countless discussions we had for the critical items in the house. So after all the discussions, we settled on the items below which were of utmost importance to us:

• - Half glass wall for bedroom 3 to make the living room looks bigger
• - Overlay of the toilet tiles because our original tiles were similar to the tiles used for the coffee shop near our blocks.
• - Craft stone brick walls for the living room
• - Sufficient wardrobe space for the Madam
• - Cabinets for the kitchen
• - FANs for the super duper hot home
• - The Scandinavian theme

Edited June 17, 2015 by HnM

[HnM 0]

H, the Hubby said that I have to post on aircon before I can post on shopping (even though that’s my favorite part of renovation).

So here goes, everything happened too quickly and Mr C was rushing us to have all the drilling done for the bathrooms before he start on the cement screed so we had to get the proposed piping layout from Mr C and below was what he proposed. What we saw later was

We didn’t foresee the huge casing that meet us when we went to visit after the piping were up. We know the trucking will be big but we didn’t realised it was that HUGE. And the other thing that slipped our mind was that the wall for Bedroom 3 was supposed to be knocked off to be replaced by glass hence the piping would need to be enclosed within a beam.

(Along the Hallway)

(Within the MBR)

After much sulking, we decided to bit the bullet and ask Mr C to box up for the trucking within the MBR and to conceal the piping for Bedroom 3 within the beam. We also got the aircon man to re-run the trucking within Bedroom 2 so that the hallway looks neater. It was a painful and expensive lesson learnt.

[looneygas 13]

For the hall, the FCU can be shifted towards the hall windows side and onto the opposite wall of bedroom 3. You can run the piping either a short distance along the hallway or conceal in bedroom 3 and drill through the wall (between bedroom 3 and hall) and connect directly to the hall FCU. Some benefits of relocating the FCU closer to the hall windows is more effective cooling in an area where people will mostly be in the hall and no beam is required across the hallway.

[HnM 0]

Thanks Looneygas, we did think of that as an afterthought but guess it was too late and well... ... we took the easy way out to pay

[OceanEleven 203]

Ok, the renowned Posh Home.

There was a blog from LJ earlier employing Posh Home which created a huge fanfare.

Then the hustle & bustle died down quicker than Fast & Furious.

Also, if my memories dont failed me, there is another blog on Posh Home which left much.....

Nonetheless, I believe the additional cost should and must be deducted from the final reno bill if C is the one who proposed the layout.

They brand themselves as an ID firm, where aesthetics and pleasing eyes are main core of business.

Failure to recognise such petite blemishes speaks so much of their capabilities.

[HnM 0]

Okay, after a long hiatus, the Mdm is finally back to post on her shopping haul. First of our purchases came from Amazon and all of them came with FREE international shipping! All items arrived within less than two weeks

Kyocera Revolution Series 5-1/2-Inch Santoku Knife and Y Peeler Set, Black

simplehuman Wall Mount Grocery Bag Dispenser, Stainless Steel
T-fal C111SC Signature Nonstick Thermo-Spot Heat Indicator Cookware Set, 12-Piece, Black
KOHLER K-596-CP Simplice Single-Hole Pull-down Kitchen Faucet, Polished Chrome
Corelle Livingware 16 piece Dinnerware Set, Service for 4, Classic Café Blue

If anyone is going Japan, the Kyocera seems to be sold much cheaper there! Blades are made in Japan

[PoisonIvy 0]

Nice sharing HnM! I'm planning to buy from Amazon ^^

How's the knife + peeler so far?

[HnM 0]

No problem! Haven't gotten down to using the stuff yet hahaha