Our First Home

[ZzzMonster 7]

Congrats!

I also bought a similar rug from taobao...

Noticed that almost or all your carpentry laminates are the same. Why don't use different laminates for different carpentry?

[jobb 0]

Thanks ZzzMonster!

From the start, my fiancee and I had decided that we like dark walnut/brown woody features so we gravitated towards similar colours when we were choosing our laminates. Having too many different carpentry laminates results in a discordant theme I feel so we tried to choose same/similar ones for each area of the house. As you can tell, we are not too adventurous and our choices can seem boring to others haha

[jobb 0]

It's Day 3 of renovations and the tilers have started overlaying tiles in the bathrooms...

ID arranged for air con installers to come in today but then realized they can't lay the pipes as the tiles are not up yet So now, we have to rearrange another date for them to come down...At least I managed to get an idea of the timeline for the next 2 weeks and hopefully, minimize such incidents from occurring again

1) Electrical works should be up by end of this week

2) Tiling should be completed latest next Monday

3) Air cons to be installed next Tuesday

4) False ceilings to be up by end of next week

5) Measurements for curtains and blinds scheduled next Sunday

Hope everything goes smoothly from now...

[jobb 0]

Shall continue my post on the furniture we bought for the living room next...

First up is the sofa! We decided earlier on that we prefer a leather rather than fabric sofa...reason is because of our dog! Even though he's been trained not to jump on the sofa, sometimes when he's home alone, he does naughty things he knows he shouldn't be doing So, having a fabric sofa is out of the question as the last fabric sofa we had got shredded so badly...It was tough looking for the perfect sofa! We went to quite a few furniture shops. As we preferred full leather over half leather, we were prepared to spend at least $2k on it. We searched for almost a month before coming across this sofa at a shop in the Furniture Mall.

IT was really comfortable and it got the approval of my fiance's Mum, so we paid for it (his Mum sponsored us the sofa in the end! ) and decided to go with light grey - similar to the display piece in the showroom

Besides the sofa, we initially wanted to get an ottoman to fill up the living room space but most of the pieces we saw at the furniture shops were out of our budget. A couple of weeks ago, my fiance saw that Courts was having a clearance sale at Lot 1 and thought these stools would match our sofa quite nicely!

We ended up getting 2 of them

Tried to convince ourselves that they're about the same colour Guess we'll only know when the sofa gets delivered!

Last but not least, we bought a bladeless fan and a trio of paintings from Taobao

Initially we wanted to buy a Xiaomi TV but then, as luck would have it, one of my girlfriend's family wanted to give away their old Plasma TV! So we spent a Sunday afternoon lugging the 75kg TV from my friend's house to our place. It was a lot of hard work on the part of my friend's dad, my fiance and his dad

So yep, our huge TV is sitting on the floor waiting for the TV console to be constructed

That's all for the living room!

[jobb 0]

Renovation update - end of week 1

After the minor hiccup with the air con installation, it seems like everything is progressing quite nicely Tiling completed for the kitchen and master bedrooms; electrical works and false ceiling in progress, should be done by end of next week...just in time for us to get the measurements for our curtains

Here are the pictures taken today and the pre-renovation photos for comparison

View of living room from main entrance:

View of hallway:

View of kitchen:

View of box-upped pipes at laundry area:

To be continued...

Edited October 31, 2015 by jobb

[jobb 0]

View of common toilet:

View of master toilet:

View of study room:

View of other bedroom:

Next week, it'll be electrical, air con and ceiling works! Exciting!

[bykaraanne 30]

Whoo! Great progress!!

Edited October 31, 2015 by bykaraanne

[jobb 0]

Renovation update - end of week 2

So...a lot of stuff happened in week 2...initial problems resolved, then more problems cropped up I guess this is part and parcel of the renovation process?

Air cons went up last Tuesday. Managed to fix everything in one day so I was pretty stoked about that. Then came the bombshell...we didn't realise the air con pipe which ran into the kitchen were blocking the path of the gas pipe The gas pipes had been pulled off from the kitchen walls as the tiles were being overlaid and so, when the air con pipes was laid, we forgot that the gas pipe ran in the same place...in the end, my ID said we need to get City Gas to come in and reroute the gas pipe and that will cost as $120. A little upset with that but can't really complain as we decided to purchase the air cons from a separate supplier from the usual one our ID gets from, hence the miscommunication. Oh well, we decided to take it in our stride and just pay up first since we will be billed directly by City Gas. Guess the silver lining is that we don't really have to do anything as our ID will arrange with City Gas to make the necessary rectifications.

Pipe from the main unit in the living room not visible as installer suggested we run the pipe through the kitchen into the common toilet.

Note the copper gas pipe hanging in mid-air...now that the white air con pipe is up, the gas pipe can't be reinstalled back in its original position

The air con pipe in the kitchen continues into the common toilet. As I was inspecting the units as thy were being installed, I noticed the corner of the pipe wasn't shaped nicely so, I asked the installer to rectify it. Kudos to the uncle, he immediately went to work on it and it looks so much better now.

This is the close up of the upper right corner after rectification.

So, air cons are up and my ID has arranged for City Gas to come in this Wednesday to reroute the gas pipe...hope this will be the end of the air con saga!

[Ks Toh 74]

Renovation update - end of week 2

So...a lot of stuff happened in week 2...initial problems resolved, then more problems cropped up I guess this is part and parcel of the renovation process?

Air cons went up last Tuesday. Managed to fix everything in one day so I was pretty stoked about that. Then came the bombshell...we didn't realise the air con pipe which ran into the kitchen were blocking the path of the gas pipe The gas pipes had been pulled off from the kitchen walls as the tiles were being overlaid and so, when the air con pipes was laid, we forgot that the gas pipe ran in the same place...in the end, my ID said we need to get City Gas to come in and reroute the gas pipe and that will cost as $120. A little upset with that but can't really complain as we decided to purchase the air cons from a separate supplier from the usual one our ID gets from, hence the miscommunication. Oh well, we decided to take it in our stride and just pay up first since we will be billed directly by City Gas. Guess the silver lining is that we don't really have to do anything as our ID will arrange with City Gas to make the necessary rectifications.

Pipe from the main unit in the living room not visible as installer suggested we run the pipe through the kitchen into the common toilet.

Note the copper gas pipe hanging in mid-air...now that the white air con pipe is up, the gas pipe can't be reinstalled back in its original position

Basically, a "Not my Job" attitude which I also encountered in my renovation here. Really pissed off by such attitude.

[jobb 0]

Renovation updates - end of week 2 (continued)

So far throughout the week, I was the one going down to the site to check on the progress as it's pretty near to where I work. My fiance and I went down last weekend to take a look at the work done over the past week and discovered a few issues...

One major issue that surfaced was the sink installed in our common toilet. So basically, our initial idea was to have a countertop with undermount sink in both toilets. However, this was not feasible in the common toilet due to insufficient space. Our ID proposed wall mounted instead. As I had opted for a veneer swing door instead of the usual bifold or PD door for out toilet, we are limited in the sinks we can choose as the maximum breadth we can go is 400mm in order not to obstruct the swing door.

These were the 2 options which our ID whatsapped us. I didn't like the round one so I asked for the square one. And so, our ID proceeded to make the order and this is how it looks like after it was installed:

My fiance freaked out...now the basin looks so small and pathetic compared to our mixer tap! We requested our ID to change to a bigger sink but because the plumber had already installed it, the shop which we bought the toilet accessories from refused to take it back We were getting really upset and in the end, our ID offered to give us $150 to purchase a new sink on our own, which we thought was really nice of him We felt really bad though...as this $150 was coming out of his own personal pocket

So last night, we made a trip down to IMM to source for a new sink and managed to find this which we think will be able to maximise the limited space we have in our common toilet.

Planning to get this in white...costs $69 with delivery fee of $35 which is still within the $150 budget offered by our ID. Will be going down to the house this afternoon to take more detailed measurements and make sure this sink will fit before we order. I guess despite all the hiccups, we're lucky that we have a responsible and responsive ID On a side note, we're glad we took his advice to have the storage heater mounted in the common toilet instead of the kitchen. Happy with that

Ceiling works were completed last Saturday...just a couple of minor things to rectify:

1) Need to enlarge the l-box in the living room to ensure uniformed 30cm of perimeter throughout.

2) Need to extend the length of the box in the master bedroom to 80 inches to accommodate the curtain track.

Other than these few issues, everything else seems to be on track...

Box up for master toilet done! No more ugly pipes!

Work to be carried out this week include:

1) Rectification of false ceiling

2) Painting

3) Rerouting of gas pipe

4) Chemical wash

5) Carpentry work

One thing that we're pleasantly surprised by is that our ID remembered we wanted to change the design of the bomb shelter ventilation. We thought he wouldn't remember but he did!

So props to him

Praying that everything else will proceed smoothly...

Edited November 9, 2015 by jobb

[jobb 0]

Basically, a "Not my Job" attitude which I also encountered in my renovation here. Really pissed off by such attitude.

Hi KS,

Unfortunately, that's exactly what happened. We didn't want to kick up a big fuss as our renovation is still in progress and we didn't want to sour the relationship with our ID...so just got to suck it up as part and parcel of renovations

[yakult 3]

From the 3Ds, it looks like we have similar color theme!

[jobb 0]

From the 3Ds, it looks like we have similar color theme!

Hi Yakult! Indeed...you have good taste Excited to see how your house will come together! Our kitchens are almost identical! Will be camping at your t-blog to see how everything turns out

[jobb 0]

Thinking of installing a water filtration system like this:

Any ideas on the electrical and water input? Do we need a separate water tap to be connected to the filtration machine???

[Ks Toh 74]

Thinking of installing a water filtration system like this:

Any ideas on the electrical and water input? Do we need a separate water tap to be connected to the filtration machine???

This is not just a filtration system but an alkaline water dispenser. You do not need a separate water tap. Most people just tap off the existing water tap. I installed one in my house. If you want to find out more information, you can check here.