Emma - Our Em In The West

[ricepapergirl 21]

Day 63 - Handover soon!

No pictures today, though I do have some updates, but the house was cleaned on Saturday and today should be paint touch-ups and other last minute stuff, so I was hoping to take some pictures after everything is done up and handed over!

Handover should be either tomorrow or Wednesday, technically most of the stuff is already done except for some niggling pieces like the window grilles and our utility room window, the latter we've agreed with Andrew can take longer than after the official handover. I should do a proper review of the Ikea kitchen installers one of these days, been really tired though. The kitchen itself, I love love love. Loving my grey kitchen haha.

Anyway, today is last paint touch-ups, tomorrow maybe handover, Wednesday afternoon husband and I are taking half-day leave because we've scheduled most of our loose furniture to be delivered then (sofa, chairs, TV console, fridge, washing machine etc) and also for StarHub to set up the internet (hope that one goes well! or you won't hear from me much till it's fixed lol). Thursday we're on full day leave for movers to go from my maiden home in Bishan in the morning to pick up my 16 boxes, then to my current home with my in-laws for the rest of the boxes, wardrobe, bed, bookshelves, desk, chair etc, then to Emma to unload! We also took leave on Friday for more unpacking and more receiving of deliveries. Should probably also call up Union Energy for the LPG tanks and put in orders to Lazada for our Roombas etc for them to be delivered whilst we're on leave. The delivery from Joo Koon Warehouse Club (wholesale NTUC) and from Robinsons (cutlery, crockery etc) will also come in on Thursday so we'll get some supplies (and our KDK standing fans) delivered on moving day.

It's been quite crazy trying to organize everything to happen in the same week + packing like mad. I'm also right smack in my second trimester (first kid!) so poor husband has had to do all the heavy lifting and I'm also much more tired than usual. But! It's all coming to an end and soon we'll have our own home!

So, review of Ikea kitchen installers, and also of Andrew coming up soon! And also all the stuff we bought and will probably get to put into action soon!

[bykaraanne 30]

I can't wait to see the finished product!!! So happy for you guys and Emma 

[JohnJohn 13]

Congrats! Happy for you that the reno is coming to an end!

[roundrabbit 0]

On 5/24/2016 at 11:30 PM, ricepapergirl said:

Day 57 - Ikea Kitchen Installation

Husband and I took leave today to be around when AZ Creative (Ikea Alexandra Kitchen Installers) installed our kitchen. Well, my husband had to be around the whole day whilst I had to run off in the afternoon for work meetings. It's not completely done yet, tomorrow the Ikea plumber comes for the tap and sink to be installed and actually we agreed with AZ Creative that we would undertake the installation of some of the "extra drawers" which they were going to charge us for, so we're going to try our hands at some drawer installation tomorrow as well. But! They installed my hob, my hood and my oven for me, and most of the kitchen is already done! Despite our initial problems dealing with their quotation people (which I'm still not particularly happy with), the installers themselves were quite efficient and proficient and from the pictures my husband took, seemed to have done a relatively good job!

This was nearing the end of the day, with the hob and hood installed! Really like the look of the glass doors for the upper cabinets!

Installed oven in the tall unit!

Done for the day. The empty carcasses on the right are the drawers we have to install ourselves.

Finally, a look at our newly installed balcony bifold doors, still with the black protective stickers covering the white frames:

Hi, congrats on the handover, really enjoyed your t-blog! Is your hood from Fujioh? Looks a lot like model FS890 which I also bought, if so may I know what's the distance between your hood and hob? I bought from hoe kee and the installation guide they gave me says 700mm to 800mm while the manual i downloaded from fujioh website says 800mm, quite strange the same model has different guides?

[d3n 14]

ermm but why Ikea furniture cabinets? lasting or not? heard horror stories about it....

[ricepapergirl 21]

On ‎3‎/‎6‎/‎2016 at 5:20 PM, roundrabbit said:

Hi, congrats on the handover, really enjoyed your t-blog! Is your hood from Fujioh? Looks a lot like model FS890 which I also bought, if so may I know what's the distance between your hood and hob? I bought from hoe kee and the installation guide they gave me says 700mm to 800mm while the manual i downloaded from fujioh website says 800mm, quite strange the same model has different guides?

Hi roundrabbit!

Yup! Our hood is from Fujioh. I still haven't tried it out yet haha we only just moved over the last few days and not enough stuff and still cleaning so hope to fire up the hob and hood on Friday for our first home-cooked meal.

Yes, the model is FS890R, we bought it cos it's one of the Fujioh hoods that's still Made In Japan. Our Fujioh installation guide said at least 800mm though, we bought it from Universal Union... (if you see my picture at 800mm my hood is already above my backsplash tiles so we didn't risk having it even higher than 800mm above the countertop). Hope that helps.

[ricepapergirl 21]

On ‎3‎/‎6‎/‎2016 at 5:37 PM, d3n said:

ermm but why Ikea furniture cabinets? lasting or not? heard horror stories about it....

Hi d3n!

I had quite a long post on why I decided to go with Ikea kitchen, you can read my reasons there:

So far, I really like our Ikea kitchen. Our own ID approves of it as well, I think he's particularly impressed by the Blum stuff that Ikea kitchens have at such a low price. The Blum hardware is really useful when you have drawers, easy to close drawers just by shoving them. At that price point, the quality of Ikea kitchen is hard to beat.

Also, with Ikea it's really about knowing what is good and what is not. I've had their cheapest PAX range of wardrobes for years and they've held up amazingly well, so we've also bought PAX sliding door wardrobes from them for our MBR. For our bookcases we went for Billy bookcases but only 40cm width ones, because the 80cm width ones will collapse over time (again, from my own experience owning Billy bookcases for many years). My husband has had two of their Expedit shelves (replaced by Kallax shelves, which we also bought for our MBR) for over 10 years and they are so hardy we moved one set over. My old Bonde shelves (replaced by Besta) are also going strong and my dad uses it for his home office. Etc etc etc. It's a matter of choosing the right Ikea stuff. Avoiding the ones that are too cheap or are made from materials which don't really work for Singapore (stainless steel stuff unless GRUNDTAL will not last long, so buy the really cheap stuff and prepare to toss out in a few years, if you wash your toilet floor often don't get the black powder-coated metal toilet racks cos the legs will break down etc).

Ultimately, my attitude is that although Ikea furniture gets complaints, I also am never certain that the furniture that I can get from other places will last a long time, even less so when it comes to custom carpentry like kitchens. I figured the chances I have with Ikea (which is a brand that has been around for a long time and has a really good returns policy) is about equal to a contractor/ID who may or may not hire always the same good quality carpenter and I don't even know the credentials of the carpenter? We did try approaching some of the carpenters with good reviews but the price range is usually double what I paid in the end for my Ikea kitchen so we figured why not.

[Luxexplorer 2]

Really impress with the Ikea kitchen cabinets. Each time when I visit IKEA i marvel at their kitchen designs but don't have the courage to consider it as always have the notion that it might not last as long as carpentry build in. And also dont know if the coordination for their cabinets will be a hassle versus one that just dealing with the contractor. Anyways, great job there.

Always exciting to see other homes on the verge of finish. 

[bykaraanne 30]

PLUS Ikea has a great returns and warranty policy. I think Singaporeans often mistake Ikea = crappy because of chip wood or because of price... All it takes is knowing what to use for what purpose and taking care of the stuff!

i agree with you. I've had Ikea stuff with me (the expedit range is indeed unbreakable) all the time through my own room to my rental to now my own home and I've had no problems. My custom PAX wardrobe has gotten a lot of compliments and some of my friends regretted their custom (super expensive) wardrobe. 

I couldn't have my IKEA kitchen so I'm super envious of yours! The inner Blum stuff really makes it worthwhile PLUS all the EXACT accessories you can buy to organize the insides makes my inner clean freak self weep in joy Hahahaha. 

Enjoy your new home! Can't wait for more pictures!

[ricepapergirl 21]

Post-renovation... sort of!

Back at work after taking 2.5 days off last week, though taking time off work to clean a really dusty new house still with tiny tile chips in corners of every room and to coordinate deliveries and moving and unpacking and unpacking and cleaning and cleaning is not really a "rest", haha.

So no pictures today, because practically none of the rooms are "done" per se. Andrew's painters were apparently slightly rebellious so we didn't manage to have our living room feature wall painted yellow before we moved in, ditto with sanding down of the staircase handrail+ repainting it. We're also going to have to change the utility room window completely instead of just replacing the glass, so technically we're still in the end legs of reno. In fact, our sofas and armchairs in the living room still have plastic over them and protective sticker on our balcony door frames are still on because we want to protect against the yellow paint, so if you peer in from the corridor it looks like we haven't moved in yet lol.

Upstairs is a little bit more lived in, though we're still missing our bedside tables in the MBR, bathroom storage rack from Ikea for the MBR toilet, and extra storage for the study because we both have way too many books and the amount of bookshelves we bought could only hold our books and our files etc have no home and are still in boxes. Ditto for CDs and DVDs, we have way more than expected so we went down to Ikea to buy a few more things, they should be in on Saturday together with the shoerack and maybe the utility room racks and extra counter-top racks for my kitchen and then we're probably closer to a lived-in reveal then. Lol. Meanwhile, time to get back to normal work!

[roundrabbit 0]

2 hours ago, ricepapergirl said:

Hi roundrabbit!

Yup! Our hood is from Fujioh. I still haven't tried it out yet haha we only just moved over the last few days and not enough stuff and still cleaning so hope to fire up the hob and hood on Friday for our first home-cooked meal.

Yes, the model is FS890R, we bought it cos it's one of the Fujioh hoods that's still Made In Japan. Our Fujioh installation guide said at least 800mm though, we bought it from Universal Union... (if you see my picture at 800mm my hood is already above my backsplash tiles so we didn't risk having it even higher than 800mm above the countertop). Hope that helps.

I told my contract to make it 750mm for me, didn't go higher because otherwise the hood will be so high above the backsplash! i am using tempered glass as backsplash so there will be a "几“ shape under the hood, at first was a little worried that it won't look so nice, but eventually caved in for practical reasons. Anyways it's more important to have a hood that works as opposed to just look nice! We also get the same oven haha.

[ricepapergirl 21]

42 minutes ago, Luxexplorer said:

Really impress with the Ikea kitchen cabinets. Each time when I visit IKEA i marvel at their kitchen designs but don't have the courage to consider it as always have the notion that it might not last as long as carpentry build in. And also dont know if the coordination for their cabinets will be a hassle versus one that just dealing with the contractor. Anyways, great job there.

Always exciting to see other homes on the verge of finish. 

Hi Luxexplorer!

Thank you for the kind words! Indeed, I've had many people ask me about the long-lastingness of Ikea kitchen but in the end nobody who passed me bad reviews actually owned an Ikea kitchen (and most of the time their bad review was of unknown Ikea furniture but not the actual kitchen so ...). I must say though, coordination for cabinet is probably more hassle than dealing with contractor. You have to do the electrical cabling for the kitchen in stages, as well as the plumbing and gas lines etc, once for the basic layout before the kitchen is installed but in time for the site measurement, and then second time for when the carpentry is all up to finish off. Plus Ikea kitchen installers only install on weekdays and they insist owner needs to be around the whole two days when they are installing, so that's two working days of leave taken just for Ikea installation. Besides that though, the price savings and the results so far have been worth it.

38 minutes ago, bykaraanne said:

PLUS Ikea has a great returns and warranty policy. I think Singaporeans often mistake Ikea = crappy because of chip wood or because of price... All it takes is knowing what to use for what purpose and taking care of the stuff!

i agree with you. I've had Ikea stuff with me (the expedit range is indeed unbreakable) all the time through my own room to my rental to now my own home and I've had no problems. My custom PAX wardrobe has gotten a lot of compliments and some of my friends regretted their custom (super expensive) wardrobe. 

I couldn't have my IKEA kitchen so I'm super envious of yours! The inner Blum stuff really makes it worthwhile PLUS all the EXACT accessories you can buy to organize the insides makes my inner clean freak self weep in joy Hahahaha. 

Enjoy your new home! Can't wait for more pictures!

Hi bykaraanne!

Really lovely to have another Ikea-appreciator on the forums! The expedit range is ridiculously indestructible, I can only hope the Kallax is as good! I also agree with you on how custom carpentry seems to be so much more expensive than Ikea stuff, wardrobes especially??

Awww your house and your kitchen is really super lovely!

[ricepapergirl 21]

1 minute ago, roundrabbit said:

I told my contract to make it 750mm for me, didn't go higher because otherwise the hood will be so high above the backsplash! i am using tempered glass as backsplash so there will be a "几“ shape under the hood, at first was a little worried that it won't look so nice, but eventually caved in for practical reasons. Anyways it's more important to have a hood that works as opposed to just look nice! We also get the same oven haha.

Hi roundrabbit!

I honestly don't know what effect having the hood at 750mm vs 800mm will be, hopefully it's all the same!  I think there are two types of thinking for hood installation: have it at eye level so you won't bump into it by accident, or having it high enough so your head clears it anyway! Guess 800mm is the second version!

[ricepapergirl 21]

Ikea Kitchen Review - Process of Ordering and Installation

I'll probably post a review of how the kitchen is actually working out after a few more months, I've only just started using my kitchen for the last three days and not even cooked so it's probably not fair. But so far it's been great!

What I can give is some information on the process of planning, ordering and installing your Ikea kitchen in Singapore, a topic which seems very lacking online.

Caveats beforehand:

- May only be applicable to Ikea Alexandra experiences, not Ikea Tampines (we're westies so we wouldn't dream of heading down to Tampines, but also the kitchen installers in Alexandra (AZ Creative) have a better reputation than the ones in Tampines (Artbuild))

- I spent about close to $6k for my entire kitchen carpentry, excluding appliances (but they installed my hob, hood and oven for me), including the actual payment you make to Ikea + delivery charges + installation charges, with mostly Blum drawers (I have 17 drawers, all for the lower cabinets, and only 2 swing door compartments for lower cabinets for my LPG tanks. Upper cabinets are all swing door compartments) and mostly no soft-closing hinges for the top cabinets. Also includes the Ikea sink and dish drainer but not my hansgrohe kitchen tap.

- I like Ikea. I like planning to the smallest detail. I enjoyed playing around with the Ikea online kitchen 3D planner (so much so the Ikea planner realized after a while and actually taught me some cool tricks). I may not enjoy coordinating stuff but I'm quite good at it. Your mileage may differ depending on how much you like these things.

- My ID and my husband were quite supportive. Again, if your ID/contractor doesn't like to or doesn't work well with external parties (and a kitchen is effectively 50% of carpentry) then this might not work for you. We brought our ID down to Ikea Alexandra to AZ Creative's office and he and AZ Creative's guy talked to each other beforehand on how the water pipes, electricals, backsplash etc should be run to fit Ikea kitchen cabinetry, and we still got some of it wrong (forgot to factor in skirting so we had to shift the water pipes which were running on top of the skirting to on the skirting itself).

Planning your Ikea kitchen - tips and tricks:

1. If you are renovating your entire kitchen and redoing even things like water pipes, gas lines, electrical wiring, then Ikea kitchen will be easier. 

2. Ikea kitchen bottom cabinets have about 8cm height clearance from the floor, so your skirting + anything else you are running underneath your kitchen cabinets have to fit within the 8cm height. For example, you may want to run your water pipes and gas lines under the cabinet and have them go up vertically when needed at that particular cabinet. Ikea kitchen installers will help you cut into the back of the cabinets when you need to, for such purposes, although it will be charged. If your ID is doing your water pipes, the pipe to connect to Ikea's sinks should extend upwards around 50cm above the floor.

3. For electrical cabling, there's roughly a 1cm depth clearance from the wall at the back of cabinets. That's not enough for usual electrical wire cabling casings but enough for the actual wires themselves, so for us, our ID ran casing until where our top cabinets start, and then just roughly hung the cables themselves for them to be hidden behind the cabinets, and then when the cabinets were installed, he came back to add casings and final power sockets.

4. If you have structural beams, especially the overhead ones, take note that you're unlikely to be able to use the tallest top cabinets (80cm tall) because the top cabinets are top-hung so they have to be hung from under the beam. Hard to explain but just take note if you have beams (and check in with the installers). This is not a problem for usual kitchen carpentry since they just cut-out the top part of their cabinet but Ikea cannot customize that way. Same thing for huge horizontal pipes near the ceiling.

5. If you have to use LPG tanks like me, Ikea recommends having 40cm wide empty bottom cabinets for each tank you want to store. It's wide enough (I had my LPG tanks go in on Saturday!) and sturdy enough to stand the weight, and the installers can help you cut a hole in the "wall" of the cabinet if you have your LPG tanks adjacent to your hob instead of directly underneath it, like I do (chargeable).

Process of Ikea kitchen-ing

1. Highly recommend playing around with the Ikea kitchen 3D online planner first, see whether you like the look of stuff and understand a bit more about the limitations of Ikea kitchens. Also good to have a rough layout of where the hob, hood, sink, fridge, oven would be so you can think about how to run water pipes etc.

2. Bring your ID/contractor down to the Ikea kitchen installers (not Ikea kitchen department itself) and have them talk it out.

3. Get your kitchen tiled, mostly painted, water pipes and gas pipes completely done, before arranging for Ikea kitchen installers to come down for site measurement (a phone call to them would do, usually can be within the week). Site measurement is $40 and C.O.D., but you don't need to be physically there if there's someone in the house. I got my ID to help to be around to open the door etc but forgot to pass him the money, he was nice enough to pay for it first.

4. After the site measurement visit, the measurements taken by the kitchen installers will be passed to Ikea kitchen department, who will use the measurements to mock up your kitchen in the same kitchen 3D online planner and also come up with a preliminary layout of your kitchen. There's no real way to show them the plan you made beforehand or even get them to load it and work off it, but when you arrange to meet up with the Ikea kitchen department for a planning session (give it around 3 hours at least) you can show them what you want and they will change on the spot, and they are pretty efficient at it!

5. Make sure you have all the dimensions of your hob, hood, oven, other stuff to be built in (your own sink? dishwasher?), before you meet Ikea kitchen planners, because otherwise you'll probably have to make another trip down to confirm the layout. I have everything in a handy notebook including dimensions of my hob, hood and oven, so we managed to get it all settled within the same appointment, though the lady next to me had to come back. After you confirm the layout and agree with the pricing etc, Ikea kitchen will generate an order list and go through them item-by-item. Pay attention, because it's a fuss if you ordered the wrong thing. After that you head to the cashier, pay for it, and then head to delivery, choose a delivery date (it has to be in your house physically at least 1 day before the installation starts), pay for that, and then go over to the kitchen installers' office with your paid-for slips for the actual kitchen items, the layout plan, the delivery receipt, and they will take it in and generate a quotation just for the installation. That will take a few days, so they send it to you via email.

6. If budget is an issue, do check in with the kitchen installers beforehand (if possible, I didn't) on what their rates for installation are. Because the kitchen installers are not technically part of Ikea but are Ikea sub-contractors, the installation price list that Ikea kitchen department hands out may or may not be accurate/honoured by the installers, as I have learnt the hard way. For me, the quotation that came into my email after a few days was a bit of a shocker because I had already calculated my installation charges myself previously and there was quite a large difference. For example, they charged me for installation of "extra drawers", which, considering I had 17 drawers, is not that surprising, but I was not aware when designing my kitchen that extra drawers came with extra installation charges (because the price list just said installation of cabinets + everything inside + countertop is $30/ft). Also, installation of décor strips is also charged at $12/ft, something I didn't realize when Ikea kitchen department convinced me that they would be a nice touch (the delivered décor strips are super super long and are still sitting in my utility room, unused, because I didn't want to pay an extra $122 to have them installed, and anyway my cabinets look nice the way they are now.

7. My main gripe with the kitchen installers is in how they had calculated the amount  of "ft" for the $30/ft charge, because I had calculated and recalculated and could only derive that I had 24ft of cabinet, but they were charging me for 29ft. It took me multiple calls, multiple emails with different ways of asking/explaining, over multiple days, before they finally told me that 1. for tall cabinets they count the top and the bottom of the cabinet - i.e. twice, and 2. they count the length of cover panels. The first I had no issues with, the second I was quite pissed because the original price list never indicated that cover panels would effectively be charged at $30/ft (which is effectively what they were charging me). When I told them that, if that's the case, perhaps I wouldn't install the cover panels after all, they basically told me that they wouldn't do installation "half-way" and that I should look for someone else to do my kitchen installation. Long story short, I was so frustrated (my kitchen stuff had been delivered and sitting there collecting dust for a week by now) that I copied the whole email chain to Ikea customer service, who then handed me to Ikea kitchen department, for the Ikea kitchen planner to call me back and actually agree with me that he did not think cover panels ought to be charged that way either. Anyway, in the end, they waived the installation charges for cover panels for my kitchen, though I hope that Ikea can settle with their sub-contractors the exact way they charge installation, and just be more transparent about how installation is charged.

8. After you agree with Ikea kitchen installers on the quotation, they arrange for actual installation dates. They usually take 2 days (esp for a biggish kitchen) consecutively for installation, and they only install on weekdays (unlike Ikea themselves who do weekend installations and assemblies), and they insist that the owner must be there the whole of the two days, so be prepared to take leave to be around on that day.

9. Final tip: if you want to be cheapo and decide to install parts of the kitchen yourself to save cost (we decided to install the extra drawers ourselves): it's bloody tiring. If you have some prior experience with power drills and are quite the handyperson, it's possible, but my husband and I literally had to go out and buy a drill and learn everything from scratch, even though I'm quite an old-hand at assembling my own Ikea furniture. None of that allen key stuff here, it's all drilling and actual nails and screws and hammering and drilling holes through entire door panels and crazy stuff like that. By the end of it we had SUCH a sense of achievement but also half wondered whether our time and effort and sweat was really worth that few hundred dollars worth of savings. Hahaha.

[bykaraanne 30]

Babe! You can go refund the decor strips... Should be an easy process since their returns policy is really great.  

awesome detailed write up! And I agree, eventually it was the installation cost that put me off. 

Btw, any reason u left a gap at the corner instead of doing a L-shaped unit? I know IKEA has those amazing corner pull outs. 

Edited June 7, 2016 by bykaraanne