5I Resale Toh Yi Drive

[dukebluedevil 1]

MORE PURCHASES AND DECISIONS

Bought our WCs. Finally decided on a couple of Johnson Suisse from Adamas. Initially wanted an s-trap Toto but no longer in production . 

Flooring picked! Waiting for contractor to confirm whether herringbone pattern is possible with this. 

 

Laminates picked from EDL. Wanted the 1.2mm polar white for the kitchen cabinetry but contractor says its gonna cost extra. So trying to nego the 1.0mm one without any up charge.

 

The toilet cabinets and master bed room cupboard are gonna get the matt laminates and be done up shaker style. Sorry its just gonna be whites for the carpentry works! 

 

Edited March 14, 2016 by dukebluedevil

[dukebluedevil 1]

HALF TIME UPDATE

Well I reckon that my renovation is about halfway done. Sorry for the recent lack of updates as nothing much happens during wetwork. Walls got plastered and some tiles went up. As we are intending to overlay the whole house with tiles, we had to hack my kitchen floor and screed it as there was a substantial height difference between the kitchen floor and the living area. Just means more cost  So what they say is true, budget at least 10-20% over and above your renovation quote for incidentals like these.

Anyway, like i mentioned earlier, we went with a contractor to save money. We haven't regretted a single moment, but it has been a super tiring process. To get the look that we wanted, we had to source many things ourselves or keep bugging our contractor to meet more suppliers and get more samples. Every (little) chance we got, we went down to our flat to make sure everything was going to plan (which was never 100% the case). We are very lucky that our contractor has been very, very patient, responsive to our queries and very hardworking. He will meet us once or twice a week to go through the progress of the renovation and take stock of what needs to be done. He chases us when he needs our input so not to delay our renovation. So far he's on track to meet the 6 week deadline he set himself.

Anyway, enough talk and more pictures!

See this?? This caused our flooring budget to balloon over 50% which made it worse cos our preferred herringbone pattern already cost a premium (regardless of brand). Fortunately, this brand is able to do a 4sided click AND came in smaller planks to give a more pleasing visual effect. Other brands were either loose lay (with glue, a big no-no) or you needed some (creative) hacks which would have voided the warranty. Made in Belgium and lifetime warranty. Hope we get our money's worth.

To keep with the french/european wannabe theme, some louvred doors for the shoe cabinet and 3 panel room divider/door thingy. This will be sprayed white with gold touches (more on this later).

See that white/grey wall? Broke my bedroom wall and shifted it forward for more space. This made the living room slightly smaller but not a biggie because the living /dining area is huge. The rectangular hole will house the shelves for the AV/internet stuff. The picture makes it seem that the shelves would be too close to the TV. Will discuss this with my contractor when i meet him this Saturday.

Cornice work is up. Had reminded my contractor to instruct the electrician to move the electrical point back as the fan would be too close to the feature wall. Will bang tables on Saturday if its not done by then. Oooh, love the tree-lined view out the balcony.

Biggest headache so far. Fibre termination point is in no-man's land. Option 1 was to relocate this somewhere else but requires OpenNet to do it and I'm afraid they will any-o-how do  and run casings everywhere and God knows when they will be able to come down to my place to do it. Plus it will cost $200plus at the minimum. I went with option 2 i.e. buy a super, super long patch cord to connect the TP to the Optical Network Terminal at the feature wall. Fingers crossed this will work and the electrician had ensured no kinks in the patch cord. Once it works, the cord will be cased up. Still will look ugly, mind. Just not as ugly as Option 1.

That's about it I guess. Toilets'  all tiled and boxed up, just waiting for stuff to be fixed and bolted on. Will show more pics after Saturday. Next post is just gonna be showing off the gold bits.

 

 

[dukebluedevil 1]

PICTURES OF SHINY STUFF

So just to summarise, the theme is (was?) frenchie/european/rojak white/gold/grey/marble/wood look. So our contractor and us separately hunted down some gold accessories:

Gold knobs for our wardrobe doors.

Handle for the gate.

Handles for the toilet and room divider doors.

Hinges for all the doors.

Door knobs.

Main door handle.

Hope we haven't gone overboard with the gold stuff!

[dukebluedevil 1]

Phew. Got news that the purchase of this flat was finally completed today. We had taken some risk in renovating the flat when it hadn't been legally ours yet. 

We didn't really have a choice as we didn't have the luxury of time. So we had to give HDB and the ex Owners indemnities before they would let us hack and smash the house. 

I guess it turned out OK in the end. Certainly was a nerve racking few weeks for us with 40k spent (to date) potentially going down the drain. Didn't want to mention this earlier as not to jinx it!

 

Edited April 1, 2016 by dukebluedevil

[dukebluedevil 1]

5TH WEEK UPDATE

Flooring has started and should be done by tomorrow. Strangely the vinyl planks turned out darker collectively although it looked much lighter in Hafary and in the pic (somewhere above). I guess the lighting at Hafary made a huge difference. So bedrooms are in straight lay (to save cost) and herringbone for the living, dining, kitchen and balcony. 

Plumbing is almost complete too, except for the vanity mixer and sink which will be installed after the cabinets are in. Got two 15l storage heaters, one for each toilet as unlike most HDBs, the toilets are really far apart. It says on the box its made in Italy, not sure about how's that gonna affect the performance. But it does look better than most if not all of the storage heaters out there. We got the standard issue made in Thailand Grohe at one of their sales - don't expect any problems from them. Toilets are from Johnson Suisse as are most of the other toilet accessories.

The plywood boards are to level the balcony as opposed to some other method using light weight cement which needs PE approval. We were afraid of water ingress as the plywood could rot. So using a combination of cement and silicon to keep moisture out. Really hope that will work. If not, luckily our flooring is plastic and easily removable. Lights and fans are up except for a few pieces which need cabinetry to be in first. 

Ok. So Friday onwards cabinetry will be in. Monday the flooring and cornice guy will commence working. Paint should also be completed by next week. Really excited. I'll leave you with some photos my contractor claims are our cabinets sitting at the factory haha.

[dukebluedevil 1]

Flooring is complete! Now cabinets should have started today. Will have more updates tomorrow.

As some of you would have experienced, no renovation journey is perfect. Here are some boo-boos!

Top left: Tile skirting was upside down and didn't match the flooring! Wonder what was the thought process. 2nd, apparently now HDB does not allow water outlets to run externally so the aircon people ran the pipe that way  The contractor said he had a solution, we're still waiting for it hahaha. Either our toilet door would have a cut-out or they will box that up and make the toilet entrance smaller  Finally, the piece de resistance - my halfway boxed up balcony pipe. Its so hilariously bad my wife and I decided to keep it that way 

[dukebluedevil 1]

If anyone's still reading, sorry for the lack of updates! Pictures will have to wait till the place cleans up good because lots going on. Updates:

1. Kitchen cabinetry 90% up. 6m of tall cabinets plus 8 ft island will take a while. Waiting for solid top to come in before finishing up.
2. Shoe cabinet up waiting for doors.
3. Fitting of the louvre room separators and toilet doors done.
4. Master bedroom cupboards done pending doors. Super unhappy of the dead space caused by my AV shelving.

Pending:

1. Monday-Tuesday - spray-painting of louvre doors on-site. Contractor said too expensive to ship them to the factory to be spray painted.
2. Monday - Tuesday - painting of skirting 
3. Wednesday - solid top to be in / plumbing (sinks etc)
4. Thursday - plumbing complete 
5. Friday - L-shaped shower screens. Was unable to source for a trackless top-hung version in white. So had to make do with a top-hung bottom track version.
6. Friday - Installation of wrought iron gate / shower screen/ finishing of paint
7. Weekend and early next week for clean up/touch-ups

Tuesday move in!! Had wanted to move in this Thursday but after some thought decided not to as too many items incomplete.

Edited April 18, 2016 by dukebluedevil

[dukebluedevil 1]

FINISHING LINE

Touch-up work - painting, carpentry.. ready to move in next Tuesday! A couple of sneak peeks, plastic wrappings still on haha:

[bykaraanne 30]

Love the marble backsplash! One of my few regrets in my home.  

cant wait to see the finished product!

[dukebluedevil 1]

On 4/23/2016 at 2:23 PM, bykaraanne said:

Love the marble backsplash! One of my few regrets in my home.  

cant wait to see the finished product!

Thanks! But there's a catch. Well you might know that one "advantage" of solid top is that there are no joint lines unlike quartz or natural stone. However, while there are no joint lines in the backsplash BUT because of the manufacturing process i think, you can see where the design "stops" and resets to the "start' of the pattern... leading to a slightly faint visual joint line rather than a  physical joint line. This line was blocked from view by my island hood but it is quite irksome to look at initially. 

Edited April 27, 2016 by dukebluedevil

[dukebluedevil 1]

FINALLY DONE!

Other than a plumber's visit to fix a ponding issue with my master room toilet sink, its done. 7 weeks instead of 6 promised by the contractor but not a big issue. Not gonna show all views of my house as some are just run of the mill rooms but will post some lived-in/messy pics of my living room / kitchen. 

Loved how the house turned out! Very happy due to the fact that we came very close to our design theme e.g. see this apartment which was one of our "model" apartments. Am pretty pleased with the vinyl herringbone - cost a bit more but the look was what we wanted and am enjoying (so far) the hardiness and low maintenance. However as the floor is not perfectly flat throughout, there are some hollow spots.

We did it without an ID to save costs. Would we do that again? Most probably not. The legwork my wife and I had to do was exhausting (especially with two young kids in tow) - from site visits to hunting for the perfect piece. Such work did not include our regular stuff like furniture and electrical appliances. It was totally unfair for the kids to spend their time at furniture shops or at their grandma's while we searched for the missing pieces of our jigsaw puzzle.

Our many painted matt white surfaces, although so pretty set against the gold pieces, are quite hard to maintain. Have found myself reaching for the magic sponge many times. Although the painter recommended turpentine, I wouldn't go there yet!

The kids seem to be enjoying the bigger space. Our four year old son enjoys sitting at the island eating his meals. We didn't have a dining table at our old place as it was really that small. It already seems to be a happy and comfortable place for them to grow up and to me and wife, that's all that really matters.

[althevin 4]

Congrats on your new place! I really like the louvered doors, I was planning on doing the same for my full height shoe cabinet but we ran out of budget. Apparently spray painting stuff is really expensive! And yes, that half boxed up pipe is...really a piece of work

 

[pipsqueak 3]

your kitchen island and herringbone flooring! 

the marble is such a pretty grain, are you also using the evershine brand which @bykaraanne is using too?  gorgeous!

[luvalist 0]

Gorgeous looking. Share more pic? 

I wanted to do vinyl flooring in kitchen but was advised not to because of practicality reason. Is it so far so good?

because of that, I am thinking of using tiles for the whole house to have the homogenous look. Still can't decide between vinyl or tiles. 

[dukebluedevil 1]

8 hours ago, althevin said:

Congrats on your new place! I really like the louvered doors, I was planning on doing the same for my full height shoe cabinet but we ran out of budget. Apparently spray painting stuff is really expensive! And yes, that half boxed up pipe is...really a piece of work

 

Yes, my full-height shoe cabinet has louvered doors, seems we have similar ideas! It does add a little character/feel to the home but best used sparingly. My wife looked at me in horror when I suggested using louvered PD doors for the toilets to save money  Yes, because of budget and not wanting to overwhelm the design, we decided not to have louvered doors for our MBR cupboard and toilet vanity cabinets. So our toilet doors/guest room sliding and shoe cabinet use the louvred doors.

2 hours ago, pipsqueak said:

your kitchen island and herringbone flooring! 

the marble is such a pretty grain, are you also using the evershine brand which @bykaraanne is using too?  gorgeous!

Thanks! Yes, same exact model. But if you're doing large formats, may have issue as I told @bykaraanne above.

1 hour ago, luvalist said:

Gorgeous looking. Share more pic? 

I wanted to do vinyl flooring in kitchen but was advised not to because of practicality reason. Is it so far so good?

because of that, I am thinking of using tiles for the whole house to have the homogenous look. Still can't decide between vinyl or tiles. 

Hmm, the flooring's been in for a couple of weeks, so far it has taken construction abuse no problem. My flooring is rated for commercial use too so that gives me some comfort. Its plastic really, so using in the kitchen should not present a problem. 

As mentioned earlier, i have some hollow spots because of the uneven flooring (not because of the laying method or the vinyl itself). If I had more $$ the choice would be to hack and/or screed the whole flooring to achieve a truly flat floor. I have part screed/part tile/part wooden planks for the entire house - not the most ideal choice really.

Will try take more pics tonight.

Edited April 28, 2016 by dukebluedevil