Wood, Copper and More Wood

[ricepapergirl 21]

5 hours ago, althevin said:

Yeah the "made in" tag doesn't mean that much nowadays, it just indicates the final location where the item was finished. I would rather go for a established brand with good quality control and a proven reputation. It was actually your post on Hansgrohe that made me consider getting a better brand, so I have you to thank for my beautiful taps

Oh wow!  Glad to be of help! I actually really like our Hansgrohe, even our ID was saying that in terms of brand and quality, Hansgrohe is hard to beat! Haven't actually moved in yet, hope the experience of using it over time will also be great!

[althevin 4]

Week 8: Decisions, decisions, decisions (and delays)

Not much updates the past couple of weeks due to an unexpected crack on the exterior of the flat. The good news: our responsive ID made a quick appointment with HDB, and the HDB officer confirmed that it was just the plaster cracking off, and that there was no structural damage. The damage was repaired quickly by the tiler, who had to get a harness to access the exterior wall. The bad news: all works had to be halted and this pushed everything back by a full week.

In other news, the air-con trunking is finally done. Due to the layout of the flat, it was a challenge to run the trunking across the entire flat to reach the 3rd bedroom, something which we didn't even consider until much later. We engaged a separate air-con contractor who was recommended by my parents, and I guess it does pay off to engage someone who specializes mainly in HDB installations - he came up with a couple of brilliant ideas which allowed us to hide most of the trunking, albeit with a false ceiling. However, there was a little delay due to a miscommunication between my ID's electrician and the air-con guy and some of the electrical wiring had to be re-done to make way for the trunking. What we did not expect was just how...ugly the remaining exposed trunking would be. So we're still considering doing more box ups to make it look less...ugly.

Exposed trunking in the corner of our living room. On a positive note, it's the only one which really bugs us.

 

As we mull over the trunking, the carpenter has been briefed and the carpentry should be done in the next couple of weeks. Laminate selection took us a good 3 weeks and countless visits to the site to see how it would look like in the areas to be applied. And we learnt to always, always choose more laminates that you think you need: sometimes what looks good in the booklet may look drastically different on a bigger sample piece. We picked only 3 samples as we were confident one of those would suffice, but ended up choosing another laminate which our ID ordered to make up the numbers.

Over the weekend we headed back to GR Link and ended up confirming our order for:

1) Baron W888 WC for the master bedroom toilet.  Even though we both love the Toto WCs, it's hard to beat the Baron W888 for value as it hits the sweet spot in terms of comfort, price and design.

2) The cheapest Inspire brand WC for the common toilet. Figured we wouldn't be using this one that often, so it didn't make sense to spend too much.

3) Joven 25L storage heater - to supply water to 2 toilets. May upgrade to the 35L in the future if we have kids, but 25L should serve for 2 of us given that we do not take long showers. We chose Joven as the dimensions fit the allocated space - we're hiding the heater in the false ceiling, and creating a cut out trap door (for the lack of a better word) to allow access. Glad we chose a storage heater; it makes the shower spaces look neater without the instant heaters and additional pipes.

Our wooden floors are being installed this week, can't wait for that to be done. Will try to get more pics of the place when we visit this weekend, so far we're glad with the progress and quality of work done, not so much with the inevitable delays!

 

 

 

 

 

 

[ricepapergirl 21]

8 hours ago, althevin said:

Week 8: Decisions, decisions, decisions (and delays)

Not much updates the past couple of weeks due to an unexpected crack on the exterior of the flat. The good news: our responsive ID made a quick appointment with HDB, and the HDB officer confirmed that it was just the plaster cracking off, and that there was no structural damage. The damage was repaired quickly by the tiler, who had to get a harness to access the exterior wall. The bad news: all works had to be halted and this pushed everything back by a full week.

In other news, the air-con trunking is finally done. Due to the layout of the flat, it was a challenge to run the trunking across the entire flat to reach the 3rd bedroom, something which we didn't even consider until much later. We engaged a separate air-con contractor who was recommended by my parents, and I guess it does pay off to engage someone who specializes mainly in HDB installations - he came up with a couple of brilliant ideas which allowed us to hide most of the trunking, albeit with a false ceiling. However, there was a little delay due to a miscommunication between my ID's electrician and the air-con guy and some of the electrical wiring had to be re-done to make way for the trunking. What we did not expect was just how...ugly the remaining exposed trunking would be. So we're still considering doing more box ups to make it look less...ugly.

Exposed trunking in the corner of our living room. On a positive note, it's the only one which really bugs us.

 

As we mull over the trunking, the carpenter has been briefed and the carpentry should be done in the next couple of weeks. Laminate selection took us a good 3 weeks and countless visits to the site to see how it would look like in the areas to be applied. And we learnt to always, always choose more laminates that you think you need: sometimes what looks good in the booklet may look drastically different on a bigger sample piece. We picked only 3 samples as we were confident one of those would suffice, but ended up choosing another laminate which our ID ordered to make up the numbers.

Over the weekend we headed back to GR Link and ended up confirming our order for:

1) Baron W888 WC for the master bedroom toilet.  Even though we both love the Toto WCs, it's hard to beat the Baron W888 for value as it hits the sweet spot in terms of comfort, price and design.

2) The cheapest Inspire brand WC for the common toilet. Figured we wouldn't be using this one that often, so it didn't make sense to spend too much.

3) Joven 25L storage heater - to supply water to 2 toilets. May upgrade to the 35L in the future if we have kids, but 25L should serve for 2 of us given that we do not take long showers. We chose Joven as the dimensions fit the allocated space - we're hiding the heater in the false ceiling, and creating a cut out trap door (for the lack of a better word) to allow access. Glad we chose a storage heater; it makes the shower spaces look neater without the instant heaters and additional pipes.

Our wooden floors are being installed this week, can't wait for that to be done. Will try to get more pics of the place when we visit this weekend, so far we're glad with the progress and quality of work done, not so much with the inevitable delays!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hi!

I'm probably not the best person to advise on this, since I didn't do box up for my entire renovation, but given that, I must say that whatever huge piping looks like an eyesore when still renovating, they tend to really fade into the background when it gets painted in the same colour as your wall. We were already prepared to live with electrical cable trunking and aircon trunking all over with no false ceiling, no box-ups etc, but to be honest, after the painters came in, we really couldn't tell anymore and it's really not an eyesore. The only trunking we ended up noticing more was the one in our bathroom cos we didn't ask them to tile it over, but all over our house most of the trunking fades into the background.

Something to think about if boxing-up will cost a lot?

[althevin 4]

5 hours ago, ricepapergirl said:

Hi!

I'm probably not the best person to advise on this, since I didn't do box up for my entire renovation, but given that, I must say that whatever huge piping looks like an eyesore when still renovating, they tend to really fade into the background when it gets painted in the same colour as your wall. We were already prepared to live with electrical cable trunking and aircon trunking all over with no false ceiling, no box-ups etc, but to be honest, after the painters came in, we really couldn't tell anymore and it's really not an eyesore. The only trunking we ended up noticing more was the one in our bathroom cos we didn't ask them to tile it over, but all over our house most of the trunking fades into the background.

Something to think about if boxing-up will cost a lot?

Hihi!

Yeah we've come to terms with the exposed trunking in our toilet and the other corner of the room, but this one irritates us too much. Well our ID says we still have time to consider the box-up, so we'll stare at it somemore and see if we can accept it

Didn't have much choice on the false ceiling though, we had to run the trunking around the entire living room due to our room placement and it looked like the ceiling of some shopping centre capark. Doesn't help that the better quality trunking we opted for is also much thicker than normal haha.

Thanks for the advice! Looking forward to more pictures of your place!

[ricepapergirl 21]

5 minutes ago, althevin said:

Hihi!

Yeah we've come to terms with the exposed trunking in our toilet and the other corner of the room, but this one irritates us too much. Well our ID says we still have time to consider the box-up, so we'll stare at it somemore and see if we can accept it

Didn't have much choice on the false ceiling though, we had to run the trunking around the entire living room due to our room placement and it looked like the ceiling of some shopping centre capark. Doesn't help that the better quality trunking we opted for is also much thicker than normal haha.

Thanks for the advice! Looking forward to more pictures of your place!

Awww. Maybe you can make it into some sort of corner shelf. Like put flowers or trailing plants or something lol. But yeah, if you're already boxing up, why not I guess.

Hahaha let me finish the reno on the place before I actually take the pictures.  

[althevin 4]

Week 9: Board of Waiting, Finally the Wood Floor is Here!

Our biggest investment of our entire house is being installed this week, and it's so exciting

For a consistent look, we opted for engineered oak planks to be laid in a herringbone pattern throughout the entire house (sans toilets and kitchen). It was half done when we visited last Sunday, and we can't wait to see the finished product the coming weekend.

Flooring guy hard at work. After watching him work for 5 minutes, I understand why laying anything in herringbone costs extra. It's a lot of work! Also note the exposed air con trunking, which is where the fan coil unit will be for the dining area. I'm very pleased with both the air con and false ceiling works, you can hardly notice the trunking.

a grainy picture of the almost completed flooring in bedroom 3.

Tv console wall, with the ugly L shape trunking, of which we have decided to box up!

Master Bedroom partition wall, doubles up as a headboard/pigeon hole for us to place hand phones and other miscellaneous stuff, as well as to create a space for a walk-in wardrobe. Unfortunately there was some miscom, and the wall went up before the flooring was done. We're unlikely to ever remove this wall, but if we do there will be an exposed gap in the flooring

Everything is finally coming together, now we just need to finalize all our purchases and get them in time for installation. It's gonna be a busy weekend... shopping

[kslicious 0]

Hi althevin,

I would like to congratulate you and your beloved one on your new abode at one of the possibly best areas to live in SG! 

I chanced upon your reno t-blog while surfing the internet for reviews of interior designers. I'm in the midst of finding an interior designer for my place and so far, it has been quite a nerve-racking ordeal. I have met up with some of the interior designers that you guys met up too, so I was really glad that you shared your experiences with them!

Looking forward to hear more updates on your flat renovation, recommendations and reviews. Btw, the space planning and materials chosen for your flat looks awesome!

Regards,
kslicious

[althevin 4]

On 6/20/2016 at 4:29 PM, kslicious said:

Hi althevin,

I would like to congratulate you and your beloved one on your new abode at one of the possibly best areas to live in SG! 

I chanced upon your reno t-blog while surfing the internet for reviews of interior designers. I'm in the midst of finding an interior designer for my place and so far, it has been quite a nerve-racking ordeal. I have met up with some of the interior designers that you guys met up too, so I was really glad that you shared your experiences with them!

Looking forward to hear more updates on your flat renovation, recommendations and reviews. Btw, the space planning and materials chosen for your flat looks awesome!

Regards,
kslicious

Thanks kslicious!

Thank you for your kind words!

We're reaching the end of the reno process, and we feel the most important qualities the ID should have are; 1) responsiveness 2) accountability. I believe no renovation will be 100% smooth, so it's important the ID reacts quickly and helps to solve any potential problems. Glad our experience helped with your choice  

 

[althevin 4]

Week 11: Problem Solving

Been a while since I've posted due to some hiccups which happened to our flooring

So, our engineered wood flooring which we hired an external supplier to install took an extra week to install because 1) they underestimated the amount of material needed, and we had to wait 2 days for new material to arrive; 2) we removed the lights for our false ceiling and and there were days where they could not work due to the overcast skies which caused visibility in the house to be horrible.

In addition to the above mentioned hiccups. upon our inspection of the completed flooring we found this:

planks fit like a badly arranged jigsaw puzzle...

difference of about 1mm, enough to trap the dust and dirt from the renovation works.

 

Apparently, the planks had magically expanded in the 24 hours after they had finished the flooring (we did the inspection the day after we were notified it was done). What made this extremely upsetting for us was that the planks had been left on site 2 weeks prior to the installation for the planks to acclimatize, and such a problem should not have happened, or at least not to that degree. The uneven planks were not limited to one area, and the same problem was found across numerous planks in the living, dining and bedroom areas (which is almost my entire house lah). Upon further discussion with the boss, he concluded that it might have been because the planks were kept in a sealed plastic wrap in the boxes, so it was not able to acclimatize properly 

In the end, the compromised solution was for them to buffer the floor down, and to extend their workmanship warranty on the flooring. Not the most ideal solution, but we didn't want to drag it on for too long. We thought the problem was over, but we were once again surprised by their buffering team, whom did an excellent job on the flooring, but failed to not damage the newly laid skirting. 

After another discussion with the boss, we decided that they would replace all the damaged skirting after our carpentry is installed to avoid the scenario where the replaced skirting gets damaged for whatever reason. Hopefully once that is done there won't be any further problems!

Compared to their other projects which we had personally viewed before engaging their services, the workmanship/project management for our flooring was not as ideal as we would have liked. Thankfully the boss is responsive and accountable, and responded really quickly to all of our complaints and requests and tried his best to resolve the problems for us. I can't imagine what we could have done if they denied all responsibility and refused to make the corrections without additional cost (like some other horror stories I've heard).

Hopefully our decision to go for hardwood flooring vs tiles is worth it  Carpentry is going up in the next couple of days, can't wait to see how that turns out. My fingers, toes and hair are crossed.

 

[trcd 13]

Hey @althevin how's the carpentry so far? Going well I hope!

[althevin 4]

On 7/17/2016 at 11:27 PM, trcd said:

Hey @althevin how's the carpentry so far? Going well I hope!

hi @trcd, the past few weeks have been filled with managing the defects, but everything is almost done now. Hits and misses all around. Will update with more pics and details soon!

[kslicious 0]

Hi althevin,

 

Sorry to disturb you at this busy timing of your renovation. I would like to check with  you on your online purchase experience with Scandinavian Design Center. I'm interested to buy a pendant light from the website, but I'm worried about the delivery and authenticity because I saw an exact pendant light on taobao. 

 

Regards,

kslicious

[althevin 4]

On 7/20/2016 at 0:11 PM, kslicious said:

Hi althevin,

 

Sorry to disturb you at this busy timing of your renovation. I would like to check with  you on your online purchase experience with Scandinavian Design Center. I'm interested to buy a pendant light from the website, but I'm worried about the delivery and authenticity because I saw an exact pendant light on taobao. 

 

Regards,

kslicious

Hi kslicious, 

We didn't find anything fishy with our package from Scandinavian Design Center, service and delivery was extremely prompt! Item seems genuine and we're happy with the lights.

If it's a popular design you're going after, chances are you'll find tons of replicas/knock offs on other sites, especially tao bao.

[kslicious 0]

On 28 July 2016 at 5:55 PM, althevin said:

Hi kslicious, 

We didn't find anything fishy with our package from Scandinavian Design Center, service and delivery was extremely prompt! Item seems genuine and we're happy with the lights.

If it's a popular design you're going after, chances are you'll find tons of replicas/knock offs on other sites, especially tao bao.

Hi althevin,

Thanks for the reply! Hope all is well on your end and you guys are enjoying your lovenest lots!

Regards, kslicious.

[stray 12]

On 4 May 2016 at 1:28 AM, althevin said:

Reno Progress: Week 3

Sofa: Hannah Sofa from Bolia.com

Yep, we got ourselves a pink sofa. Time will tell if the colour choice is a good decision! Decided on an open ended sofa as it adds to the length of our living room, allows us to lie down for post meal naps, and acts as an additional seat when we have guests over. Purchased from Kuhl Home, they bring in furniture from Bolia.com. Only down side is each piece is made to order, and it takes 3-4 months time from the order for the item to be delivered.

Hi @althevin ! How is your house coming along?! Hope the flooring issue has been resolved because I'm really looking forward to see how your house turned out — have a feeling it will be oh so tastefully decorated! I AM IN LOVE WITH THIS HANNAH SOFA. Has it been delivered to you? How is the make, how does it look?!?! Would you mind also PM-ing me the cost? Thank you very much!