Lessons learnt from my renovation

[FatRabbit 2]

Hi All,

Just want to share my renovation experience and hope it creates awareness to others and not to repeat the same mistake I made.

1. Just because the contractor is recommended by someone you know doesn't mean they are good. My current contractor is introduced by two of my colleagues, both of them said his pricing was reasonable and his work is not too bad. It was a terrible mistake made by me for not doing more research by checking their reviews online prior deciding. After my first misunderstanding with my contractor, I found many more complaints about them online. Their quality of work has deteriorate over time after they had receive more exposure on corporate and private projects.

2. Not having the proper documents to protect my rights. My contractor only offer an itemized quotation to sign on to act as confirmation of renovation. After reading on CASE, we are advised to sign on a proper contract like this (https://www.case.org.sg/pdf/model_renovation.pdf) and attaching the proposed timeline, quotation and 3D drawings if any. Right now, my contractor is dragging my renovation although he verbally agree to complete by end of July. Since nothing official has been written down, he is taking advantage of it.

3. Do site visitation as often as possible. Initially I trusted the contractor and only visited my place once a week. This has caused me the wrong trunking position that could not be changed and slacking of work of contractor as I did not follow up with him as often as I should. I recommend to visit your place at least 3 times a week to make sure what they are doing is aligned to what you want.

4. Do markings on wall with masking tapes and marker pen. While walking through my house with the contractor on my requirements, he did not pen them down nor did he do any markings on wall. He even confidently told me that he can remember everything in his brain. Right now, he is denying some of the things I had mentioned and I had no proof against it. 

5. Ask for a new quotation or invoice every time when there are changes or when they offer to do something for free. Some of the things we thought are meant to be free are no longer free after renovation has begun. We have to pay extra for patching of wall (after removal of old electrical trunking) and patching of gaps behind new trunking. His reason was we did not do wall / ceiling plastering, thus, patching of holes and gaps are not inclusive. They left the wall looking ugly and uneven.

6.Request for walk through with electrician, plumber and carpenters. My contractor is not able to juggle his work load and does not take extra care for my design preference. He made the decisions for me, e.g. pulling the trunking in a certain way, or installing the bidet at another location and etc. He was not keen when I asked him to change and he becomes offensive and unprofessional with his words and behavior. 

7. Put down your feet and insist if you want things to be in a certain way. Ultimately, you will be staying in the house and not the contractors. A good contractor should advise you but not to force you to give in to their opinions. 

8. Do not put personal belonging in the house until renovation is complete. Unless you are fine with them using your item (e.g. extra light bulb, plastic stools or cleaning products), if not, do not leave any personal belongings in the house's storeroom. Because of the delay of our renovation, we had shifted some of our belongings to the storeroom, but found that the workers are using our items without permission. They did not even bother to clean up after and put it back to the original position after using, which created much more work for me.

9. Record every discussion or conversations. I am not sure if this would violate any law but I felt that I should have recorded both the phone conversations and verbal conversations we had with the contractor so that we can report him to the police after the renovation. He brought another gangster like person with him during one of the meet up at our new place, the other person just stood in our house and smoked in our house. We were disturbed by this and he forces us to shut up with such barbaric threatening behaviour. Not to mention words he uses like "Want to fight", "You think you use measuring tape to measure you can talk a lot", "I'm older than you and you should respect me", "I haven't hand over to you why are you complaining" and etc. He is also a sexist, he targets on me most of the time even though it was usually my husband who handles him. He even threaten to terminate the renovation half way through it. I only have partial whatsapp voice message which I think is insufficient to make a case against him.

Both my hubby and I had learnt all of this in the hard way and hope none of you had to go through what we had. It was a heartache and traumatizing experience for us. It kills our joy of owning our own place.

If any of you would like to know the name of the contractor, please pm me and I will revert to you. The contract office is located in the Serangoon North area, in a private building and he is HDB certified.

 

 

Edited September 5, 2017 by FatRabbit

[samanthalee 0]

Care to share the name of this contractor? need to hunt down every single irresponsible contractors.

[FatRabbit 2]

15 hours ago, samanthalee said:

Care to share the name of this contractor? need to hunt down every single irresponsible contractors.

Due to their barbaric and threatening behaviour, I'll rather not post their name here in public but I had PMed you the name of the contractor.

[samanthalee 0]

Although we are not having the same contractor, the nightmarish experience is similar.

[FatRabbit 2]

5 hours ago, samanthalee said:

Although we are not having the same contractor, the nightmarish experience is similar.

Sigh.. It really takes away the joy of owning a house. I hope this post will be bumped to raise more awareness.

[pckun 0]

Hi FatRabbit, 

sorry to hear about your bad experience for your renovation. 

understand that your concern of the threatening behavior of this contraction, could you also pm his information so that i can avoid using him.

Thanks.

[Silvy 0]

Pls pm the contractor name n company to avoid. Thanks for sharing too.

[Dragonia 0]

may I have his contact too?

[Debrahkok7777 1]

Wow, there is so much to take note of during renovation period. 

On 8/14/2017 at 7:45 AM, FatRabbit said:

Hi All,

Just want to share my renovation experience and hope it creates awareness to others and not to repeat the same mistake I made.

1. Just because the contractor is recommended by someone you know doesn't mean they are good. My current contractor is introduced by two of my colleagues, both of them said his pricing was reasonable and his work is not too bad. It was a terrible mistake made by me for not doing more research by checking their reviews online prior deciding. After my first misunderstanding with my contractor, I found many more complaints about them online. Their quality of work has deteriorate over time after they had receive more exposure on corporate and private projects.

2. Not having the proper documents to protect my rights. My contractor only offer an itemized quotation to sign on to act as confirmation of renovation. After reading on CASE, we are advised to sign on a proper contract like this (https://www.case.org.sg/pdf/model_renovation.pdf) and attaching the proposed timeline, quotation and 3D drawings if any. Right now, my contractor is dragging my renovation although he verbally agree to complete by end of July. Since nothing official has been written down, he is taking advantage of it.

3. Do site visitation as often as possible. Initially I trusted the contractor and only visited my place once a week. This has caused me the wrong trunking position that could not be changed and slacking of work of contractor as I did not follow up with him as often as I should. I recommend to visit your place at least 3 times a week to make sure what they are doing is aligned to what you want.

4. Do markings on wall with masking tapes and marker pen. While walking through my house with the contractor on my requirements, he did not pen them down nor did he do any markings on wall. He even confidently told me that he can remember everything in his brain. Right now, he is denying some of the things I had mentioned and I had no proof against it. 

5. Ask for a new quotation or invoice every time when there are changes or when they offer to do something for free. Some of the things we thought are meant to be free are no longer free after renovation has begun. We have to pay extra for patching of wall (after removal of old electrical trunking) and patching of gaps behind new trunking. His reason was we did not do wall / ceiling plastering, thus, patching of holes and gaps are not inclusive. They left the wall looking ugly and uneven.

6.Request for walk through with electrician, plumber and carpenters. My contractor is not able to juggle his work load and does not take extra care for my design preference. He made the decisions for me, e.g. pulling the trunking in a certain way, or installing the bidet at another location and etc. He was not keen when I asked him to change and he becomes offensive and unprofessional with his words and behavior, he is also a sexist, he targets on me most of the time even though it was usually my husband who handles him. He would say things like "you want to fight is it" or "I'm older than you and you should respect me". He even threaten to terminate the renovation half way through it.

7. Put down your feet and insist if you want things to be in a certain way. Ultimately, you will be staying in the house and not the contractors. A good contractor should advise you but not to force you to give in to their opinions. 

8. Do not put personal belonging in the house until renovation is complete. Unless you are fine with them using your item (e.g. extra light bulb, plastic stools or cleaning products), if not, do not leave any personal belongings in the house's storeroom. Because of the delay of our renovation, we had shifted some of our belongings to the storeroom, but found that the workers are using our items without permission. They did not even bother to clean up after and put it back to the original position after using, which created much more work for me.

Both my hubby and I had learned this in the hard way and hope none of you had to go through what we had. It was a heartache and traumatizing experience for us. It kills our joy of owning our own place.

 

 

Wow, there are so many things that we need to take note of during our renovation period. Also not just to entrust our homes to contractor out there !
So how do you resolved the matter? Any other ID/ contractor you engage after this ?
 

[Pamela Toh 0]

Pls pm me the name of the contractor n company to avoid.thanks

[FatRabbit 2]

6 hours ago, Debrahkok7777 said:

Wow, there is so much to take note of during renovation period. 

Wow, there are so many things that we need to take note of during our renovation period. Also not just to entrust our homes to contractor out there !
So how do you resolved the matter? Any other ID/ contractor you engage after this ?
 

Eventually, I gathered my uncle and aunty, brother in law and sis in law to accompany us during the handover to have them as witness if anything goes south. We actually just let him go and made the final payment even though there were a lot of leftover work not done. For e.g. paint splatters on window grills, floors and walls; after chemical washing stains on pipes and walls; discolored kitchen quartz top; unfilled gaps by the door frames and much more. Our ultimate goal was to just get over with him asap, so that we could move in. After moving in for about 3 weeks, both my hubby and I are still touching up after their shabby work. We fill up uneven gaps and holes on wall with putty and silicon, polish the metal pipes and etc. It was a lot of work!

[daninabae 0]

Hi FatRabbit, "met" you for the first time from your reply on my thread. I am so sorry to hear about your bad experience! It's the kind of horror story no one wants in their reno journey. I hope you've managed to pick up the pieces and start enjoying life your new flat. If you could PM me who this contractor is, I would appreciate it. Thank you!

Edited September 5, 2017 by daninabae

[Debrahkok7777 1]

16 hours ago, FatRabbit said:

Eventually, I gathered my uncle and aunty, brother in law and sis in law to accompany us during the handover to have them as witness if anything goes south. We actually just let him go and made the final payment even though there were a lot of leftover work not done. For e.g. paint splatters on window grills, floors and walls; after chemical washing stains on pipes and walls; discolored kitchen quartz top; unfilled gaps by the door frames and much more. Our ultimate goal was to just get over with him asap, so that we could move in. After moving in for about 3 weeks, both my hubby and I are still touching up after their shabby work. We fill up uneven gaps and holes on wall with putty and silicon, polish the metal pipes and etc. It was a lot of work!

Hmm, Really can feel the struggle sia. How much did you guys pay him ? Is he just an contractor or the ID itself ...
I also have been struggling to find some good ID to help me to my house. It been really good to at least go around the forum and ask for opinion in case of anything =(

[Superberries 0]

Sorry to hear about your bad experience but did you check their reviews before deciding to engage them? Can u PM me the name of the contractor and company? Thanks!

[d3stinedxx 0]

@FatRabbit

Hi, sorry to hear of your experience. Can PM me their contacts so that I can avoid? Thanks!