Our Dream Home Journey_3 Storey Inter Terrace

[ygkt 0]

Hi everyone! We have begun on the massive renovation of our dream home - a humble 3 storey inter terrace landed home . 

This is our first landed home after staying in 1 HDB and 2 condos. It was a big big decision to buy this lovely house. We have always wanted the bigger space and feel really blessed it all worked out!

We have started the renovation process already. We are about 1/4 into the reno process. After almost 2 months of finalizing the quotation (and we still have some changes along the way), the work has finally started! 

Just a quick run through of our scope of work. 

• Auto Sliding Gate with small door and sensor/remote
• New aluminium fencing
• hacking & tiling of all floors/toilets/car porch area
• Vinyl flooring overlay (bedrooms & walkway & family area)
• install new aircon 
• waterproofing (at car porch roof top terrace) [We intend to do the rooftop terrace in 2 yrs time]
• Brand new kitchen (wet & dry) with cabinets
• Concrete sink at the yard and base for washer/dryer
• tiling of staircase
• Wardrobes (3 rooms)
• turning 1 room into 2 rooms (cos its humongous!) 
• Study tables
• Feature wall (with hidden door for 1st storey toilet)
• Mirror feature wall
• TV console and feature wall
• storeroom door feature
• shoe cabinet
• brand new front door and aluminium sliding doors (kitchen & front car porch/living area
• painting (interior & exterior)
• special effect painting in living (San Marco Paint)
• re wiring of whole house 
• plumbing of whole house
• changing all the lights/fans
• brand new toilets (total 4) with new fixtures
• changing of all room doors and gate (yard)
• Sliding door (kitchen)
• curtains/ blinds (whole house)
• auto roller blinds (for high ceiling window in the living area)

Basically we are like redoing the entire house EXCEPT tearing it down and building a new one!

We engaged a contractor. This is our 5th renovation (yes, we are nomadic - move a lot) but this time as much as we really wanted to take an ID again, we decided to engage a contractor due to the cost. This entire renovation with furnishing is costing us almost 200k.  

We have engaged Mr Lee from Deng Feng. He is the Loyang specialist. We are indeed blessed to have him as our contractor. His pricing is really competitive and very reasonable. So this time the process for us is very very hands on. We literally designed a lot of the things on our own and coordinate the reno together with him. Esp cos we took our own electrician & plumber. (From our previous home reno - and we LOVE them)

Will attach the photos of the house (we took these after we signed the OTP) sorry if these come in separate posts. still trying to figure out how these work. 

excited to share our home reno journey here. Sorry if I am not very detailed in the description. I cannot believe I'm actually starting this reno blog! Its been really surreal for us and although this is THE MOST CRAZY EPIC reno we have done - we are truly excited to see how it all looks like in the end! 

Snap shot of the super high ceiling we have. 7.5m! We are still deciding on our chandelier for our living. 

This is the window at our high ceiling. (Its a north facing home - so it gets hot quite easily) s we decided to to install auto roller blinds here. 

Living/Dining room

Kitchen

Yard

En suite room (level 2)

3rd level room.

realised there are so many photos! Think i will attach the work in progress photos instead. 

Edited September 6, 2018 by ygkt

[ygkt 0]

We have no 3D drawings. sketches and drawings of carpentry will be much later. For now, we have made all our purchases of:

• lights/down lights
• fans
• toilet accessories & fixtures
• selection of tiles/vinyl flooring
• air con

We have yet to decide on our chandelier (living) and hanging light for the foyer. Still pondering over it as we want to ensure the living/foyer looks really lovely and getting the right lights for that is awesome. So far we have looked at a few choices from JB (ion lighting, VIP lighting, tapoi lighting centre), lighting centre (Balestier) & Chan Huat. We havent made our decision yet. 

We got most of our lights and all fans in JB. toilet accesories (JB & SG) 

 

[ygkt 0]

Some photos of the works that have commenced. 

We also had to call in the pest guys to do termite control. 

 

Kitchen -hacked a wall to make it bigger!

 

 We will be putting new tiles at the car porch. Initially we did not want to do this. cos the existing tiles were ok. But then our contractor said the tiles were hollow  at certain parts. So we thought might as well just do it! Cant wait to see it all done up! 

The huge room which we will convert into two for our 2 kids. Took this photo just today! 

Wah, didn't think we will need to do this. But after some checking - best to get this done! cost us a bit but no choice. 

getting reading to put the medicine for the termites.

air con piping was done today. Will be completed tomorrow. 

 

More photos of the progress soon. I see all the tiles brought in to the house today. So yeah! its gonna be tiling time soon!

Edited September 6, 2018 by ygkt

[snoozee 98]

your house has the ideal north-south facing which would not get the morning of afternoon sun. so not sure why you want to install roller blinds on the windows which are facing north.

I also see your house have nice parquet flooring already installed. quite a waste to replace the hard wood flooring with vinyl.

remember to buy a super long ladder so that you can change your lights for your new chandelier.

 

[ygkt 0]

Hi snoozee! 

Thank you for visiting my reno blog!

Our house facing North South - yes its the ideal direction. But after going there many times after we collected our keys, we felt it was still hot so we felt just install the roller blinds there so that we have the provision to use it when we would like to. 

getting it from our curtains/blinds contact that did our previous homes- pretty decent price for Sompo blinds. 

The parquet flooring actually isn't in good condition. a lot of dents and lose pieces here and there and they have been varnished many times previously. So we decided to put vinyl flooring in the end. I think its going to be better as with parquet flooring from our previous experience - very easily scratched and dented

oh yeah! we saw one super long ladder at Jalan Besar! we are gonna get two!

Edited September 7, 2018 by ygkt

[ffdee 1]

Hi. Looks great. Is your new place Poh Huat road area ?

[ygkt 0]

Hi there!

Yes it is. 

[ygkt 0]

Updates:

Just had a meeting with our carpenter to discuss the ideas for all the carpentry. Sigh, every time there will be some new thing that crops up.

So for our kitchen cabinet - since the depth is 620mm there will be an issue as the wall beside it is 600mm. Ideally we should extend the wall so that the carpentry will be flushed with the wall. BUT should we decide to do that, than we got to hack the other side of the wall  and then we got to make some changes to the steps at the yard. so much extra work which means  more cost involved. 

aiyah, such a headache. this is for the wet kitchen which is connected to the yard wall. so the hubby feels its ok, not a big issue as it will only be visible that its not flushed at the yard side - which really no one would really notice. tomorrow we will have another round of discussion. hoping we can resolve it. 

We just got the remaining fans. Got them from Ion lighting. Collected all the remaining lights from VIP lighting centre. We had to get 2 staircase lights - and got a pair of pretty nice ones for a about RM 360. really save a lot shopping in JB for lights!

Now the biggest headache is selecting our living/foyer lights. Still deciding if we should take the one we saw at Chan Huat. We don't really want to buy a chandelier type where it is very hard to clean as our ceiling is so high! In Msia, we almost got a pair of lights for our living/foyer but in the end we decided against is cos the bigger light they were giving was a display piece.  yeesh! so expensive some more

any ideas where we can go check out for possible pretty lights for living/foyer area - our budget is $2000 max. 

 

 

[snoozee 98]

I would suggest you keep your kitchen cabinet at 600mm rather than 620mm. I was told that contractors will do costing for cabinets based on multiples of 300 or 600mm. anything outside this "standard" multiples will cost slightly more due to more material wastage. this is because the standard plywood sheets comes in sizes of just slightly bigger than this 600mm multiple.

for example, the plywood sheet is 2400mm x 1220mm. so if your cabinet is 600mm, the carpenters can cut 4 pieces of 600mm x 1200mm out of the sheet. but if your width is 620mm, they can only cut 3 pieces of 620mm x 1200mm out of that sheet. of cos that last bit of about 550mm x 1220mm still can be used for other things but wastage is higher since the dimensions of left over is odd sized already.

hence it would be better to adjust your cabinet size rather than hack the wall to cater for a slightly deeper cabinet. After all, how much gains can you get from the extra 20mm of space?

[ygkt 0]

Hi Snoozee!

Wow, thank you so much for your post. I will take note of this information. 

Wah, after your post, i went to check the old photos (prior to hacking) and realize that the old carpentry was sticking out too. it was 620mm but that wall there is 600mm. actually it seems ok to leave it like that. 

The carpenter suggestion was to extend the wall to 620mm. which means that the yellow parts had to be hacked to fix the whole thing. If we keep it as status quo - then it will look ugly as it is not flushed so its whether we are willing to accept it that way.

lets say we just extend the wall to 620mm (so that the cabinet is flushed with the wall) but dont hack the yellow parts - then the gate (we are removing the existing one) will become smaller. which i think is ok, isnt it?

also must check the dimension of our oven - cos we are building in on this side of the wall. Below is the design for this entire wall. if oven is 620mm then no choice must stick to that. 

appreciate your advice Snoozee

 

Edited September 11, 2018 by ygkt

[ygkt 0]

Lights, lights and LIGHTS!! 

That is the BIG decision now we have to make with regards to our choice of lights for the foyer and living area.

Ideally we would like to buy two similar lights (one big & one smaller) so that the entire area will look nice and in sync. 

These are our choices so far:

Choice 1 ---- Lighting Centre:

We saw these! really nice! they has 3 sizes. so we thought take the huge and medium ones. It is brass - so it will last really well. in terms of how design - its pretty nice. But really expensive - it will cost us about $2500 for two of these (one huge & 1 medium).

Choice 2 ------ Chan Huat

 this one - the huge version has 24 bulbs!

and the smaller version - realize this picture is the small size. we r looking at the medium one which is slightly bigger.

These two cost $2400.

I prefer Choice 2. but we r really seeing if we can find something else - which wont cost us above $2000.

oh my! such a tough time searching for the perfect lights! 

 

 

[ffdee 1]

16 hours ago, ygkt said:

Hi there!

Yes it is. 

if I am correct, its a wonderful place with a dead end street so a lot of privacy with not many cars driving in and out....

[snoozee 98]

oven need less than 600mm of depth. search on google on the oven model you want and check out the dimensions.

[ygkt 0]

17 minutes ago, snoozee said:

oven need less than 600mm of depth. search on google on the oven model you want and check out the dimensions.

Yes, indeed. just checked the model specs we bought. its less than 600mm. 

[ygkt 0]

3 hours ago, fastfatdude said:

if I am correct, its a wonderful place with a dead end street so a lot of privacy with not many cars driving in and out....

correct! It was one of our fengshui requirements too.