4rm BTO Renovation Journey [Industrial + Mix] + DC Carpentry Review

[Heng Qi Ping 0]

HI Everyone!

First post since a long time ago, and i thought i want to update my renovation journey and as well, provide some additional information on some stuffs that has limited reviews online. This loooonnnggggggggg post will mainly touch on my renovation works and some procurement stuffs.

We signed our renovation with DC Carpentry / De Chevron Holdings Pte Ltd.
Came to know of Joe from one of my DXO during my time in the army. I see her as someone who's picky about things and i saw her Facebook post recommending Joe from DC Carpentry, so i thought why not ping him and see how it goes. 

~2nd quarter of 2018
We met Joe in his office in Bartley Bizcentre. He came off as someone knowledgeable and well experienced in the industry on our first meetup. He has lots of exciting stories to tell and our meetup often drag to hrs due to his stories. 

Everyone says that the ID itself plays a big part in your renovation journey and you must be comfortable about him.

Things about my ID that impressed me: (1) he holds management position in the company and still doing hands-on / ground work and (2) he drives a McLaren (gave me a piece of mind that he wont run off like other horror stories i see online). He was telling us that he does commercial projects as well (e.g. AIA / F1 Grand Prix / etc.)

Things about the company that attracts me: They do their own carpentry / wood works. This was a big selling point to me. To me, 70% of the renovation involves carpentry. The quote he provided was definitely competitive (e.g. initial quote of 1.8k for settee compare to >2k from other quotes)

We went a bit further on our requirements. Our must-have includes

1. A window settee and
2. An open concept wardrobe (the highlights of my MBR, just a pole hanging down from the ceiling).

Like every businessman, he tried to talk me our of the pole idea (i presume since he's doing carpentry and he cant earn as much from this metal pole, LOL). 

I emphasized a lot of lightings as well (I am someone who likes to lie down and NUA the whole day). I told him i wanted cove lights kind, those indirect lights that wont hurt the eyes while ling down on the floor / sofa. He advised me NOT to go for false ceiling and instead, use my existing carpentry to cut an opening at the top and use it to project the lightings. I liked the idea since its gonna save me money on false ceilings
I felt more comfortable as the discussion goes since he's providing good inputs.

After the meetup, i feel had very good vibes.

 

June 2018
Our 2nd meetup with Joe (more of less we wanted to confirm him since we're tired of sourcing). Our agenda was to negotiate with him further on the price and sign with him.

Although the so called cove lightings did cut cost, but he charges me another 200bucks (excluding the lights) for the carpentry carving + installation for every point we're adding. the whole house came up close to a 1000bucks just cause of that. The MBR curtain pelmet came up to a big sum as well since the top includes the lighting. We negotiated (my wife actually) with him for a lump sum discount.

We came to a good conclusion and paid our first deposit; a 25% deposit. He assured us that during this time if for whatsoever reason we wanna back out, he'll just refund the money to us 100%. Of course we were comfortable with the arrangement since his Mclaren cost maybe a hundred times more than our project?
Before we end the discussion, he gave us some homework to do: to go online and look for pictures and themes and screenshot it down to forward over to him so he can come out with 3D designs. (We didnt have a proper theme at the point of time).

As instructed, i went home to work on it. Sent him some very nice designs we saw on google / pinterest. Specifically my MBR wardrobe pole ideas, i took a few of what i saw for him as a reference.

2 weeks later, finally our 3D was out. See below on my first 3D.

now, i was quite disappointed to be honest. So-so 3D with no details. My cove lighting never came out. It wasnt a design that reflects what we've spoken. (or maybe i visualize too high of a standard?) . The homework that we did for him (plucking pictures from google on what we feel nice) related nothing to this 3D design he made.

I was least impressed with my living room design (There's an additional cabinet design in the living room that i deleted, too ugly i couldnt take it). Especially the feature wall / TV console considering the amount of money we're quoted for this. We went recce for furnitures before the 3D was out, and came across so much nicer TV console display than this design.

I thought: We cant blame him. Afterall we didnt give him a specific direction to explore and we didnt have much in mind on specific themes.

 

JULY 2018
We arranged for a meetup at his site (as usual) to talk on more details and things that we've added.
Our wedding is in Dec and we estimated to collect our keys in Nov. Told him that we'll need to rush out everything, chop chop to be in time for the wedding. He went on to tell us on the projects that he has done. 3 days time complete (but need to touch up after) with of course, payment being settled first till the 95% mark. We had our hopes up.

For our 3D, we told him we wanted a more grey look for our house and ask him to revised.
As well, we pluck out one of his fb photo update from his colleague and told him we wanted something like this, something that will bring out the back LED lightings.

Sept 2018
Yep, 2 months later. We waited 2 months for our revised 3D. He either never reply / kept saying he's busy, will update.
3 things happened along the way: 
(1) HDB updated us that the probable completion date is END OCT. (excited!), 
(2) Went down to their mynicehome roadshow held in the CC.
(3) HLE cleared and approved

By this time our spider legs coming out already.
So finally the 3D came out in Mid Sept. 

(This was the cabinet design that i deleted in my first 3D collection, LOL. Too ugly)

My gosh, 2 months and all that was change was the colour?! Even the TV console also never change. He was giving excuses saying his guy messed up his computer and deleted everything. My wife was turnoff-ed by the 3D as well.

This time round i concluded 2 things: (1) His 3D CANNOT MAKE IT and (2) i had to do more homework myself to come out with a specific theme to direct him.
We're thinking of ditching the idea of feature wall and TV console at this point.. Not cheap to begin with, no point spending the money on stuff that we're not impressed with. 

I arranged a meetup with him on the same month to propose to him on the industrial theme that i have in mind. I wanted black PVC piping for my ceiling electrical works. 
For my TV feature wall there were 3 options from cheapest to most expensive: wallpaper, cement screeding, carpentry wall. i wasn't confident about screeding cause i am afraid of the cracks over time. He told me he'll update me with the 3D. This time round, i didn't take him as seriously.

 

OCT 2018
2 weeks later still no news no nothing. 
Neighbors started receiving notification for key collection date, our wedding coming up, etc. etc. Our issue is that since June till present, we still dont have a clear idea of how the interior of our house looks like. Ever since the 1st 3D he made, there's nothing additional other than the colour change that took months to do.
My wife was fedup. He went on rage mode expressing his disappointment to Joe. Immediately we got a slot on that Saturday to meet him. This time round, we proposed to go straight into material selection. No point forcing the 3D out of him since its not his forte. We had to settle this in order to start buying additional furniture and misc stuffs for the house. 

We had progressive meetups at the end of the month. By then, we already had our key collection date. We were no longer expecting the work to be completed before our wedding. Seems like he cant do it as well even though he boasted about it in our previous meetup. Well, we'll just make do with whatever arrangements we can, as long as our renovation isnt screw up i am ok.

During the meetup, we amended a lot of stuffs, one of it is throwing the TV console and feature wall out of the quotation. Chose our laminate materials and tabletop. (I've excluded the design ideas i showed him cause it was taken from google images. Not sure if there will be any copyright issues)

For laminates, we went for this 2 mainly for the whole house: Arova AE 8000 & 8011 

Our bedroom we went for a darker colour:

 

For tabletop, we went for Compactable by Jennings. Recommended by my ID, says its similar to Kompactplus, just that its thicker (10mm). 

Though the colour seems ok, i am not entirely convinced to choose this over quartz since i dont get much reviews online on this type of countertop and its pros and cons.

I thought this meetup was a productive one cause we managed to settle what we needed. My wife however, still wanted the 3D cause she cannot visualize stuffs. 

This time round, he came out with the additional 3D quite promptly.

Now, this is what i call quality work! (i told my wife maybe he outsourced this 3D, sooo much different in quality than the work he presented so far)

Nov 2018

We collected our keys on the 7th Nov 2018, activated our water and electic supply. 

Our defects check was conducted by his employee by the name of Peter cause our ID is overseas. The defect checks were.. ok. Nothing much to report except some groutings and paint wear off here and there. Nothing major. However, Peter didnt check 2 things for us. The plugs were not checked and our floor. He didnt knock the floor although he claims he did and everything was good. -.- We came back another day with some marbles and started rolling and bouncing it around the house to make sure.

Some images of our place:

feeling excited over it. 

Our next meetup with Joe is on 24th Nov. This time round, we touched on the final quotations. Apparently, his electrical works is expensive. (e.g. installation of lights is 2x the quote of 2 other IDs we compared from our fellow residents). My whole electrical work fell short of 2k by a bit, which includes additional black pipings for my electrical works. It was pretty costly to be frank, but we chose to let him do still to prevent any conflicts along the way between different vendors.

we completed the whole detail work of the carpentry etc. Not sure if i can share the details, but i'll leave it to the pictures to tell everything when the carpentry is up. As well, we paid the remaining cost of renovation till the 95% mark, until left $1,000 outstanding.

We changed our tabletop to this instead:

I was thinking: The selling point of this tabletop is in its thickness of only 10mm and its ability to reflect a wood surface / woody feel. If i were to take the normal black one i might as well go for quartz. JTS: the price difference for quartz and Compactable isn't very big.

BTW, when hdb is done with your defects check, they help you mop the entire house. We were shocked! Collected keys to a dirty floor and a week later, its clean!.

Will update again on the actual start of our renovation work in the next post!

 

 

Edited January 8, 2019 by Heng Qi Ping
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Thanks for sharing it with us.