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Hello renotalkers! I have benefited from this forum immensely and it's about time for me to pay it forward. I bought a resale apartment and obtained the keys only in late July. It's a 1 BR, only 52 sq metres (560 sq ft) in size. I was drawn to this space as it was relatively square-ish, not many bay-windows, no balcony, 2.9m ceiling height and floor to ceiling windows in the living room. Knowing that size was a limitation, my challenge is to make the space feel bigger than it is. The original floor plan (ignore the PES - the apartment does not have any PES) This was how I envisioned the new layout Red lines indicate the walls which I wanted to knock-down Blue line is where I would like the new wall to be erected Yellow lines is where I envisioned a concrete plaster appearance Besides the challenge of opening up the space, I wanted to keep the budget low and time-line relatively short, yet achieve a specific industrial look. I'll be dedicating quite a bit of my blog on how I kept costs low while maintaining decent quality. That means I will describe my thought process for contractor selection, material selection, purchasing from taobao etc Hope new home owners that plan to renovate will benefit from my blog. I shall post the before pics soon and some interim pics as reno is currently on-going. Happy reno-talking! EDIT: I realise that it is very cumbersome to go through an entire thread without a contents page. So I have compiled the links here 1. My thoughts on ID vs contractor. All home owners struggle with this question and meeting IDs/contractors can consume a lot of time and effort. 2. How I shortlisted and chose a contractor. The key considerations which led me to chose among the shortlisted contractors. 3. My taobao shopping list. With all the links from taobao sellers which I bought from. 4. My before pics. Demolition pics if you're into that sort of thing. 5. General Info on shipment of bulky taobao items to Singapore. 6. Since it's very difficult to estimate how many cubic metres each item is and the shipping charge is based on cubic metre, I came up with a way to estimate total cost of the bulky taobao item based on my first shipment when I purchase through peeka. 7. Some chinese keywords for shopping on taobao. Although taobao is cheap and therefore tempting, there may be instances of dissatisfaction. To provide a balanced view, Another poster's negative experience with taobao items. How I minimize risk of purchasing low quality items on taobao. 8. Info on the fibreglass concrete panels in my living room. 9. A guide on choosing paint colours for your wall. 10. Kompactop final pics 11. Info on artificial turf for balconies/planter/baywindows 12. Final pics - after 6 months of living in my place, this is more or less the final look of my place, though it tends to evolve with time (and clutter). To be included at some point.

This is the view taken from the dining/utility room View from living room

Hi supermama, do you mind sharing with me your ID contact from RenzzInterior Design and quote too? My hubby and I also have a 4-rm BTO in the sengkang area and are on a tight budget too. Gam sia in advance!

'COV' system WAS basically a 'by product' created by gov. - Sellers got COV cash not subject to taxation(stamp duty), the higher the merrier, fly like buttleflies. - Buyers cry father and mother, claiming high COV.....crawl like catepillars. - Agents of both sides? Patterns liao liao. Fighting in the garden - Gov? feels John Marsden is right (dead of night), 'We kill all the catepillars, then complain there are no butterflies' I'm the gardener!. - Valuation companies ? Eat 'grass' soon liao.

Not too sure, but I was recommended 22W LED lights (not Philips though) for only service balcony and 2 toilets. [small area] For bedrooms and living rooms was recommended 36W. Those recommendation was based on my comments though => I did comment that I wanted brightness in the room. To most people it's 'coziness and ambiance'. To me it's dim lighting that makes it difficult to read... My lights not installed yet, so not able to confirm if it's bright enough at the moment.

Tell me about it, however my mum like that area and its near her so I purchase it. Frankly the Blk number 118 already win her heart over a certain %... Hahaha ~~~

Final payment made yesterday. Now it's time to clean the place up before the furniture comes

Everything's a very personal preference but here's what I would pick, to add a slight tinge of rustic/industrial vibe to complement the 'recycled-boat-wood-look' dining table. Bare bulb on holder (For e.g. Nud, Muuto etc. Can browse at Grafunkt or LifeStorey) Or maybe replica Caravaggio Matt (can browse at those lighting shops along Balestier Rd) Or good 'ole trusty Ikea (Hektar Pendant Lamp):

Hi myone181 and Songz, I finally managed to break in the LG Roboking vacuum cleaner after downloading a copy of the English manual and reading through it. I haven't fully tested out all the features but so far apart from a few hiccups, I'm liking the robot vacuum alot. Here's a short review for your benefit. Price - unbeatable if purchased from QOO10. It's selling at about 60% of the Singapore price on QOO10 instead of at around $1k in local stores. The catch is that while there is a warranty on the product, if anything happens you will have to send it back to Korea to have it serviced. Not too sure if I'm keen on that. User Friendliness - since everything is in Korean (including the buttons on the robot and remote control, as well as the voices coming from the robot), I would say that based on that it's not very user friendly. But once you read the English manual as found online, it makes things so much easier. Once you set it in the mode you want, vacuuming starts by the press of a single button. Cleaning Power - the robot comes with two yellow side brush attachments which help to sweep dirt to the front of the robot. This is extremely useful in cleaning corners and the edges of the walls. I did not find much dirt hiding in such areas, which is a common complaint for other brand robot vacuums. At the bottom of the robot is where you find a rotating brush at the mouth of the vacuum. This is where all the dirt is caught and gets sucked into the robot's bin. I think the rotating brush does a great job of picking up dirt as it helps to scrub dirt off the floor (I can hear it). For ladies with long hair, the fallen hair on the ground is picked up by the rotating brush, but it gets stuck on it because it's so long. LG recognizes this and provides users with a yellow brush/picking tool which you can use to pick the hair or dirt off the rotating brush. I was pleasantly surprised at how much dirt the robot managed to pick up the first time around (see pics below). Mind you, this is after we had vacuumed and mopped the place at least twice. New house lydat one la, alot of dust and dirt. Still I feel the LG Roboking does a great job picking up dust/dirt. There is a 'mop' attachment as well which consists of a mounting bracket and a microfibre cloth. We haven't tested this out since we prefer to use the magiclean mop for the same purpose. You can't wet the cloth anyway, so I don't think it's of too much use. Area Coverage / Smartness of the LG Roboking - LG is said to produce one of the smarter vacuum robots around. The sensors are very good and this can be seen by the way the robot goes around doing it's business. Apparently some other robots have problems getting a clear picture of their area, which means sometimes they can skip spots around the house if say for example, there is a hump between rooms where people put those plastic covers to cover the gap. Some robots also bump into objects, walls and furniture etc. The LG does a fairly good job of not bumping into things, although it sometimes does bump into chairs, our laundry basket and our step ladder, since those things have very thin legs which the robot may not be able to detect that well. Cleaning is precise and how the robot covers your house depends on what type of mode you set it in. I prefer to set it in the zig-zag mode as I feel it gets the job done best. Although I have yet to watch and monitor the robot clean the entire house (cos we leave it on when we go out for work), from the times I have seen it work it has covered every area in the house. I have a feeling though that it still is in the learning mode, as sometimes it does get stuck at places, for e.g under my bed. Problems - The LG Roboking is not without it's problems. For as good as the rotating brush is, it can also be a bane in some respects. See picture below for case in point. Before you set the roboking to clean mode, you must be sure to remove any thin wires, cords, string rope etc. on the floor to ensure that it does not get caught up in the rotating scrub. The rotating scrub is so powerful that it threatens to eat such wires, strings etc. On hindsight, the carpet that we got isn't great for the purpose of the robot because of the tassels on either side of the carpet. It has gotten caught underneath the robot more than a couple of times that we have deciding to roll up the carpet each time we use the robot vacuum. Then there was another time when the robot ate up the pull strings of our roller blind and just died there. Every time the robot gets stuck, you will have to pull whatever's caught under it and then turn it on again at the same position. I'm still playing around with it everyday in order to get the best out of it. Overall, I think we are both quite pleased with the performance of the LG Roboking. Plus, it's fun to see it roam about the house on it's own - like a little kid. Hope the above helps you with your decision. Cheers

Amazing hack!

Why u seem to post identical message throughout the forum?Love the design from the FB and happened to be our theme for our new house... so I send an email in Jan 2014 to your company if we can ask for quote or have a meetup for discussion; sadly I don't even get any respond to my email. Guess that had fail my first expectation of prompt reply. In case you think im from another ID coy. Sadly I'm not; pure consumer in this forum.

http://renotalk.com/forum/uploads/gallery_59719_7_63287.jpg

hello mellenur, this is Yishun! nowadays hdb new bto flats are more or less.. same, or mirror of each other la.. kekeke... initially we also tot of merging the MBR with adjoining room for WIW, but on second tots, better keep that room for future baby plans. yeah yeah, second pic is the tiny kitchen!! that's why people like to hack hack hackkkk all the walls... hahahaa... thank you and all the best to all of us! jia you! mellenur, on 18 Feb 2014 - 2:58 PM, said: hi hojichalatte, we have similar layout for living to bedroom area I think, is this Punggol? Funny that I always see many people hacking that wall because we actually sealed up MBR entrance and combine with adjoining room to make a WIW. Although I must say this is partially why we are moving now because WIW is technically not a liveable space for me! is the 2nd pic your kitchen entrance? why HDB make small entrances one? sigh enjoy your reno process and post more pics!

We're back! Took a week off our reno while our contractor apply his finishing touches. Here's a small post about our shower screen, which was recently completed due to breakage during the initial installation. We took inspiration from the Duravit OpenSpace shower screen, which is a perfect fit for our tiny bathroom space. The tempered glass panel is a shower screen when open and nicely folds away into a bath cabinet when closed. The handles also double up as rods for hanging stuff. [read more on our blog post]

ID vs contractor I think most reno-talkers struggle with this question. A considerable number of people no doubt spend ALOT of time meeting IDs and contractors. After reviewing a lot of experiences and accounts from reno-talkers, it's well known that ID is more expensive than contractor Economically, they must charge more than contractor since they are the additional project managers and designers and afterall must engage a contractor to do the work Some conservative estimates point to IDs charging about 30% mark-up from contractor based on these services. This is probably the accepted median It is not surprising if the mark-up is higher especially if the ID firm is big. They have bigger advertising budgets for TV/print/internet, bigger shopfronts and bigger exhibition booths i.e. bigger mark-ups, probably 50% upwards of contractor price. Also, all the big bosses in the ID firm who don't do projects and generate business need to be paid fat salaries Nonetheless, there are some contractors who are trying to go up the value chain and have ID services as well. No doubt they will charge ID type prices. I met a contractor like this. You know this immediately once the contractor offers 3D drawings, throws in freebies, has an in-house designer etc - all ID-like characteristics. Conversely, there are ID firms which are just starting out and growing their business. They tend to have lower margins in order to get volume and grow their portfolio. These will be cheaper and may be somewhat comparable to an average contractor pricing. However, they still need to pay a contractor to carry out all the reno so how do they manage to get comparable contractor pricing. There will probably be less people working on the wet works, tiling, demolitions, erecting walls, carpentry etc. Project may face delays because there is inadequate manpower to get the job done. Moreover, once everything completed, they won't entertain many rectification works. For me, it was a relatively simple decision. I wanted as cheap a reno to achieve the desired look/feel. Although I'm not a designer and have zero experience in reno, I knew the look that I wanted to achieve. There are very few IDs which can do industrial designs, simply because they turn to "standard" designs. This is to save effort and resource for them since they have done many projects in a certain look/feel. These are mostly modern contemporary. Having said that, choosing a contractor meant I needed to do ALOT more research on my own. I started to gather a lot of info about reno, the process, the materials and the rough pricing. To the point where people in the industry think I'm a contractor! If there are reno-talkers out there in a similar situation, I hope this will help you eliminate wasting time with meeting too many IDs and contractors.

Is it all KDK model in malaysia is half the price singapore is selling? If yes then i will straight go JB and buy no need to do any research. Pls advise