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Wanted a bigger place for living, not that current place running out of space but simply prefer a bigger one. Had always been living in the west side, so after years being away, time to move "Back to the West". Searching for the right unit had not been a breeze but not that tough either. Mainly due to wanting a big unit hence the limitation of choices. Big units are pretty scarce plus location is another factor to consider as well. Did thought about EM but the 2 storey kind of turn us off, call us lazy if you want. Personally I find EM had certain restrictions in changing the layout and living space planning. Though the area in excess of 140m2 is appealing but the staircase takes away a fair bit of space. Also EM units don’t seem to come in high floors or in the west side at least. Moving on, after one and a half months viewing 5 units in all, a new listing was made known to us. Headed down to the unit for viewing. Overall condition is acceptable. About 10mins walk to MRT, reasonable mid high floor, living room and all rooms facing a park area. A good distance from the opposite block, separate by the park. Time to do the math and think hard.

Due to short of time, we only look for a few ID to renovate our new place and would appreciate anyone comment on the following ID: 1) Dots N Tots 2) Design 4 Space 3) Rezt and Relax 4) The wooden platform Appreciate anyone can provide comment on above ID especially Dots N Tots as we feel their response is good and prompt and hope their work and quality is as good as what their response.... Appreciate and thanks in advance..................

Dear All, Welcome to my T-Blog. I am starting this T-Blog to chronicle my reno journey, in the quest of creating a cosy, liveable space that i can call home. After living in a 121sq.m 5room flat for the last 15 years with my wife and 2 kids, many of my friends are unbelieving when I mentioned my next flat is an 82sq.m 3 room unit. My decision on a 3 room is purely financial. Maximise profits, live loan-free. I sold my previous flat just before the HDB prices and COVs came a-tumbling (last May), and have been living with my parents since. Saw an opportunity to purchase a flat fully paid, and with a COV of $2k, I signed an OTP within 5 hours of viewing this flat. I took ownership of this flat 2 weeks ago, and I have been discussing my plans with various IDs and contractors. Details later. Now for the customary obligatory floor plan. What attracted me to this unit is (1) the location-Bedok, (lived here half my life) (2) the large kitchen (I love to cook), (3) top level in the block (well, technically I live on a more "atas" stratosphere than 90% of my neighbours. Right? Lol) (4) windy - at least it was windy when I first viewed at 3pm in the hot afternoon, and thankfully still very windy after I took over the keys 4 months later, (5) chance to create a study room where the "excess living room" sits (6) Corner unit (privacy) (7) North-South orientation, thus NO WEST SUN!! I suffered badly in my previous flat the dreaded west sun. I bought it when I was much younger and deemed the west sun as a minor factor in a flat selection. Clever me... (8) I can go on, but I think any further points would just me justifying to myself. Haha.. However, I certainly did miss a couple of shortcomings of this flat when I viewed, in the excitement of it all. Only in an empty flat do these defects show up. (1) Master toilet space is miserly. Utterly miserly, making me miserable.. (2) Ceilings are spalling badly. (Pictures in the next post). Being in the top floor, my upstairs neighbour is the space managed by the Town Council, the storage water tanks and its water proofing, and the weather elements. (3) The walls are not aligned right-angle. There is a slight 2-3degree (by my estimation) tilt, making the floor space a trapezium. Although 2-3 degrees do not seem much, running the 2-degree deviant over 4 metres show up the huge difference. Placing furniture will then also be a challenge. It shows as right angles on the floor plan though. Not funny, HDB... (4) Maybe there are more that I have not discovered yet. Okay, getting long-winded already. More pics coming up in the next posts.

My second round of carpentry is also in! So kudos to my ID for rushing the laminates and their work. Apparently the wardrobe couldn't fit into the lift so they had to literally build it in my room. I guess that's payment for all the drinks that I've been buying them. haha. The house is currently a mess with cabinet doors and drawers all over the place so it's a bit hard for pics but I can't wait to see it all slowly fit together. Even the contractors looked around and said, this project is nice. Unique. And yes uncle, I have to agree with you.

My W1070 has been sitting in a corner since Apr wating to be unboxed lol Epson is LCD projector if I recall correctly; both projectors have rave reviews at this price range. It's your preference really. May wanna consider the sitting area and viewing distance. Can the projector give you your desired screen size with its zoom capability? You wanna try to avoid setting the zoom at either both extreme. Also will you be viewing more of 2D or 3D? I chose 1070 cos my setup will be temporary, and in living room where there will be some ambient light. I like the DLP image better than LCD. Will eventually get a JVC when I shift to my new house in 2yrs time. It will be a dedicated viewing area with anamorphic screen. Try to research and dont rush into buying first. I'm no guru and is trying to catch up with HT from where I left 10yrs ago I can help better if you ask about car audio cheers!

Yo! I plan to get those long armed vacuum with a brush at the end to clean up cobwebs & dust periodically.. And on top of that have to keep cleaning.. Hehehe.. Hey there! Hmmmm.. Off the top of my head, the #kompactop seems to be about 5mm thick.. I am still not living in my house but as I was mentioning, I did do an initial "splash about" (in some parts of the world it's called "playing with water" LOL! ) and the #kompactop seems completely water proof! I was told that the colour also won't fade after extended periods of contact with water.. U must take note that #kompactop is not wood! It's some kind of vinyl/ resin/ hard plastic.. Hope I helped!

Lights up camera action!

I used to have a projector with fixed screen in my Sengkang flat (living room), no TV. Gonna renovate my parent's flat and set up a home theater in the living room too. System all bought and sitting in boxes waiting to be set up Projector gives you more bang for bucks when it comes to image size. Cost is also likely to be much cheaper too unless you buy the high end sets. A very decent HT projector can give you HD resolution + 3D; 2D qualities range from good to excellent. Bulb life span averages a few thousand hours and it's cheap to replace. Some considerations you may wanna keep in mind: - how much ambient light control you have (affects image quality) - ease of operating (old folks may just wanna press a button to watch tv) - available throw distance via-vis screen size - aesthetics (boxy floorstanders or wall/ceiling mounted? Or sound bar?) List can be long depending on how particular you are What's your expectation and budget? Range can be very wide

thanks for the info! we saw this article as well and went on this manic to remove the fruits and veg that might be the cause. so far we have noticed that there are still stray flies (1-2 ard the fridge and freezer). we will be monitoring the situation and hopefully they will be gone forever. Else will have to call the fridge guys to check if there is any leak or or gaps. i also saw someone suggest that a glass of red wine will attract them to all congreate and then we can get rid of them (might try with some white wine since i dont have red). haha. am excited to see ur 'dungeon' studyroom forming. the muddy purple really was not very nice. i like the repainted color!

Both are nice, but eventually i chose white.

Hello!! May i have the link for the service yard LED light?

I got all my wooden doors and digital lock from Ricky Ang of An Digital. A very nice young man who made no less than 3 trips just to confirm the order. Trips include presentation of the lock, measurement of the doors, supervision of installation plus explanation. Such sales ethics are worth mentioning and deserves commendation. Ricky Ang An Digital HP 90998233

Yes, i did before 28 degree for fire rated main door... cost abt $2388 included box up and plaster by the side of main door...

If you have the budget, go for reputable quartz brands like Silestone and Caesarstone. Better quality and better designs. For island top, you have the option of choosing a design which has running and continuous patterns to bring out its beauty. Solid surface is also feasible but it scratches easily. Scratches are not a if but a when event. Just get a sample of solid surface and quartz and use your sharpest knife to do the scratch test. No point choosing beauty over functionality because when the beauty fades, you are only left with regrets.

Hi Bikerguy, I also don't want to deal with this type of ID, can PM me to avoid. Thanks.

It's been a while since we mentioned anything about the design, previous posts were all about the things we bought. Time to give some updates. Design has been confirmed! Contractor has been engaged. And today is the start of renovation! We took quite long to settle on the designs because the husband is more concern about budget and the wife is more concern about the design. So many rounds of trying to strike a balance between value and aesthetics. But here are the designs. Most of the stuff shown in the designs, like the study with black frames and the brick wall, we are definitely doing. However, for the media console and the full height cabinet... no matter how much we love it and how much time we spent on the design, after seeing the quote, we won't sure if we can afford to realise it. At the moment, it is beyond our budget, so we have to leave it aside. Till we become rich or when money drop from the sky one day, we need to look for an alternative media console off the shelf. We are doing the brick wall! To minimise the cost, we have it at the smaller wall. Haha. The kitchen! The side with the fridge and oven has customised measurements instead of the usual 60 cm depth for the bottom cabinet. This is to compensate for the bomb shelter's loading wall eating into the kitchen on the left resulting in the bottom cabinet to be roughly less than 60 cm in depth. The fridge and the oven gets the deeper end of approx 75 cm in depth. For the side with the hood, hob, sink and dish rack. The only not-so-standard thing we did was to make sure the base of top cabinet is aligned with the base where the dish rack goes. For the 2 bathrooms, we are going for almost similar design with a box out niche feature at the shower area. Each bathroom has a slightly varied design for the mirror and storage. We are also choosing different tile and laminate for each bathroom. (Will update the choices of tiles and laminate in another post ) On the renovation end, our contractor is Jake of Z L Construction. He is recommended by our ID. We have met up with Jake a few times to bombard him with a lot of questions before we signed them on. They are not lowest quote around, plus we have to pay for GST. But we are assured of the commitment and the quality, judging from their previous work and the rapport we have with him. Just to add, they are HDB registered. Let's hope our choice is right. But judging from the first day of reno, his team is made up of uncles... those kind that are super experienced and know exactly what they are doing. (Don't need to see HDB electrical drawing, they know where is what kind.) They just auto-pilot once they got to our place. Especially when they are asking us to confirm things, they can recommend what looks nice and what works very quickly. All while we were still trying to understand what is going on. Also to add, not that we are xenophobic, but there aren't any PRC or bangla workers, all of them speak Singapore type of mandarin and some English. So now we just cross our fingers and hope that our reno turns out nice and good. That's all for now.

Jimmy himself is actually holding the fort at his shop at Joo Chiat Complex. This big boss has several shops! Usually, curtain makers don't go down to your place just to give you a quote. You should bring along your floor plan and maybe take some pictures. After choosing the materials, they can quote you quite accurately with that. They have seen all sorts of windows and can suggest many alternatives. When you sign with them, then they will go down to make precise measurements. Jimmy said there are now new types of blackout curtains that are washable. Lots of materials to choose from. When it was time for my home's measurement.....a Benz drove under my block and it was none other than Jimmy hmself that came to take measurements of my place! Wow... I was so surprised. He said he was on the way. When I was at the shop, I did not know he was Jimmy until we finalised everything and he was making out the invoice ... then I asked for his name. Very successful but very humble guy.