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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 to keen when I asked him to change and he became offensive and was 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. 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.

Matte the colour of the tiles are more subdued actually

This was really funny had me laughing indeed

Manged to get hold of the HCL89 from the http://hcl89.byethost10.com site. So far my wall tiles seems to have become quite clean and am quite pleased with the result. Will recommend the product for those that have hard to clean stains on their tiles

If you want to DIY, you can use something called HCL89.to polish your marble by yourself I usually get it from http://hcl89.byethost10.com or http://hcl89.atwebpages.com What it does is that it polishes your polishes your marble and renews it (if its an old marble piece) Hope this helps you out

LIGHTING 1. Lightings.com http://www.lightings.com.sg/ We went to their shops at Jalan Besar and Geylang. Preferred the Geylang branch as we found the sales person, Mr Wong very helpful and good natured. We ended up buying 11w Phillips downlights from them. Its important to note, Phillips downlight comes with built-in drivers. Hence, if it spoils you will have to change the whole light. However, there is no denying that phillips is a good brand and their lights last long. We also bought LED ceiling lights for the rooms and the kitchen from them. 2.Glamour House Lighting http://www.ghlighting.com.sg/ They are located at Geylang. We bought the rest of our downlights from them (phillips dont have stock of the smaller downlights). We bought safety-certified 9w downlights for SGD28 each. It comes with free delivery as well. The owner is super friendly and patient. 3. Ikea Ikea has a wide range of lighting options at good price. We bought a simple pendant light for SGD 20 only. Wife really liked the simple design. BATHROOM ACCESSORIES 1. Bathroom Warehouse by Wan Tai http://bathroomwarehouse.com.sg/ I highly recommend this place. We went to many well known shops, but none compare to this one. The price is also excellent. They also carry a wide range of brands. We bought Grohe rain-shower, mixers. 1 Hansgrohe tall tap. 1 Nobili tall tap, Franke kitchen sink and various other items. They are the only shop that I know that carries a wide range of Nobili, Elkay and Franke products. These are well-known brands that are hard to find in Singapore. They have a wide range of Elkay and Franke kitchen sink (for those who are looking for Blanco alternatives). 2. Adamas Bathroom Pte Ltd http://www.adamasbathroom.com/ We went to their Jalan Besar branch. They gave us the best deal for Fujioh hood/hob and Joven 25L storage heater. We also bought our TOTO WC from them. Recommended! 3. Universal Union Enterprise Pte Ltd http://www.universalunion.com.sg/ If you are the type that dont like doing a lot of walking around and want to purchase everything from one place. This is the place to go! They have almost everything you need- bathroom/kitchen accessories, wide range fan selections (including haiku fans), water filtration system, laundry system The price is competitive. We purchased our industrial design kitchen mixer there. 4. Heritage Bathroom Gallery (Geylang) and Hoe Kee You can also consider these two places. Hoe Kee especially is very well known. They have wide selection of stuffs as well. If you are interested in Blanco kitchen sink, this is the place to go. I would recommend their Kaki Bukit branch. CEILING FANS and VENTILATOR 1. Tai Yong Electric Co at Jalan Besar Hands down the best place to buy fans. Their fans are the cheapest (we combed the entire Jalan Besar). However they dont carry Haiku range of fans. We also bought a KDK ceiling ventilator for our bathroom from them. Highly recommended place. FURNITURE 1. Lorenzo They have great range of leather sofas. 2. Scanteak If you are interested in darker teak woods, this is the place to go. 3. Star Living This is where we purchased most of our furnitures. We like their Scandinavian design and the price is very good 4. King Koil @ Marina Square A wide range of good quality King Koil beds. We will be purchasing our bed and mattress from here. Although a wooden bed would be more scandi in nature, we decided to buy a light colored bed from here for practicality reasons. 5. Picket & Rail Awesome place if you are going for Industrial look. Their beds selection especially is awesome. Unfortunately it doesnt fit our scandi theme. 6. OM Living Good selection of furniture. 7. V-Hive One of the best shops to buy quality office tables and chairs. Their 'Komforte Recliner' range has a lot of nice recliner chairs at good price. 8. Hommage High quality Japanese furnitures. really nice stuff but a bit pricey. But it feels like the price is worth it. FURNITURE SHOPPING TIPS: A good place to do furniture shopping would be at IMM and Furniture Mall (both located next to each other). Most of the furniture shops are located here, hence its easier to get an idea even if you are just sourcing for furnitures/window-shopping. It can be quite a bit of travelling for those living in the east, but its all worth it in my opinion.

sure there are some good and genuine electricians around. and this forum is for RESPONSIBLE sharing. But no harm for fellow forumers to be cautious when getting contacts via this forum. Better to be safe then sorry. This group of scam electricians have been lurking in this forum since 2011 and til now 2013...still there are victims. Individuals will judge for themselves. Good Luck!