JandG

ya lor elane ! how come i didnt think of that......

Quick Quiz 2 What are these little mounds for ?

Chpt 5 : Of Elephants Nxt up aircon trunking -no not elephant trunks . We got our Fujitsu Sys 3 Inverter A0YA24LAT3 with 12k blower for master bedroom and 9k for the study and common room. And a Fujitsu Sys 1 Inverter A0AR18JC with 18k blower for the living room. We engaged G**nCi** for the installation as everybody says their workmanship is good. But..... No pix here as that day of installation we weren't in the mood. They sent in a team of banglas with a malaysian supervisor. the malaysian guy looks like he knew what he was doing. unfortunately, after he discussed the running of trunking with us and speaking to his banglas, he mumbled something abt having to go somewhere else for short while and......disappeared! The banglas started drilling and hacking away. we stayed till lunch time, they were still drilling around so we went to get groceries and lunch. when we returned, to our horror, they put up the trunking in the common room at the wrong place! we have false ceiling over the area and cannot place it above the door. they had to re-locate it and there was a huge hole in my wall the kind huge enough to contain all those huge armaflex tubes... for the study, they put the blower much too far out..it had the trunking almost the length of the entire room...why couldnt they put it nearer the door ? we had this re-done. also, the water pipe trunking was smack in front of the doorway outside the master bedroom door. thus, when u look from the living room, u can see the huge box smack in the middle. why couldnt they put it behind the beam ? we also had them re-do this and drill a hole to the common toilet for the water pipes. banglas also cannot count for nuts. trunking instead of measuring the length and cut correctly to fit the length of wall or corner, they joint and patched little pieces of trunking to make up a whole line so it looks like many many uneven pieces joined together. those that can be hidden i dun care. but there were many i couldnt hide...so ugly! it was finally 6 plus in the evening when the malaysian dude finally show his face. we were like telling him all the problems and he went around inspecting the work. even he couldnt take it and he realised they connected it wrongly, ran trunking wrongly as it was too bulky, some parts didnt even have the armaflex tubing. so he scolded them and starting cursing at them. i mean to me, its not the bangla fault its HIS for not being there! after hacking out and re-doing, patching, opening up and re-running it was abt 8.45 pm! What dinner ?? We were super pissed with GA*%CI** for this experience...as we paid 80 bucks to 2X installation we specifically told them DUN send us banglas next time!

Quick quiz results YES its a concealed shower mixer....and the first major mistake made on site We've explained at least ten times to our ID that we bought a concealed mixer and we wanted a space cut out next to the mixer to store shampoo/shower foam bottles. But..becoz my ID didnt tell the tiler what the space cut out was for, they happily did this mosaic laid out wrongly inside too narrow hollow block with this size, the space cut out would be less than 4 cms (can't fit a Dove bottle!) but hubby was onsite during lunch time and just in time to instruct them of correct dimensions like this correct dimension hollow block space cut out then we had to re-do the mosaic on the outside like this our concealed rainshower head imagine if my hubby had not been there...would we have to hack away and waste more exp mosaic tiles to correct this...or i would have to live with a useless hole in the wall too small to put any shower bottles....things like this makes us mad!

Nope...no extra cost...the water proofing cheap cheap one la... Yeah...finally can have Xmas at my new place...

Hello Rasp My reno shd have 2 wks more to completion. Thanks for your well wishes... Cement is like a sponge. It soaks up water thru the tiles when u wash the floor. By adding a layer of water-proofing on top of the cement base, we hope to minimise the seepage into the cabinets when they are laid on. U know the musty smell u get when u open old cupboards esp in kitchen ? its due to damp moisture seeping in from the floor. thats why european kitchen cabinets never sit on floor. they always have legs. And hehe partially correct...its for our concealed water mixer...

Chpt 4: The 'disappearing' ID Wk 3 of Reno. We start to call our ID Mr Invisible. Why ? He is never in sight. To-date, as we counted, he has not been onsite more than 5 times. That's thruout the almost 8 wks reno. Amazing. We go down more often than him, and luckily too...as whenever the tiler or electrician scratches his head at the planned diagram and proceeds to do the wrong thing, we are there. Can't imagine the amt of leave we wasted on the reno We were there to check on things like waterproofing on tiles. They normally can't be bothered and either put very sparsely or dun even put any. Because hubby was there, they did a proper job. Cement base for kitchen. We kept instructing them to put a layer of waterproofing so our cabinets last longer Wrong Cement screed on whole kitchen Because we weren't there, tiler mistakenly screeded whole kitchen. He was only supposed to screed one side of wall and not the sides covered by cabinets. $550 boo-boo we have to absorb Base for cute lil island hob

Quick-Quiz Guess what this is ? Turns out this is one of my fave areas of the house after all is done up Here's a hint.....we will use this too....

nope...my ID is someone else. But our situation is also like yours

bro i feel your pain...our ID is the same....your list looks like the same types of complaints we have for our own place...our ID is never on site to supervise and we wonder time and time again what is he for when we begin to directly engage his contractors and start to do up schedules for him instead....sigh.....in the end did u get him to rectify all the flaws ?

From the 24th - 28th Aug, the following happens. Tiling, electric cabling, plumbing finally we have a pile of long awaited sand - trademark of reno in progress Tiler's tools..cement, our living rm tiles, hollow block for the master bath we quite like our tiler's workmanship. we just don't like his price 'octopus' arms dangling all over our ceiling

Chpt 3 : Down come the Walls of Jericho We got delayed. Our reno permit for the hacking of master bedroom wall was approved but the one for the kitchen requires a PE this means extra 450 damage just to hack a thin little wall. Our ID applied, but we had to bugger hdb to get it approved. This takes close to 1 week to settle and it finally gets done on the 18th. The walls go down on the 20th Bedroom wall devastated Bye bye kitchen wall

The sewage pipes in both common and master toilets are concealed inside a box-up which is installed by HDB. (Red circle) You can't see the exposed sewage pipes in both your toilets rights? So that means you also have the box-up lor! So the only time we noticed the brownish stains is when we pushed the plastic grill aside and look inside as indicated by the black arrow.. Anyway, the problem has been resolved.. The chinaman came and hack away all the brownish stains, re-applied sealer, and re-painted the area.. So far the stain hasn't came back yet, but it could be becos our neighbour upstairs haven't taken a shower in his common toilet yet! We shall monitor and see, if the stain come back they will have to go upstairs and hack away his tiles and re-apply water-proofing at the shower area in the common toilet

yah..we will try that once it starts to leak again

It's at the common toilet.. Just beside the inlet pipes for the water heater, inside the boxed-up area.. You have to remove the plastic grill to see it. We actually had brown-ish stains all over the sewage pipe. Plumber said it was a leak from upside but the workers from BSC insisted it wasn't.

Chpt 2 : Bad Omens We met up with our ID and his team for the 1st site evaluation. If it was anything to note, our ID almost forgot to take the tape measure out of his bag. And he was supposed to take measurements (??) We left the site, and returned the next day to find chinese scribblings all over our toilet.... who or what did that ? it turns out the plumber came for a visit. And he wrote this.. we didnt even notice this. new home owners...do chk your pipes for leakages we lodged a defects report they gave us an appt. the appt date came..no news and no action. We called. They forgot and they re-arranged for someone to fix it. When we inspected afterwards, we saw that someone just painted over it. The ugly stain came back the very next day! Called and complained. this is what they did next. xtra strength paint and they covered it with a shiny coat of white we actually wanted them to fix the leaky pipe upstairs but they refused! they said after this round of painting, if it doesnt work, they will finally go up to fix. we hoped the stains would return so they had to fix it, but it didnt! now, only when our upstairs neighbour uses his water supply will i truly know if it is really fixed....

Chpt 1: A New Beginning Our open door ritual was a simple one. MIL insisted on rice & salt sprinkled at all 4 corners. We got the ong lai and oranges. And of course the official 'evil chaser' our doggie, Summer ! Huat ahhh!! Summer in a comfy corner @the kitchen. the only rm with tiles..

Hello happydog! Gd luck on your reno soon too!! For the reno permit, dun forget to check your myhdb page for the permit results...and Do call hdb if u suspect delay...else they will take their sweet time...

Hi greenpeace, i m frm 438B

Thanks for the warm welcome and encouragement guys ! Thanks also for your advice and sharing of your own reno experience too. We love to hear from you, so do comment away on our T-blog. We want both good and bad comments on our home or your own experiences. Good as we can share your joy or you can share ours. Bad as 'misery loves company'... Our own experience was indeed "unforgettable"... why ? Do stay tuned....

Here's the view from the living room..before they put in the grilles Master bath..infamous leafy pattern Common bath..yes leafy again Truth is, when we first saw our flat, we saw flaws...and in this blog, we wish to tell it as it was. Getting keys after that 4 yr wait, well...our dream home was rapidly becoming a dream disaster.....

Introduction Once upon a time, there was a quirky little home in Sengkang West. Project : Fernvale Court Stats : 94 sqm 4-rm apt Date applied : Dec 2005 Keys taken : 7 Aug 2009 Reno start : 19 Aug 2009 Reno end : 22 Oct 2009 Moving in : Here is the first look thru our eyes Entrance. Whoa ! What a long gas pipe...bright and yellow too... Living room. huge air hole for bomb shelter. Shows entrance to kitchen Kitchen wall. To be hacked.. Kitchen. Near windows

It's around 80% done.. Just left a couple of items outstanding.. Took a looooong time to finish the 80% though, but hopefully all would be completed by next week..

We are from 438B.

Very nicely done up! Cosy and warm.. Wanted to pop by the other time but paiseh..