Rasp

Hi feimei, Welcome! The dining ceiling 'artwork' is really 'unique'. Hasn't seen it before. But the mushroom partition is quite cute. Hee.. Is that their kiddy room?

Hi Catseyes, Welcome! I like your floorplan, quite different from the usual 3rm ones. And the big living room is really good to have. Looking forward to your flat transformation!

Hi Takomi, Great to see you back with pictures! The Tv console design look good, very 'flat' at the Tv side. Hee.. can save alot of walking spaces with this design. Your kitchen top seems quite limited, do you have another facing side for the top? Your reno seems to be 7-7-8-8 already. When's your HO date?

Good Morning Doremon, I just read that you only got 3 weeks to do up the reno. Are you able to negotiate the Handover date with your buyer? I think 3 weeks are really tight, esp. since you still got wetworks to do. Have you engaged your renovator already? Do put through to him that you only have 3weeks for him to complete the list of renovation items. For us, the laying of aircon gas pipe was done together with the installation of the aircons. And wiring need to be done before the aircon installation so that the aircon can be tested after the installation. My electrician fixed up the 15amp socket for the aircon first so that we can test our aircon. Im not sure if you are doing conceal electrical points. For us, our plastering come before rewiring so that all the walls are smooth out before the casing/trunking are nailed on the walls. Cant remember our exact reno schedule, it should be something like this: 1. Hacking 2. Tiling (for toilets & kitchen: wall tiles first, followed by waterproofing, then they will lay those big water pipes, then floor tiles) 3. Constructing of hollow block walls 4. Plastering 5. Plumbering (installation of basins, w.c., shower set etc) 6. Painting 7. Rewiring 8. Aircon installation 9. Carpentry 10. Installation of granite top 11. Plumbering for the kitchen sink 12. Installation of lights 13. Painting touchup 14. Retification works

Updates on Main Gate: Hee.. our main gate was one of the item that was installed pretty early as my contractor need a new gate to lock the place before removing the old gate. We also didnt spent alot of time on the design cause we only wanted one that is easy to clean/wipe. So we just settled on this simple design. However, we made 2 special requests about the gate to our contractor, that was... 1) hb wanted to have a 'plate' to cover our main door lock so as to minimise/prevent others from meddling with our lock. 2) We need to have at least 10cm allowance between main door and gate due to the requirement of the main door lock. And because we are so precise with our request, Henry is very mindful of it also. He arranged for the boss/foreman of the gate to come down for a discussion before the fabrication of the gate. Hb also arranged for our lock installer to be at the discussion so that we can ensure that the 'plate' position on the gate will be able to accomodate to our preferred 'height' of the main door lock. And not the other way round which was usually the case. On the day of installation, Henry also wanted the gate installer to wrap the whole gate back to prevent dirting it. Hee.. think he's really detailed with such stuff. Ok... here's our simple gate. This is the 'plate' to cover the main door lock. The gate is all wrapped up after the installation, including the handle. The curvy lines of the horizontal bars. Here's the allowance between the gate and main door. Hee.. Pretty nice to have this allowance. Both of us are quite happy with it. If not for the main door lock, I don't think we would request for this allowance. Here's the overall look, the installer even helped us to paste our unit no. before he starts the wrapping.

Hi Seashell, Just noticed your kitchen doors, very nice glass doors. Look quite different from the usual sliding and swing ones. Are all of them slide-able? or any fixed panel?

hey Rondy, Your drawings look very nice. You still do elevation plan. Hi Gantan88, For the drop down of the casing from L-box/ ceiling, what we did was.. all the 'drop-down' are behind the doors/ at the corner of the room (not very visible) and the casing will run above the skirting to the 'right' location. In our opinions, the casing/ trunking are not really visible in our rooms (meaning we don't see the casing when we step into the room, esp. after the furnitures are placed).

Hi Nekorin, Nice lights and interesting fans you got. Hee.. I liked your clock too.

Hihi iluvmybeans, Read that you going to start your reno next month. Congrats congrats~! hee.. think you almost purchased all your electronic stuff.

Hi wywy219, I concur with the rest. You might want to look around for more quotes first. Because during the reno, there is usually alot of grey areas which might not be stated very clearcut in the contract. It can be quite worrisome if this contractor/id continue to work in such manner (eg. asking you to top up for all those grey areas in future as there is no black&white).

Hi Yuene, Welcome!! Seems like you have done alot of planning already. I noticed that there is no storeroom in your original floorplan. Did you remove it? I think for most 3room flat, there is a beam that cut across the centre of the house (usually inside one of the wall of the store). You might want to take note of that beam by planning it to be on top of a sliding door etc to hide it off. Im not sure if you're into fengshui, cause fs will try to avoid the beam above the bed, dining table, sofa etc.

Hi Greenpeace, Is your mbr feature wall made from partition board? I thought most feature wall is using carpentry? Is that feature wall for your tv in the room?

Hi TB, Your place very nicely done-up. The red wall in the living room brings consistence with the red cabinet in your open concept kitchen. Very choice with colours. Your white Caplyso sofa also look very nice. Just that I thought the size of the sofa like abit too big for the area. My personal thoughts only.

Hi Risis, My old sofa.. the cushion is cloth and the 'structure/bone' is leather. When we gave it to my mum, my mum also cant remove those stubborn stains on the leather portion. I bought a bottle of leather wipes (for car leather seat) for her to try, but it doesn't work. End up, she used cif on her own and managed to clean it all up. I am not sure if cif will work for ink stain for your leather sofa, you might want to try abit on an un-obvious spot first.

Good Morning, Hahaa.. I just read about the 后路 thingy. You guys are quite funny. When we first moved out from our parents' place, we also didnt engage the lorry. Just took 1-2 shopping bags each time. Cause didnt have much to shift over except for clothes and some personal items. For our reno this time, we leave most of those big items (such as bed frame, cupboards) at the site and shifted out those small items. Despite that, we still have around 20-30 bags of stuff. Hee.. and for this time, the bag we used were those 'china' lookalike bag with the zipper on top kind. Think most will engaged movers if they have furnitures (such as cupboard, bed, sofa) or alot of barang barang (such as electronics, books, kitchen stuff, ie. pot/pans, utensils). For us, we only engaged the mover to shift 1 queen mattress, bedframe and sofa as we are giving them off. The 20-30 china bags, we d.i.y. ourselves. hee..

Hi Homemaster, I just saw your PM and I am quite SHOCKED after reading it. I just re-visited your earlier posts and found that you have RE-edited your post to remove all those red headings & real comments that you put in about your contractor and the sanitary shop that is recommended by your contractor. I am quite upset to know that your contractor actually force bug you to remove them. If your contractor is worried about his business, he should be doing more/ better stuff to keep up his reputation and not through this 'method'. To be honest, Im pretty unwilling to edit my post as Im quite concerned that the other forummers would be blinded by all those good and FAKE sharing. BUT... like what you mentioned in your pm about your family safety, I am also worried for you & family. I'll edit my previous post to remove that RED heading which you put in previously. I hope that everyone who read this post will know what they are in for when they engaged such a contractor.

Hee.. you still got alot of time to think about it. Another thing that you might want to check on the electrical loading of your block. My hb check ours and found that we might run into electricity tripping each time we uses the aircon/oven and cooking etc...(cant really remember) Anyway, we just went for cylinder, cause don't want to take any risk of tripping. Hee..

Hi Nekorin, We also didnt go L-box or false ceilings. For my living area, we only have 2 points, ie. one 3 tube light and one fan with light. Just switching on the 3 tube light is very bright for our living area. Hee.. Think cause its 3 tubes and we went for white light. So I think it depends on the light that you choose. Have you selected your lights? You can bring your floorplan along, the sale assistants will advise you whether the light you selected is bright enough for the whole area. I read that you are only having the yellow light from the fan for the study room. We noticed that our fan light is actually not very bright, though we went for white light. Im not sure what fan you are getting, ours is the round light under the fan. For this type, the light is not strong even for white light. For your mbr, you mentioned that there is a beam. I think you might want to consider the area size also. For us, we had a mini light at the balcony (beside our living area) and similarly, there is a beam inbetween. But I noticed that the light does come in to the living. So it depends on how bright you want the area after the beam to be.

I think it depends on individuals' preference. For me, Induction hob is good cause its easy to clean, look sleeker, nicer and make me feel better without the cylinder. The downside of Induction for me is, it heats up very fast and burns the food. I still cant really get use to it, even after 2yr of trying. Pricing wise, it depends on which brand you are looking at. Previously, we wanted to go for brandt or Ariston for the induction hob so their prices are higher compared to most convention ones. Hence, when we decide to change back to cylinder, I got quite some budget when picking convention one. The pots/pans for induction is actually not cheap. You might want to check out your current pots if they can be recycled, otherwise changing the whole set might be quite an amount also. Hee.. I also don't like to waste my cabinet space. Too bad, we didnt have govt. gas piping. By the way, its also my first time trying out cylinder gas, not sure if I can get use to it cause haven't move back yet. Same like you, I also scare scare about tank explosive etc... hee.. watched too much show.

Good Morning, Kopi We used induction for 2yrs before switching back to cylinder. To be frank, I also cant get use to induction cooker. The pan heats up very fast according to the heat that you set, unlike the old school cooking where the pan will slowly heat up. So the food get burned pretty easily. You might want to buy a portable induction cooker for your mum to try now. Think around 40ish.. can be use for steamboat at your dining table in future. Hee.. Another thing about induction is.. you might have to change all your pot and pans because induction is using electricity to produce the heat, so the pot base is actually magnetic. You can bring a small magnet to test when you buy the pots but usually there is the induction logo imprint at the underside of the pot. By the way, there is totally no flame when using induction. Because the heat is by electricity. You can even touch the hob while cooking cause the heat would only be transfer on the pot. Some people will put a layer of newpapers on the cooker while cooking so that any spills will be on the paper which can be discard after cooking.

No problem, Kopi. This is really useful cause when the miotv guy came to install, he wanted to use those yellow/white/red socket at the side of the tv as they are easier to access. But hb thought of keeping the side ones for other plug and play gadgets. So he had to poke them at the back himself after the guy went off. He just look at the pic and managed to poke them at the right holes. Hee..

Good Morning Red_devil, Thanks. Hee.. really good to know that you like reading my blog. Umm.. guess still ok for us cause we planned to have the whole week to slowly clean up the place and put the stuff in order. The floor are roughly clean now and we are bringing around 2 bags home each day to unpack slowly. Hee.. so far still ok. Im the one who is for the throwing while hb's the one who like to keep. Anyway, we have packed once (ie. when we shifted out of our current place), so we have passed this dilemma. Now is more about.. where to put this and where to keep that.

Hi Gantan88, For us, we didnt have the option of government piped gas cause our block doesn't have it. If given a choice, we will definitely go for piped gas because of the below reasons: 1) I am worried about gas leakage due to improper connection/handling of the LPG, 2) Run the risk of no gas during cooking, 3) Need to ring up the LPG supplier regularly to change if the LPG run low/out of gas, 4) LPG takes up cabinet spaces. Do check with citigas first.

Updates: Hee.. we just did our handover yesterday afternoon. Glad that our reno have come to an end. But I still got quite a number of pics outstanding. Hee.. will try to post them soon after sorting them out. Now we're left with the shifting back and pack/unpacking again. Just thinking of it makes me feel tired. Hee..

Hi Marcus168, Your process is good. Remember to check for the waterproofing, very important for those who d.i.y cause usually no warranty. For painting, you can have a 1st coat of painting first before electrical so that the area behind the casing/trunking will be same colour as the rest of the wall. This will only show when you need to remove the casing infuture. I think mine is painting before carpentry, but the painter will come back to touchup quite a number of time after the carpentry is up. And for those who intend to box up their pipings/electrical stuff in the bathroom, they might have to do them before all the tiling is done. Are you changing your windows? For windows, its the kitchen and bathroom window to be up before tiling.