Reno_Foo

LoL!! Thats funny~ I could image your reaction and ur missus reaction when those things happened. Hmm.. I'm a project manager in a renovation firm and allow me to add some suggestions. Not sure if you have encountered the same situation, but previously a year ago a home owner did encounter this problem. In term of contracting renovation contractors, try not to engage many contractors for your unit of renovation work. 1. Initially when you plan to engage on (say 5 contractors) multiple contractors asking only their lowest price work area, you will find that you may end up paying more compared to engaging 1 contractor for the whole process. This is so because cost like Haulage and Debris charges for example, will be charged 5 times up by each contractors when each of them will refused to clear other contractors' rubbish. 2. When conflict of work using multiple contractors, they will not communicate compared to using only 1 contractor for the whole job. For a simple illustration, people would install electrical wiring first before cabinet installation. However, say you do not know and carry on with the cabinet installation, more often than not the cabinet carpenter will not be bothered to advise you that electrical point should lay first. Hence, upon installation, you will find yourself facing a major problems in amending it. 3. When using a contractor as a whole, it is easier to negotiate for a better discount. This is so because they can save on the individual labor and delivery charges and more willing to give a further discount upon completion of work. A simple illustration here for example you engage 2 contractors to lay the tiles work. 1 for living room while 1 for toilets. The trip for the workers made & time period spent may be reduced if you engage using 1 contractors. Because say laying of toilet tiles is 3 days while living room with 5 days. By using 1 contractor he can finished it in 6 days. This would have saved up to 2 days of workers fees and in return giving as discount to the home owner. Hope this help in your consideration while you are looking for a renovation contractors! Do take care and have a nice home building time!! Cheers~ Arthur

Oh by the way, summer forever, dun worry of being hated by contractors and ID firm, i personally think that your post are beneficial coz it bring knowledge to everyone, thus i believe matured thinking contractors shouldn't be inducing hatred for contractors or ID. I'm working as a project manager for a renovation firm currently. I would think that it is right for us home owners to know more how things works. It is of course beneficial to share our thoughts to improve on ourselves on work and life. i won't deny the facts for your costing quoted and the commission earned. However, this is not the only way or strategy that how a renovation or ID firms run. Would like to share some knowledge on how renovation firms run (Not sure if i will also be hated by fellow renovators / ID firm for sharing this piece of information.. ) Allow me to segregate Renovation into 3 categories (Correct me if I am wrong. I'm here to learn too ): 1. Self monitored project - In this categories, usually the projects are very small and requires less management time and professional knowledge. (eg. just installing of window grills, or just simple renovation of toilets). 2.Renovation Contractor - Such firms usually do not have any in-house interior designers. However, they usually keep afew freelance designers at hand in times where customers needed one. Thus these category of contractors focus very much on providing renovation works based on home owner requirement mainly on fixtures (example kitchen cabinets, TV Console, false ceiling etc). They help to manage these required works and make sure they are installed in good conditions and quality before handing over to the home owners. However, matching furniture, and design themes would be provided by the home owners themselves. 3. ID firms - ID firm would be considered as premium to me. They have someone catered specially to design for your dream house, up to the point whereby furniture are being bought as per the designs. Their service coverage are the same as ordinary contractors, which help to manage the whole project and make sure it is delivered on time for the home owner to move in. Of course, with such services provided, the costing would also be premium too. Moving on to what Summer forever has mentioned, renovation firms and ID firms does their business in many different ways. Like for example in the case of the commission earned, I believe 20% - 30% would be a premium charges due to the extra service provided. (not saying that such charges doesn't exist, I believe there are even charges up to 50% or more). However, to my knowledge, renovation firms usually runs by referral means of around 5% - 10% commission from the hardware stores. This charges are not put on to customers as the priced tags are stated in the stores. Customers can also checked out the price of similar items easily. Top that off, if the contractors are long term customers with the hardware stores, there might even be a discounted price given to the customers on top of the price tag. I would say be it self help, a contractors or id firms, every trades definitely got to have their own earning. Just like we can buy a fish in our wet-market (Convenience sake), or buy them directly from the fishmongers (Fishing service only) or fish them ourselves (Self help). The Pro are of course on costs saved between each layer of service provided. The Cons would be the professional opinion offered and Management service of the whole renovation process. It is of course ID firm would be preferred if money is a luxury without much constraint because they basically take care from the start till the end and give you the keys with even the furniture designed to your liking. However, if we're running on a budget but with a little to spare, getting a contractors would be good as we (home owner) can do the design and furniture purchasing ourselves and leave the more complicated stuffs to the professional. Lastly, if budgets is really so tight, we can monitored everything ourselves but do spent some time to learn and understand how things work before engaging direct. Because when you buy a fish for your wife from the fishmonger, it might not be the exact fish she want. you'll have to find yourself either go back to the market to buy her (wife) type of fish (Extra material cost incurred with the previous fish thrown away) or go back to the fishmonger to exchange for her type of fish (Provided he is willing to exchange and not to forget the traveling expense incurred). Hope my analogy is fun filling and have provided some beneficial knowledge to the everyone!! Do comment and share our knowledge so that we can better improve ourselves! =) Cheers, Arthur 万里之行，始于足下！

Hi Monsieur, Very much agreed to your statement. The differences between getting direct and from contractors is the luxury of time we home owner have to manage the whole project on our own. A contractor's job are to provide their expertise in the whole process of renovation and manage it to complete in time for the home owner to move in. Therefore, it is not wrong that we home owner may save up some amount by managing the project on our own (Because we take the cut on the job, time & effort spent of a contractor for ourselves). But we have to planned the whole process well with good discipline in monitoring the different jobs too. I have heard cases whereby the home owners go direct, which means taking over as a contractor herself. However, due to her tight commitment in her own office work, her planning goes haywire. Furthermore, with the lack of discipline the jobs are completed in a mess. This friend of mine, for example planned for the carpenter to install the cabinets before the electrician to lay their electrical points (though she has planned out the electrical points). She instructed the carpenter to leave spaces for the electric socket and the carpenter did so. To her horror, the electrician complaint that the wiring suppose to run behind the cabinet as a conceal wiring so that it will be as per her design. When she confronted the carpenter, the carpenter claim that he knows that usually people run their wiring behind but since she have asked him (carpenter) to install first, he would assume that she want to run the wiring outside (Alot of time people only care about their own scope of work and care less of what others job scope, thus we must know the process well to make sure things are running smooth). Another issue of this same friend of mine was with her false ceiling and air-con piping. she planned a route for her air-con piping to run. However she install her false ceiling before installing her piping. The issue here is that her route of piping actually clashes with the main beam which cannot drill a whole through. Therefore she needs to cut the her false ceiling out and re-run another route for her air-con piping. The false ceiling installer actually was aware of the beam but did not know that her air-con piping route. I must say that she is quite capable to have manage so far with her work commitment. I would say due to her lack of experience & knowledge, she suffered an extra cost incurred. She later give up and engage us to take over the project which causes her to incur more costs than she initially planned and catered for. She was a friend of mine, therefore it was done at a utter low workmanship charges for all the amendment (not worth the $ earned if you asked me for the amount of work we take over due to the mess she created. Thus if she is looking for other contractor, I will definitely say she'll be charged quite a high fees to fix up the mess). Therefore, if we intend to go direct, it is advisable for us to check out each procedures in details first. Example, which processes should go first etc. Secondly do take the time out to monitor the process. A lot of time when the fixtures are installed, dismantling or amendment would have cost even more. Thus, it is definitely worth the time taken to make sure things are according to your planning. Last but not least, a good direct company is a blessing, becoz they will help to advise you. Hope my sharing is beneficial to all. May everyone's dream house be built with a smile. Cheers, Arthur 万里之行，始于足下！

Hi Bepgof, Was reading your reply and found it quite interesting. But for point "e", in long run, wouldn't the roots be too strong, breaking the pots and tiles around the area? or making the parquet flooring pops up? and even if we wanna re-pot it, the trees would be 10m by then. How do we do re-potting? do we need a contractor for it? =)

@ vaqui74: No Prob. Am glad I'm of some help. =) @ freyl80: As per bepgof has mentioned. In addition, the overlaying tiles will be eating away your available space between your ceiling and flooring (depending on original tiling and overlaid tiles' thickness). Some will feel that that their area will seems to be more confined. Previously we had a friend who request us to do the hacking and re-laying after 2 years due to improper waterproofing by previous contractor. This friend also did mentioned about the confinement feeling after the overlaying. Secondly, imagining what if the first layer tiles "pop"? your overlaid tiles will goes "pop" too~ same goes to your wallet as the "pop-ing" of $$$ sound will be heard.. =P More often than not, it is not recommended to do overlaying. Some contractors will not even provide warranty as overlaying might implicate waterproofing complication. Hope that helps. =) Regards, Arthur Foo Project Manager

Hi kungfu Kiddy, I would agree with the rest that tiling is to be done up altogether first. As a project manager for a renovation firm, I have never come across a project that client would stayed in during whole unit tiling process. It will definitely cause a lot of difficulties for the contractors and workers to work. More often than not, contractors will lay the tiles one shot for the whole unit. Imagine if you're the contractor and have to hack each room at different date, laying the tiles would thus be a bigger headache as you will need to use more raw materials and labors. Take for cements, it will dried up and thus need to remix again. Not to say that it is time consuming and slow. The labor fees for each extended day will also be incurred too! If you're the contractor, where do you think these extra charges of material and labor cost goes to? (guess you know who will be paying for these) Next qns post will be if you're hacking the living room, (apart from the dust) how will you cross the living room or if u need to access to kitchen, main door etc? Wouldn't it also be dangerous to move around in your unit too? Not to say if the tiles are not ready, moving about might also caused the alignment to go off. If you happened to do electrical or water piping work, where will you draw the electricity and water from? *choy choy touch wood* that if that day cannot rectify your electricity work, where would you plan to "borrow" your electricity from? Like therat proposed, it would be better that you post up your relevant work so that we can help you out. Or can even ask around here for pricing in renting a unit for a short stay? (or at least the major work like tiling and toilets are done up) it might have been cheaper than all these extra cost adds up and less worries for the aftermath effect. For your consideration. =) Regards, Arthur Project Manager

Not exactly is better. It also have to depends on how bad the scratches is. Working with my dad as a Project Manager, I do agree that your painting work is quite cheap already. As Jaskel said, it can easily be 5x more than this price considered the work involved. One of our recent client in renovating his commercial dance studio faced the same problem. His painting work on the toilet door is done by a previous contractors is too thick and causes difficulties in closing the door. In fact, the door knot is being pulled so hard just to closed it that over the years it is more or less falling off. Cheers, Arthur Foo Nyuk Fong Project Manager

I am currently working as a Project Manager for my dad's renovation firm. We do have clients requesting to do the same thing. However, it is not advisable to save cost by overlaying the homogeneous tiles. Especially wet areas like toilets and kitchens. This will result in leaking to your neighbours below and definitely caused a complaint letter to shoot up. If no post effect, it is a cost saved. However, if *touch wood* anything happened, the cost saved will end up worse off by paying to re-do the tiling and fix up your neighbour's problem. Please do re-consider the effect and consequences. =) Cheers, Arthur Foo Nyuk Fong Project Manager