nickguthe

Air con Plan (Part 1) Just went on-site recce yesterday, air con trunking and partition is up!! So happy with the results.What we started with... Our Requirements 5 air cons for 3 bedrooms + study + living room (9 BTU for all rooms and 18 BTU for living)neat, minimal air con trunking that can be hidden nicely by carpentry or plaster partition/false ceiling if neededOur contractor recommended us to go with one of his contacts so that he is able to coordinate with them effectively in terms of schedule, layout of trunking route and the order of works. And we are glad we did. We got quotations via him from his contacts and the prices more or less matched those that we got from gain city and best tech. Choosing between System 2+3 or System 5There are not many system 5 on the market. Only seen Toshiba system 5 and the recent new Daikin system 5For system 2+3 means we will need to spend more money on an extra set of high capacity power socket and brackets for the additional compressorBut with additional compressor, means if one system goes down, we can take refuge in other rooms during maintenance.For brands, we are more inclined to choosing Mitsubishi Electric and Daikin because...We had good experience with Daikin, has been using them at current place for more than 7 years.Ease of getting support for maintenance since these 2 brands are popularHear relatively better reviews from friends and online.Price differential between System 2+3 and System 5 is minimalSo in the end we chose Daikin 2+3 .We wanted to avoid ugly air con trunking as much as possible so we worked super closely with our contractor and air con specialist. It was also super helpful that many of our neighbors shared their trunking solutions on the Facebook group. Thank you Ancillians! This is the summary of the aircon plan and how the trunking will look like after discussion.

Welcome! Will keep you updated! We are halfway through renovation, once we have more things done, will take more pics of the workmanship. Agree. Thanks Apple1 for your sharing your experience. We haven't make up our mind yet. But after reading your comments, very tempted to get the F & P. For washers, read about people with bad experience with Samsung as well. Very difficult to choose. Anyone else can share their experience with Samsung, Electrolux or LG washers? Is Electrolux washers worth the price differential? Thank you in advance.

Yep. No need to worry about +ve or -ve as I believe our electricity flow is AC (alternating current). Just be mindful not to let the clips touch each other when you turn on the power.

(cont'd from previous post) And we will not accept that triangular eye sore plus this vertically laid subway tiles... After discussion with contractor and ID, We decided to hack away the entire under beam strip of tiles. ID suggested that we can paint it black to make it look like a portal for the zoning of the kitchen door, since this coincides with the grout we chose. Problem solved. So beware of these structural beams especially if you are choosing the challenging smaller tiles. As explained by my ID, this kind of surprises will happen, it is no one's fault. One way to reduce this risk is to choose bigger flat tiles so that when they are cut, it is not that obvious or hide the funny edges with carpentry. But we chose to use 3D subway tiles and have them exposed at the edges, so this is the risk we will take for a design we want. Currently, we are satisfied with the current rectified results with black grout before the black paint is applied. Progress is going good and we are enjoying the whole reno journey thus far.

(cont'd from previous post) Case 2 And since there is no more carpentry, we decided to also overlay subway tiles at that area too...which brings me to Lesson 2: These kinks will affect the tiling... And it is totally by chance! We were quite shocked when we saw this little funny triangle at the corner. Reminded me of the yellow angry bird. Ok that is besides the point. XD so we thought it must have been a mistake and then we thought maybe if the tiles shift horizontally left or right, it must definitely help. I was thinking that it will look much better if the half tiles end at the ceiling and at the floor. Why must it be so conspicuous at the edges. Can't it be like this: so I went to ask my ID and this was the consideration... Full tiles starts from the countertop since that is where the eyes will see the most. So since the tiling starts from the counter area, with the subway tiles offset and all... it is difficult to pre-determined where it will end and how the edges will meet. Hence resulted in the half tiles at edges and little triangle there... So it is purely chance. (to be continued...)

On odd kinks in the house and how it influences decisions and tiling We are still in the midst of renovation. During which, most of the biggest surprises we had were those related to the odd kinks and areas caused by the loading walls and beams that are not indicated or represented accurately in the HDB floor plan. They cause changes and it will affect how things are done. Case in point... Lesson 1: Carpentry that you originally design on paper might not have enough space once it accommodates these kinks. At first, we planned to have carpentry near the fridge indicated by this 3D drawing... During the 1st site recce by our contractor, he highlighted that there are thick beams in the kitchen. These were not indicated in the floor plan. This will make the building of the top cabinet above the fridge quite redundant as there won't be much space left to store stuff. In the end, we had to take them away from the design. Minor... because nothing is built yet. (to be continued in the next post, too many pics)

Thank you for the suggestions. Will look into them.

Hi Jerome, Would like a quote for the following 1. Fridge - F&P E522BRXFD4 2. Fridge - Mitsubishi Electric MR-F51E 3. TV - Samsung UA48H5500 4. Washer - Electrolux EWF12732 5. Washer - LG WD1275QDT Thank you!

On electrical appliances Yet again. So many choices. How to choose, Which brand, what model, what function ... After reading on renotalk and hardwarezone forum. Each brand has its own following. It was so difficult that we are thinking of just choosing each based on how it looks... On TV The most important factor for us was how reflective the screen is. Many of them are so reflective that it is like watching yourself acting in the movie. We know we won't be needing 3D because it makes me (the wife) nauseous. And we don't want to spend too much money buying the latest technology since it is likely that we won't watch much TV. So a 40- 50 inch TV that can connect to the laptop for movies suffice. Our strategy for choosing the TV involves us going to the different appliance stores many trips to look at their TVs under different lighting and when they showcase different content. A lot of them have bright content on display which makes it hard to see what happens when the content is darker as that is when you see yourself starring in the movie if the screen is like a mirror. Based on the screen's reflective-ness, we narrowed down to the Samsung TVs, specifically F5500 and F6400. Between them, the biggest difference to us is in the clear motion rate (CMR) other than F6400 being 3D. After reading this article and this article we realised that clear motion rate is a marketing term that takes into account all three factors that contribute to motion clarity: panel refresh rate, image processor speed, and backlight technology ... blah blah blah and we have no idea what those means. While we are still deciding between a CMR 100Hz F5500 and a CMR 400Hz F6400, Samsung releases their 2014 successors. The H5500 and the H6400. To our delight, they have even less reflective screens! Right now, we are inclined to getting Samsung H5500 above because it is cheaper, has a simpler rectangular base and we don't mind much about 3D or CMR 400Hz. On washing machine We don't even know where to begin with this, all of them look almost the same. We are also torn between front load and top load as we experienced the convenience of being able to throw in dirty laundry after washing has started but know that front load saves more water. Right now, we are inclined to LG front load as there was a mentioning of a silent motor... But really, we also figured that this could be some marketing terms so we will really appreciate any recommendation. On FridgeAt first, we were set on Samsung RL4013 purely because of the price vs the capacity (402L nett) and the stainless steel minimalistic aesthetics. The design is similar to Fisher and Paykal's stainless steel flat door fridge E402BRXFD4 (364L) which we quite like, just that RL4013 is much cheaper and bigger. We went around several appliance stores to take a look at RL4013, but find the suction pressure of the door weaker than other fridges. Then, we also read on hardwarezone and renotalk that some people ain't so happy with their Samsung fridges. Made us rethink our choice...Why F&P E402BRXFD4 so expensive One brand that stood out during the forum research was Mitsubishi Electric. Didn't think much of it at first because we find their fridge less aesthetically pleasing until we met this sales aunty at Gain City who kept recommending Mitsubishi Electric based on her years of experience in her own kitchen saying that having a chiller is very useful. But MR-F55E (451L) , the one we initially wanted, is so deep that we don't have enough space to cater for the depth so likely we will settle for a smaller one MR-F51E (418L). How I wish they can make Mitsubishi fridge prettier... The above is our preliminary choices for TV, washing machine and Fridge, if you have any good/bad experience with the brands/models above, do share. Will really appreciate it. Thank you in advance!

haha glad to know we ain't the only obsessed ones!

Do some of you have the same experience? We started to do odd things like touching the wood laminate at Burger King and counting the number of LED bulbs of a track light at a clothing shop's display. It is like once we start embarking on the reno journey, we tend to pay attention to how shops do their lighting, what laminate and materials do shopping malls use to achieve a certain look? Just wondering if other people also do that or it is just us being really weird. Or maybe while walking past nicely decorated cafes, you will take a second look at their table and chairs and might be able to guess where they might have gotten it from. Maybe we are too crazy. LOL Anyway, we just collected our Relite fans from Tai Yong today. The smaller 36" one looks so cute beside the 48" version! They use the same motor, only the blades are of different sizes., Also our Tecno SR128SV and Fujioh NL 900 are delivered! Can't wait to see all of them being installed!

Day 4 of our renovation. There was hood and hob delivery today, so I dropped by to check out the site as well. I am impressed by the progress. So exciting! Our sexy subway tiles... tiling in progress. Also the dry wall for the kitchen entrance is up. To cater for the depth of the shoe cabinet on the kitchen left entrance, we decided to extend out the wall. Building of the study has also begun. Electrical work up. We are using the white round PVC conduit because we don't like the normal trunking. For the normal trunking in the image, we will box them out. Cement screed to get ready for our craftstone brick wall. We will be overlaying the bathroom floor tiles with dark grey slate tiles. Toilet bowls and sinks removed! We will be re-using the toilet bowls and one of the sink (at the yard). I am not sure if some of you are like us, find the awkward gap behind the area intended for the media console a bother. We decided to fill this gap with what they call a gypsum wall so that our future off-the-shelf media console can lean against a flat wall since we are not doing any carpentry to conceal that. Thanks to the workers! yay!

Thanks for the insight! Will probably talk to my contractor more regarding this. All this discussion about shower door making us more aware of the potential issue with it. Good that we uploaded the progress. So thankful for the Renotalk community.

Hi YTMO, very nice looking place! Can I check with you for the bomb shelter door, what type of paint did you use. is that normal emulsion paint?

Nope we are having normal shower head. Not sure how much splashing there will be, so we will risk it for now.

Good point! Didn't think so much about the kid part. HAHA. not yet at least, but I think it is possible to add the door after when we decide to. Yea will probably buy a good floor mat as well.

About the request for our ID and reno quote, we won't be sharing the breakdown. We feel that it's like comparing apples to oranges and it won't be fair to Interior Kit and ZLC if someone brings our quote to them to bargain for a better price. Hope you understand. Just for a gauge, excluding ID fees and the carpentry in the living room shown in the designs, it is roughly about 40k plus. We feel that the quote is already pretty reasonable with the workmanship we are requesting of them. Do note that we chose to customize certain items like overlaying kitchen wall tiles and bathroom floor tiles, kitchen and bathroom carpentry, study glass partitions and brick wall. If you have a floor plan and would like to have a feel of how much your designs will cost. Do contact Jake and I'm pretty sure he will be able to help.

Actually not going to mitigate that other than just having a kerb and try to be less dramatic when showering. Both of us don't like glass door with hinges, feel that they tend to sag in the long run.

Partial shower screen. No door.

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.

Yep, we opt in for the insurance. It is 3% of the declared value.

In other news... I got electrocuted today while testing lights... Forgot that the test device was actually switched on, and I was grabbing the crocodile clips while it is connected to the light. I could consciously feel the current running through me and aaaarrrrrrggggghhh, till i let go of the clips. Honestly, my head got cleared a little. Like a refresh. LOL. Please be careful if you are going to do such test or any electrical work. Be safe. Don't be kuku like me go and touch the wire when it is on. Glad that I am still alive. It was quite a funny experience but won't try it again.

You are welcome. Forgot to take photo before opening the packages. Too excited...haha but these 2 posts I just updated should help. Good luck with your purchase! http://www.renotalk.com/forum/topic/65217-brick-wall-by-the-floor-5rm-bto-sengkang/?p=858897 http://www.renotalk.com/forum/topic/65217-brick-wall-by-the-floor-5rm-bto-sengkang/?p=858900

Depending on how bright you like your space. The following pic might give u a better guage. This is taken in the store room, door closed. Nothing else was giving illumination. 4 x 7 watt each. warm. I totally with you about the 12W. Very big - more suited for large retail spaces with taller ceiling. Regarding the 3W, our take is that the distance it cast is nearer, so the brightness might not be extended to the floor. This is a pic of the 3 different track light sizes. 12w, 7w and 3 w respectively. Door is open, so brightness is not representative. Hope this helps.

Lights 2 x pendants 1 x wall light 10 x downlights 10 x ceiling mounted lights and more lights! Those boxes you see at the left side of the standing light are track lights. Each box containing 1. About 15 of them there. And the long black bars at the back are the tracks, 6 of them there. The longest track we have is 1.5m, they are packed diagonally with the rest of our items so it fits within the 1 cubic meter. On the right of the standing lamps are the downlights. Very flat packed and small. We also bought trigger spray and valve tap, forgot to take the actual pic but you get a good guage my previous post about the taobao links. All of them came in good condition. All except my EKO soft-closing dustbin Dented from shipping! They didn't pack it well. Note to self and everyone: must tell your Taobao merchant to “请加厚包装，是送海外的。” means ... please add extra packaging, it will be forwarded overseas. Most tell you okay when you pester them on chat, but no promise that they will definitely do that. We are going to try claiming insurance that we topped up. Emailed Oops.sg, they say they will help follow up. Our poor dustbin. It was worse than this, we manage to pinch it back to shape slightly. Luckily, it is at the back of the dustbin, not so obvious. T_T