vicx1234

Laminate selection for carpentry: We spent about 4 hours the other day discussing designs with our carpenter and ID, as well as choosing laminates. It's kindda the same as choosing tiles, the more you see and the longer you see it, it becomes harder to choose. Nevertheless, we would up quite happy with our choices as we feel that we stuck to our colour scheme and theme. For plank feature wall (rustic looking wood design) - the carpenter will be cutting individual "planks" of laminate before pasting it onto the feature wall. Can't wait to see how it turns out. For kitchen cabinets (wood colour for the bottom cabinets, white for the top) A closer look at the wood grain for the bottom cabinets (colour seems a bit different), which we will also be using for the full height display cabinet in the living room. The graphite colour laminate will make up the internal area for the open shelf in our display cabinet, for contrast of course. For toilet vanity and mirror frame, same for both toilets. The rest of the laminates will be black and white, so nothing worth showing there

thanks for the tip guys!

the homogeneous tiles actually look ok, quite a nice rich grey if you ask me. Could be something to work with. I would probably change the bathroom tiles though.

The good thing about Jimmy is that he's very easy to talk to and he's not like one of those grumpy old contractors who will give you that look if you keep changing your mind. So far he has been quite accommodating. Understand from your earlier posts that Mr K has not been his usual self during this peak period? But looks like you guys have turned the corner on the renovation and it should be smooth sailing for now! It's gonna be a slow couple of days here. Waiting for the evorich tile installation and carpentry now.

thanks songz, will ask my ID to look into it.

thanks alfredt! hopefully the tint will turn out nice, if too dark also not good thanks for the support jus4fun! haha . Btw who did you engage at 3D Innovations? Jimmy has been good so far and things seem to be done as scheduled and on time.

My ID is painting the gate for us for free, but I don't think he's sanding it down first. Is sanding necessary according to Alan?

Carpentry Works - designs and dimensions Our unit looks super bare now!! As previously mentioned, we were played out by my carpenter friend, so we only just confirmed the carpentry items and designs. We started off thinking that we would not have too many built in items, but somehow we've expanded the list of carpentry items to include full height cabinets, panels to cover the store room and shelves for the various room recesses. Here they are: L-shaped kitchen cabinets - the previous owner had an island but we did away with it. We will be doing top and bottom cabinets for the entire length of the back wall (which includes a space for our washer/dryer), but only bottom cabinets for the left wall. On the opposite of the left wall will be our fridge and baker's shelf from Commune. Should think we have more than enough storage here. Living room display cabinet / panel to hide bomb shelter - to hide the bomb shelter door located to the right of the entrance, we will be constructing a panel with a tic-tac door. The panel is then linked perpendicular to the display cabinet which will have a cut-out to serve as our bar. Can house my nespresso machine, wine bottles, wine glasses here. We will also be painting the leftmost panel of the display cabinet with chalkboard paint, so that we can dress it up with a menu description or misc drawings when guests come over. Nothing much, just some shelves and bottom cabinets to fully utilize the recess area located in the rooms right now. To be clad in black laminate to have some contrast with the wall. TV console and dresser for the MBR with attached WIW - part of the TV console will be suspended and our TV will rest there. That position will be right smack in the middle in line with where our bed will be. E's dresser will be to the other side, where she'll be spending lots of time I'm sure. Sliding doors to the left of the MBR entrance - basically this is what we will see from our MBR since we combined 2 rooms into 1 and converted one of those rooms into a WIW. We will also be going for black tinted glass doors as per the picture below. Really can't wait for the carpentry and pole system to come in, hate the wait!

Great choice of toilet floor tiles mellenur, and your furniture you bought is really fitting the theme as well. For the door frame at the toilet, our contractor cement screeded it before plastering over to make it smooth, thus we don't have any tiles there. Don't think it looks weird or is impractical imo. In your case, it hasn't been plastered yet so it still looks very raw. Should be fine in time to come! Judging by your selection of tiles, colours and furniture, your house will really be outstanding. Looking forward to more of your updates.

Nice gate designs! But I would keep the original gate and give it a fresh coat of paint in a vibrant colour perhaps.

Today was the first time in almost a month that I didn't pay a visit to our flat, only because there wasn't much going on. Not sure how many of you feel the same way, but I absolutely love going down to our flat to check up on progress and to see the house slowly taking shape. There's something really therapeutic about the whole process. Anyway, apparently subway tiles aren't as popular as I thought they would be. haha. For one, my mom asked me if we were going to change our subway tiles to something else (thinking they were old)....pengz Alas, she was not the only one. I think we've received at least a handful of those comments. Starting to wonder if we actually have bad taste! haha Also, I just wanted to say that even though our ID Jimmy has his shortcomings (e.g he doesn't have a keen eye for detail, and he may not be the most active project manager around), he has been wonderfully accommodating to us in terms of being available for lengthy meetings (yes our meetings stretch for hours even at this stage) and he has been rather responsive thus far all things considered. I haven't had too much difficulty finding him even though I've now made our 3rd tranche of payment to him, so previous comments about him disappearing after receiving payment appear to be overblown. I sincerely believe Jimmy is one of the more honest contractors out there, and he's very fun to talk to. I would not recommend him to someone who's very particular and fussy about the smallest details, but for someone who has a strong ideas about the direction they're headed and has time to go down to the unit to supervise or catch mistakes on occasion, Jimmy could be the contractor for you. Perhaps the reason why it seems he's not eagle eyed about everything on this particular project could be the fact that he's not familiar with Scandinavian or industrial designs? Heck, he couldn't even pronounce Scandinavian when he tried. In my very limited mandarin, I told him 北欧 style, so hopefully when he takes on such projects in the future, he'll be more familiar with it Oh yes, your Chinese needs to be at least half assed when engaging Jimmy, cos his spoken English isn't the best. He did however mention that he has had Filipino clients before, and how they got around was through lots of finger pointing, body language and "you want this? yes? no?" haha So far Jimmy has performed right about at expectation, though I had hoped that we could have come up with less energy and supervision ourselves. Still, so far so good and I don't really have any major complaints. After all, he did save our *** with the carpentry.

hey retchlow, I've been meaning to ask where you got your wonderful yellow ladder from? Looks like something that would go really well in our home as well

Thanks retchlow! Talk about the best of both worlds right? The raw and edgy look of cement yet without the maintenance and upkeep usually associated with it. Win win! YTMO also has the same floors btw, though in a darker shade, also very nice.

Actually I've also been wondering what exactly is acceptable workmanship and what is not. I guess it depends on how obvious something is? If it's something that can only be found upon closer scrutiny and provided that it doesn't bring with it any other risks such as water damage, potential to breed pests etc, it should be ok? I probably need some guidance on this myself too. Everything looks to be going smoothly for you this last stretch. Huat ah!

Thanks for the lead! Just had a quick browse, and it does look like they carry some nice stuff which incidentally I've also seen on taobao, the only difference being you can see, touch and feel the actual furniture. Might head down one day since we are still looking for a lounge chair. I suppose you will be buying more stuff from that store? Their prices seem reasonable

Hi plainsharon! Thanks for stopping by. You know what, I actually headed down to hommage after seeing the sofa in your blog (yes I was one of those silent readers before), especially since I work a few blocks down the road from hommage. I agree the material is better since they are using premium fabric, but unfortunately the downside was that the covers were not removable! We figured we'd probably have to wash our sofa covers every once in a while since I admittedly am not good with Singapore's tropical weather (i.e I sweat, alot). I actually plan to remove the covers at some point and bring them to an upholsterer to replicate another set, in a colour and fabric of our choice. That way when we get bored of it, it's as good as getting a new sofa!

ooh the papa bear! how much and where? Congrats btw, you've just opened the floodgate of purchases Many more to come!

Hi guys, does anyone here know of a good painter who knows how to paint over aluminium window grills properly? Please help! My window colour is pretty fugly.. Thanks

More views of the space: View looking into the MBR. In a month or so, you should see a dresser table with a mirror above it. Contrast between living room and kitchen tiles Expanded views of the living room area. Pardon the dirty floors, it really doesn't do justice to the tiles! Will take more pictures once the place is cleaned up and when the Evorich tiles are laid.

Progress pics: False ceiling with provision for cove lighting up in the MBR Guest toilet tiled and box up of pipes done. Ignore the dirty floors, they're supposed to be black. Liking the shower niche - good for storing shampoo bottles and such without having to buy those stainless steel baskets or glass racks. Kitchen tiles on one side of the kitchen up, we're not doing the other side. Our sole accent wall for the master bedroom, should go really well with our choice of bed frame fabric (light blue) Finally get to see the cement screed lookalike flooring after weeks of hiding!!

Reno updates (almost at the 1 month mark): Completed Items: - Tiling has since completed (except for the Evorich HERF which will be installed next Monday) - Running of aircon trunking and drainage pipes done, although with a lot of headache - False ceilings up - Rubbish cleared (finally! the place was looking like a dump) - First coat of paint just went on Things left to do: - Install EVORICH HERF flooring - Install carpentry works - Install lights, switches and faceplates - Install aircon - Move furniture and personal belongings in - Move ourselves in and start life anew Problems that we've had/encountered so far: - Complaints by neighbours: Immediately after our 3 day hacking permit ended, some neighbours started to complain about the noise going on in their estate. Got so bad that our HDB estate manager called me up personally to ask me to do something about it. Of course, I threw it to our ID to handle it and asked him to apply for an extension of permit. Problem solved, but in the spirit of good neighbourliness, I wrote and sent our personal letters to the units above, to the side and below and asked for tolerance (nicely). - Kenna played out by my carpenter: We had originally decided to use my old contact and carpenter friend to carry out our carpentry works instead of giving it to our ID to do. He promised us that he had cleared his schedule in order to accommodate our house carpentry, but in the end slotted in more work and told us he could only deliver the works at the end of February at the earliest. Felt a bit played out and stranded because our ID did not know if his carpenter could take on the work. Luckily, our ID did good by contacting his carpenter immediately and arranging for the measurements to be taken. The good thing is that he didn't take this opportunity to make me a "carrot head" by quoting an exorbitant price for the works, like I'm sure many other contractors would not hesitate to do. +1 point for our ID. Sometimes, it's just easier to let your ID handle everything albeit at a premium. It simply saves you time, stress and some brain cells. - Aircon trunking: We chose E's uncle to be our aircon contractor because of family ties and the fact that he was known to be reliable from past experience. But the problem here wasn't to do with the quality of the work, but rather a total breakdown in communication between us, our aircon contractor and our ID. It went a little something like this: we communicated our wishes to the aircon contractor, our aircon contractor liaised with our ID without keeping us in the loop, and our ID assumed that the aircon contractor knew exactly what we wanted without further clarifying with us. Some details got lost in between and the aircon guys started work getting stuff completely wrong and ran the trunking and drainage pipes all over the place and completely opposite of the way we wanted it. The red circle represents where the hole was supposed to have been, and the yellow circle depicts where they drilled the hole wrongly. Almost a disaster! Luckily I caught it in time and called my ID immediately. The thing about my ID is he's not always around to supervise, so sometimes you're left to catch the mistakes yourself. I think he can and should carry out supervision better for his customers in the future. - Colour of the windows: Not a major problem in terms of executing the renovation works, but we can't stand the look of the original HDB orange windows. Is there any way we can paint over this? People keep telling us that we can't. - Size of the toilets: There are serious limitations to what we can or cannot do within the toilet space as it's just so tiny! We've had to scrap some ideas as a result. Admittedly a renovation could be much worse than that described above, so I thank the Lord above that we've gotten this far without too much drama. Let's hope it all goes smoothly from here on out.

Hi LynnzIq thanks for stopping by. I didn't actually get those lights pictured in the mood pic, but I believe these guys carry it: https://www.facebook.com/likelights

I would second greg and retchlow's opinion. While track lights can look aesthetically pleasing to some owners, it may not be the most practical option especially if you do cook often. If you use LED track lights esp, the light beam is typically narrower and more focused, although the more expensive types (think they call it COB??) with reflectors are better in that aspect. Still, you don't want to be bothered by the lack of light in your kitchen where presumably, you need brighter lighting so that you don't run the risk of cutting yourself or serving raw food. If you really like track lights, you may consider positioning them directly above your kitchen counter instead of the middle. That being the case, you may consider adding general lighting to supplement the lighting, at the slight risk of making the lighting arrangement slightly cluttered.

Hey guys, we're trying to find some nice black or gold door knobs/handles for our MBR double door. Does anyone know any shop which carries nice designs for cheap?

Thanks klimoo! That was extremely useful indeed, guess what our contractor was saying was correct after all. Initially we had hoped to just see the door knob without any of the locks or hinges etc, but guess that's not possible. Btw, could you pm me the cost of your door please? Thanks!