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Bought the kitchen sink from Hoe Kee. It's a good quality undermount sink with silent shield on the bottom to reduce noise when water drop to the sink. The price is ~$190, after top-up $10 to change the drainer with a better one with filter. I think for an undermount sink with silent shield, this is really good buy because most of the under mount sink we asked about is >300. For those <200 are without the silent shield. According to bathroom accessories sales person, the shield serves 2 purposes, silent of the water dripping sound, and protect the under from water condensation. Water condensation will happen because the sink is colder. When this happen, the cabinet below the sink will be very humid and in the long run will not be hygienic. Upper view: Bottom view (with silent shield underneath): Upgraded accessories:

The ID refuse to help us to alter the L-box curtain opening to be wider. He said need to bring down whole L-box to fix that, and more ever he has done up many new HDB (e.g. Punggol), and L-box opening all like that. We continue to pester him many times on this, and he told us that please let him rest well, and he already done up the cove light and curtain pelmet FOC for us and hope don't need to alter this coz this will add additional cost. Actually the L-box for living and passage-way is included in the package we sign, so not quite understand why he said so. Probably cove light is more expensive than just L-box? Anyway we decided not to pester him anymore and decided to talk directly to the workers when they come to install the remaining plaster ceiling at the passage way. Guess what? It works... We had took pictures of the L-box internal and show the ceiling guys, and they said it can be done! There is some metal in the structure, so need to sacrifice little area of metal support, but still okay. They fixed the curtain area in 10 minutes and we are so happy it's finally done. Haih, I think the ID just want to avoid the hassle and additional costs so just BS us... Actually the schedule supposed to be able to met just on time (8 weeks) if the carpentry is done right. But when the carpentry come, the dimension of the kitchen is measured wrongly. Supposed to be 270cm, but it is 265cm, less 5cm than discussed. See the photo below: There are 2 choices now: Choice 1: Redo the upper and lower cabinet to exact length - which means need to throw away some of the drawers and material wasted. Choice 2: Add some wood to make the cabinet length to as discussed so that it can align with the tiles. Either choice 1 or 2, they need time to change the carpentry so the kitchen cabinet wasn't ready when we move in. The carpenter is quite skillful actually, do a check on cabinets and they are well made, no peeling laminate at the edge. I've visited another contractor done-up house, and as compared I think this is better. But how come measurement can be wrong? ID said measurement is done by another guy, but I'm not pleased with this because he supposed to have double-check the measurement before fabrication.

Installation of master bedroom tinted glass door. Done! So fast and simple... Our master bedroom washroom is small (you can check out our floorplan), so the glass door might not be able to open fully to the bathroom without touching the wash basin. But luckily, the space is enough to open inside after installation! Just enough I would say. :-) So now the glass can swing both way, inside and outside of bathroom, didn't put a stopper to limit the movement now. Master bedroom built-in wardrobe internal shelving. Most of the shelves are installed, except the jewellery drawer with glass hasn't arrive yet.

Happy New Year everyone! Just to announce we have move in into the house, and count down on the New Year eve in the new house ^_^ The house is partial complete, but the electrical man has installed lighting for both rooms. This is the condition of the house when we move in: Just kidding. Anyway carpentry arrived, and it's still partial complete. Will post more pictures later. Here is the 2 room after laminate: - Master room looks much nicer after laminate, right choice for choosing the light wood color. I think the light flooring color make stylish grey wall looks acceptable again, and decide not to ask the ID to repaint the wall. The laminate flooring we are using is ACE floor, not sure good or not, but it's included in the designer package.

Haha, yups open kitchen makes the living room bigger. But yours will have benefit also la, don't need to worry the cooking smell goes to every corner of your house. We will not cook often, should be okay with open kitchen... Hey, saw your blog, everything is done and move it already. Congrats! Enjoy the new house you've there!

Haha, actually the promotion for December Christmas time is only everyday 1-2 items on special discount. So not worth purposely travel there just for that small item also because the transportation fees might be more expensive and troublesome. Looks like you have grab quite a number of items, shopping is great? I supposed for guys also, haha :-P

Not yet order but intend to buy one that slightly longer than the window so that can cover nicely. Might be using blind, but regardless which type still need more space than that I think.

Next step is the furnishing... We would like to go for all-white minimalism, so most of the stuff will be white and some would be wood like. Will be also looking for little items with splash of color to spice up the place. Inspiration will be Scandinavian or Swedish decoration. Here is the inspiration:- Place some pictures and "big" letter behind the sofa. Also intend to buy some green artificial plant to live up the place. For the rug, for practical reason, considering a grey/black or grey/brown color. Another example with lots of picture hang on the wall. Love the wood parquet for kitchen, if I have a second house, then I think I'll go for wooden tiles. So cosy!! White color cabinet. Love it. Also like the white light. Considering the Ikea maskros at the moment. The white kitchen! Like the black pendant light and the wooden color dining table. For dining table, I'll be getting either a wooden color or all-white table. Prefer wood at the moment. Also like the green toy very much. Saw one is Star Living! Not sure to get or not coz not very practical, haha... It looks like it can serves as a stool but I think won't comfortable sitting for long la. Just for fun I think.

Air-conditioner is installed. We bought the system 2 Inverter air conditioner from Best Tech IMM. Chosen Mitsubishi Heavy Industry because the sales person highly recommended this for energy saving. It is the most energy saving after comparing other popular brands like Panasonic,Mitsubishi Electric etc. Energy consumption is our top priority so we will go with this. Note that Mitsubishi Heavy Industry is not the same as Mitsubishi Electric, although they come from the same parent company. The latter is not as energy conserving. Gain City also carries the the Mitsubishi Heavy Industry Air-Conditioner. I googled about this online as not heard of this brand before this, and from the review should be okay. It cost us about $2100, and we top-up $150 for a stainless steel bracket. Best Tech promise will give good quality copper wiring and also Class'O insulator material, so the price is 'slightly' more expensive. After we had bought, lately we just found out from Internet that this company has some bad reviews. Anyway the installation went smoothly, and we haven't got a chance to really test it yet. Hopefully no problem.

Painting is done, place look neater now. The living room is almost up now except the wiring and downlight. We chose Nippon chalk white and Urban Grey for the wall painting. Urban grey is the lightest tone of grey in the Odourless series, and looks almost like white. However it will still contrast when put together with white color. We are satisfied for the living color. Chosen stylish grey for master bedroom. The effect is... khm.. darker than what I've thought? And it highlight all the unevenness on the wall. Now think back I'm so glad last minute decide to plaster the living room, else would be pathetic to see the living room wall look like this. I've chosen wrong color for the wall because the 3 walls in the room which is also not even does not look so obvious when it's painted white. Compare the plastered wall in the living above and this wall, it really makes a huge difference! I think it's really good money put into to plaster although it's not cheap. Now I think the effect is quite far from the grey wall seen from the furniture store showroom :-( Wish can repaint this wall to latte like the common room :-P

Like the lamp also! Very matching with your industrial theme...

Very bold color choices as well as design... ;-) Congrats for turning what you want into reality! Are you satisfy with the outcome?

Haha, I love the pinky toy also! So cute, can be a seat? Saw similar thing at Star Living. So colorful and cool... Do you decide to buy any of them?

This is what I think also. I would like curtain to be slightly longer than the window so that it will cover perfectly. Feedback this to him, and he said will fix lor...

Bought the Bekvam Step Stool from Ikea last week at promo price $19.90.. What a steal..! Always been finding reason to buy this because I like the design!!! It will be useful when accessing the top kitchen and wardrobe shelves, although a small stool will do the same trick. Most importantly it still looks good when "NOT IN USE". Haven't assembly it yet, it will put this "lego" in place when we shift in.

Things that are yet to be rectified: (1) L-box opening for curtain not long enough. I think at least need to be some distance from the window so curtain rod can be installed as shown in picture. Thought this is common sense? Not sure why it is done this way, puzzled. Any advice for anyone done L-box at curtain area before? (2) We think the tap for washing feet is too high. ID said this is standard height. Not sure can be rectified or not. Is there such things as standard height? Just a little too high than what we had expected. Would be better lower than the sink to look nicer. Let us know if you had any ideas about these 2 items.

By the way, our air-conditioner wooden frame has been fixed. It's fixed by contractor from town council. Can I say the Marine Parade Town council is super efficient? I just emailed to them to enquire and they have sent people to repair this straight-away. Thumbs up to them! Problem is I too busy to check email and also find another contractor to repair this due to the urgency. So end up both turn up at the same day. So finally we let the town council people fix it. For my own contractor, I need to pay $150 although nothing is installed. This is because they already done up the frame, so need to pay a minimum amount for the material cost (actual full amount is $270). Anyway things are settled, and here is the new aluminium frame for air-conditioner. No more rotten wood and I'm sure these will last for years, much better than the wooden one. From outside: From inside:

I can totally understand what you meant by something neat and tidy with less maintenance. When we look at showroom, many ideas are so exciting. I do love a lot renovation ideas, e.g. brick walls, wooden floor, chalk board wall, cement screed walls. But all these things requires maintenance and cost, so at last settle with things that are practical. And i find modern simple design are popular because they are easy to upkeep. Even small things like cove light, we thought over on the maintenance. Small insects might be collected up there, and after few years would be dirty and hard to clean up. However, we decide to do it because it will give a cosy lighting to the house. Also for sofa, although we like white color, but for practicality we will settle for a off-white color. :-) By the way, we don't specify a dateline. I don't want to rush him also, because I wanted a quality product. I just want it to be done up within a reasonable schedule, not in super fast schedule. And I can understand that December is a peak time for renovation, since the other IDs I've met up also mentioned similar things. Just that I'm expecting something around 6 weeks, not 8 weeks. Now we agreed 8 weeks, things are still delaying, and this is the last week and carpentry not yet up. We chased him over progress quite frequently for the last 2 weeks, things are progressing but it's still quite worrying. :-( He promise to get the kitchen carpentry up this Thursday and let's see. I had prepare for worse case now, move in regardless whether everything is done up or not. He need to acid wash and clean-up the whole place by end of this week so that we can move in. If minor stuff not done, will still continue after we move in.

Saw the Ikea promotion on the 18-piece dish set, are you getting it at promo price? Haha... Ikea having daily promotion now, we had grabbed only 1 item so far. It's the Bekvam step stool...

I would say change also. Condition quite bad from your photo.

Haha, I think you makes everyone start to worry because your progress is so fast... Can help me manage the ID also? :-P Ours one also start earlier than you but progress still slower than yours. Thumbs up to you and your ID. :-)

The things you've planned to do is more than us. :-) We don't have the false wall, and no full height mirror. Initially has a feature wall with full height black mirror, but at last we decide to cut cost and instead use that amount to plaster the wall for living room instead. I think the feature wall like make-up, definitely nice to have. However if foundation not done property (not plastered), effect won't be good also. So decide to go with just plaster and forgo the feature wall instead. We also didn't change the window grills and room doors. Only repaint them. The main door design is quite out (classic door), so we'll change that. Considering the amount of renovation you're doing, your schedule is really really good. Really excited to see your design turn into reality. Seems that you've done up quite a lot and should be total transformation! What is your design theme by the way? The ID we got from InnerView, IMM. They only promised to finish the project in 2-month time, is a bit longer than standard renovation time. We had paid $100 deposit initially after negotiating and quite satisfied on the renovation quotations. However we forgot to discuss on the schedule. So the second time, when we decide to sign with them, they told us about this 2-month schedule. But we already paid the deposit so it's a disadvantage to us if not to sign. Although $100 deposit is not a lot, but still something to hold us back. So my advice is not to pay any deposit first, e.g. to lock up the price, special deal etc. Remember must have a good feel that the contractor/ID can deliver the design you want and also within reasonable schedule, then only sign-up with them.

Painting work just started. Common bedroom is the first room to start:- Work in progress. First coat of paint is up... The color we choose is "Latte", a warm color suitable for bedroom. All the color we choose are from Nippon Odourless. The right one not sure what paint, thought all paint they use should be Nippon paint? Guessing that should be for painting ceiling....

L-Box is up, haven't painted. Now all patches of white and grey... The glass above the door has been boxed up, here is the before and after: Before: After: The L-box will left some space near the window for installing curtain. However the L-box left too little space, the curtain rod will need to be a little longer than the window, so need to fix this.

Oh yeah, at last... Finger crossed, this is one week from moving in... But more relieve when seeing progress everyday. Still have carpentry haven't up yet. How's yours? Haha, I think you manage the it very well... Your progress seems so fast. How long they state in the contract to finish the reno?