NSW

my folks spent a good week or so packing up their stuff and when that, its time to let loose!

Brought my folks down to SBH to select tiles and laminates and the contractor generated the 3D drawings. Hacking starts tomorrow!

In seeking quotations, I provided some visual references for the contractors to agar-agar know what I wanted: and spelt out clearly what I wanted: Quotation to include lights, sinks, toilet items and built electrical items (eg fan and aircon) Floor tiles to be replaced, walls to be re-plastered and repainted, piping and electrical conduit to be redone totally Hacking and erection of new walls. Existing windows and window grilles to be disposed, and no grilles thereafter Kitchen to be resized, and the drop for the kitchen is to be delayed further North, and done through a slope across a 50cm ramp down Strong emphasis on practicality eg: no L-box ( to prevent insect/pest droppings) all flooring to be tiles (can be cheaper Chinese tiles if need be), track lights (for easy replacement of spoiled LED lights), ceiling fans (DC ones with LED room lighting), 2 individual electrical water heater (the unit does not have piped gas), all carpentry to be suspended for easy of cleaning, else built on raised cement/tile platforms (eg wardrobe / MBR bed). Will go for full induction cook hob to avoid needing LPG canister. Since I cannot oversee the project personally, was hoping to engage someone with a trustable degree of independence..

Hi all, [Tis sad to see that all the picture links in my previous t-blog are now dead] This was the first unit my parents bought as young adults, and housed my childhood memories. While nice, spacious, and sporting an awesome-sea view, its interior is also 31 years old. Timely for a revamp. It will be a full revamp, and will involve portioning a section of the big living room for a study corner. The MBR will take-in the old existing store for wardrobe. The "true" kitchen will be made smaller, and a freshly-designated dining area will be made more spacious with the hacking of 1 segment of the wall. Two rooms will be left unmodified, in case my family expands then I might consider swapping HDBs with my folks. I did a preliminary mock-up in sweethome3D. Time to seek quotation from interested and trusted contractors...

the best bets for photographs are like and the glass doors divide the dining from the study+living room the new wall eats into the current living room there is a metal stopper which is cut to length to stop the main door when its parallel to the 1.8m length shoe cabinet http://www.renotalk.com/forum/topic/60188-resale-4ng-bedok-north/page-3#entry811719 hope i answer all your questions..

the dryer has been a life saver. both my wife and I work so we dont really have the luxury of monitoring weather conditions just to ensure that our clothes dry out. it works very well and monitors the dampness to gauge the required drying time. the only time when some articles came out slightly damp still was when we overloaded beyond recommended capacity. but really washing and big articles like our king size bed sheets and comforter is no longer a daunting task haha. hob has been ok we havent done any deep frying yet (bought ourselves an airfryer) so it has been doing its job well. we like our combination of fire and induction. the flexibility is there. the induction is really easy to clean up and degree of heating is easy to control.

ho ho ho! season's greetings folks!!

haha thanks... I had to shift some stuff away to take the photos .. like eg some inner wear from the metal rack etc lol but thanks since it runs off city gas there is hot air being exhausted, both from dryer or the instant water heater. we just open our kitchen windows and it'd be fine. thats perhaps the functional advantage of the service yard in the latest flats but.. nah I'd like my space. (by no means might you be a photographer?)

Probably my last mega post .. hi fellow forumers.. as my reno project draws to a close, this is probably the last mega post i can afford to share out of our humble 92 sqm worth of living space. we survived the post-reno cleaning, the auxiliary furniture assembly, the mega house warming and finally we can sort of resume with life (.. or not... there is still the wedding eeks haha) presenting: finally, the stickers was approved! i think on hindsight we really love how it looks hehe bought a knocking-enabled digital peephole off g-market .. nifty little gadget really. also, liking how airy our shoe cabinet is like. after hosting our house warming with the buffet tables inside our dining room, i think our home is now gathering-certified lol. good excuse to start coercing all our friends to gather at our home instead. hehe.. placed our extra pendant lamp shade (bought to guard against cracks due to peeka shipping... which didn't happen) over my storeroom lamp and tidied up our very ... bare TV wall with cable ties bundling up the various cables. we intend to have the blue empty wall decorated with black-bordered photo frames of various sizes and orientations... the 2 sides of our MBR. we are quite pleased with our own handiwork for the curtain-over-mirror .. loving the cute prints. over at the other end, our fortune-spot. for now its a inactive safe deposit box with our combined soft toys collection. may we have more than enough to spend and still keep the child in our hearts =) our walk in wardrobe with an ikea shoe rack. however, we choose it for its slim width, makes it good for storing our towels and toiletries. the height is also rather ideal for toothbrushes... the mornings are quite nice in that we dont have to fight with each other over basin space. and the rain shower certainly feels very luxurious heheh,... our very functional kitchen. we have done some cooking already and so far we have no real complains about.. just about anything. despite it being a shortened kitchen, it still feels rather spacious. our fridge/washer/dryer placement is also very compact thus far. thank god for the dryer; given our unpredictable weather this season... we are also thinking of printing some vinyl stickers of maybe campbell canned soup design to paste over our huge drainer pipes next to the dryer/washer... our smaller common toilet. the dragon head tap is quite a crowd pleaser haha. AND ... thats about it folks! thanks for all the help and attention rendered so far!

hi there. great pre-planning and sourcing, you have built my ideal kitchen with all the stainless steel racks! hope you dont feel too swarmed by all the PM requests lol

haha comfort furniture..

Old TV plug if you open it up, its just a full cable running from roof to first floor.. i dont understand why the electricians die die didn't want to help me do so I DIY-ed: Left: OriginalCentre: the most my electrician is willing to goRight: DIY (heh) ..

we did our bed-settling on 24th aug and slowly proceeded to move in .. one the good things about having a usb tuner: checking tv reception across multiple points using a laptop heh my bad tv reception was resolved when the electrician checked the innards of the cable he used, apparently there was manufacturer's fault.. all the glass came in too. by that time, we have bought a ikea hemnes shoe rack for our toiletries and towel storage hehe... saw many of these stickers and wanted to use them for the door but none of them got approved by my wife haha... anyone has good ideas for unit number please share here! the last thing i want to use is the standard homefix type eeks.. speaking of door, in order not to have the handle bar crashing into the shoe cabinet, i decided to have it horizontal. I am not sure if it is choice-bias but im liking the look of it lol.. now that my PC and internet is up and running...i can resume renotalking!

They have been serving us well so.. no complaints =)

very very nice la #thumbsup

wow! grange road! the envy!

Hi I bought the table from Comfort Furniture, its 140cm for length.... http://www.comfortfurniture.com.sg/dining-tables/putin-dining-table

wow the overall design is very very welcoming and attractive...

today my old iron wrought gate was removed .. and replaced with another that is slightly less ornate, more clean cut and more black to suit our black window frames and black glass sliding door border and black haiku fan! During the installation, one of the 2 installers snooped around and remarked that their company is 10 years behind the current set of windows i have installed in terms of quality. When requesting for my signature the other remarked that the price i paid for the iron wrought was really low and if i knew the company's boss directly o.O" .. since I don't I wonder if they say this to every house owner just to make them feel happy The panasonic TV-mounting was also done today! Here is the sad thing: USB read and playback of media: OK CNA / Okto / Vasantham Reception: OK Channel 8 / Channel 5 / Starhub Preview Channel: Reception KNS! ANYone know the reason why? I assume if CNA is clear means the wiring cannot be wrongly done but the 'main' tv channels are really bad urghs .. Today my headboard was also delivered. And I cant resist posting pictures of my toilets hahaha...

haha so do we! yea the table is iconic right! just amazed that the glass top survived the shipping process!

hi its hard to tell you the "separate cost" of the study as it contains elements from different works (hacking, wall erecting, tiling, painting, carpentry, electrical works)

rectifications and last minute changes have been arising and our completion date now seems like a floating deadline rather than some fixed occasion we can look forward to. nevertheless some chunks of reno are still coming in to keep us happy, for eg the wall paper! now our beams really look like wooden beams haha Our dining table and bench from Comfort furniture also arrived. today was also the day we finish unpacking all of our taobao purchases, namely the coffee table (the glass surface is 22mm... ******* heavy if i may add) and the 3 chairs! looking good heh...

more updates... and we can definitely smell completion coming... As we near the date for the plumber's final visit, i quickly trotted down to sim siang choon to grab all the necessary stuff. went for no frills mirror and no frills drainer and no frills towel racks... and hoping chrome stuff lasts. somehow i have a natural adversion towards the chrome stuff but seriously the choices for stainless steel stuff were really very limited... heading back, the kitchen had a nice sparkle to it. YESH the quartz surface is in place and its really pretty!! haha .. cant wait for the FSM to advice on the time to set the hobs in. meanwhile, the wardrobe area is now fully fitted with the track lights! the spot lights (once again bought from taobao) were working very well indeed! ALSO quartz counter top for the MBR vanity hehehhe ... back outside, the carpentry for the study corner is now complete. i kinda like how the tube light casts that very triangular shadow against the floor/wall ... zooming out, the glass sliding doors are in place and all the LED downlights have been wired up! we are liking the look of it more and more; after all, its our own design heh.. lastly, this is how 300 hangers look like in our wardrobe! hoping to have enough for a long time to come!

thanks thanks! haha i was half-wondering if you contemplated the roundish tables with the chinese-chess or checkers layout before...

rain shower pic in post done on 31st july . works lo. my wife and I never had the luxury of a super high pressure rain shower so we are happy with how it seems thus far heh