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dreambeast

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Posts posted by dreambeast


  1. Will be designating our 2nd bedroom as a wardrobe room too! but w additional study table as well. Just to check, are there any special things to note when planning the interior of the wardrobe? TIA!

    Not really. We scoured the Internet and also went to IKEA to look at their wardrobe layouts and sketched a similar design for our contractor. Here's a guide picture we got from the Internet:

    gallery_58707_247_23639.jpg

    Hope this helps ;) !


  2. Some of the things we did for the house, we simply got from the respective contractors recommended in Renotalk without much research. Saved us a lot of time :thumbs up: .These include curtains (J&B), aircon (Hong Huat Electrical) and racks (Yee Sin) in the bomb shelter.

    Bomb shelter racks from Yee Sin:

    gallery_58707_247_18144.jpg

    So far so good. Thanks for the recommendations, fellow forummers! :good:


  3. Aside from the dining light, we have three types of lights in our house. There is the simple 38W energy saving round type of light that we used in all our bedrooms, living room, kitchen, service yard and bomb shelter.

    gallery_58707_247_61278.jpg

    We changed the ballast from the default magnetic one to an electronic one so that the lights come on without flickering. In hindsight, I feel that 38W is not bright enough for my living room, and will be looking to change to a 50W in the future. For all the other rooms, 38W is good enough.

    We have 2 6W LEDs in our bathrooms. They are super bright! :good:

    gallery_58707_247_146603.jpg

    We like LEDs and would have outfitted our whole house with LEDs if not for the price. Branded LEDs e.g. Philips are pretty expensive and would have cost us near $2000 for the entire house! :jawdrop:

    Next, we have the small halogen lights that illuminate our bedroom entrance, corridor and main door entrance.

    gallery_58707_247_55008.jpg

    We seldom turn on these halogen lights, although they give out quite a nice effect when they are on :rolleyes:.

    As you can see, most of our lights are cool in color except for the halogen lights which are warm in color. Colors can greatly affect the ambience of the room. If you are doing serious stuff e.g. cooking in the kitchen or studying in the study room, you probably want cool color lighting. Warm colors give a very cosy ambience and can be good for the bedroom or living room.

    Our lights were bought from a shop called Choon Ying in Kaki Bukit. Aaron brought us there and assured us that they are one of the cheapest in the East. We thought their prices were reasonable but the range of lights they sell are rather limited. Also, we had two of our 38W lights changed after they stopped working within two months, so I think the quality of their products is also suspect. Nonetheless, they do have free 1-for-1 exchange within 6 months, so it is not that bad, just a bit of hassle.

    You will need to budget in the cost and installation of the lights when doing your renovation, as they are additional items usually not included in your contractor's quotation. Cheers! :thumbs up:


  4. We had thought that room colors will be relatively easy to choose, since we only wanted white walls. However, we didn't expect there will be so many different variants of white! :unsure: Also, we were deciding between Nippon and Dulux, since these two are the more popular and trusted brands. Price-wise, Nippon seems to be more expensive than Dulux. Of course, it also depends on which product range of the selected brand you go for. It is VERY important to specify the range of paint in your quotation. If you just specify Nippon, the contractor may just use a cheaper range of Nippon paint e.g. Vinilex 5000. You also need to check how many colors they are limiting you to for your entire flat (sometimes only 3 and you have to top up for more paint), and how many coats of paint you are paying for (minimum should be 2, some contractors do 3). If you are hacking walls, consider getting your contractor to put a layer of wall sealer over the affected walls before painting over them.

    Eventually, we settled for Nippon Odour-less EasyWash. Nippon has 10 different variants of white. We picked Sail White for our living room and study room, Orchid White for our wardrobe room and Lily White for our master bedroom. Sail White looks good, just like the white we imagined :good: . However, Orchid White and Lily White do not look like what we see in the catalog :o! The differences are more dramatic in real life when you are looking at an entire room painted with the color compared to just a small box in a catalog.

    Orchid White in wardrobe room looks more pinkish than expected:

    gallery_58707_247_23097.jpg

    All in all, we were fine with how the painting turned out. But if you think you are very particular about the colors in your rooms and want them to be as perfectly as you imagined, it would be good to drop by on actual flats with the same color you are planning to use. Ask around on your project Facebook page if there is one, or consult your contractor :lol:. You could also check out your neighbour's flats when they are doing their renovation. However, do be polite and ask first before going in uninvited!

    • Like 1

  5. nice intro, great tips on the stuff to look out for, ideas for the design and where to source for the various items. Thank you.

    jus to check with u, the 16k u mentioned, is inc of the cost of the items done by sub-contractor you self source ? like the flooring that one ?

    how is the coordination like between you, the sub con u find, and the main con ?

    Aaron is okok with such arrangement ??

    I am curious as I heard a sub con saying that he prefer to be intro to the main con.. then main con direct coordinate with him.. then he will charge to the main con while the main con charge to house owner.. cos he got experience that he work as a sub con direct under house owner.. end up the main con 'bully' him..

    any such events ??

    Hi Frederick84,

    16K excludes the flooring and aircon.

    Aaron is our main contractor. He has stated upfront that he does not do air-con so we were told to find our own aircon contractor. We did our own coordination with the aircon contractor. And our flooring salesman, Kenny, is his friend so it was easy for him to coordinate. The rest of the work was done by Aaron's team of sub-contractors.

    I think it is not advisable to have too many sub-contractors working directly under the house owner, especially if something goes wrong and they start blaming one another and refusing to rectify their own defects. At least, if you have a main contractor, you can just tell the main contractor to sort the problem out with his own people. It will be less of a hassle for the house owner.


  6. One of the things you have to decide for your bathrooms is the type of water heater you will need. The two popular choices are instant heater and storage heater. Depending on your floor level, most HDB flats have only average water pressure. If you are planning on using rainshower, which needs higher water pressure, you will need a storage heater. Storage heater also provides hotter water than instant heater because the water is stored in a tank and heated before you shower, whereas instant heater heats the water as you are showering.

    For instant heaters, you may choose to install a heater for each bathroom, or a central one that services both your bathrooms. The advantage of a heater for each bathroom is that you get hot water faster because the heater resides in the same bathroom. In the case of a central heater, you will need to wait for the water to be transported to your shower if the central heater is not in the same bathroom as your shower. If you get a gas central heater, you have to install it in the service yard because gas leakage can be dangerous in confined spaces :o ! If you get an electrical heater, then there are no such restraints.

    We went for a gas instant heater (Ferroli) and installed it in our service yard:

    gallery_58707_247_46386.jpg

    Because of the distance between the service yard and our bathrooms, it does take a while to get hot water after we turn on the shower (~30s).

    If you are looking to get a gas heater, you can visit the Citygas showroom at Triple One Somerset, or look out for their roadshows. They are constantly having promotions (e.g. vouchers, discounts, waiver of gas pipe installation etc.). However, do take note that they do NOT do installation of water pipes from the heater to your bathrooms, so you will have to get your contractor or plumber to do that.

    Also in our service yard is our washing machine (Samsung):

    gallery_58707_247_170347.jpg

    Washing machines come in two types: front-loading and top-loading. The advantages of front-loading is that they usually use less water, are gentler on the clothes (resulting in slower wash cycle), and can be stacked together with a dryer. The advantages of top-loading is that you can add in clothes to wash while the washing machine is working, and have a faster wash cycle.

    We bought our washing machine from Mega DIscount Store and quite like it because it "sings" a funny tune when it is done with the washing :lol::lol: !


  7. Bathroom wash area:

    gallery_58707_247_39522.jpg

    We switched out the default HDB basin as it was too small and bought a new one from Wasser Bath Pte Ltd (Geylang Rd). There are a few roads in Singapore where bathroom/kitchen stores cluster at, namely Geylang Road and Jalan Besar. Wasser Bath, on first glance, may seem expensive, but they have deep discounts, and after comparing prices and quality with other stores at Geylang Road and Jalan Besar, we decided to get our basins and bathroom accessories (caddy baskets, robe hooks, towel racks, toilet roll holders) from them. For bathroom accessories, they usually come in matt or chrome. Matt is generally more expensive and has a duller look, but water stains do not show up on them. Chrome is shinier and more attractive, but they also keep water stains on them easily.

    Poh Seng (Jalan Besar), on first glance, also seemed slightly expensive and the lady boss wasn't very friendly (in my opinion), but their listed prices were inclusive of GST, which they actually waived during purchase. We got our bathroom mixers from them. I feel the most important thing is to get one that is heavy. Try weighing the mixers that you like in your hand and go for the heavier ones.

    GR Link Marketing (Jalan Besar) had friendly service and OK prices so we got our Crizto kitchen sink and kitchen tap from them. Initially, we shortlisted the Blanco sink from Hoe Kee, but it seemed to be very popular and was out of stock. We had thought that the sink might be too big for our kitchen (it's 850mm long) , but it turned out fine and I was glad we did not go for a smaller sink :thumbs up: . The huge washing space is really useful! Also, you need to decide if you want hot water for your kitchen. If you do, you need to get a kitchen mixer. If not, you can go for 8a normal kitchen tap.

    For the bathroom cabinets, it was done by our contractor. We chose the same color as our kitchen cabinets, with soft-closing doors. One important thing to note is you can get your contractor to adjust the height when they install the basin for you. I find the default height of the wash basin too low.

    The bathroom mirrors were purchased from Song Cho at a sale price. We got our kitchen rail and basket from them too. Usually, the stuff in Song Cho are rather expensive, so we did not want to buy much stuff from them. But they are known for their quality stainless steel products.

    There are other oft-mentioned stores that we visited but did not buy anything from e.g. Sim Siang Choon (wide range of products in their Changi showroom) and Hoe Kee (quite popular too) so you can also check them out when you go shopping for bathroom/kitchen stuff. Remember to ask for discounts! :)


  8. This was the hacking modification we made to our flat:

    gallery_58707_247_60542.jpg

    We hacked away an L-shaped part of the original wall and replaced it with glass. Then we customised a wall-mounted study table from our contractor, made to specifications. I was rather anxious about the result, because I have not really considered the practicality of this design. Would it work? :unsure: We were relieved that the result was as we envisioned, and no major problems arose during the process. There were so many things that could go wrong e.g. hacking not done well, cracked walls, fragility of glass, quality of the study table etc. The hacked wall and the glass had to be perfectly aligned but we understood that it would be very difficult to do so. Naturally, there were some gaps between them, but our contractor used silicone to seal them so they still looked fine.

    I liked this design, because it makes the living room space look larger. In addition, I like to be able to look at the TV when I am using the computer in the study room. It is also easy to watch the main door from the study room if you are expecting guests. As I mentioned, the tricky part is really conveying your idea to your contractor, and work closely with your contractor during the whole process.


  9. The sofa area:

    gallery_58707_247_27606.jpg

    Our sofa is from Air Division, during a 30% sale. They only accept full payment upfront as the sofa color will be customised for you. They have a rather nice collection of furniture so you may want to drop by their flagship store at Wilkie Road to take a look. Another of my favourite stores will be Grafunkt, which has a store at Park Mall and the (less accessible) flagship store at Playfair Road. We got our coffee table from there, during their 20% sale. Cushions are from MUJI, which are admittedly slightly expensive, but they have a real nice feel when squeezed :lol: , so we just went ahead and bought them without much consideration. I believe you may be able to find similar ones at Spotlight.

    The TV area:

    gallery_58707_247_88856.jpg

    You will notice that we do not have any feature wall or console table. That was because we did not want to have too many built-in cabinets and walls that will reduce the size of the living room. Instead, we opted for smaller and moveable pieces of furniture that can function as the console. The two pieces of "consoles" (Kartell) were bought from Space Furniture at Bencoolen Street, which is simply a HUGE, amazing and exciting showroom with lots of nice designer pieces! We fell in love with many of the pieces there, but could only afford to bring these two back :lol::lol: . We were lucky to get them at their end-of-year sale period!

    We bought our TV (Samsung) from Mega Discount Store, which has generally cheaper prices than the usual mega-stores in neighbourhood shopping centres. I especially liked the glass frame around the TV which makes it seem like a picture hanging on the wall, especially after wall-mounting it. Since we have no feature wall, we had to hide the cables somehow. We bought a cable pipe from IKEA, painted it white and voila! Cables not so ugly now :good: .

    Other than the places I mentioned above, you may also like to check out Lifestorey and OM (both at Tai Seng). They had some nice pieces, but unfortunately, we did not see anything that could fit both our budget and taste. Of course, remember to try to get your furniture during sales periods, which usually have the biggest discount at mid-year and year-end!


  10. Most people like to hack the wall between the master bedroom and the adjoining bedroom, so they can have a walk-in wardrobe in the adjoining bedroom. We initially had the same idea too, but decided against it, in case we have guests staying over. Saves on the renovation cost too. We designated that room as our wardrobe room. We got our contractor to build a 10ft long full-height wardrobe with soft-closing doors and drawers. Pretty pleased how it turned out :good: :

    gallery_58707_247_97381.jpg

    This room is also where we do our ironing and laundry stuff. One thing to take note when doing full height wardrobe with casement doors is to make sure that when the doors are fully open, they do not hit your ceiling fan or lights! We do not have any ceiling fans in our home, but some of you might. If you have sliding doors, then you will be fine but generally, sliding doors cost more than casement doors. Also, you will be unable to see all your stuff in the wardrobe at any one time if you are using sliding doors, because one portion of the wardrobe will always be blocked by one of the sliding doors.


  11. A picture of our kitchen:

    gallery_58707_247_114024.jpg

    First thing we insisted on is that the cabinets are all flushed, with no protruding handles or knobs. Secondly, we insisted on soft closing cabinet doors and drawers. I was glad that our contractor and his carpenter managed to achieve both our demands! Selecting the worktop material for your kitchen is another chore, just like selecting your flooring. There are many choices in the market but the three most popular choices are:

    - solid surface

    Generally cheapest but need to take care while cooking. Recommended for light/non-kitchen users.

    - granite

    Tougher than solid surface. Limited colors. If you like the natural look of stone, use granite.

    - quartz

    Generally most expensive. Seems highly recommended and all those who have used it have no complaints about it.

    and other less popular ones including marble, glass, concrete etc. After deciding on the material you want to use, you still need to choose which company's product to use. For example, for solid surfaces, you have LG Hi-Macs, Corian, just to name a few. For quartz, you have Caesarstone, Zodiaq, iQuartz etc. Or you can just go with your contractor's choice of supplier.

    The worktop we selected was a Corian solid surface which was a little more expensive than budgeted, but so far we have no issues with it. The installation was smooth and was coordinated between the Corian in-house installer and our contractor. To be frank, I feel that no matter which material you use for your worktop, if you take care of it (by wiping stains off diligently and not put hot stuff on it), it will last. If you abuse it daily, it will not last. Simple as that.

    Our fridge:

    gallery_58707_247_177755.jpg

    Initially, we ordered our fridge from Mega Discount Store, based on measurements from our floor plan. However, the reality is - your flat will be smaller than it is supposed to be in the floorplan :angry: ! We wanted our fridge to flush with the side of the entrance so that it will not protrude out. Our selected fridge has to be thinner than 650mm, which pretty much eliminates 95% of the models in the market! When selecting a fridge model, other than the volume (personal choice) and tick rating system (choose those with 4 ticks), you should look at the energy consumption too. A 4-tick model from Hitachi and a 4-tick model from Panasonic may differ greatly in energy consumption. I have observed that Hitachi models tend to have one of the lowest energy consumption in the market. Also, in general, the more drawers a fridge has, the more energy you will save. But of course, you will observe that the price goes up along with more drawers :lol::lol: . Happy fridge hunting!

    • Like 1

  12. One of the first things we shortlisted for our home was a dining table from FrancFranc, which we grabbed during their 20% sale. We had to find a dining table less than 1.5m in length due to our flat design, and also something that looks Scandinavian i.e. white and wood.

    Dining area:

    gallery_58707_247_126769.jpg

    The dining light is from lightings.com.sg, which is quite popular in these forums. They were having a 10% discount. The chair is a copy of the iconic Eames plastic chair, which we bought from Star Living. There are many copies of this design out there, from Picket & Rail and XTRA, all selling at different price points. The pricier ones will be sturdier and heavier. You get what you pay for :) .

    Our aircon contractor is Tim Wong from Imperial Distributors Pte Ltd. They are widely recommended in these forums. We purchased a Mitsubishi Starmex Inverter System 4 from them to have aircon for all our rooms (we don't intend to have fans). Although I think their price is on the high side, I have no complaints about their service both before and after the installation process :thumbs up: .

    One of the many things we got from IKEA was a shoe bench:

    gallery_58707_247_193428.jpg

    People usually think of IKEA stuff as cheap and skimping on quality. While I generally agree (I think their mattresses and sofa are terrible :bleah: ), I will still buy their stuff if it fits in with my design vision. Personally I avoid IKEA for big-ticket items e.g. sofa, bed and only buy from them those smaller, easily replaceable items in the house.


  13. I'd like to talk about my contractor, Aaron. Among all the quotations we have gotten, his was the lowest generally (no one contractor will quote uniformly lower than the others - they usually have some low prices in one area e.g. carpentry and make up the "loss" by marking up in other areas e.g. hacking works). Our quotations ranged from 16K (Aaron) to 33K (one of the ID firms recommended by friends). For the same amount of work done! Our renovation included hacking a L-shaped wall between the living room and study room and replacing with glass, carpentry for wardrobes, bathroom and kitchen cabinets, study table, doors, painting, plumbing and electrical services, service yard windows, among other usual stuff like warranty and general washing before handing over.

    As I mentioned about trade-offs in a previous post, there will be a compromise between quality, speed and cost. In this case, I reckon it will be the speed. We took about 3 months to finish the renovation. Also, Aaron just started out so he is not very experienced. But we thought we could work with that since we knew quite strongly what we wanted and just needed to rely on him for his contacts.

    All in all, I thought the work done was decent. There were hiccups along the way and after we moved in, but Aaron will get his workers to rectify any problems we found. I will recommend him to people who know what kind of design they want and are not in a rush to move in to their new flats :rolleyes: .


  14. The most expensive purchase in our flat should be justifiably the bed, since we spend more time using it than anything else, say the sofa, or TV. We visited the usual suspects i.e. Sealy, Simmons, Serta, Englander, Dunlopillo etc. I find most of the mattresses in their respective hotel collection comfortable, but prices vary. We had an initial budget of 3K for the bed. We planned to put a king-size bed in our bedroom and nothing else. Wardrobes will be placed in the adjoining wardrobe room. With the size of HDB flats nowadays, you can hardly put a decent sized wardrobe and a king-size bed in the same room :lol:.

    My personal favourite was a mattress from Sealy (marketed as Merlot) but the price was about 3.3K. We were hesitant to increase our budget and decided to shop around more. When I came across a model from Dunlopillo which had the same feel but only cost 2K, we immediately put down a deposit! :thumbs up:

    Our bed (with bedside table from IKEA):

    gallery_58707_247_89496.jpg

    I learnt a lesson from this experience of buying a bed. Humans tend to associate high price with high quality and vice versa. I tried a 10K mattress from Simmons (Beautyrest Black) and it was indeed very luxurious and comfortable. But I checked myself and wondered how much of that perception is real and how much is actually psychological. So to be more objective, it will be advisable to tell the salesperson your preferred feel (soft, medium, hard) instead of your budget. Lie on the mattress first and decide if it is for you, before you check the price, so you will not be unknowingly biased.

    As a side note, bed sizes in Singapore are a tad different from the rest of the world. Our king size is 183cm x 191cm, which is shorter than the usual king-size in hotel rooms in other countries. Both Sealy and Simmons have models that come in longer lengths i.e. 198cm and 203cm at extra cost, of course. Might be an important detail for taller people :). Ah, I might be tempted to get me one of those beds someday, but that will be another bed for another house :lol::lol: .


  15. As mentioned, to get part of the Scandinavian feel right, we need some wood-looking flooring. So one of the first things we had to decide on was which kind of flooring. The different kinds were:

    - laminate flooring

    Simply a photograph of wood on top of a synthetic piece of flooring. Can pass off as real wood to an average person. Generally cheaper and easier to install than the rest.

    - engineered wood flooring

    A mixture of different types of wood in a single piece of flooring. I believe that it has the properties of solid wood minus some of the cons of solid wood because it has been processed.

    - vinyl flooring

    Seems similar to laminate flooring except that it is more water resistant. Compromises on the feel.

    - solid wood flooring

    Real wood in every sense. Have all the pros and cons of wood. If you are very particular about the feel of wood beneath your feet, then you will need nothing less than solid wood flooring.

    and a couple of hybrids like HERF (marketed by Evorich) and more exotic flooring (bamboo, linoleum). I have even seen tiles that look like wood (from Hafary).

    Initially, we wanted to go with engineered wood flooring. We were planning to do wood flooring for all the bedrooms and living room. However, contractors were quoting us a figure of around 10K for the flooring! Then, we chanced upon Supreme Floors, which specialises in laminate flooring among other things. I did a quick research of Supreme Floors online and seems like most people are satisfied customers. We met one of their sales executive, Kenny, who was friendly, helpful and wasn't pushy at all. Laminate flooring comes in different thickness (8mm-12mm) and toughness (AC3-AC5). After some deliberation, we went for the thickest and toughest they had, seeing as flooring is quite a permanent part of our house. We settled on a price and paid a deposit. The total amount will be less than 4K, we were reassured.

    After we started our renovation, we confirmed the colors for the flooring. As we wanted the living room and the adjoining study room to look spacious, we chose white wood color for them. We then chose champagne color for our private rooms i.e. the wardrobe room and bedroom to have a warmer feeling.

    A look at the flooring in the living room:

    gallery_58707_247_80186.jpg

    And a look at the flooring in the wardrobe room:

    gallery_58707_247_32434.jpg

    Naturally, we need to research on how to take care of laminate flooring. We bought a 3M microfiber super mop, which can be used dry and wet. Usually, we will need to clean the floor twice, once using the dry mop to pick up dust, and then second time we will use a mixture of vinegar and warm water. I have read that it is essential not to leave puddles of water unattended to, especially near the skirtings and parts where the laminate floor connects to the kitchen or the bathrooms.

    After renovation, there were some gaps in the skirtings which were not done well. We called Kenny immediately to rectify and he was responsive, getting his workers to do it on the same week. So far, we are satisfied with his services and will recommend him to anyone who is looking for laminate flooring.

    With anything else, there will be trade-offs, regardless of which flooring you choose. So as long as you know the pros and cons of your chosen flooring and can live with it, I'd say that's good enough :good:


  16. Hi all,

    I have been wanting to write about my renovation experience for a while now but have been putting it off until now :lol:. We took our keys back in July 2013 and officially moved in in Nov 2013. This forum has been a great source of information for me and I would like to give something back to the community. Hopefully, it will be of some benefit to anyone who is reading this :).

    First of all, the floor plan:

    gallery_58707_3_20018.jpg

    We started researching for our renovation since 2012. We read forums and flipped through home decor magazines at the library or bookstores etc. Take pictures - they might come in handy in future when you meet with contractors. A good idea is to write your notes in Google Drive so you can access them anywhere. We also kept a spreadsheet with all the quotation breakdowns from the contractors/IDs we contacted. This keeps things neat and easy to compare. Do include the prices of everything else you will need to budget for e.g. furnishings, electrical works etc. In this way, we knew for sure how much we spent in total for renovation (including all hidden costs!).

    Try to know what you want before going around asking for quotations. For example, we knew (after looking through countless magazines :) ) that we want a Scandinavian look for our house. That means:

    - furniture with simple and clean lines

    - bright, open spaces

    - light-color themes

    - wood-looking flooring

    - minimalism

    In short, there are lots of planning and research to do even before getting your keys. Do walk around home exhibitions (regularly at Expo) and furniture stores (IKEA). Shortlist the stuff that you like. Take note of prices and put them down in your budget spreadsheet. We had planned for a renovation budget of 40K (including furnishings) and I was quite proud that we spent within our budget AND did not compromise on the Scandinavian vision ;) .

    Preview:

    gallery_58707_247_160444.jpg

    I will try to narrate and dissect our renovation process in future posts in this topic so stay tuned! (I am rather slow in writing, so bear with me, hopefully just need a few weeks! :lol: ).

    P.S. In the meantime, you can head over to my wife's blog (http://yunzhijian.blogspot.sg/) for pictures and her views on our renovation (YES she has already finished her blog!! And I am still on my first post!!)

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