nottidotti

Hihi...will be parking here Love your home design...especially the "fortress". Very special! We also got 3D Conceptwerke for our Reno. Nice to find comrades at similar stages. Just complete our hackings and also pending our layout revisions. How I wished I am more hardworking on my updates like you both >.<

Been a crazy last week with all sorts of things that you never expect to happen within a single week to, well, happen. Mum falling in the bathroom, hospital, dad fainting, tenants shifting..sigh~ Glad last week was past, and all's well finally so that we can get on with the home reno. We did received our first 3Ds last week, and also at the same time we are considering on a revised layout. Those 3Ds will have to be revised. *Will upload to tonight. We also made a trip down to Mega Discount store to confirm our list of electrical appliances. Placed a nominal deposit...but hor, since it's GSS now, hubby wants to keep a lookout for lower prices around so can update MDS. Will update our appliances list later tonight..cos I have some questions on the kitchen stuffs that I have been searching for feedbacks. Maybe RTalkers here can help. Laters....

Oh..it must have been great to work with New for your home!But nope, we are not the couple. New did offered to bring us down to one of her projects to see. Perhaps it's yours? Did you do cement screed floors for your home? That was what New wanted us to see, cos we wanted to do that as well.

Thanks, forgot2bme! Yeah, open concept kitchen. I guess when you asked are you sure, u meant the fumes, smells and grease from cooking?? Well, I was also concerned, but we wanted a kitchen where friends/family can still exchange idle conversations while we are cooking and peek into the pots of yummies. And since we intended to have quite frequent cookouts with friends, closed concept kitchen may seem quite cramp. So all I can do is to be mentally prepared for more cleaning in the house (actually that will be more of hubby's mental preparation) and invest in a good cooker hood Are you considering an open concept kitchen too? Or currently experiencing having one?

Hey, thanks Lauer. Good to have someone share thoughts candidly. Well, the current proposed layout does seems rather weird initially, very open, and some areas seem bigger and out of proportion vs others. We thought so, so we took the layout to our flat and try to visualize the actual size of all the areas. And with that, the areas don't seem that big anymore...the bedroom, dining etc. Perhaps cos the walls are not down yet? Well, at any rate, we are quite comfy with more space We actually tried tinkering earlier too with the layout ourselves and had another version. Haha...if you are interested perhaps I can upload here to gather some feedback?

Yeah, we were also concern abt the aircon cooling for the bedroom. But, we don't really want to have another door separating the wardrobe area. So that's out. The solution we thought is to get a size 18 aircon (don't know if you will call that size, but I heard hubby talking about on about 9, 18 , 24 for aircon..if it makes any sense), and installing above the room door so that we get to be cooled first before the aircon flow into the wardrobe area. In fact, we don't think the wardrobe area will get much air conditioning unless the aircon is on for quite a while. Well, we'll speak to the aircon contractor and see what's he suggest as well.

As mentioned, my original floorplan vs the proposed one. Our initial concept for the Home was to go full on Industrial-style. But hubby was worried with it will be difficult to upkeep (or the lack of it), whereas I was a little bother by the gloomy feel of some such industrial interiors that had all concrete walls and floors. So we decided that we wanted a brighter and airier home with simple straightforward designs (read: easy to clean), but with industrial influences. And that was what we communicated to the IDs. At the same time, due to the age of the apartment, we had to do a total overhaul of the place. That includes changing the flooring, windows and doors, as well as removing all the existing fixtures. Since it is going to include a fair amount of hacking, we decided to make some adjustments to the layout configuration to include a walk-in wardrobe, a open-concept living/dining and kitchen area. Study is needed for me since I work from home at time. Our dilemma was how to incorporate the living, dinning and study area around the single pillar in the middle of the living area that cannot be hack and with the ceiling. In Will's layout we thought we saw an interesting use of the space and working around the problem, although I am still trying to figure out a way how to make the study area more private. Sigh...this is why I am starting to worry a bit now. 3D pictures will be out hopefully by next week and we will have better sense of this layout. Hopefully we won't be tweaking the layout much.*fingers crossed*

Finally did it. For Flickr users. - Select your image on Flickr. - Select the 'Share' icon (similar to the icon you see on iPhones) - Choose BBCode - Choose size (approx 640px is good for forum) - Copy the link generated - Paste directly into your post. (no need to use the BBCode button or link button on RT editor) Hope it's helpful

Hmm...have been procrastinating for a while to start this thread on our home. Finally decided to sit my a** down and start sharing our journey with you all. We are noob homeowners, so it is a learning process and hopefully what we share will be interesting and useful for you too. Do share with us too...especially those who are at the same stage as us, and those who had 'attained nirvana from this process Because I had procrastinated for so long before starting this thread, we had already finished on the early stages of confirming our ID...haha. One hand I am happy to get the ID confirmed and move on with the process, the other I don't suggest anyone to be like us. Despite reading so much from the 前辈s here about how to choose ID, we only applied maybe 20% of what we learned here and depended the rest on gut feel. Now, starting to worry and regret for acting so impulsively. Sigh~~ Time will tell, if our gut feel is reliable. So, in summary we contacted 6 IDs. Who did we get? 1. Space Sense We liked K****'s portfolio in industrial style so we sent him an enquiry. He replied to ask for our budget and requirements, then there was a long delay before he turned us down citing it is impossible to fulfil our requirements with our indicated budget. To be fair to us, we really do not know what would the cost for the intended renovation of our scale, so we mentioned an estimated of 35-40K hoping that our conversation can carry on and we can make more realistic adjustments to the budget. It is a pity that we were not given the chance to further our enquiry, or perhaps there was too much projects to handle for the ID firm. In another words, no fate with Space Sense. 2. BoxID Saw their work on an article from renotalk.com. Sent out an enquiry but no reply until a full month later. By then we are already in closing talks with the final ID so we did not proceed to meet up anymore. 3. Artist Room Read about them on renotalk, but no reply on our enquiry. 4. Three-D Conceptwerke One of their designer, Will, contacted us the next day after we sent our enquiry. Initially, I had my reservation because Will is not a local, and thought someone local will contact me since the firm is local. But not willing to discriminate, we proceeded to meet up with Will, who turn out to be quite an enthusiastic and friendly chap. It was easy to talk to him about the concept we are after, but we left the meeting feeling a little iffy if Will will understand what we really what and how he will propose the layout to accommodate what we want (will show below). But boy, we were pleasantly surprised by Will's proposed layout. It was interesting and quite similar to what we were thinking, only perhaps better. We were quite blown away. (And this is when our gut feel started to kick in over rationality...sigh). 5. New Nyew I really like New, and her hubby. We first visited New at her place, and both of them are very nice people. She spent 3 hours going through our floorplan and proposed her ideas right on the spot (even brought us to see her showroom in Yishun). She was also the only ID whom brought to site immediately following our first meeting to view our place, and she was the quickest with her response including the edits we requested to the initial proposed layout. Frankly, we were so closed to confirming with New had we not gone on to meet Will and saw his layout. I would still strongly recommend New to anyone who is looking for an ID 6. The Design Practice We found R****** from vincentinteriorblog.com. He was one of the recommended ID, and after viewing The Design Practice portfolio online, I found that he was the designer for a flat reno that I really like and bookmarked since the day we got out flat. Told myself my future flat can possibly look like that. Unfortunately, fate is not with us for R******. We waited long for his responses, and never get to fix down an appointment date. So, in the end, we decided to drop this enquiry as well. By now, you should have guessed it. Since our gut feel was so strong...we decided to go along with Will from Three-D Conceptwerke (TDC for short..lazy) Hmm....any renotalkers who had also used TDC before? Do share your feedback =)