Hi everyone here. I recently engaged Defong to carry out the Reno on my resale flat, and the renovation was completed about 2 weeks ago. Just wanted to share my experience and commend Arthur Lim from Defong for the quality of work and overall experience. We got our keys to our 3 room serangoon resale flat on the 9th of April 2014 and work started the next day. Work was completed by 23rd May, with some small touch up jobs running into the week after. We moved into our place on the 31st of May. The Reno Proccess: The work we needed done Hacked wall in between kitchen and living room; Hacked wall in between toilet and shower room (this is the old-style 3-room flat where the toilet and shower area was in separate rooms and the sink was outside)/ and combined toilet and shower area; Hack and redo tiles in kitchen and whole bathroom (including walls); Hack tiles on kitchen wall and re-plaster and paint (we didn't want tiles on the kitchen walls!) Install laminate on top of tiles in living room and bedroom; Hack and remove kitchen cabinets and bathroom fixtures; Hack and remove bed room wardrobes; Install L-Box lighting in living area; Install kitchen cabinets, toilet accessories sinks etc; Re-do electrics and plumbing; Change all interior and exterior doors; Paint whole flat. Searching for an ID/Contractor From the get go, we did a lot of research on IDs and contractors. I had a number of quotes and met with about 5 IDs. Of all the quotes Defong was the most reasonably priced. When we met with Arthur, he seemed very thorough and was able to highlight certain requests that would be problematic (i.e. against HDB regulations). When we spoke to other IDs, they all seemed to just say OK... even if the request was not possible and they were really oversell what they could do. But with Arthur he was always very sincere. And would recommend more cost effective options if they were available. He was also very clear and up front about all the costs, and true to his word, I can attest that from the initial quote, there we no hidden/additional costs. Arthur was also very responsive. As part of the quoting process, replies were always prompt. . The Reno Job Overall, Defong was very efficient, completing most of the heavy work(hacking/tiling) within 1.5 weeks.The tiling jobs were flawless. When we got the flat, it was in pretty poor condition as it had been rented out previously and probably was not shown much TLC. So we knew that we would have to gut the place and start again. Throughout the Reno process Arthur always maintained a can do attitude and replied to all our WhatsApp messages within the hour. We had quite a lot of weird requests as my husband is from the UK, and hence used to having certain things a bit different (e.g. the bathroom sink a bit higher, no tiles on kitchen wall etc.), and Arthur was very accommodating, even if we did not make our preferences clear from the outset, he would still try and meet our requests at no extra charges. He was also very helpful with providing suggestions, and never pressured us into making decisions. Another plus was that Arthur is very effectively bilingual, which was very important, as sometimes my husband had certain requests, and to be able to convey it in English to our ID was a huge benefit. Some Strong Points The plaster job on the kitchen walls was fantastic. We kind of wish that we had plastered the whole flat given the quality of the work. Likewise, the tiling was also very well done, every detail was attended to, even the tiniest corner of skirting was attended to. The electrician was every good too, providing advice on where to place power points and doing a good job of keeping the footprint of the trunking neat and to the minimum. Finally, the carpentry work was finished to a high quality. Without even asking, all kitchen cabinet doors were provided with soft close hinges and drawers too. Some Learning Points As complete noobs to renovation, we knew that there would be some hiccups along the way that we couldn't anticipate. For us there was nothing major, another kudos to Defong and Arthur for the good job done. There was just one minor mis-communication/ over toilet fittings: We didn't think to discuss with Arthur initially on where we wanted certain items (e.g. the toilet sink height/ the positioning of the shower heater etc.), so Arthur went ahead with installing the fittings, without telling us when, and assuming that it would be standard height etc. The only real problem was the the sink height was a bit low for my husband, so we asked if it could be moved a bit higher. Arthur was very accommodating and understanding and tried his best and managed to move the sink higher. After that, we were a bit more pro-active telling him ahead of time if we had a particular preference for something. Another problem we had, which has nothing to do with our ID was that the aircon man from Gain City who did our aircon installation, really messed up the installation (making it very ugly with trunking running in the middle of the wall on 3 out of 4 of the walls in the bedrooms. Luckily Arthur was very understanding and organised for work to be halted for a few days while we got our aircon problem rectified. Concluding Points: Overall, we are very happy with Arthur and Defong, the renovation process was as smooth as we could have hoped for and came in on schedule (we asked for it to be completed in 6 weeks), despite the delays. Arthur was always polite, and was upfront and responsive if there were any problems. He has a very can-do attitude and no request is too small. Having trouble uploading pictures. So please PM me if you would like to see some.
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