For the past 2 months, we were busy searching for the right IDs/contractors to put our dream into reality. These are the few IDs/contractors that we have met. YY from Diamon tif Interior Design: Recommended by a friend. Quotation is the lowest among the rest. He used to work in Absolook Interior when he did my friend's reno. We did not choose him as we feel that he is now having an ID firm on his own, we are not sure if he can produce the same standard as he used to produce when he did my friend's reno. Gavin from Summit Design Studio: Went to Summit because we read about the good reviews of Summit Design Studio in Renotalk. Gavin attended to us and we felt that he is a patient man. He showed no sign of impatience although he has not had his dinner and our meeting ended at about 9.30pm that day... His quotation was also among the lowest. However, we did not choose him cos we eventually decided to go for a contractor rather than an ID. Lauren Triston from Piuttosto Gallery: He is the master designer in Piuttosto and also show his enthusiasm in our reno by sending us msgs and pics on the ideas that we can have for the house even before we sign with him. However, we did not choose him as we eventually decided to go for a contractor rather than an ID. I find that his design has a bit of a different feel than others and I feel that his strength is mostly on modern minimalist. May have signed with him if our theme is a modern theme. Jia Wei: Saw his name on Renotalk by forumers. Hmm... we did not sign with him as we did not click with him. (For anyone who is interested to know the detail, feel free to PM me) Furthermore, he emailed us a few days after our meet-up that he is unable to take on our project due to some unforeseen circumstance... Mr K from H2O (contractor): Popular in Renotalk. The only person who gives us the confidence that he is able to produce the "Greek" feel in our house reno. I also feel that I will not have to worry too much if I engaged him as my contractor, as he has too many good reviews in Renotalk. However, as his quotation exceeded our budget, we have no choice but to drop him.... Alan Tan from AIAN Furniture and Reno (contractor): Popular in Renotalk. Our 2nd choice after Mr K. He was the ONLY person who requested to have our first meet up at our new house. While we are telling him our requirements, he was taking the measurement and giving us suggestions. We find him very hands on and practical. The reason why he is our 2nd choice and not the 1st is because he did not give us the confidence that Mr K gave. However, we also understand that Greek-inspired beach theme is not a theme that many IDs/ contractors are familiar with, so it is understandable why we felt that way. Secondly, he did not respond to our Whatsapp group msg after our first meet-up, so we were thinking that he may not be easily contactable if we were to sign with him. However, just b4 we gave up on Alan, he msg WX privately to request for our email add so that he can send the quotation to us. We then gathered that he may not know who the person in the group chat are as he is too busy to check against the names that he has saved in his contact. So after the meet-ups with the IDs/contractors mentioned above, we have decided to engage a contractor instead of an ID because we have a strong idea in our reno design and we felt uncomfortable when IDs tried to change our idea. Therefore, to save ourselves from struggling between ideas, we decided to engage a contractor. Alan Tan is our chosen contractor as we found him to be an honest and straight forward person. He is very practical and will advise you against works that he viewed as unnecessary. He will rather not earn the money than to persuade you to do things that you may not need. However, he will still leave it to you to decide. This is our impression of him after 3 rounds of meet up. Will share more of our experience with him in time to come!!