Simplicity @ Costa Ris

[Simplicity @ Costa Ris]

The Outcome (so far)

Time lapse! The renovation is a long journey and I'm going to skip the boring part and go straight to the stage where the vision and design is in it most tangible state.

There are still lots to be recertified by Nick (as you can see there are still stickers all over) but at this juncture the outcome is pretty satisfying

Sourcing of Lights and etc...

The lights shown are all sourced from Taobao and with lots of my other furnishing such as bed frames and sofa are all going to coming over from China as well.

I have zero issues with the lights other than a blown bulb which is easily replaceable. The cost savings justified the risk and so far all of them are working great.

I will share more when more of my furnishing arrives.

[Simplicity @ Costa Ris]

The Introduction

Time for me to share my renovation journey after much persuasion from my ID.

Pardon me as this is going to be an abridged version, but feel free to post / PM if you need more details on any aspect.

The Site

Our family gotten a flat at Costa Ris in 2011 and finally received our keys earlier this year.
We are kind of late due to administrative hiccups and by the time we received our keys, a good portion of our neighbours have already moved in.

We thought this site is really quite good despite it being on the eastern edge of Singapore. It is rare to find a site that is walking distance from a main MRT line these days.

The Floor Plan

We opt for a 5-room flat as we intend to stay for the long haul, thus more space the better!

We are happy with this layout as it gives us a long rectangular kitchen. The down side is the master bedroom is relatively small.

From the onset we already have an idea to have an open kitchen concept by knocking down the wall highlighted in red.

The Design

Love wood, love simplicity and sleekness.

These principles seem to be embedded into mainstream Scandinavian design and we'll go with that.

Some pictures that we collected on our Pin board that make us say "Yea we want to live in a house like that!"

The Interior Designers

We met up with a few IDs in an attempt find the right one.

I hate shopping for IDs as it gives me the same sick feeling when we are shopping for wedding studios, pre-sales promise you everything, post-sales give you everything else.

As we do not have a clear cut idea of what we want to be done, we find ourselves comparing apple to oranges as different IDs have different ideas, which translates to different Bill of Materials and different cost. Meaningless.

In the end we chose Nick that used to be from Renoguyz. He is different, he talks to you about fishes, flowers and bikinis.

Deciding factor is that he is frank and not afraid to tell you what is nice and what is not.

And now he have an assistant (Benny) so they remind me of Batman and Robin, which is always nice but I digress.

The Plan

As we did not opt for any of HDB add-ons, we pretty can choose anything we want which is nice. The bad part is that we have to choose from anything under the sun.

Long story short, we settled on a plan to have the following key features:

Kitchen

• Two row of cabinets and a breakfast bar top
• Subway tile backsplash
• Granite countertop
• Cement Screed walls
• Hacking of HDB tiles
• Lay with tiles of our choice
• Hacking of wall between kitchen and living room

Bedroom

• Custom Wardrobes for all bedrooms
• Study table and overhang shelves (aka the head cracker because I knock my head so many times on it) for bedroom 2
• Cement Screed floor
• Classic doors for all rooms

Toilets

• Full overlay of tiles for both toilets
• Vanity top for MBR toilet
• Aluminum full louvre doors for both toilets

Living Room

• Extension of Breakfast top to a dining table in the living room (Nick's proud invention)
• Feature wall: Brick overlay at TV area
• Feature wall: Wooden Plank wall
• Shoe Cabinet

Others

• Electrical works
• Flooring tiles + labour
• Painting, chemical wash and yada yada

The indicative cost was about $47k but the final figure is being recalculated as there were adjustments along the way.

[Ceiling Fans & Lights (Led)]

Hi Bro,

I'm on a lookout for the following:

3 x Ceiling fan w lighting for bedrooms

2 x ceiling fan for living and dining area (don't need lighting)

Am looking at Crestar brand however open to recommendations.

Thanks.

[5 Rm Bto @ Costa Ris]

Hi neighbour, sorry to hear about your situation and respect your positive deposition despite all the challenges.

Possible to PM the ID in question so I can avoid giving them business unknowingly?

Thank you.