alprakas

I got this tile from Soon Bee Huat, near IMM... I think this was around 4++ per sqft... But be mindful that tilers charged me extra to lay down these days since the edges are not straight... And I could see that cutting these tiles was nowhere nearly as easy as cutting other tiles..

Hahaha That was indeed the idea! But we also knew that this is also be difficult to keep clean. Since I take care of the toilets myself and cannot stand dirty toilets, it was not an easy decision! So far, been using it for more than 6 months now.. seems okay for now. My wife likes the leafy tiles on the wall and I like the one on the floor.. Since we could not decide on one of them, we got both.. as you see hers is on the wall.. and mine is on the floor.

You mean this one? Yes, these are designer tiles that we installed in our master toilet.. There is a lot of texture to this tiles...

Hahaha Well, most of the wet works like tiles, flooring, painting, most of the carpentry stuff was already done before we shifted in. Some electrical work, kitchen counter top, splash back glass, carpentry touch ups, etc. was left over when we moved in. The headache was when we had to re-varnish the parquet in the 3 rooms, stupid contractors did a lousy job twice. 3rd time was okay. But the smell of the varnish is unbearable really, we didnt go inside the rooms for more than a week. Had to sleep in the living room. Anyway, most of the time the contractors clean after themselves, not very well, but to some extent. Then we had to let our vacuum cleaner run around the house frequently. Ask the contractors to cover the floor and nearby stuff whenever anyone drills, else the dirt is hard to get out from some floors, like vinyl or wood grain tiles. And clean slowly lah. We are still dealing with house stuffs 6 months in. Arranging things, buying and fixing things here and there in the house all the time. PMed you...

Ah yes, in fact I had to move in while some of the renovation was still going on.. Paying rental was getting too painful! Been staying at my new place for about 6 months already..

What apps u use for the 3D? Free app called sweet home 3D. give it a search on google and you should be able to find it easily. Sorry, I do not know the capacity of the bath tub.. The important thing for me was its size and honestly, it just barely fits into my master toilet. I worry, if they every need to service the tub for any reason, dont know how they are going to do that.. :-)

Well yeah, that is surely a good point, but I really do not trust Wi-Fi for stable connections or lack thereof. Lets see, likely the wallet will dictate the number of points in the end.

Thanks @ricepapergirl Actually I think I am pretty good at bargaining! Hahaha We also had a lot of things to do over the weekend. Went to harvey norman millenia walk to settle the bed stuff. We had already purchased our mattress and bed earlier, this weekend was to select the color and type of bed frame that came with the package. So that is settled now. Next stop was the hob/hood/oven purchase. We ended up buying a Brandt set for the hob/hood and also a Brandt pyrolitic oven; all three items from gain city. Hopefully they serve as well. Now, the next target is all the toilet stuffs and the kitchen sink. Hopefully, this weekend we can finish all of that. Both me and my wife work on Saturdays, so we only get Sundays together to do all the shopping, so it is always a rush rush to get everything settled within a day every week. Can you also pm me the price for all the WCs that you bought, if you dont mind.. Thanks!

hi, need to buy ceiling fans for my resale hdb flat.. Can you please forward me your latest catalog with prices? Can I install 56 inch fan in a 2.8m by 4m common room? Thanks!

Wow, this helps a lot @ricepapergirl. Thanks a lot! I should have done this a little while ago. Right now, I will not have time to order online and wait for the packages to arrive, it seems. I will visit Aqualife and will just have to pay the extra for quick delivery. Today we have time to visit a few shops, hopefully will come back with a lot of items. Thanks again!

Thanks GallopingPuffin! You are right that the new sockets/switches are the expensive ones.. Also, I want to put LAN point in every room, for that they have quoted me 150 SGD per point. Seems quite expensive as well. Lastly, for fan installation since I currently do not have any points to hang the fan, they are charging almost 150-180 bucks for each new fan point. Sigh.. the costs add up to quite a bit that way...

Only the Lan is Cat 6 ethernet cables. I plan to have the LAN point in 3 bedrooms as well. For the living room, the router is generally there.. So there is no need to have another Lan point in the living room I suppose. Thanks ricepapergirl.. Yes I am still worried about the water seepage, but I suppose we will have to live with it.. The evorich guy did insist that their Vinyl is waterproof, NOT just water resistant.... I confirmed with the guy several times about that. But to be honest, I dont care what they say.. I do not really believe that it can be water proof! So we will just be careful in mopping up any water spill on the kitchen floor as soon as possible. As it turns out, my Cat 6 quotation is identical to yours. I was not clear earlier. But it is indeed 150 SGD per point. Since I was planning to do 4 points, they quoted me 600 SGD. Even so, I find it really expensive.. I mean, how much do Cat 6 cables cost anyway! 150 SGD per point seems like a complete rip off.. But what to do, it is not as if we have a lot choice in this. I am not really doing any rewiring.. But yes, quite a few power points in the kitchen.. so that will be expensive.. no choice.. I am going to talk to one more electrician next week.. Lets see how the other guy quotes..will update then

Hi ricepapergirl, just wanted to check with you about the Aqualife shop vs. the Xtwostore prices for the hansgrohe products... Were the prices significantly different? Can you maybe give me an example for one of those items.. I need to buy for my house as well, except I probably do not have enough time now to order online.. How long did it actually take to get to you guys anyway? Thanks!

I know it has been a very very long time since I updated this thread. I suddenly got very busy at work, then the renovation started a couple of weeks ago. So far the hacking is done, tiling almost done.. Now moving to flooring. I ended up doing Vinyl for the living room, my new wardrobe area and even the kitchen ( long story about the kitchen). Selected Evorich HERF for the Vinyl. I so wanted the wood grain tiles instead in these places, but we really could not find any good looking wood grain tiles within our budget. Plus the tilers wanted to charge us exorbitantly for staggering the tiles and excessive wastage. So I decided to do Evorich vinyl for the living room and the wardrobe area. Saved us more than a thousand bucks when compared to tiles. For the kitchen I still wanted tiles because of the fear of water sipping through the vinyl. So that was decided. The first day of the renovation, the hackers came over and hacked all the necessary things; they were done in three days and they left. After they left, my tiler tells me that they cannot overlay tiles in the kitchen since the house shelter door cannot open after overlaying. I was furious with my ID. The guy had been to the place several times by then and still did not identify this problem. He told us about all the other doors that need to be adjusted after overlaying, but forgot about the one door that cannot be adjusted/touched at all. Anyway, so he says that he will arrange for the hackers to come over and hack the tiles, but they will charge me another 600 SGD for hacking and hauling off the debris. Then I thought of Vinyl and suggested to him, first he refused saying that even with overlaying vinyl the door cannot be opened. I showed with the vinyl sample I had, but he insisted upon calling the evorich guys to confirm. I agreed that it was better for the evorich guys to come and confirm. So they came and confirmed. In the end, I confirmed that we will do vinyl in the kitchen as well. After all said and done, they finished the vinyl flooring yesterday; these guys are fast! they finished in less than a day for about 600 sqft area. I went in the evening after those guys left, it looks nice, but at some places it feels hollow. I am told that it takes a bit of time to settle down, so lets see. I hope it does not feel hollow for too long. Here are some picture of the Vinyl floor, please excuse the lousy quality of the pictures itself though. Now back to the tiling, we are putting in a lot of effort in the master toilet itself. We went to soon bee huat and hafari several times and multiple branches. But the first time, we liked two tiles a lot from soon bee huat. These two tiles were part of the same series, but the problem was that I liked and my wife liked the other one.. So we had to compromise in the end: Here goes: See what we had to do there, I got my tiles on the floor and my wife got her special tiles on the wall! The work is still ongoing, so they haven't cleared all the debris from there yet.. The one on the floor can be difficult to maintain though, as in since there area grooves in the tiles, bad things can get stuck there.. Plus the tiles are dark, which can make them hard to see.. But I clean my toilets myself quite frequently, so I will just have to make sure that they are clean everytime.. Thats all so far.. I hope I wont take this long to update the next time. What do you guys think? By the way, I am kind of struggling with the electrical stuff at the moment, the electrician with my ID quoted me 4K plus for all the electrical items, including laying the Cat 6 cables in the 3 bedrooms. The cat 6 cables itself was quoted at 600! Really, is it that expensive? If you guys have some cheaper option there, please share! Thanks a lot guys..

Thank andotang for the information. Yeah that was my thought as well. Not sure what these guys are upto... I have asked another electrician to come and take a look this coming Tuesday, lets see what they say... By the way, how much do you think they charge for installing a ceiling fan with lights? Thanks!

Hey Guys! Just wanted to check about the Legrand sockets and switches, do you guys remember how much did they charge you per socket? I just got my electrical quotation and it looks crazy.. 4K plus, I have no idea why so expensive, so I am trying to understand that.. Thanks!

Yes, I asked him for sure. He said that the tiler charges extra because the planks need to be laid out in a staggered way and they need to ensure their straightness.. Apparently that is a lot of effort, not to mention that they have to lay more tiles in the same area. Moreover, these tiles apparently do not have smooth edges, so the tilers have to file/cut them before laying down; which requires even more effort.. All in all extra 80 cents psf.. May I ask you the average psf cost for your flooring for the living room+3 bedrooms? Or maybe just tell me the total square feet of these areas.

Heyy GallopingPuffin! Wanted to ask you something Bro.. I noticed that you selected floor tiles which 15x75, want to ask you if your contractor charged you extra for tiling these tiles, as opposed to tiling a 30x60 or a 30x30 tiles? Any ideas on this! my contractor insists that they have to charge me at least about 80 cents/psf, if we selected a plank tile, such as 15x60 or 15x90 etc.

Sorry guys, been a while since I updated here.. I guess all of us are celebrating the Chinese New Year.. Me just celebrating the holidays.. we came back from a quick overseas trip late last week, lot of pending work right now though.. all business as usual.. Anyway, we will be collecting the keys soon, so I hope the work will start soon and there will be lot more updates here! And Happy belated Chinese New Year to all of you! Hey twinklecloud, Thanks! It is actually quite fun to use them, given that one has enough time.. For the kitchen drawers, can you tell me more about song cho please? Havent heard about them.. would be nice to compare prices with Excel... Actually I decided against vinyl flooring in the end... Likely going to overlay tiles on the existing tiles, I know it is not the preferred solution, but sometimes no choice...For Vinyl, I cannot shake the feeling off that water might go inside through the click-based interlocking mechanism and moulds will grow underneath! We have almost decided the ID, this week going to collect the keys first, then we will make our final decision... lets see how that goes... Haha The WIW wardrobe, I hope it turns out as well as we hope.. All depends on the contractor and his carpenters in the end I guess.. Hey OceanEleven, for sure I would like to view.. can you please send me some pictures! Very appreciated.

Yesterday we went to Excel hardware shop in Admiralty street, Sembawang.. D@mn they have an extensive collection of kitchen drawers, many of which look quite useful.. I want to ask you experts if there are any more shops like that, that we can check out?

Thanks Fatcat, one more question though, how long did they provide you the warranty for the waterproofing in the toilet leh?

Hey Fatcat, I see, so did they do any extra waterproofing in the kitchen before overlaying the tiles? Thanks! Yesterday, I went to my unit with a contractor and he spotted a big crack in the ceiling just on top of the hob/hood area. I hope this can be rectified by the current owner before we get the keys in about 3 weeks time... Lets see.

We will only be getting our keys in the last week of February. I went to Hafary this last Sunday and saw the Wood culture showroom there, but apparently the lady working there was on leave. So I could not talk to anyone to convince me in favor of Vinyl. I will likely go with tiles and just overlay on the existing floor. Hopefully, they dont pop out anytime soon... Fatcat: no no, I hope that doesnt happen...

Hi Malaxo and Lazyfatcat007, all the IDs are also suggesting doing a Vinyl overlaying. But I just can't shrug off the fear or water going in through the vinyl and making my floor smelly... Which brand of Vinyl have you guys used by the way? Thanks Fatcat, really dreamt of having a bathtub in my house for a long time.. So hopefully we can get this one... Does anyone have any experience with this brand by the way? SSWW.. this is the company for the whirlpool bath I am looking at.. Hi Yakult, yes we also had the same discussion a few times.. In the end we decided to have that and add a day bed in the living room near the window to double as a settee as well.. let's see how it turns out in the end...

Hey guys...not many updates these days.. Still looking for IDs and contractors. Unfortunately, everyone seems to be busy in either finishing their renovations jobs before the CNY or in the CNY itself. Anyway, tomorrow I will be going to Hafary to check out tiles collection. One thing, I have been considering is to overlay tiles over the existing homogeneous tiles for my living room and wardrobe area.. I know, it is not exactly recommended because of the tiles popping issues, but it really saves a lot of money these days for that.. Otherwise these contractors/IDs are quoting a lot of money for the hacking and then laying the tiles even for just the living room and the wardrobe area, close to 7K for 520 sqft. I have no idea, why is it so expensive to lay tiles. Actually, the hacking itself is not that expensive, less than 1K. But laying of tiles is almost 10-12 $ psf. Is it reasonable, with a $3 tiles selection? oh, and by the way, I want to install this bathtub in my master toilet! http://www.sswwbathroom.com/Detail.aspx?id=28 What do you guys think? I have taken the measurements and it checks out. I hope no big issues crop up though...