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It's been a good 10 years since I last log in to RT; the last time I did, it was for my first home - a 4 room HDB. Reno was done through a recommended ID through my friend (who had her home done by him) and I have to say, it was a 8/10 experience except for minor hiccups then but nothing serious. Workmanship was impt to me and I am glad i got past that part since all the carpentry was still holding up well by time I sold my place. I learned plenty back then and from many masters hidden around the forum but how things had changed; now, it's all about TB shopping =) Time flies, a home for 2 evolved and went to 5 by 2013; needless to say and with every Singaporean's dream, I have to upgrade. I started calculating budget, monitor the property market and worked on convincing my in laws to let us move in with them. Luckily for me, it all worked out. I managed to convince the in laws, got what I want for my place from the 2nd viewer and hit on my choice unit for my new home; all within 2013. Fast forward to Jan 2016, I got updated that my new place will most likely TOP by this year and somehow, the most natural thing to do was to login to RT AGAIN. Going through all the blogs one by one for the past few months was tiring - especially so when i see so many wonderful new homes being done up; just watching the photos and reading lobangs shared is enough to make me drool with envy (you know that feeling of wanting to get things started immediately). Reading blogs after blogs do have it's benefits: 1) Taobao lobangs and links and "How to buy" 2) All reliable and updated ID/ Contractors contact I have since bookmarked quite a fair bit of TMall and TB links, as well as contractor/ IDs contact. To be honest, I am not the patient sort and will not have the time to go ID sourcing every weekend around Balestier, Ubi etc hence getting reliable feedback and truthful sharing from members here are impt. Having spend the last 3 weeks reading, I have narrowed and will work on getting quotations with the below 4: 1) J&E 2) Mr F 3) K 4) Renoguyz I will be sharing my experience once I meet them all soon. My floor plan below

Hi there! After spending months trawling the renotalk forums, and learning SO much from all you regular posters, I'm creating this t-blog to give back to the community by sharing my experience. Hopefully my 2-cents will be useful to some future home owner Renovation for our place has just started, so future updates will show progress of our home as well! Cheers, Alvin

Finally bought my own flat and i'm really excited about it. Not really into any specific style, but i like something simple, clean and neat. I shall share my reno experience here. Here's my floor plan: Before renovation starts: Reno began last Friday, with the hacked wall, to turn it into an open-concept kitchen. Plastering the kitchen and hacked walls To be continued......

Hello everyone ~ After years of waiting, finally I got my keys to our new home. We have chosen a 3 room BTO, it's small I know... but with 2 years of info gathering in this forums and other platforms, we believe we can make it into a comfy abode! Contents (To be updated soon) Shopping list a) TV b) Oven c) Cooker and Hoods d) Fridge e) Air-Con f) Bathroom accessories g) Laundry system h) Wifi remote controller i) Ergonomic furniture j) Other interesting stuff Completed Looks a) Living room b) Kitchen c) Bedroom 1 d) Master Bedroom e) Common bathroom f) Master bathroom As part of my job needs, I travelled quite abit and get in contact to many interesting home living concept that really helps make full use of space. I believe it is possible to enjoy comfortable living even with small area. Let's begin with the floor plan.

Hello all! I have been a silent reader and follower of this forum since my fiance and I received our keys in May 2015 - we have been kinda chill about this so the process only started proper last month haha. Before I begin, I would really like to give my biggest heartfelt thank you to all the bloggers here who have shared their experiences because it has helped me so much, if not entirely in my own process. We are halfway through the renovation process now and I thought I would start writing about our renovation journey and hopefully, our experience would help all of you in your own exciting experience. The initials of our names form WHAT - hence the title ahha. We are both easties at heart so imagine our joy when we successfully applied for a sales of balance BTO in the Bedok area. It is about 10 mins walk to Bedok MRT, and we ain't got a good view (unless you count having a free show of watching your neighbours go about their business as one) but I gladly sacrificed that so that we could still be in an environment we grew up in. So here is our very humble home layout - a 4 room unit. I guess you could call our theme scandustrial (are you bored of this already?) but I love the woody warm feel, mixed with a little bit of industrial (black framed glass and wirings), and marble-tops - I will just let the photos do the talking for the inspirations. I guess you can say I am into a lot of white, grey and brown shades heh.

Hello! It's been really interesting reading everyone's journey in renovating their homes. Thank you for sharing all your stories and tips! Now it's our turn, as we have to move to a bigger place. With four young kids, our current home is just too small! We've had our taste in renovating our current HDB, and learnt many lessons along the way. For the new place, we hope to use those lessons, plus be more daring with our use of pattern and colour. Right now, our home is quite a mish-mash of scandinavian and country, with some vintage thrown in, and we're hoping to bring that combination over to the new home too. It's a bit crazy, but I think it's a happy mix, and suits a family with young children. Today we met with the ID that we finally shortlisted, and discussed the quotation. Will share more about him if we find his services good! Anyway, for the kitchen, we're hoping to have a cheery yellow backsplash like in our current place, and pops of colour: (More details in this post on our kitchen) For the dining, we're just planning to shift over the long table and these "vintage" posters. But I hope to change the pendant lights. Perhaps to the cage-like ones, for a change? (Anyone has recommendations to where to get these at an affordable price?) (More details in this post about our dining room.) Ok, that's all for now. We'll be tile-hunting and scouting for sanitaryware next!

We have been homeless for the past three years after selling our then just MOP HDB Flat in 2013. We waited so long for our new home to be ready. THREE years and TWO babies later, we are finally on the last lap of getting our keys! We are in the midst of obtaining TOP, with BCA just rectifying a recent gas pipe problem at one of the stacks. I have really awesome neighbours! We have not even stay together yet but we already met each other and build positive rapport! Cannot wait for the Kampung Spirit to be reunited in a few months time! I have been wanting to start a tBlog since forever but decided against sharing too early as the initial TOP was stated somewhere in the 3rd quarter of 2016. Anyway, let me share our journey of purchasing our new home. We didn't plan on getting a house in the Northern part of Singapore when we sold our new place. But i guess fate works in mysterious ways. A friend's friend (whom is a property agent) called us a couple of times to share with us about a new development but we weren't too keen on it as i (the mrs) prefer to get a resale somewhere at Hillview area. I don't know what made me decided to give this showflat a try. So yeah, off we went. With not much of an interest or expectation. We met with the agent. Let`s call him EF. We must have had an affinity with him that we were totally sold when he showed us the showflat, patiently explaining to us the pros and cons, the future development around and most important of all, the price was within our budget. Not to mention, the developer is a reputable one. So yes, we took a queue number and our hopes were dampened when we got our queue number at a whooping 700plus!! Whaaaat?! We still shortlisted a few units which we like or think we could afford.

After reading through some of the posts here, my partner and I have decided to add in our experience too. Just a little background, I am in my mid 20s while my fiancee is in her early 20s so we have a tight budget to get our family life started. Not gonna be easy but it would be an enjoyable journey! How It All Started Early 2015, we applied for the sale of balance flats in Choa Chu Kang/Bukit Panjang and the number was pretty crappy so we scrapped the idea of trying for BTO/Balance of Sales since the units are smaller and lesser grants. Factoring in our CPF and savings, we decided to hit the nail and go for resale flats instead since the market is somewhat bottoming now. Flat viewing started around Sept/Oct 2015 and we have already decided on the location which was Bukit Panjang. Simply went to PropertyGuru and shortlisted a few units, arranged with the agent for a viewing and off we went. Yes, plenty of our friends were wondering where on earth is Bukit Panjang but having stayed in Bukit Panjang for 10 over years, it is actually a very convenient location with the upcoming Downtown Line and buses. 20 minutes to Orchard via 972 or 190, seriously?! House Hunting Our fruitful yet tiring house hunting journey took us about 2 months. We started off by viewing flats randomly within the area and realised it was leading us nowhere as none of the units was to our liking. We then decided to view 2 to 3 units per area and once the units were not to our liking, we eliminated that area out of our choices as the units within that area were usually within the same batch so layout and design wise would be similar. We had a few requirements: 1) Corner Unit (For privacy) 2) High Floor (Feels good to be up there ) 3) Squarish layout (Easy to manage in terms of design) 4) Bright and airy (Good for health to have ample natural light! ) Simple requirements yet it was a nightmare just trying to find the right unit. Finally, we found one to our liking but the owner was reluctant to sell at our price and the agent told us that the house was previously sold at $465k but the buyer screwed up so the deal didn't go through. Considering how bad the market condition was, we decided to go ahead and offer a price of $435k which kinda shocked the seller I guess. The agent told us that he could try for $460k but we had no interest in paying over the market for the unit considering there was quite a bit of renovation to be done. Credits to my fiancee for being firm by telling the agent that we would settle for $450k, take it or leave it. To cut the story short, we finally settled for $450k and valuation came about to $450k so there was no COV on our part either. Gotta give the credit to my fiancee as I was pretty alright with paying $460k which was $10k more but we really liked the unit and the house hunting was really tiring. I just wanted to get it over and done with! DIY Procedures We decided that it was pointless to engage an agent since he will just be doing the paperwork for us when we could do it ourselves which saved us at least a few thousand since buyer's agent usually go for 1% of the selling price as commission! Seriously, pay them $4k plus just to do paperwork for us? Nah! Signed the OTP and exercised it with a total of $5k as deposit. First appointment scheduled in Feb 2016 and keys collection in March 2016. We decided to take up all the grants available to us which summed up to $50k from HDB and ROM was not an issue since we would be solemnized before our second appointment. The procedures are pretty simple as it is all documented in the HDB website, I spent about an hour digesting the website and we were good to go. The seller's agent even told us not to bother with engaging an agent to save on the fees and we could approach him if we needed help, just that he could not represent both sides. Well, if we screwed up and the deal falls through, he will be on the losing end too. Feel free to call up HDB if you are unsure of certain things and they are pretty helpful I would say. Tadah! Here is the floorplan of our house. The house has minimal renovation except for wall cornice and floor skirting since it was the first owner. Flat is about 18 years old so a major renovation was in the plans with a budget of $30k and another $5k odd for furnishings & furnitures. Original Floorplan Modified Floorplan (After hacking of walls)

Hello everyone! My fiance and I are going to get the keys to our 4-room in 2Q 2016. So excited and we can't wait to start our new home after 4 years of long wait! We have been reading the forum to do our research diligently. Thank you everyone for sharing your experience with us! Now is our turn to journal down our renovation journey in this t-blog. Here goes our floor plan: This is our first time owning a house. We are very excited about our renovation for the new home. However, we can’t help but feel the pinch, especially we going to spend a hefty sum when our renovation and wedding falls in the same year. We just started working for 2-3 years and I don’t want to spend all our savings to splurge on the renovation. Hence, I will try my best to stick within our budget and spend wisely. We also set our budget below: Budget for Renovation: 30-35K Budget for Furnishing and Electrical appliances: 20k Renovation Requirement We will keep our carpentry work minimal and simple. Save money on carpentry by going for off shelf furnishings and online shopping of home decorations to achieve the look we want. Also, we chose Scandinavian style as this theme is easily executed and it will never fall our of style. As some of the requirement are optional, we will finalize our decision only after considering the cost and visiting the actual site. I also try to think of other alternatives to save the cost. Living Room 1.To supply materials & labour to lay Vinyl @ Living. Dining Room/ Bedroom 3/Bedroom 2/Master bedroom 2.Painting for the whole house 3.Chemical wash for whole house after renovation 4.Sliding window at the yard (optional) 5.To supply and install 3 bedroom doors / 2 bathroom doors LIVING ROOM 1.To construct false ceiling work @ Living/Dining Hall (optional) 2.To construct 16ft Craftstone wall / Brickwall stucco wall, whichever is more affordable (optional) 3.To box up 8ft gypsum partition wall 4.To construct half ht and 5ft shoe cabinet KITCHEN 1.To hack half partition wall between dining and kitchen 2.To install coated aluminum frame fixed window at partial wall and swing door 3.To construct 9ft Top cabinet 4.To construct 15ft Bottom cabinet 5.To construct 2ft Tall cabinet 6.To overlay Subway tiles on exposed wall on kitchen wall 7.To install 16ft Kompac plus/ iQuartz for kitchen cabinet surface top BATHROOM 1.To construct shower kerbs at Common /Master Bathroom 2.To supply and install 10mm Clear tempered glass shower screen @ Common Bathroom 3.To supply and install 10mm Clear tempered glass (1 fixed and 1 swing) shower screen @Master bathroom 4.To construct 3ft Vanity bottom finished @Master bathroom 5.Overlaying floor tiles for Common /Master Bathroom (optional) BEDROOMS 1.Full ht and 7ft casement wardrobe @Masterbedroom 2.Full ht and 5.5ft casement wardrobe @Bedroom 2 Table of Contents 1. Moodboard

After reading through some of the posts here, my partner and I have decided to add in our experience too. Just a little background, I am in my mid 20s while my fiancee is in her early 20s so we have a tight budget to get our family life started. Not gonna be easy but it would be an enjoyable journey! How It All Started Early 2015, we applied for the sale of balance flats in Choa Chu Kang/Bukit Panjang and the number was pretty crappy so we scrapped the idea of trying for BTO/Balance of Sales since the units are smaller and lesser grants. Factoring in our CPF and savings, we decided to hit the nail and go for resale flats instead since the market is somewhat bottoming now. Flat viewing started around Sept/Oct 2015 and we have already decided on the location which was Bukit Panjang. Simply went to PropertyGuru and shortlisted a few units, arranged with the agent for a viewing and off we went. Yes, plenty of our friends were wondering where on earth is Bukit Panjang but having stayed in Bukit Panjang for 10 over years, it is actually a very convenient location with the upcoming Downtown Line and buses. 20 minutes to Orchard via 972 or 190, seriously?! House Hunting Our fruitful yet tiring house hunting journey took us about 2 months. We started off by viewing flats randomly within the area and realised it was leading us nowhere as none of the units was to our liking. We then decided to view 2 to 3 units per area and once the units were not to our liking, we eliminated that area out of our choices as the units within that area were usually within the same batch so layout and design wise would be similar. We had a few requirements: 1) Corner Unit (For privacy) 2) High Floor (Feels good to be up there ) 3) Squarish layout (Easy to manage in terms of design) 4) Bright and airy (Good for health to have ample natural light! ) Simple requirements yet it was a nightmare just trying to find the right unit. Finally, we found one to our liking but the owner was reluctant to sell at our price and the agent told us that the house was previously sold at $465k but the buyer screwed up so the deal didn't go through. Considering how bad the market condition was, we decided to go ahead and offer a price of $435k which kinda shocked the seller I guess. The agent told us that he could try for $460k but we had no interest in paying over the market for the unit considering there was quite a bit of renovation to be done. Credits to my fiancee for being firm by telling the agent that we would settle for $450k, take it or leave it. To cut the story short, we finally settled for $450k and valuation came about to $450k so there was no COV on our part either. Gotta give the credit to my fiancee as I was pretty alright with paying $460k which was $10k more but we really liked the unit and the house hunting was really tiring. I just wanted to get it over and done with! DIY Procedures We decided that it was pointless to engage an agent since he will just be doing the paperwork for us when we could do it ourselves which saved us at least a few thousand since buyer's agent usually go for 1% of the selling price as commission! Seriously, pay them $4k plus just to do paperwork for us? Nah! Signed the OTP and exercised it with a total of $5k as deposit. First appointment scheduled in Feb 2016 and keys collection in March 2016. We decided to take up all the grants available to us which summed up to $50k from HDB and ROM was not an issue since we would be solemnized before our second appointment. The procedures are pretty simple as it is all documented in the HDB website, I spent about an hour digesting the website and we were good to go. The seller's agent even told us not to bother with engaging an agent to save on the fees and we could approach him if we needed help, just that he could not represent both sides. Well, if we screwed up and the deal falls through, he will be on the losing end too. Feel free to call up HDB if you are unsure of certain things and they are pretty helpful I would say. Tadah! Here is the floorplan of our house. The house has minimal renovation except for wall cornice and floor skirting since it was the first owner. Flat is about 18 years old so a major renovation was in the plans with a budget of $30k and another $5k odd for furnishings & furnitures. Original Floorplan Modified Floorplan (After hacking of walls)

8/10 condition This dining table and bench was bought almost 2 years ago.However, please note that it is very lightly used as we usually eat with our kids at our coffee table. The only issue would be the minor scratches on the sides of the bench but very minimal. The table was bought at 690 and the Bench was bought at 300 excluding GST and Delivery, hence in total it cost us $1100.We are now letting this go at $500 but this is negotiable (reasonably) Whatsapp 86608402 Full set as shown except for flowerpot Slight minor scratches IKEA Chairs worth $75 each to compensate for the scratches

Hi guys! So we got the keys to our 5rm BTO flat in October, waaaaaaay ahead of expectation. Both of us are the rather chillax kind, so we did not really do any research on reno stuff beforehand. We are in our BTO FB group and were quite amazed that people actually signed reno packages even before they got their keys . For me, I need to have a feel of the physical space before deciding anything. So, we only started reading up on renovation stuff one month before we got our keys. Our theme for the house was unanimously decided long ago: Scandinavian with essentials of wood, grey and white. Despite being an overly-done theme, it is something that we both hold dear, and one that works for us. This is our floor plan: Living room Floor--at first I had decided on vinyl/HERF because of the nice woody look. But she was concerned whether there will be a smell from the plastic in the long run, and also whether it is truly waterproof (since they are assembled using the clicking system). A valid concern; so we decided to go for wood-grain tiles instead for the whole house (incld bedrooms). Sofa/TV console/Feature wall-- We had a long discussion about this and finally decided to put our TV along the wall adjacent to Bedroom 3. There will be a feature wall of long vertical woodgrain tiles (1.8m high each) that look like wood planks. And on top of that line of tiles, we will install a thin ledge for us to place photo frames or posters. Something different from the usual brick walls. Something like this for the feature wall, just that it doesn't go all the way to the ceiling: Example of photo ledge: Dining table-- It will be placed along the wall opposite the TV console. She wants a really biggggg dining table, so we are prolly getting a 1.8m long one, with a bench to match. Planning to place a bar table against the household shelter wall as well. Built-in storage/display cabinets-- I personally hate having storage/display cabinets in the living room, period. The HDB living room is already too small for my liking (heng we chose a 5rm), having any sort of gigantic cabinets in the living room will just make it look even more cramped. So there will be none. Except for a shoe cabinet that we are planning to build into that recess to the right of the main door. False ceiling/L-box-- None of this too. It will just lower the height of the ceiling even further. Lighting-- Planning for track lights above the feature wall area. And a black ceiling fan. Hanging "spider" lights above the dining table. Track lights along room corridor. LED near the main entrance. Kitchen We are going to hack away the whole wall facing Bedroom 3, and build a kitchen island in the middle . Both of us like to cook, and can't stand claustrophobic kitchens haha. The island will be 1.8m x 1.2m, and the side nearer to Bedroom 3 will feature a counter with stools. There will not be any glass partitions or doors between the kitchen and living room. Yes it will be open but we are not worried about the smell! We don't do heavy frying anyway. There will be kitchen cabinets on both top and bottom on the other wall, and we are planning to get either Kompacplus or Pacnel countertops. Leaning towards Pacnel tops because as of now, they have more colour choices! As for the cabinets, we prefer the surface to be less "flat", contrary to the usual sleek, contemporary laminate surface. After Googling, we found out there's actually a name for this kind of design: it is called Shaker style. An example below: We are leaning towards dark grey cabinets with light grey Pacnel countertop. Along the wall adjacent to the toilet until the service yard window, we are going to build a bottom side-board cabinet; on top we are going to put stuff like my Nespresso Pixie, toaster oven, Hurom etc. Bedroom 3 We are hacking away the whole wall facing the kitchen and replacing it with a black aluminium-framed glass wall/door, to make the whole house feel even more spacious. This will be the gaming/study room! Going to put my PS4, a 40inch UHD TV with a Yamaha soundbar in there. Master Bedroom Making a L-shaped full height wardrobe! Was contemplating the idea of a platform bed, but decided it was too expensive and the ceiling will be too low (planning to put a ceiling fan). Going to put the usual queen-sized bed frame! Toilets Going to install a vanity top with mirror box cabinet for both toilets! Prolly going to use black Pacnel top for the vainty. For the MBR toilet, there will be a glass shower panel (not door), separating the shower area from the toilet bowl. Cos I feel having a sliding door is too claustrophobic. For the common toilet, there will be a shower kerb with IKEA's shower curtain rod (no shower panel, to save costs). Panel only: Contractor We met a grand total of one contractor and one ID. We invited the contractor to our new house and told him about our plans and ideas, and to give a quote. The moment I spoke to him, I knew I could trust this guy. There was rapport, we could click, and he was clearly experienced in his field. He suggested alternatives when our ideas were not feasible. We were very comfortable with him and were eagerly awaiting his quotation. It came back to be around $48K! At first it was shocking. But after calming ourselves down and looking at the things we wanted, we concluded that it was a reasonable (though not cheapest) pricing. (We later changed some stuff and the price dropped to $46k.) On the other hand, the meeting with the ID was unplanned. I chanced upon this FB post of a so-called renovation "open-house", where various companies will be there to showcase their reno materials (kitchen tops, cabinets, tiles, lights etc), so that we can have a better idea of what materials to choose for our reno. So I thought to myself, why not? Upon reaching the place, there was a group of young people smoking in the stairwell right outside the entrance to the openhouse. Impression down We walked in, one young guy approached us, and introduced himself as an ID from ___ company, and offered to bring us around. At this point, we knew it was not such a simple affair. He brought us to see all the materials, tiles, tops etc. Along the way, he kept emphasizing on how credible and accredited his company was (rolling eyes at this moment ). At the end of the tour, he made us sit down and listen to him intro his company's reno packages. Upon first glance, the pricing looks reasonable. But upon closer scrutiny, we realised the package was super basic (plain white tiles @ $3 per sq feet etc). So if we add on the things we wanted, it will prolly add up to a substantial amount. Then he suddenly whispered to us: if we sign today and give the deposit, his boss will waive the 7% GST. Ermigawd. Are you freaking kidding me. That's like the lamest sales pitch ever. Everybody knows you have already factored in the GST into your pricing right?! We walked out without signing anything. The silver lining was that our time was not totally wasted; we learnt quite a fair bit about the materials TL:DR version : Not impressed with ID company, signed with contractor.

my flat is coming and we will be blowing out budget at our wedding. looking for some simple home decor that isn't expensive but yet stylish. hoping to make my house look somewhat like this avoiding expensive built in carpentry. like this airy feel at home no clutter

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 topSubway tile backsplashGranite countertopCement Screed wallsHacking of HDB tilesLay with tiles of our choiceHacking of wall between kitchen and living roomBedroom Custom Wardrobes for all bedroomsStudy table and overhang shelves (aka the head cracker because I knock my head so many times on it) for bedroom 2Cement Screed floorClassic doors for all roomsToilets Full overlay of tiles for both toiletsVanity top for MBR toiletAluminum full louvre doors for both toiletsLiving Room Extension of Breakfast top to a dining table in the living room (Nick's proud invention)Feature wall: Brick overlay at TV areaFeature wall: Wooden Plank wallShoe Cabinet Others Electrical worksFlooring tiles + labourPainting, chemical wash and yada yadaThe indicative cost was about $47k but the final figure is being recalculated as there were adjustments along the way.

Hihi, I am H - the husband... M is my wife... and so we are "H&M" (we are not that well known swedish retail clothing company). Warm - Our home is really very warm!! Or should I used "HOT" instead.. Haha... No wind at all despite that our living room is not block at the moment. ...view from our living room... Time seems fast forwarded once we got our keys. But before that, it was a looooong looooong....... 5 years wait! Every BTO seems building faster than our project. We are starting this blog to detail our reno journey for our first home ~ A tiny 83sqm HDB BTO 4 room flat before it's gone without us noticing it. ...our floor plan... cheers, H

Hi guys!! I've been stalking renotalk for over 4 years omg! Decided to start a t-blog to share my experiences so far My husband and I balloted for our Punggolian home like 4 years ago! And we've finally gotten our key collection date! We'll be collecting our keys on 15th June after a freaking long wait! Am glad to see some fellow Punggolians threads here too! Hello future neighbours! *waves* Actually last week, I wrote a post on my blog about things to prepare when searching for an Interior Designer! Basically the main gist was, we learnt the hard way about going in blind. It is best to have kinda of an idea of what you want. And after a couple of meetings, we finally decided on what we wanted. Woohoo! This is our floorplan! #nadskaihome is a 4 room Premium BTO. Unfortunately for us, our kitchen is tiny! Even if we decide to hack that tiny little wall there, it isn't going to help much! Honestly, when we compare our floorplan to others, I find that we have very little unusable space. Oh well, we'll just have to make the best of what we have! For some reason, our project is extremely green! It's like our contractor Sun Huan is OBSESSED with green. The outside is green. The lifts are green. There are many ugly mosaics in the house. many ugly green bits to be covered. Will be taking pics when we collect our keys and will share pics of the royal greenness. More updates coming soon!

Hello! Decided to start a T Blog here after reading so many interesting blogs from you guys! Have been a silent reader since late last year and now my reno is almost ready hence would like to share my buys and progress. My crib is located in the north-east area, we got our keys in mid jan. Renovation did not start until mid march as i want to avoid the CNY period. First up, my tiny 4 room floor plan : Floor Plan Theme As per the title, i am going for the super overuse wood,white & black color board in my new crib because i love the ambiance of those cafes which are sprouting over in Singapore over the past 1 year or so. Hence i decide to create the same ambiance which consist of a little of scandi, loft style so that i will not spend so much money on cafe-hopping. A few must haves : Woodgrain laminates White laminate Brick wall Black electrical conduits Contractor/ID We have decided from start to engage a contractor instead of ID mainly because i have the design more or less in my mind. I have read through so many blogs here and the first one i approach was Nicholas from Renoguyz. He is the first and the only contractor we met up. We decided to engage him as our contractor after 2 meetups. He has a reputation of being sloppy,straight forward but that is what my husband like about him. Both of us are comfortable with him throughout the 2 meetups with him and we get along quite well with him hence we decided to take the plunge and go with him. His ideas are more to the practical side and if he thinks it is not nice or will not fit, he will voice it out instead of accepting whatever i have suggested. Budget We did not take up any renovation loan hence our budget is quite limited and we allocated under 20K for renovation. Nick gave me a very satisfied quotation 1 day after our meetup and its well below our 20K! p.s : we opt in for tiles and doors from HDB. Things we did : Taobao I have been an avid fan of TB since 5 years ago and It is in my natural instinct to get stuffs from TB since i am quite well verse with it. . I have engaged AMCON for all my sea shipments till date. Their prices are slightly cheaper than other forwarders and they are fast! My 3rd shipment only took 5days! It is true that they say cheap will not be good, good will not be cheap because their customer service is like non-existence. Shall not rant on that part however i will still use them because of their speed! Did not receive any damage on any of my items so far and i have to give credit to the AMCON warehouse staff and delivery uncle and of cos to TB sellers who wrapped it so well and sturdy! I will write a separate post on my purchases on TB. Progress I do not have the before and after photos because i am not always around when they are doing the works. I only do checks on weekends and most of the time it is nicely done! So i only have the almost-done photos. Every weekend checks are like opening presents during Christmas because our crib is changing every single week i went up and check! Next post will be the almost-done pictures! ************************************************************************************************************************************* Decided to do up table of contents for easy viewing: 1. Taobao purchase 2. Taobao Unboxing 3. Taobao Unboxing part 2 3. My completed Taobao brickwall 4. Progress #1 5. Progress #2 6. Progress #3 7. Taobao Unboxing part #3 8. Installation of Matt black bombshelter 9. Taobao unboxing part #4 10. Amazon purchase 11. Progress #4 12. Amazon unboxing 13. Taobao purchase #2 14, Progress #5 15. Amazon purchase #2 16. Electronic appliances purchases 17. Misc online purchases 18. Progress #6 19. Progress #7 20. Taobao unboxing #5 21. Post renovation cleaning 22. Blinds and curtains 23. Appliances delivery 24. Decoration #1 25. Decoration #2 26. Decoration #3 27. Decoration #4 28. Decoration #5 29. Decoration #6 30. Taobao purchases #3 31. Taobao unboxing #6 + reviews

Hi everyone out there! Just wondering if anyone is willing to share their experience if they had renovated their house based on the 'Scandustrial' (Scandinavian/Industrial) theme. Also if you had used an ID, how did it go in that aspect as well? Hopefully everyone gets to exchange tips on where to get all those beautiful lights and furniture according to these themes as well! Cheers P/s I hope someone got the pun hehe.

Introduction We want to share our renovation journey with Renotalk forumers here. After reading so much adventures, we are finally setting off to embark our renovation. We decided that we want to buy our own flat. We were thinking to purchase a resale flat beginning last year. That would mean we need to hurry to have our wedding banquet and solemnization soon after signing with HDB. We don't want to rush through such an important occasion of our lives. We want to be more prepared and ready and involve both our families, relatives and friends. After monitoring the resale market from the cooling measure, it is actually a good opportunity to get a resale flat. Good for buyers, sellers are not so happy with the least COV. There are two key factors that we look out for our flat. 1. Distance proximity, near either one of our parents. This means that anytime we can visit our parents and pop over for meals. If we have children in future, it will be accessible to find help. There is added advantage to live near parents: CPF Housing Grants for Resale Flats. 2. Available amentities like ATM/Banks, supermarket, coffeeshop, clinic, shopping mall, etc. It was our intention of getting a resale flat. However we realised after checking HDB website, there is a Sales of Balance Flats balloting in May 2014. To our favour, we found a location near to my parent's place and want to try balloting for it. The rest is His-tory. Tomorrow will be the start of the renovation. A Typical 4-Rm Floorplan

Being a silent reader (on and off) since 2011, when we first applied for our BTO, I guess it's time for me to make some worthy (I hope) contributions to this community! Having heard of how difficult it was for couples to apply for a BTO flat, we are indeed thankful to be able to secure a mid-level unit on our first try, given that our queue number has exceeded the total no. of units! Well, maybe I should thank those people who applied, but given up their chance. Fast forward to 4 years later in 2015, we finally collected the keys to our first nest in Jan' 2015. We didn't carry out rituals like rolling pineapple, sprinkling of salt in 4 corners or screaming "Huat ah, Huat ah" etc.. Instead, we were snapping away! Having seen my sister's BTO flat, I wasn't expecting much, but it came as a pleasant surprise that it's slightly bigger than what I expected! Hehe! Starting off with a mandatory picture, the Floor plan! In my opinion, it's a rather standard one in these days BTO. Upon entering, this is the view that greeted us.. Living Room. It's pretty Long-ish & square-rish. Up next is the Corridor, leading up to the bedrooms & bomb shelter (double up as storeroom). Okay, that's another standard thing. Realized that I do not have any pictures of the rooms. Actually all of these pictures are taken by the husband, and he said something like, there isn't a need to take as all the rooms looks the same! Hahah! We forgotten about the kitchen too! But I managed to find a saved pic of the kitchen in my gallery. I think it was my neighbour's, which I chanced upon in my project's facebook group. So, the credit of this picture is to him/ her! Being someone who enjoys cooking & baking, this kitchen came as a big disappointment! It's so tiny!! I think this would be a nightmare to people coming from my mums generation, their kitchen is easily 3x of this size? After looking around, we proceed to spend the next hour or so checking defects, but we were quite tired out by the bending up and down in such a warm weather.. All we wanted was a chilling can of drink! So we decided to call it a day, we shall come back another day to continue with the defect checking! Hiak Hiak Hiak!

Hello everyone~ After 3 long years, been through times living with both of ours parents, renting apartment overseas, Hubby and I finally bought our first home in Singapore! We've decided to go for resale instead of BTO because we do not wanna wait any longer, and we're very particular about location. Prefer walking distance to the MRT, have good variety of eateries, supermarkets etc.. And we're really happy and lucky that we manage to get one within our budget.. Here I will share my reno journey with you.. ID HUNTING Like many homeowners, we went through the tiring ID hunting process as well.. Especially when the cost of renovation works for resale flat seems to be higher than BTO, we want to ensure we don't bomb too much money into it. After all what we really want is just a cozy home, not a showroom. We asked around for friends and relative recommendation, before arranging for them to meet up and discuss the details, then follow by waiting for quotations and layout drawings (some didn't provide eventhough we specifically asked for it). ------------------------------------------- Initially we loved the 1st ID we met, Mr C. He is highly recommended by one of our good friend.. A honest looking man, not those sales man type. We saw his work in real life at our friend's place and its really good.. He gives us a lot of ideas during the meet up, hand draw really well, provided us with some knowledge.. but once his quotation is out, we were really disappointed because he is too expensive (GST company). So no choice but had to drop him. -------------------------------------------- Mr I. Very slow respond. Met up with him and he keep picking up calls in between our discussion. Quotation take forever to send us, no drawing. Price wise.. consider reasonable. But very turn off with the slow and bo chup attitude, so immediately out from my list. ------------------------------------------- Mr Z. He have some difficulty in trying to understand the concept I want for our house during the discussion. No ideas were generated at all during the meet up, he is basically just listening to what we want. His company is relatively new.. But he seems really passionate about his job, fast respond through whatsapp, and he also promise us he will give us a very good price. I asked him to give a rough figure on our renovation works, he said 30k. Turn out his quotation is alot more than the 30k he mentioned, but still is the lowest among the rest. So we continue with the details, but we later on found out that he missed out quite a number of details and then ended up adding a lot of money. He wasn't very apologetic about it too, we were quite sian with the keep-increasing-final-price. But he keep insisting that his price is very reasonable, and keep guilt trip us telling us he had to "bare" some of our cost as his contractor is charging him but he did not charge to us. -.-" Then there were also some miscommunication later on when we try to suggest some ideas to help save cost, he not only did not help, he also just turn my idea down and tell me that he had NEVER seen others do it like that before. I was quite affected, cos I thought the reasons we hire a ID is so that they can "customize" base on individual client's need? Many times I feel he just brush my questions off without actually answering the question. I can feel his eagerness to get our "sales" at that point.. but no.. I know I needed someone who can "solve my problems" and not one who just avoid them. So even though we went through so much time to "correct" his quotation, clarify details and take measurement already, we decided to hold him and continue searching..and eventually we did not sign him in the end. ---------------------------------------------------- We emailed a few other IDs after that to get quotation (without meeting up yet), and nothing really stands out.. so we went back to Dennis, who we feel is consider one of the best so far for us in terms of communication.. which we feel is the most important criteria in selecting a ID..especially for your 1st renovation. --------------------------------------------------- Dennis was introduced by my Husband's colleague. We approached him 1 day before CNY by email (at that time we were leaning towards Mr Z and did not really give him a fair chance). He asked us to send him our requirements details through email and say that he will send us his quotation asap. We were expecting to wait until after CNY for his quotation, and also expected to have a lot of missing details in his quotation since he is the only one who did not meet up with us for discussion..even those that meet up with us also miss out certain things on their quotation.. But not only he send us a very comprehensive quotation on the following day, he also send us a layout drawing to ensure his understanding of the requirements tally with ours. We were impressed by his prompt action and response, and his good understanding of what we want. But we were too blind folded by Mr Z at that time that we rejected his offer at first.. He gracefully wish us good luck on our renovation. After we decided that Mr Z may not be the best ID for us, we went back to Dennis and ask him out for discussion. Told him we want to give him a fair chance before making the final decision.. We invited him up to the house to take detailed measurements, and requested him to give us a more accurate quotation after that. He provided us with a number of cost-saving ideas (on his own without me asking) on site, telling us what can/cannot be done. He is also frank in telling me what are the additional cost going to be incurred which he cannot quote me yet as it depends on how much work needed to be done (electric works, boxing up of pipes, installation of gas pipe, connection of gas stove which will be reflected in PUB bill). And he again send his revised quotation to us in the next 2 days or so, and then patiently amended the quotation again and again as per our request because we are very "kiasi" want every details to be written black and white lol.. We went down to his show room to view samples, and eventually after tons of questions, we decided to sign the contract with him.. Both hubby and me feel very comfortable with him, as he always answer our (sometimes stupid) questions professionally. He also help to give suggestion when I cannot decide and then tell me why he suggest this and that (which often are quite convincing and reasonable). There are also times when we have different opinions, but he is also respectful enough to accept my point of view and doesn't make me feel bad about it. Fingers cross everything will work out well in the end...

Finally starting a T-Blog here with my free time! This post is over-due because I collected my keys 6 months ago, our first house at Anchorvale (5 Room) after getting married in May last year. The bare, clean and white area that we spammed lots of pictures before the commencement of all the renovation works. My fav part was the huge living room which made up for the tiny rooms.

Now that our reno seems to have started, i guess it might be nice to do up a little thread on our ground flr 2 bedroom resale apt. Our first ever home. Why Renozilla? Cos my gf think's i'm the reno equivalent of a picky bride-zilla. Am doing the space planning and design myself so we did not engage an ID or ID firm and went straight to the contrators, shortlisted 3 of em and got 3 quotes. Also cos reviewed a few ID firms that cold called me and found that stylistically, most of them were not that great. The difference between all three were quite significant but in the end, we went with the one that that came in the middle in terms of quotation $$$. (but was still overall slightly on the expensive side imo) We have heard really good things about him and his reliability so i guess sometimes you just can't put a $$$ value on everything. Let's just hope we made the right decision. Here's some pictures of our soon to be gutted abode (pictures taken on viewing) Kitchen

Hi All, Just like to share with you all one my completed project at Casa Clementi. Here is the proposed layout. Due to some fengshui concern from my client, we actually change the location of the entrance for the kitchen and added in a sliding door. For the rest we keep quite simple as the items that stand out will be the furnitures itself. In the MBR we also hacked away the dividing wall to built in a wardrobe and maintaining a comfortable walkway. Concept Images Like I mentioned most of the design elements will come from the furnitures itself and the space will emphasis more on the materials and textures used. Stay tuned for more of the completed photos. Thanks for viewing.