Mabari House

[mabaricows 0]

Hello everyone,

Welcome to our t-blog

After lurking around for eons, we've decided to come out of the closet. We as in me, my wife and our cat (maomao).

Here's our reno story, works still very much in progress though we expect to move in by end July'11. Heh heh.

A picture of our layout, a top floor (16) 5 room unit in Jurong West St 61.

This is maomao..

Why a picture of maomao? Because we had to think of ways to make the house cat-proof, so many reno and furnishing decisions revolved around her. Stupid cat. Haha.

Lets go back in time a little.

We balloted for the "Sale of Balance Flats" in August 2010, got queue number 25!

Now before you start thinking "lucky b@stards", please understand that we've been balloting non-stop since 2004. We have sh!t luck. Haha.

Collected keys on the 10th of March 2010, felt slightly overwhelmed and thus went for a nice lunch.

Flat was supposedly vacant for around 2 years. It was a repossessed flat and though HDB did do their usual refurbishing, it was in crappy condition.

Apparently some windows in the flat were left open for the entire 2 years, we've never seen so much dust in our entire lives. Not happy. Will elaborate on this dusty saga and our triumph over "evil" in later posts.

We met up with several contractors and IDs and we were cruelly ignored by some after they viewed our flat.

Smart alec husband decided on Designer House, wife just wanted reno to start ASAP.

At this point in time, the reno is about 70% complete

Will update when we can.

[yumiko 0]

Hi Mabari, welcome to t-blog. We are neighbours; but I have not seen this layout before eh...our unit similarity is "the long and narrow kitchen" that shattered my dream island table in the kitchen

[shumin 0]

Welcome to T-blog!

Maomao looks really cute

[strikingreality 0]

Lets go back in time a little.

We balloted for the "Sale of Balance Flats" in August 2010, got queue number 25!

Now before you start thinking "lucky b@stards", please understand that we've been balloting non-stop since 2004. We have sh!t luck. Haha.

Collected keys on the 10th of March 2010, felt slightly overwhelmed and thus went for a nice lunch.

Flat was supposedly vacant for around 2 years. It was a repossessed flat and though HDB did do their usual refurbishing, it was in crappy condition.

Apparently some windows in the flat were left open for the entire 2 years, we've never seen so much dust in our entire lives. Not happy. Will elaborate on this dusty saga and our triumph over "evil" in later posts.

I admire your persistence. Balloted for 3 years, in the end gave up with bloody HDB and went resale instead.

Your dusty saga makes me wonder the HDB employees are actually homeowners!

[mabaricows 0]

Thanks for the welcome everyone

Here are some pictures of the house when we first got our keys.

Living room (note its irregular shape and all those beams)

Back of living room leading to bedrooms (weird protruding false wall that previous owner built)

Kitchen (the horror!)

Rooms and toilets (rooms have weird corner windows, toilets are tiny and plain)

When we surfed around renotalk and other websites, we found that many other forumers were accompanied by the HDB branch officer or technical officers to check for defects. Our HDB officer however, simply came by and left the front door unlocked! We came by ourselves and had to note down the defects ourselves. Anyone could have walked in!

We eventually told the HDB officer about the defects through email,

1) Laminated windows that were peeling off

2) Broken window handles

3) Windows that were completely stiff and tough to wrench open or close

4) Huge crack along living room wall

5) Unremovable stains and scratches on floor

However, she insisted that we had to accept the current condition of the flat as it was a repossessed flat (2nd hand they said). Wifey had a conversation with the officer. The outcome of the conversation was - HDB 1, Wifey 0.

They basically said that we had to get our own contractor to rectify everything as this was "common practice".

Husband stepped into the picture and had a 25 minute conversation with said officer. He asked for the official SOP with regard to flat inspection by HDB technical officer and the rectification of defects by HDB. She tried to change the topic repeatedly (she d@mn good at taiji - I don't know how many lesser educated older folks living in Jurong had their rights denied because of her and had to fork out money for rectification works that should have been borne by HDB).

To cut a long story short, she eventually gave in.

We got -

1) New windows for the whole house (brand freaking new)

2) Huge crack in the living room plastered over

3) Dusty dirty floors were cleaned

4) Living room tiles hacked off (our request)

Sharing this because we felt really indignant. Especially wifey, who lost the first round.

To everyone who is reading this, you must know your rights and entitlements.

You purchase a new flat, it is only fair that you get a flat that is in good condition.

What we couldn't accept was the inconsistency in their procedures.

It doesn't make sense that some people get their defects rectified and some don't.

So after the HDB contractors finished with their works, we started on our reno journey for real.

Edited June 22, 2011 by mabaricows

[jaskel 2]

House owner 1, HDB officer own goal. Edited June 22, 2011 by jaskel

[newnyew 1]

Welcome to RT Mabaricows!

U r d a r n funny! i like!

[Kobelala 8]

We balloted for the "Sale of Balance Flats" in August 2010, got queue number 25!

Now before you start thinking "lucky b@stards", please understand that we've been balloting non-stop since 2004. We have sh!t luck. Haha.

Collected keys on the 10th of March 2010, felt slightly overwhelmed and thus went for a nice lunch.

Good perseverance mabaricows! wife n me balloted since end of 2008 and gave up after 2 years.... wish u a smooth n fun reno journey

and, yes, you got a cute cat

Edited June 23, 2011 by Kobelala

[mabaricows 0]

Thanks guys

Posting some pictures of the house, post-hacking. Quite gross.

d@rn dusty, d@rn dirty and the toilets smell like poo. Quite literally so because you know, the pipes are all interlinked and all they did was to clog the pipe with some newspapers (only after the workers got grossed out too).

Pictures!

Living room hacked to pieces

Living room with hacked flooring cleared but new mess took over

Kitchen, wires and all

Gross wc hoooole

Edited June 23, 2011 by mabaricows

[mabaricows 0]

Husband really likes the feel of natural stone, so we initially wanted granite. However we soon realised that our home would look like an MRT station. Not good.

Did some research on the internet and renotalk, so off we went to Soon Bee Huat. D@mn lot of tiles!

You know most people usually decide on their tiles within an hour and they go like, "WAH LAO, took so long!".

We went on our own at least 4 times, our shortest visit spanned 3 hours. One of the visits lasted from 10am to 6pm. We are not kidding, tile selection is serious business and very stressful.

Wifey initially wanted laminated wooden flooring in the bedrooms for that rustic, homely feeling.

Alas, maomao pukes. Often. Furballs that are coagulated acidic unidentifiable lumps of partially digested cat food mixed with some fur.

That cr@p would seep into our laminated floor and cause warping, not to mention the lingering smell of cat puke.

So no more laminated flooring for bedrooms, getting tiles instead.

Since granite was out of the question, we started looking at the marble section with the living room in mind and fell in love with this!

The lady at SBH told us after we asked a few times that nobody had ever used that as flooring before. The patterns on the tiles are naturally irregular, splotches of brown, veins of white, the base color ranges from a deep emerald to light jadeite and sometimes even brown. But we like the tile leh.

Hubby saw a tile and gave wifey "that look". So this is going to be our MBR flooring, God help us.

Wifey wanted a hotel-like toilet for the MBR, so decided to spend a bit more on marble walls and floor.

Shower area and floor,

The rest of the walls,

\

This picture turned out bad, should've been a normal clear white.

Edited June 23, 2011 by mabaricows

[mabaricows 0]

Since we busted our tiles budget 3 times over already, we settled for simpler tiles for the other areas..

2 other bedrooms

Kitchen floor

Kitchen wall

Kitchen feature wall

[mabaricows 0]

Kitchen toilet floor

Kitchen toilet wall

So thats our entire tile selection..

We must mention that we went with our contractor from Designer House, Ronald, and he got us a pretty good discount. Yay.

Edited June 23, 2011 by mabaricows

[Reiki 0]

Sharing this because we felt really indignant. Especially wifey, who lost the first round.

To everyone who is reading this, you must know your rights and entitlements.

You purchase a new flat, it is only fair that you get a flat that is in good condition.

What we couldn't accept was the inconsistency in their procedures.

It doesn't make sense that some people get their defects rectified and some don't.

Bravo!! -- I like it when you wrote "you must know your rights and entitlements"!

Hehe, what an adorable looking cat! Surely, maomao can't wait to enjoy living in the new house.

[mabaricows 0]

Hey Reiki,

We really really feel that way.

No one deserves to get shortchanged because some lazy bum doesn't want to do their job. It seems that these people responsible for rectifying HDB defects usually try to "Taiji" their way out of work.

One of the things I told the officer in-charge was this,

- I do not want unofficial telephone conversations. All correspondence between us to be in their official capacity and recorded. Email or letters.

This really helps to make things transparent. Which works against them if they are irresponsible. When their jobs are on the line, extra work is suddenly do-able.

I hope people who read this will follow our lead and not allow irresponsible people to weasel their way out of work, at our expense!

Side note:

Maomao is never enthusiastic about anything except cat treats, think she'll be terrified when we move over..

Edited June 24, 2011 by mabaricows

[mabaricows 0]

Hey all, an update on some purchases we have made.

We don't have the habit of taking photos of things we buy, so we can't really show everything..

They'll all be shown when everythings delivered and up I suppose..

Some pics..

Living room main sofa (its 2.2m in length)

Living room side bench (its 1.8m in length, will be shifting around depending on the occasion)

Living room coffee table (10cm thick rain tree wood! )

Book shelf for the living room (2.2m high, nice..)

Shoebox! (Its a long story)

Forgot to take pictures of the dining table and of the tv console..

Dining table is also a natural wood top, but with cast iron bands that function as legs.

Tv console was bought from a shop in Chinatown, its wooden and intricately carved and we hope it'll go with the sofa (fingers crossed).

Edited June 25, 2011 by mabaricows