Footprints Leading To Our Love Casa (^_^)

[Errandz 0]

We settled on the third ID firm because the person in charge "A" followed up regularly in asking us to meet and discuss the renovation design. He was willing to spend a few hours talking to us till midnight when he would be the last one to leave the office and even on weekends. He was also confident about doing the tilted door which is important to Calvin. Although his quotation was not the cheapest and slightly out of our initial budget, the cabinet workmanship of the project he went to was quite nicely done and it was the deciding factor for dear and I to both agree on choosing him.

Congrats on the new place. As many others before always have said, I too stand by the golden rule that no matter what the online reviews and the recommendations and all, the couple MUST personally feel at ease and 'click' with the contractor (ie make them feel at comfortable and able to rest assured).. Thats a minimum requirement. And looks like you folks got tt..

Anyway, looking forward to how your house shapes up..

[meiz 0]

Thanks Errandz! I also think that it is important to be able to communicate with the ID person as renovation is a process that last at least 1 month.. more importantly, we have to live with the results for at least 5 years!

[meiz 0]

Renovation was scheduled to commence in July before the lunar seventh month. This would allow us to continue renovation works during the seventh month. If we miss the period, we would only be able to start in September which would be too rushed to meet our wedding date.

We met our ID guy "A" several times prior to the commencement to discuss on our home concept, colour theme and tic tac door laminate etc. Finally the following were decided:

1) Kitchen

- Glossy white and lime green cabinets with tempered glass backing. The lime green colour gives the kitchen a refreshing feel, and is in line with the Feng Shui shi-fu's pointer of using green more generously in our house. I also requested for the cabinet shelves to be made thicker (25mm) so that it could support the weight of the pots and pans. Another interesting thing is that the Feng Shui shi-fu recommended our fridge to be placed near the wall entrance of the kitchen. However, this meant that the entrance walk way would be narrower and we need to extend a partition to cover the fridge back. Hence dear dear "negotiated" with the shi-fu. Instead of a fridge, we would put a wine chiller at that same position. The fridge could then be placed in line with the kitchen cabinets to maximise space usage. However I don't really drink wine so now that we have a wine chiller, I tease Calvin that we would become drunkards in future. [Calvin and me!]

2) Living room TV area

- The Joo Chiat designer suggested to use wallpaper instead of feature wall console for the TV area which we thought was quite special. Cost-wise, if we managed to get a wallpaper at $500 plus and a TV console at $500-$600, it should be around the same as that of a feature wall console. Plus point was its uniqueness as we could choose from a great variety of wallpaper designs. Little did we know that the variety would be a source of headache for us... but that's another story for later.

3) Feature wall with tic-tac door to cover bomb shelter door

- Initially we decided on a white square-ish block line design that leans towards a modern feel. However along the way when selecting our wallpaper, we realised that the square-ish design might be more appropriate for the TV area since it has to be something that is soothing to look at without drawing our attention away from the TV. Hence we changed the feature wall laminate to a white circle design instead. This would match our round dining table also.

Wall colour: Blue

4) New master bedroom

- To hack a partition to join the two bedrooms together so that the new master bedroom would now be more spacious.

Wall colour: Dusky violet

5) Old master bedroom

- Since it is not advisable for us to sleep in the old master bedroom, we decided to use the space to have two full height wardrobes. It would be abit like a walk-in wardrobe area, except it won't be an open concept. We prefer to have sliding doors to prevent dust from going in and also to save us embarrassment if guests happened to see our messy wardrobe. Lolx The other area of the room would be converted as a cosy area. Dear and I could settle down on the sofa to watch TV or read a book.

Wall colour: Cherry yellow

6) Bedroom 1

- Would be used as a study room for the moment. Had to convince dear to use a pretty pink for the wall colour though which up to now he is still abit regretting... lolx

Below is my finalised home casa floor plan together with my furniture and lights layout for all my blog friends to have a look. Pardon the ugly drawing though... lolx

Edited August 18, 2011 by meiz

[meiz 0]

One of the things that I found to be most fun when coming up with our love casa design was the ability for us to create our own wardrobes since they are customised. In the past when I looked at IKEA catalogues, I always find the bedroom wardrobe section very interesting as there are so many things we can put inside, be it the basket trays, tie holders or trousers rack. So I spent an afternoon measuring my own wardrobe and dresses (and even my daddy's shirts so that I know how high dear needs for his hanging rack), trying to find the optimum shelves length and how I would place them.

Here are my initial drawings:

My wardrobe - There will be a full length mirror pull out at the left hand side as our room does not have any full length mirror.

Calvin's wardrobe

The net trays in my drawings were meant to be IKEA pullout trays as I felt that such trays allow my clothes to be aired and less dust will collect compared to if I use whole solid trays. I also checked with dear whether he would like to install trousers rack but as he felt that it would restrict the type of clothes he could hang, hence we used back the normal clothes rack instead.

During the discussion with our designer "A", he mentioned that we could actually have some design for our trays, such as on the drawer handle. This would make the trays more special. This made me consider twice on the IKEA trays as practically it would meant less cost for us since the wardrobe cost already include the drawers workmanship. So in the end I decided to go for the drawers, but to make it special, I requested for the drawers handle opening to be lower. Calvin preferred a normal tray design though so both our wardrobes would be slightly different. One thing I was very happy with "A" was that I told him I would like one of the drawer to be for me to put my cosmetics and other stuff. Hence he came up with the idea of a pullout tray so that I could place my cosmetic basket on top. Loved the idea!

My finalised wardrobe

Calvin's finalised wardrobe

[meiz 0]

"A" also let us have the 3D drawing for our kitchen cabinet as well as the shelves placement.

Edited August 18, 2011 by meiz

[Wu Jiahong Alvin Ng 1]

hi... Congrats of getting ur new home n welcome u to RT...!

[meiz 0]

Our first piece of furniture was bought while shopping with Calvin's other "dear" - his best pal BH. It was my first time shopping at NEX when we happened to pass by a furniture shop that has branches in many neighbourhood malls too. Calvin and I have been eyeing one of their L-shaped sofa as we find it comfortable and the size is just right for our hall. It can easily accommodate 3 to 4 people. The texture is half leather which means the seat area that we sit on are real leather while the sides and back portion are synthetic leather material.

Super happy when we saw that it was having a discount off $100 plus from the price we last saw! The only concern was that the sales person said the latest delivery must be 2 months from the date of purchase. But she suggested for us to call the Customer Service Centre nearer the tentative date to see if it can be delayed since our renovation might not be completed yet. Hence decided to just go ahead and buy it as it was within our budget.

[meiz 0]

Our renovation officially started on the 18 Jul 2011. First in schedule was to hack the wall joining the old master bedroom and bedroom 2. Met the contractor and Calvin (who took 2 hours time off from work) at our new house to witness the moment though thinking back we didn't really see them do the hacking. We only saw the workers lay the protective cardboards on the floor and doors, as well as mark the wall portion to be hacked before we left.. lolx

From this where you can see there is a marking on the wall representing the portion to start hacking....

To this....

You can also see the flooring in-between the two rooms is bare at the moment as the parquet wood needs to be lay subsequently.

[meiz 0]

My good friend Kai (who is also doing renovation for her new house) commented that she was amazed at the speed at which Calvin and I buy our furniture. It is so much faster than her though she got her flat keys one year earlier than us. I did not think it was really so until one day when Kai and I met a group of friends for lunch. Her plan after that was to go to IMM with her fiancé to check out the furniture and hopefully start getting some stuff now that discussion for her house concept with her ID was in progress.

As Calvin and I have started buying some items on and off, there was no urgency and we thought we would just do some ra-keying around. Dear suggested going to Trade 21 there to browse the shops as he saw an ad in the papers for one of the shops. Did not get anything from that shop but when we went to the next door neighbour, we got not one but three big items all at one shot. They are 1) TV console 2) Coffee table 3) Dining table set

The TV console with the extension design that dear likes alot.

The coffee table which is white and round (just like my tic-tac door laminate design and dining table).

Part of the reason why we chose this was because of the metal base design matches that of the TV console metal base too.

[meiz 0]

Our 1m diameter round table. Requested for the base to be white so as to match our house colour. We also changed the transparent table top glass to white backing type as Calvin prefers not to be able to see our legs when eating.

The sales person was very nice so let us choose other chairs from the catalogue to match the table. Decided on the below design as I love the classy arch back feel.

Kai called me at the end of the day and mentioned that as usual, she did not manage to get anything.

[meiz 0]

Subsequent progress of our renovation:

- Laying of the cardboard papers around the house flooring. The white pieces of papers sticking on the wall are actually drawings made on the house plan by our hardworking ID "A". One of them marks the paint codes for the painters to come, another indicated where the tiling works are supposed to be done etc.

Laying of lighting and power points

- Electrician came to do the wiring for the lights and power points prior to the false ceiling construction. Not sure why but the hanging wires reminds me of aliens.. lolx...

a) Living room

b) New master bedroom

c) Kitchen

Edited September 5, 2011 by meiz

[meiz 0]

Make good the wall and parquet flooring between the two bedrooms

- Smoothening of the wall and flooring using cement first

- Lining up the parquet wood blocks

[meiz 0]

False ceiling and air-con piping

Next up was the construction of our false ceiling at the living room near the dining area, as well as the master bedrooms. That morning our ID "A" was also at our new house inspecting the start work of our false ceiling.

- False ceiling construction at the living room

- Finished product

- False ceiling at the TV console area where 3 down lights would be subsequently installed

Edited September 8, 2011 by meiz

[meiz 0]

When I puzzledly asked how the air-con piping was going to be installed in our master bedroom now that the false ceiling work commenced, "A" suddenly slapped his head. Turned out the experienced "A" also has his missed moments as he totally forgot about our air-con.. oppss... Hence the only solution was to asked the false ceiling "shi-fu" to lay the foundation in the bedroom first, and put up the ceiling after the air-con people came subsequently.

- At the 'old' master bedroom

- At the 'new' master bedroom area

And this is my own little cozy area to rest while waiting for the "shi-fus" to complete their work... not too bad a place right? Lolx... Want to give thanks to my dear daddy for contributing the red rocking chair!

[meiz 0]

Finally my air-con pipings are here

- 'Old' master bedroom

- 'New' master bedroom area

- Piping leading out of the master bedroom toilet. Not sure if it is obvious in the photo but actually the workmanship was not done very nicely as there were some portions where the joints were too rough.

- Air-con ledge area

Edited September 8, 2011 by meiz