After so many months of secretly private messaging like 30% of the t-blog owners, it's finally time to start our own T-Blog.

First, a big thank you to everyone who have shared their contacts, details and recommendations. We are finally on the way to start our big project for the year.

We first applied for this BTO back in May 2008. This was our first application, the then-boyfriend just proposed to me, and decided we should try our luck. Well, we did get a number within the number of available units though a pretty huge number. Since we were lazy people, we decided to just pray that the higher floors were still available. I was happy with anything 8th floor and above.

Lucky for us, we selected our ideal flat on 9 Sep 2008. This was also the day where parents of both sides met with each other to discuss our wedding plans! We didn't have much choice as the better units were gone. Loft units were snapped up really fast, then again, being lazy people, Loft units were not in our radar.

We settled for a point block, turned out to be the most expensive block compared to the rest. No west sun, only morning sun and has a good facing, so I guess it explains?

The wedding was in 2009, we then moved into a temporary unit that my in laws own. Finally, 3.5 years later, we received the golden keys to our Perfectly Imperfect Home.

This is the floor plan.

You may ask, why imperfect?

1. The smallest kitchen ever. With the high price we paid for it, I even had to fork out more money to hack the wall.

2. Air Con ledge at the living room - Because of this, I had to pay more for the copper pipe cos the MBR was way too far away.

Next Steps: To transform this into our perfect home.

Edited November 16, 201114 yr by reine

Some shots of our little pigeon hole.

Living Room & Suggested Study. The Hubby chose this unit mainly because of the squarish layout.

Passage way to the bedrooms

MBR

Mini Kitchen

Edited November 16, 201114 yr by reine

Defects Checking

We were not lucky enough to get a defect free unit, though most of our defects were quite minor.

The most major ones were huge crack under TV/FM point, cracks at doors' hinges, and 1 of the keys were stuck in the keyhole.

What I regretted was submitting the cracked skirting and dented flooring. The rectifications were unsightly.

We didn't submit any defects on the flooring partly because we couldn't spot any (very blinded couple here) and also because my friend has warned me of their horrible rectification works.

Even with the minor defects, BSC took more than the time promised to finish up. We decide that we shall take our own sweet time to sign off as well.

Edited November 16, 201114 yr by reine

House Theme

The hubby's requirements:

1. Easy to clean

2. Easy to clean

3. Easy to clean

Fits me perfectly as I wanted something simple and clean. Did some checking, so my style is contemporary!

 

Living Room

Kitchen

Hi reine,

welcome to the RT .

where's your new house? is it punggol sapphire?

Indeed it is a perfectly imperfect design.. especially the aircon ledge position..

But it does provide you alot of room for creative ideas..

Btw how big is the area?

Edited November 16, 201114 yr by jackwolf

Indeed it is a perfectly imperfect design.. especially the aircon ledge position..

But it does provide you alot of room for creative ideas..

Btw how big is the area?

Hi, my internal is 110sqm.

Shortlisting Contractors/IDs

We have no intention of getting a designer home with loads of feature walls and built in carpentry / storage. Hence my preference was towards a contractor, simply because we kind of know what we wanted. No false ceiling/L box, no tv feature wall. We prefer to have a flexible space where we could change the layout if we want to.

Other than recommendations from friends and from the forum, we also made a really bad move.

We sent a 'request for quote' via the forum and all we got were phonecalls /emails asking us to go down to take a look at their showroom. The hubby probably received about 20 calls and only 1 or 2 of them provided a quote based on our specifications which was indicated clearly. 1 of them gave us a sample quote! Duh. Totally defeats the purpose of the 'request for quote' function since we never received a proper quote.

It was then back to square one and based on the recommendations, we met up with an ID and a contractor.

Since both were really good and professional, with around the same price. Yes, contractors are not cheap nowadays, or at least we were willing to pay a reasonable price for a peace of mind. The deciding factor came down to who would be able to solve our kitchen challenge.

After we confirmed the lucky guy who will be haunted by us until the project ends, the very indecisive us, changed our minds again and again as to whether we should hack the freaking kitchen wall. After deciding to hack the wall, we wanted a different layout. The whole decision making process took us a while even until the hacking permit has been submitted.

We are really glad that we have finally decide the final layout - I hope.

For now, we are still pending for HDB to approve the permit.

Hopefully it comes soon as it has been a while, and we can start work!

As of now, my hacking permit has yet to be approved.

It has been dragging and dragging and dragging. Hacking was supposed to start this week.

HDB claims that the submission was incomplete, there was nothing I could do except highlight this to the contractor and hope that he settles this soon.

Anyway, window grilles and aircon trunking are up. I'm loving my white grilles, so glad that I did not opt for silver ones to save costs. Then again, after comparing, my grilles were actually more expensive than the rest of the neighbours. I can only be optimistic and blame it on the fact that I have longer windows instead of being chopped.

Anyway, for the kitchen, we have bought these:

Fujioh Hood FX900

Fujioh Hob FG792GL

Bosch Oven HBN331E2J

Double Bowl Kitchen Sink

Kitchen Tap

Edited November 23, 201114 yr by reine

Wish you a smooth reno!

Thanks! I hope so too leh!

Wish you a smooth reno!

Anyone using Paranello Multibot Vacuum or heard about this before?

Is it worth buying from groupon deal? http://www.paranello.com/vacuums/multibot-vacuum.html

Hacking has finally been completed!

Can't wait to see the end result!

Meanwhile, since we don't have a funky 3D drawing to show, please bear with my diy layout.

It's not to scale since I have been very lazy to completed my Sweet Home 3D model. I think I have given up on it. Anyway, this helps me to visualise where stuffs are going to be. Yellow dots are my lighting points.

wow cool..see that one of the bedroom is converted to Yoga Room

wish u hv a smooth reno..waiting to see more pix of your house.