A Brand New Chapter

[Takeyu 0]

Hi all,

Have always been a silent reader of the forums without contributing. Thus, with the arrival of my new house, I decided to start a t-blog to document the progress of the renovation journey and maybe contribute to the forum if possible haha.

Basically, me and my partner wasn't prepared for the flat as we got it via the Sale of Balance Flat in which we would get the keys to the new flat much much much earlier than expected! It was mixed feeling for us because we were prepared to wait for BTO flats which would mean ard 3 to 5 yrs of waiting and letting us time to save for it but instead we got the keys to the new house in July 2011!!

To cut the story short, we started our reno at the start of Dec. But 1st, let me share the floor plan and some pre-reno pics. Its a 4-room with a floor area of 100m2 inclusive of bay windows and AC ledge.

The floor plan

Edited December 19, 2011 by Takeyu

[Takeyu 0]

As seen frm the floor plan, each of the bedroom have the bay window to imitate the condo style much thanks to our dear HDB designer.

Our common toilet have 2 doors to access it. One from service yard and one from the passageway. Best part, it was further sub-divided into 2 partitions. One for bathing, one for toilet bowl. Strange design and before we see it, we think it look like a public toilet design.

But the real thing, it doesn't look so bad after all! hahahaa

Here are some pre-reno pics

Living Room

Master Bedroom

MBR Toilet

Look so ugly! Can't believe what they are thinking with the colors and the design of the sink. The worst part?! As it's a premium flat, doors were included in it. And when we open the toilet door, it was so cramped that it was unbelievably near the toilet bowl that it could almost hit it if not done properly, can you believe it?!

Common Toilet

The public toilet design! =)

Common Bedroom

Edited December 19, 2011 by Takeyu

[Takeyu 0]

Some further pre-reno pics

Close-up Look of the Common Toilet

2 PD Doors for the Partition. New idea hahah

Kitchen

Small as usual for the new flats.

From Kitchen to Service Yard

Service Yard See Through to Passageway via Common Toilet

with both doors for the common toilet, here's how it will look when you are at the service yard.

Edited December 19, 2011 by Takeyu

[beezeebear 0]

Nice place you have got there! It is very similar to mine. Guess HDB decided to use 1 template for all the new flats.

I hate the MBR sink too!! Are you gonna change it?

[Takeyu 0]

yeah nowadays the design of the flats are more or less the same..

yeah definitely gonna change the sink. doesn't look nice and the shape ish arghhh! haha

[denimart 0]

Hi all,

Have always been a silent reader of the forums without contributing. Thus, with the arrival of my new house, I decided to start a t-blog to document the progress of the renovation journey and maybe contribute to the forum if possible haha.

Basically, me and my partner wasn't prepared for the flat as we got it via the Sale of Balance Flat in which we would get the keys to the new flat much much much earlier than expected! It was mixed feeling for us because we were prepared to wait for BTO flats which would mean ard 3 to 5 yrs of waiting and letting us time to save for it but instead we got the keys to the new house in July 2011!!

Hi, may i ask which area do u get ur Sale of Balance flat? Your view seems good though. We failed to get ours and I quite envy u for able to get one. End up we are getting a resale flat now

[piknik 1]

Yes, pls reveal ur flat location. Look very interesting for the floorplan. Hahah.

And the MBR vanity sink is super ugly ..

[PoppyLove 0]

The designer, if he's not french, he must've loved France so much to give the mbr toilet a touch of france hehehehe

MBR Toilet

[Takeyu 0]

Hi, may i ask which area do u get ur Sale of Balance flat? Your view seems good though. We failed to get ours and I quite envy u for able to get one. End up we are getting a resale flat now

Our flat is in the Sengkang area. It located oppo Rivervale Plaza. It's pretty near my in-laws house so i guess that play a part in us getting it ba. Prior to that, we also tried quite a number of times for other BTOs but unsuccessful.

Did you tried for the recent SOBF? Our SOBF is last year one..

Edited December 18, 2011 by Takeyu

[Takeyu 0]

The designer, if he's not french, he must've loved France so much to give the mbr toilet a touch of france hehehehe

MBR Toilet

ahhhh now i get what you mean. hahaha. that's the hot and water piping on how it should be run! All the new flats will have this marking in the toilets. haha

[Takeyu 0]

A close up shot of the the common toilet divider.

The shower area and "business" area would be separated coz the designer think that if one was bathing, some other pple can still go do "business". But seriously who will do that! It just feel so awkward isn't it.

[piknik 1]

U already knew who would do "business" when one was having a shower. It's definitely the one who created this designed floor plan.

[Takeyu 0]

To move on, next up would be the ID search. Did lots of research via the forum for recommendations before shortlisting which one to drop by and take a look. We actually went to shortlist before we got the house keys, so as to ensure that everything would be done properly. Din realise that ID search can be so draining, physically and mentally.

Here's some brief ID encounters:

In**** Living

One of the IDs was hotly recommended in the forum, but we din contact her as my idea was that the standard would be across the board. Instead, we did a walk-in and see what they gotta offer. The colleague of hers, was abit tad inexperienced and the ideas wasn't fantastic. Wasn't very impressed by it.

Pl*** Living

Same tot of us, din contact the popular person recommended in the forum. Walk-in and see what we get. hahaa. was pretty much impressed by the idea proposed and the ID was able to draw out 2D drawing to show us what he meant. Was pretty experienced and confident on what was being proposed. We kind of decided to adopt his idea on the MBR layout.

Id*** Design

Same area as the 1st one so thot why not. Just to save time. ID was gd to tok with, ideas were all right as we slowly realize with the small area we have, more or less its gonna be the same proposal for each ID due to our request for modern theme. hahaha.

Su*** Design

Did a walk-in too. was a bit pushy and ideas were all right.

** Design

Make an appt and had difficulty in finding the office. Was nice to tok to and ideas were more or less the same with the others. Din get back to us on the quotation at all in the end though. hahaha

End up, pricing wise for the all the IDs were more or less the same for the range of works that we wanted to do, we decided to go with the one that had lots of ideas for us. But the pricing was a bit on the high side and we had to take out some of the stuff that we wanted to do in the 1st place :\

Edited December 19, 2011 by Takeyu

[Takeyu 0]

U already knew who would do "business" when one was having a shower. It's definitely the one who created this designed floor plan.

Gotta agree on that! We had thoughts of removing that partition but due to budget constraint, we decided to leave it alone. haha. Its the common toilet after all!

[Takeyu 0]

As mentioned previously, we decided to go with the ID with the most ideas for us. David Chan from Pl*** was the selected one. His design was nice but we wanted something different from the norm..

Just for 3D drawing itself, he had to make changes for like 4 times before we were fine with the colors and design. But that's what we pay for right! hahaha.

Here are the 3D drawings provided:

Foyer

A hot pink shoe cabinet. My fiancee absolutely love the color of it!!

Living Room

Diff kind of false ceiling and feature wall. our ID had to crack his brain for this as we insist on something diff for it and he din disappoint.

Kitchen

Had a hard time deciding on how the orange color would be done... as we din wan the whole kitchen to look so orange. haha

Bedroom 2

A table to put a desktop / laptop but the room would be mainly a guest room. For my parents come and sleep over if needed

Common Toilet

Would be doing up the sink and vanity only.