Hi all! Waited for 3 years and we finally got our keys in 12th June 2013 at Punggol Crest. I have always love the French, shabby & country style/furniture, hence the topic title 'Frest' came about. Currently, reno is going halfway now, I'm gonna share the journey and our experience with finding IDs & contractors.

I guess what everyone first did was to upload the floor plan. So here it is !

Welcome to RT, Nice shape of your house no odd corner. Wish you have a smooth reno journey.

Thank you Soonliew.

After collection of keys, we went to our new place right away! Here's some pics of the empty house

Pretty shocked to see the living room & kitchen is quite small.

Common toilet. Don't know y HDB build it this way, shower head is at the door side. How to build shower screen?

MBR toilet. Cramped.

Can you share with us is this a 4/5 room and area?

Can you share with us is this a 4/5 room and area?

lol standard 4 room BTO lah. 92-94 sqm inclusive of AC ledge.

Yup, 4 room BTO. We went to 8 IDs/Contractors before deciding on the 'one'. Had a tight budget to work with and hopefully everything we wanted can keep it under 20k. We know exactly what we wanna do, some hacking for my WIW , kitchen, laminate flooring and those essentials. Being the typical Singaporean, gotta compare and compare and compare. LOL.

Here's the list of the companies we went to (Mostly read thru RT and know about them):-

1) Id*** House

- Didn't met up with the famous boss K. Met this lady, Y*****, new in the company but not in this industry. Showed us her work that was featured in magazines like Square rooms etc. We first liase via emails, giving her a list what we wanted to do. When we finally meet up, she already prepared the quotation. Price came up to be 23k excluding GST and she offered free 3D with no obligation.

2) Defong Interior

Met the boss. To me, I found him quite down to earth, friendly, no hard-selling, no GST. Don't expect creativity, he will quote you based on whatever u wanna do. Promised to email us quotation 2 days later and he really did. To me, this is pretty important.

3) N*D D***gn

Met the boss. Young man, pretty creative. But if you want something different from what he proposed, he will say not nice blah blah blah. And his quote is a whopping more than 34K . Many items are way over budget. And they are very persistent in follow up calls and sms. One word, irritating.

4) One St** Bui*ders

Met the boss, super new company. They are more like a contractor rather than ID, prices are not too ex but they will charge you for 600 for a design fee?

5) CO*s D*****

Met a guy, E***. Should be the boss? Shortest meetup time, 30mins? Kept everything short and sweet. Had very good impression of him, he kept giving ideas on how to save money, what we should do and what we shouldn't spend money on. In the end, quotation he missed out a lot of things and priced at 24k.

6) Carp******

This company has their own factory and they has been around for many many years. Met up this interesting guy, A******* but prices over our budget even they have their own factory.

7) Sun H**

Met tis lady, P******. Super friendly. Gave us a lot of tips on Fengshui as well, LOL. But when she said to email us quotation 2 days later, the email did not came in. I have to keep text her to ask for it, eventually delayed and only email me few days later. Too busy or forgetful? Anyway price over our budget but prices stated is very transparent. Stated everything including electrical works.

8) DX Interior

Intro by my fellow neighbour, she met him and seen his works at other projects. Met the boss. The first time we met him, he gave me that kind of PCK feel. LOL. But really nice and friendly guy. Discussion was short and simple. Read his reviews, after sales service was superb . Promised to email quotation 2 days later.

In the end, we shortlisted Jeremy from Defong & Edmund from DX. Mainly because reviews, chemistry was good and most importantly price also good . Met them for site-seeing, Jeremy was late half an hour .

hi cynthiazen, can u share what is the list of items u r doing?

hi cynthiazen, can u share what is the list of items u r doing?

Hi harlocarlos, my theme is French & country.

I'm doing the following:

- crown molding (cornice) for living room, the walkway, MBR & BR2.

- Extend TV wall as the wall is too short

- top+ bottom kitchen cabinets + glass backing for kitchen

- swinging glass kitchen door

- windows only for service yard

- laminate flooring for MBR and BR2,

- platform for MBR (as platform bed)

- Hack one of the wall in MBR to install a pair of French doors + seal original BR2 door

- shower screen for MBR

- vanity for MBR

- misc works + electrical works + plumbing works

Hope it helps

After site seeing, official quotation came in 2 days later. Both quotations work out to be quite similar. In the end, we chose DX as reviews mainly were good compare to Defong.

Renovation only started in August due to some problems in the renovation loan and Edmund is extremely patience with us

During the long 2 months wait, hubby and I tried to order from taobao. I ordered a dressing table for a start to get a feel of how MIC furnitures are.

Here's the pics!

Came in a crate, packaging was superb.

hi cynthia, do you have any 3d drawings to share also?

Edmund says he will be updating us via whatsapp. Here's the very first pic he sent! Reno started

Hacking was done 2 days later, no PE required!

Kerbs in toilet also done!

Lack of updates due to extremely busy-ness

Didn't expect Edmund to furnish us with 3D pic of the kitchen, kinda surprise when he whatsapp us the pic of our kitchen!

Initially, we chose Sandstone for the kitchen, but since our theme is country french, we change it to all white with a black granite top.

When we told Edmund we wanted crown mouldings instead of L box or cove lightings, he was like "not much people do this liao leh". LOL. Due to the lack of popularity of it, we chose the simple one.

AC313

Work started pretty fast

Edited December 1, 201312 yr by cynthiazen

We have some really serious shopping.. Burning weekends browsing all the furniture shops, everyday surfing Taobao.

And i saw this bench in Hock Siong FB:

I immediately called hubby to make a trip down to have a look since they close at 5.30pm on weekdays. We needed 2 of them as our dinning bench. They were selling at $80 per piece and after much bargaining, we manage to get both for $130

Cash & carry, LOL:

Edited December 26, 201312 yr by cynthiazen

Kitchen sink shopping at Hoe Kee

And we chose volcanic black

Air con shopping.. Due to the budget contrain, we chose a system 2 from Midea at Gaincity. We have decided on citygas for our heater. Pretty cool!