P(^o^)Q

[korilala 6]

Updates Part 2

Kitchen cabinets are up too! And my lovely E F oven that was only delivered yesterday has been installed too!

Top cabinets

Closer view of my oven. Love the mirror glass effect!

Walk in wardrobe!

Blinds were also installed earlier for WIW room, as the carpentry was gonna eat into the window space.

It feels good to see the carpentry up so quickly, though I believe there's still plenty of touching up to do. Did a basic check, and mentioned to ID that some of the doors were not properly aligned, and ID immediately requested for the workers to take note and rectify the mistakes. Also, the flooring in the MBR wasn't protected, and again the workers got a lashing from ID. oops.

Confirmed the table top for my MBR toilet vanity top as well. Chose a shade of sparkly white and hope it goes well with my dark walnut vanity cabinet.

Can't believe today marks 1 month into our renovation! It's been quite an enjoyable process so far, thanks to my ID for overseeing the details and seeking clarification with us very frequently to ensure that we are aware of the progress and informed of any big and small decisions made.

[korilala 6]

The renovations is slowly coming to an end! ID says that probable handover date will be around mid June or earlier, I can't wait!

Air con installation

This was the part that gave me the most headache throughout the renovations. It finally came to an end (I hope!) yesterday when they completed the second installation of the air con units. They arrived at around 4plus as arranged and worked till close to 7pm before they finished the job. There were mainly two guys handling our installation of the System 4 units. When they arrived with our units, they actually asked if they could have their lunch first before proceeding with the installation. They seemed quite nice and entertained our questions, as well as took care to make sure they do not scratch the carpentry accidentally. Installation wise, seems alright and pretty neat and aligned.

They also did a basic test run for us, and passed us some vouchers for servicing, although they were very honest and told us that it would be much cheaper to engage air con cleaning companies to do the servicing instead of going back to them. After the entire installation, they helped us to wipe the units first, to clean away any fingerprints, wrapped up the units with plastic covering, and taught us how to remove them at the end of our renovations. All in all, despite the glitches in the arrangement for installation, we are still quite pleased with their final services, and the workers were pretty friendly and all.

One of the workers installing the aircon unit in the living room and balancing the unit with his head.

Completed installation in the MBR, and the wind was soooo cooling and comfy after we spent 2 hours in the house without any fans!

And so... the air con company we engaged is actually CT Air con, located in Sin Ming area, just opposite Hommage. To be fair, despite their pretty screwed up appointment dates (need to confirm installation dates early as they are VERY packed), the customer service was rather good. They tried to accommodate to our requests and slot us in for earlier dates, and they were quite prompt in their replies. Also, when we purchased the air con system, they gave us a free $200 (or $300 I can't recall) NTUC voucher, which they allowed us to exchange for a cash deduction on the final price instead. Only down part is I think the workers' schedule are very packed (overheard them saying they have been working nonstop since morning), and last min appointments are very hard to secure. So I guess, if anyone wants to engage them, do make sure you book your appointments early.

Window grilles installation

This was actually a contact passed to us by my dad. This company has been around for 20 over years, and apparently they never do any promotions or advertisements, so usually their clients are through recommendations by friends. The boss came down each time personally to meet us, and he is always super punctual! In fact, first time we arranged to meet him at 3.30pm, he was already at the site even before we arrived. He was quick in giving us the quotation, and installation was completed around a week after quotation was given and final site visit was done for measurements. In fact, he only collected payment from us AFTER the entire installation! We were so surprised, since usually companies all require us to pay some form of deposits before they start work.

Anyway the grilles were installed last week, but we noticed a small problem with one of the grilles, so we got the boss to come down again to check, as well as make payment.

Thin, fine scratch on the grille.

After we showed him, he immediately ask his worker to take down the grille and promised that he would replace it asap. True enough, he called us this morning and informed us that he will be sending the new grille up today in the afternoon. Also, as the process of powder-coating the grilles involve movements of the grilles from one place to another, he mentioned that it is likely that there might be fine scratches at certain parts of the grilles, which cannot be helped, but he will be coming over to help us inspect and do any touch up if required. The boss also assured us that in years to come, if any part of the grille starts malfunctioning, we would only need to top up his transport fee, he will come over and help us with the repair without charging. We are really glad to have taken up my dad's recommendation, and it was a breeze working with him!

[Ks Toh 74]

Kitchen cabinets are up too! And my lovely E F oven that was only delivered yesterday has been installed too!

For a moment, I thought your double sink was above your oven.

[4ddd 18]

Glad the air con turns on ok in the well. We all wan things to be rectified. Voicing out is a chance for rectification...

Not voicing out means ...grrr

[korilala 6]

It's been awfully long since I last updated! *sweeps cobwebs away*

Renovation has been COMPLETED and handover has been done since last week. Most of our furniture have also arrived, except for our dining table which we have YET to purchase and simply too lazy to go and select/ purchase.

All in all, we are very pleased with our ID and will definitely recommend her to our friends and family members.

Will update more tonight with pictures and details!

[LHWH 7]

Hi!

Can I check with you what is the window grilles contact and cost? Also, did you hire a cleaning service for after renovation? Any recommendations?

Many thanks!

[muffball 0]

Hey just to check, I see that you've built a room around the study area. I will be having that in the future so was wondering if the space for a study... is it okay/too small? Also, how many air con units do you have for the house? 3br + living room = 4 units, plus your study, did you get 5 units? thanks!

[Ken82 6]

Excellent and I love your blog. I put my deposit for Air-Con with All Best and I also hope for the "best" too but so far I have friends who feedback that they are alright.

[korilala 6]

Hi!

Can I check with you what is the window grilles contact and cost? Also, did you hire a cleaning service for after renovation? Any recommendations?

Many thanks!

Hihi, I got my window grilles from Teck Guan Aluminium. You can look for Albert (I think he's the boss) at 9150 5525. He's mainly Chinese speaking I think, middle age uncle. I paid a total of around 1.3k for my white powdered grilles.

Oh, and yup I did hire a cleaning company after renovation. (It just seemed too much to have to clean up the entire dusty house ourselves after handover, and we didn't really have time either, cos rushing to move in on "auspicious" date.) Was recommended Mrs Sparkles, but they were fully booked, so we went with Clean Homes Singapore instead. Paid $589 for full post-renovation cleaning and sanitisation, they did quite a good job according to the hubs who was there to supervise.

Edited July 1, 2014 by korilala

[korilala 6]

Hey just to check, I see that you've built a room around the study area. I will be having that in the future so was wondering if the space for a study... is it okay/too small? Also, how many air con units do you have for the house? 3br + living room = 4 units, plus your study, did you get 5 units? thanks!

The space is quite alright, maybe 2/3 size of a regular room? We did full height book shelves at the back of the study, and with our customised study table, still feels okay, at least more than 1m of space from bookshelves to study table. As for aircon units wise, cos one of my bedrooms is converted into a WIW and we shifted the MBR door forward to combine the WIW and MBR, so we only did system 4. 1 for living room, 1 for study, 1 for common bedroom and 1 for WIW+MBR. If u are considering 5 units, maybe better to get 2 sets of System 2/3?

[korilala 6]

Excellent and I love your blog. I put my deposit for Air-Con with All Best and I also hope for the "best" too but so far I have friends who feedback that they are alright.

Thanks for the compliment!

As for the air-con company, I think so long you are able to check on them during the installation and make sure everything is alright, things should turn out fine. Usually things cant go too wrong with constant supervision, lesson learnt from renovating the house! All the best.

[muffball 0]

Ahhhhh I see I see. But for the wiw, would it get too stuffy cos one unit for 2 rooms? Would love to see pics of your completed home!!

[korilala 6]

Last bits of reno

Backtracking to my last post was around early June after the installation of the air con and replacement of the scratched window grilles. So after that, the hubs and I kind of "dropped" the reno supervision and went for a trip, leaving everything in the hands of our ID to settle for us. By then, outstanding items were only the kitchen glass splash and a few minor installations.

One thing I would really like to highlight about my ID is, she took the initiative to inform us when the MBR basin we bought was defective (apparently the base was not well cut?) and that installation of the basin in the long run would cause leaking problems. First, I really appreciated her effort in informing us, as she could have simply just installed the basin for us. But not only did she not do that, she also sourced for an alternative basin for us while we were still overseas. She whatsapped me a few different kinds to show me too, and in the end she actually REPLACED MY DEFECTIVE BASIN FOR FREE with another one she bought on her own for us. Hubs and I were really touched by her sweet gesture. I am not sure if any other ID would have simply done the same, but this is our first home reno, and we really appreciated her going the extra mile to help us.

Rectification works - carpentry, painting, doors

Fast forward, we came back in Mid June and by then it was mostly rectification before handover. Most things were quite well done, except for bits and parts of the carpentry, painting and doors. And so, we spent a few days with the various groups doing up the minor touch ups. We were very pleased with the ID subcon's professionalism. Firstly, the carpentry side came in the afternoon and started working on the parts we were thought could be done better. They stayed all the way from 12plus in the afternoon till 8pm just to up the defects (eg. doors were not aligned properly, weird sounds when we opened the drawers etc). Actually we were quite surprised, because we thought usually they will try to argue and convince us that it's the "norm" for certain defects to occur and etc, but no, they took all our feedback and redid every single bit we mentioned. Not only that, the boss also came down personally to inspect after his workers were done, and only left after we confirmed that we were able to accept the rectifications and everything was up to our expectations.

Same went for the painter who dropped by to help us with the touch up. He ensured that we checked every part of the touch up we requested, and that things were alright before he left. Previously, there were some parts of the painting that had slight bumps and it looked funny, so we got him to sand the area away and repaint it. Again, no arguments or anything, he simply helped us to sand it away and repaint without second words.

For the doors, after reading through some T-bloggers' entries, I realised that many IDs/contractors do not have the habit of painting the top parts of the doors, citing that it won't be seen anyway. But I believe in the idea that when you do something, you do it properly and totally. So when we realised that the top parts of the doors were not painted, we informed the ID who in turn got the painters to paint it. However, they did not do a very good job, as the colors were not very even. Also, there were parts of the WIW sliding doors that wasn't painted evenly, with tiny bubbles formed on the door frames. According to ID, it could be because the door wasn't sand properly before painting, and thus the unevenness. Again, when the doors subcon came over for rectification work, he redid everything without complaining and repainted the top of the doors as requested.

So within a total of 3 days, we managed to finish up the entire rectification work and the house was ready for handover!

After the wall of text, pictures!

View from entrance of the door. To create the 玄关(ganken effect) of a Jap home, we used tiles for the foyer area. On the left, our mid height shoe cabinet.

We sealed the original kitchen entrance (which was where the shoe cabinet was) and relocated it. Built full height mini storage space to flush the wall with our study, and in missing in picture below the lights will be our dining table. Lights from Tmall Panasonic.

Our customised TV floating console that is linked to our settee. Venetian blinds from HM Gallery.

Pardon the mess, our sofa from Hommage, placed in front of the study. On the left is the settee cushions which came along with our customised settee.

Close up view of our sofa from Hommage. A 2.5 seater with our chosen fabric color to match the flooring and color scheme.

[korilala 6]

Continuing on...

We chose soft lights for both sets of lights in the living room, with only the lights from the ceiling fans to be white ones (in case we need to read). Ceiling fan from Samaire, Royal Fanco. Tested the windspeed and it is pretty good! Downlights from Tmall again, and it is cheap and good. Paid less than 15sgd per LED 12W downlight.

42" Full HD Panasonic Smart TV delivered by Best Denki, and our Eubiq track installed as well. Alot of messy cables everywhere though.

Close up of the Eubiq track.

Kitchen cabinets with backsplash up. Love the white quartz kitchen top!

The original kitchen was sealed, but I requested for a half glass wall so that even when I am in the kitchen, I can see who's coming back home!

Our Samsung Inverter fridge with no silicon trimmings by the sides to prevent mould from growing.

[korilala 6]

Walkway to Study (1st room on left), Common bedroom/ baby room (2nd room on left), Common toilet (on the right) and MBR+WIW (in the middle)

Entrance to the study. ID helped us fixed the door stopper so that we would not accidentally knock into the book shelves when we open the door. Sufficient space was also allocated, so that when we open the book shelves, it would not hit the air con unit either.

Our customised full length work table with power points and Cat 6 internet cable for fast speed connection. We opted for the glass window concept for the study, so that again, we are able to see what's going on in the living room area even in the study. (great for supervising kids/babies, haha)

Our full height bookshelves with internal woodgrain PVC. (post-its were pasted to remind ourselves of places to touch up)

Close up of our LED study light from Tmall Panasonic. We choose this for the brightness, as well as the dark walnut light frame to match the theme.

Common bedroom 2/ baby room. Nothing much was done here, except installation of lights, window grilles, blinds and changing of the switch casings. Full black out blinds with UV protection in baby blue, also from HM Gallery.