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Hi all!

We are nearing the end of our house renovation and we have finally decided to share our experience so far :)

Our new house is a 5-room BTO in Waterway Brooks, and here's our floor plan for a start:

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Both of us prefer a simple and clean house, along the line of minimalistic and nordic feel kinda. We surfed extensively on (it's really quite a useful app!), renotalk (of cuz ;p) and various interior design company websites initially to gather our ideas on how we want our house to be. Being super fickle-minded, it took us quite awhile to come to a decision on the interior design we are both comfortable with. Here's our mood board:

Living Room

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Kitchen

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Random ideas

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That's all for now! :D

 

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Selection of Interior Designs (ID) and Contractors

We were deciding between to engage an ID or to get a contractor for our renovation. The pros of engaging an ID is that ID will have a better design perception and project management skill, whereas contractor, of cuz, will be cheaper in terms of price. We shortlisted a few IDs and contractors from renotalk and  and contacted them to get a quotation:

PO** H**E - We arranged our first appointment and met up with ID M**k. The impression he gave us was that he is a very experienced and organized guy. He called us up shortly after he has drafted his first quotation to arrange for the second appointment and presented to us his mood board on this laptop and his hand sketched designs. Impressed with his free style drawing (very professional). However, his quotation is also very impressive :notti:. Close to 50k ! Way beyond our budget.

FU** C*****T- We really like many of their home designs in their portfolio on their website which are line with the concept we wanted for our house. Met up with ID Y***y but she seems to be very busy. Had to chase her for quotation and the next appointment. She never get back to us for the second quotation. Disappointed :(

TH*M S******** - Met up with ID G***en who is rather responsive. However, we feel that he is lacking in ideas since most of the time we are the one giving him our ideas and designs. Well if we are the one giving the ideas, we could simply engage a contractor instead of ID :no: ...

Contractor Boon - First impression that he gave us was that he is quite creative which is unexpected from a contractor. His quotation came very soon and we were quite happy with the quotation since it's cheap (compared to all the ID quotations :D). He proposed to bring us to his show flats. After viewing his show flats,workmanship-wise we think that it's pretty decent but his designs does not seem to match our theme and we weren't sure if he could pull off the theme that we wanted.

Contractor J&E - Saw their portfolio from fellow renotalk t-bloggers which looks promising :P:P. They came to our new house and started measuring the moment they stepped in. We roughly told them the design we wanted and they immediately advised us on what is feasible and what is not :thumbsup: :thumbs up: Budget-wise, contractor J&E is higher than contractor Boon but still cheaper than all the IDs. Despite their busy schedule, contractor E made time to meet up with us and revised our quotation a few (if not many :unsure: ) times because we kept changing our designs ;) . Finally decided to engage them :deal::yamseng:

 

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After hearing nightmares from many of our friends who went ahead with renovation before their 3D design were completed (due to the long waiting time for each revision), we were thinking - what's the point?? Therefore, we decided to self-draw our very own 3D drawings which on one hand, could clearly convey our ideas, and on the other hand, we could save some money :sport-smiley-018:

Here are a few decent drawings that we managed to generate from Google sketchup ;):

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Things we want for our kitchen:

- open concept kitchen to make our house feel more spacious -> hacking of kitchen wall

- breakfast counter /bar top to create a chic feel :D

- subway tiles

- black and white theme

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Things we want for our living room:

- shoe cabinet with a display section in the middle for putting small items

- low platform/ledge in replacement of TV console

- cove light on one side of the living room only as we feel that L-box around the living room will make the house feel smaller

Other items:

- Wardrobes in master bedroom and one of the common bedrooms

- our master toilet comes with a vanity top (yup the ugly-looking one). Initial plan was to replace the whole vanity top, but eventually we decided to just build a vanity cabinet beneath due to budget constraint :wacko:

- mirror cabinets in both common and master toilets

 

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Hi glad that your reno is completing soon, look forward to see :) , can you please share with me contractor Boon and contractor J and E 's contact? Thank you:)

 

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Hi! Looking forward to reading the rest of your journey! Would you mind PM-ing me the contacts for Contractor Boon and Contractor J&E please?

 

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Hello! I'm having the same 工字 (learnt this term from the tilers, hehe) tiles above the lower cabinet as you are. Almost the whole wall is up already and I love it so far :) Sketchup is handy. Helped much of our space planning too. But curious, why is the microwave shelf so low?

 

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We have both microwave and conventional ovens for the two "holes" in the tall unit but only drew one in the sketchup drawing :yeah:

Oh I see! Interesting :D I've always thought that the base of the 'bottom hole' is the same height as the kitchen cabinet table. I guess having two appliances in the holes would mean that the height has to be lowered, then.

 

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Pre-Renovation photos

living room - kitchen - master bedroom

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Apparently the best view we have of the waterway is in our service yard! :bangwall: maybe we should just convert it into a balcony :yeah:

 

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Renovation in progress!

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Bye bye wall! Really love the effect of the subway tiles when we went down to see on the other day. $$ well spent. We chose to have white grout between the tiles, looks nice aesthetically but soon we would have a hard time maintaining it :unsure: We decided to plaster and paint all visible kitchen tiles as we really cant accept the ugly tiles done by hdb :bleah:

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Prelude of our plaster wall along the long side of the living room for the TV to be mounted on..looks abit ugly for now. False ceiling in master bedroom for hanging bedside pendant light and aircon trucking boxup are also up.

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Kerbs for both toilets. Due to budget constraint, we decided to keep both common room basin and the master bedroom vanity top.

More photos coming soon! cheers!

 
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