Renovation woes.

Who doesn’t get that when they do renovation for their new nest? Either you do not care what the ID (interiors designers) deliver or just filthy rich that you engage the top notch players.

Either way, our home is going to be completed soon.

The contractor called us up last week and said everything was done and able to do the hand-over.

B was really sceptical and we purposely went to our new place to take a look.

It was horrible.

What we saw:

    • The paint works were badly done especially the corners. I do not remember asking him to paint wavey paintwork at the cornerS. This happen to all corners.

His excuse/explanation:
Lousy walls done by HDB.
His workers 看心情 and unfortnately we were the suay ones who kenna their bad moods. He told us he came down to take a look the day before but did not notice that because these can be easily handed by his workers.

    • crackling sound from the MBR fan but not the CBR

His excuse/explanation:
The fans were bought by us (KDK from Malaysia) and not from him. Same fans and one with crackling sound. He said same guy installed and same installation method. Ok, I cannot say much since I know nothing about the installation. Anyway, he got his man to reinstall the fan and it’s fine now. So, the problem was not the fan.

    • paint stains on the tiles, switches and skirting

His excuse/explanation:
He said these were small little things. Hello… You called and told me it’s ready to hand over and those minor yet super obvious stuffs not even cleaned up? What kind of hand over is this?!

    • laminate was not done properly, the side of it totally chipped off

His excuse/explanation:
So the contractor claimed that he was more concerned on the carpentry and this still happened. What a joke. B pointed out to him , he made some fuss but still get that done , but ended up some faults at a non visible area.

One mistake we made was we already made 95% of the payment that was we have no control over him. Please look out for the payment terms in your quotation. Best would be to have the last payment to be 15% or more.

Another thing was that push your contractor and ask him what he is going to do next and set a timeline. If not what you going to get is “rubber time” and endless delay. Stress him that you are aware what is going on and what you are expecting to see accordingly to the timeline. I believe a good ID or contractor would have done this. If he’s good , definiey have a lot of customers so ultimatley he also do not want to waste his time too.

Good luck for your renovation!

Choices of blades

Ceiling? Standing? Or wall?

There are a couple of choices when we come to selection of fans.

Standing fans

  • Pros: You can move it anywhere you like. Cheap. Easy to clean. easy to replace.
  • Cons: take up space and fugly (the biggest cons ever). Need to have a power plug around. Might tripped over the cables.
  • Price range: SGD 60 – 200 (excluding the blade-less fan)

Ceiling fans

  • Pros: does not take up space. The wind can cover a bigger area at the same time. Supposed to be more lasting. Do not need to clean as often as compared to the other 2.
  • Cons: expensive. Difficult to maintain. Need to pay for installation ( SGD 30 -50). Unskilled installation will led to noise generation from the fans and may be shaking. different/ expensive to replace (but hopefully can last).  Cannot have lights above the blades unless you like the flickering shadow feel…
  • Price range: easily > SGD 150 for the simplest design and go up to SGD700 for KDK brand!

Wall fans

  • Pros: does not take up space. Cheapest among the 3. easy to clean.
  • Cons: Stucked in the corner. Need to do self installation e.g. involve drilling into the wall. Need to find back the similar model if not you need to re-install the whole thing and need to patch up the holes that you drilled. Save a bit of space compared to standing. Cheaper version will have noise (like my SONA zzzz)
  • Price range: SGD 50 – 150

Ultimately, we go space saver and looks since our flat is so tiny.

I thought of wall fans but decided to go with ceiling fans since the wind is going to cover a bigger area. My ID was trying to sell us ceiling fans (alpha brand) 56″ , 5 blades with LED  etc for SGD 270 ! This price is indeed attractive but.. we do not need the LED! We already have the false ceiling so we do not want the one with more lights! and it cost the same or slightly lower without LED. frankly speaking, i do not mind paying slightly cheaper for fans without lights. we just find them soooo extra.

Heng my bestie did her reno a year ago so she was sharing that KDK ceilings fans are cheaper in Malaysia.

This is so true!

But i read in some forums that SG KDK produced better quality fans as compared to MY KDK. IMHO, KDK has a name to uphold, so it should not differ a lot. The only concern would be what if “suay” that the fan broke down within a year *touchwood*

Here’s one of the examples.

KDK SG Model :V56VK (5-SPEED)

Retail Selling Price:  SGD 512

KDK SG

 

KDK MY Model: K14Z9

Retail Selling Price (according to app): RM 569 (~ SGD 237) A WHOOPING 50% OFF!

KDK MY

They have almost the same description but price difference makes you just want to smuggle in from Malaysia! haha

The choice is urs.

I’m getting mine from Malaysia. *praying hard that it won’t spoil easily*

by the way, do remember to declare your goods when you bringing into SG. Let them tax rather than fine.

Good Luck!

Where all the heat begins

Where else but the Kitchen!

Frankly speaking, when I first saw the flat, I was really disappointed as the kitchen is really small. I know I’m not getting a 5-room or a penthouse but it’s just too small. I can live with a small bedroom , small living room but not that size of a kitchen.

floorplanOur kitchen is a rectangle shape but could only line up the cabinets on one side and the opposite is the toilet and the bomb shelter.

By following the HDB’s placement of sink, hob and fridge, i would probably left with 40~50cm prep space. This is excluding the space that we need to put the kettle, rice-cooker etc.

I was telling myself.. We are going to stay for 5 years and would need to upgrade when we have children. “Just 5 years .. Just 5 years…”

So we try to maximize the usage of the limited space we have. Basically we need to have our dining table, workstations for 2, the sofa, TV console, some shelves in the living room. I cannot imagine how clutter it’s going to be. But anyway we got to live it not much choice unless I can strike the CNY 10m toto and not more than 3 folks to share the prize.

We went to Ikea to source for (cheap)ideas. It’s always a fruitful trip. We will be home with fresh ideas. So we came across those “L” shape kitchen,the shorter part of the L can be serve as a prep and dining table. That’s one hell of a space saver idea!!

But we have to spend money to hack down a wall so that we can extend the kitchen top. The circled area is where we going to hack.

floorplan-1

Supposedly will turn in the something like the one below but erm.. more modern looking! Basically that’s the idea! To turn the hacked away space into a prep + dining area!

 

Is it a go or no go?is it worth it?Will I be lying on a pan-fried-fish-smelt sofa every other day?Will there be any fengshui issue?

The discussion went on for days. B said we are going to stay for at least 5 years might as well do something we like. ARGH! Fuck it! We are going to hack the wall!

We talked to our contractor and he was asking “are you sure? Next time if want to sell, the buyer will discount the value leh?”

We don’t care.

Contractor proceeded to help us apply the permit to hack that wall. After the submssion, you will be able to check the status (started off with “Pending”) from the HDB page with your singpass logon but anyway they took about 1-2 weeks before replying to my contractor that they need PE endorsement.

Ok.. That thingy burnt another big hole into our budget.

From the floor map, the wall looks harmless and hack-able (not those thick black lines which one look i know that can’t be hacked). But apparently the HDB officer told me they will need the PE endorsement if we are hacking the kitchen wall cause there might be cables or piping concealed in the wall. Anyway I know nuts about what other treasures hidden in that piece of wall , we just told our contractor to source whatever they need.

We agreed to pay $1100 for the PE endorsement. After googling a few reno-forums, yes, that’s pricey. I do not know how true but i read there are folks who paid only $500.

一种米养白种人, 一种 HDB, can have different kind of walls. Haha, i was trying to say different flats  have different kind of walls, with or without “treasures” (hidden cables/piping) so i believe the price you paid for might varies. Or i’m just unlucky to met a contractor who chopped me.  BUT anything above $1100, you are probably on the springboard waiting to be pushed into the carrot soup unless there’s strong justification that requires a very very very very senior PE to do it (as if you are hacking down the whole HDB)? That’s my guess.

Ok. Enough crap.

After submitting the PE approval thingy, it took another week for the status of the permit to change from “Pending” to “Approval”. My contractor told me that HDB will give them only 3 days to hack the wall and has to be completed by then. Not too sure what will happen if it’s not completed. The contractor will print out the notice and paste it outside your home or probably at the lift lobby to alert your neighbors that they are doing something legal.

20130803_165511

 

Tada! The wall is gone! They will start doing the patching after the 7th day in 7th month.  Can’t wait to see our completed kitchen!

The Grand “Opening” to our BTO flat

i am just referring to the 1st time opening the door to our BTO flat. lol

So we chose a date and made our first trip to our new home on 3rd June 2013.

Some folks will prepare some prayers whereas others would just roll pineapples into the home.

rolling pineapples into home means 旺来, 财源滚进来.

Yes, yes… we are superstitious. We know we have to do something to bring some luck to our new nest.

But for us , we brought some rice, salt and “Mak Cao” (which until now i do not know what is that). Basically we just tie the “Mak Cao” at the metal gate, mix the rice and the salt together and put bit of it in every corners (including the toilets).

Next, you should be checking out the defects in your new home. During the collection of the keys, the HDB staff will pass you a feedback form whereby you need to list down the defects that you found and submit it to the Building Service Center (BSC). But question is , what do we look out for? what would consider a defect?

I found this online. This is indeed useful! At least you have a rough guide on what should be looking out for. My bestie emphasizes on the skirting. You should see any gaps between the skirting and the wall/floor tiles.

We did a round of checks and was satisfied and thought “Wow, we are lucky, only minor defects that could be easily fixed during reno”. But we were so wrong. Our contractor checked the flat again and he submitted multiple defects. -_-

Some of the defects that our contractor highlighted. 

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The gap at the door

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As for this…. all i can see was that it was badly painted which also consider a defect.

 

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the gap at the service yard

 

photo.jpg_preview_373x500 (3)

I’m not too sure where … looks like it’s my kitchen’s floor tiles.

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another badly painted works i guess…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We have the feel of our new home so we could move on to the planning portion before the real renovation!

Keys to .. the new home!

B and I got the keys to our humble 3-room BTO (Build To Order) flat in May 2013.

BTO basically means , you “reserve” your flat now and pay it later since the construction will takes about 3 years to complete each housing project. Flats are getting more and more expensive and thus this is sort of a cheaper option for Singaporean citizens comparing to buy a property in the market rather than from HDB. And also you will never know how much more the housing going to inflate in the next 3 years. Currently those who bought their properties 10 years ago , they are now worth more than double . Good money isn’t it? But if you cash it out , where are you going to stay? (unless you downgrade from 5-room to 3-room flats)

Anyway, we did not go to visit the place immediately cause we believe in picking an auspicious hour in doing major/significant event that affects our lives. haha (yes, the 1st time to enter the house is a significant event!)

通书 (Tong Shu) is one of the primary method to check whether that particular date is a good day to carry out certain things.

If you do not need or do not want to engage professionals to advise and you believes in what you read from the Internet, i would recommend Jiriba. It simply has all the information you need including the date “clashes” with which chinese zodiac and even list out the auspicious hour.

There were a few drawbacks that i had from the site.

1. It’s completely written in Chinese (I had a hard time reading it so I just simply leave it to B to check)
2. You need to decipher the time (to convert the chinese time to erm.. SGT) as it’s not written as direct as “9am – 10am”.
3. You need to know what “event” that you are checking for. For me, I do not know what’s the “event” call for “1st-time-opening-door” . Unfortunately it’s not as clear as “开门日”.. /shrugs

If you can understand the “chim” chinese, please check out the site cause it’s most probably good as a “Tong Shu Shifu” ! haha

And Of course! Just for people like me,  there is always a simplified version! you might find it too simple and do not want to believe in it . However, there is no “good day”  if you are choosing to move in from now till end of Dec 2013. :(

Good Luck in checking!

 

Disclaimer : I’m NOT a fengshui shifu nor fortune teller. Believe the site at your own risk. Haha