November 2, 2009
Home Renovation 2009 (II)
The following is the list of things included in the minor renovations we done for our house..
1. Hacking of the kitchen tiles, to lay the new tiling, and construct the fridge and waching machine base.
2. Hacking of the 2 bathrooms’ tiles, lay the new tiling, including the installation of the toilet accesories.
3. Supply/install shower kerb and shower screen c/w swing door in master toilet.
4. Furnish or refurbish old kitchen cabinet.
5. Installation of 3 bedrooms’ doors and 2 toilets’ doors.
6. Supply construct cornices in 3 bedrooms’ ceiling.
7. Build laminated feature wall in master room c/w low cabinet below window.
8. Chemical cleaning of whole house.
Before reno works started:
This pic description from top left to right, the selection of tiles for toilet and kitchen while below left to right show the script planning for feature wall and low cabinet below window at master room.
part of the planning process
The grey tiles we chose for our bathroom toilets and the white tiles are for our kitchen.
The feature wall was planned according to our ideas and being visualized with drawing consept by Henry.
During reno works was in progress:
covered living hall and hacking of kitchen tiles and bathroom tiles
The second pic description from top-bottom left, other rooms were covered to avoid any destruction, and top-bottom center shown the new tiles sample in the kitchen floor after hacking the old tiles and the unfurnished kitchen cabinet.
After reno works finished
After all reno works had done, then the painting process of the whole house was started. The paint colours for each room is different, we had been helped by our designer from the ID firm which we only took their painting services to mix & match the colours.
Here’s some pics of the whole house after the painting works finished:
Our maindoor and gate. The left one is the meter reading room.
Living and Dining room
Our balcony glass door. Last time we planned it to be removed but luckily we didn't
Kitchen Store Room, the paint colour is the same as the main door gate
Our refurbished kitchen cabinet, does it look new? hehe
This is the painting in common room 1
This is the painting in common room 2
The 2-tone colours of wall painting for our room
We got our TV feature-wall mounted in our room
Our master bathroom door with the toilet accessories installed
We got our toilet accesories from Genova, and we also got the tempered glass cooker hob - Fujioh 3 burner – from there too.. 
My next pending post is the home furnishing series.. Had been pending it for so long coz quite busy with my Jakarta wedding preparation and some office works.. Hoping to finish the home series soon as I couldn’t wait to start my wedding preparation stories 
October 26, 2009
Home Renovations 2009 (I)
As promised, in this post I will share about my home renovation which conducted around February this year.. After we confirmed our house on August last year, got our housing loan approved then began to process the handover of the flat. Our agent settled all the mandatory things, from paperworks, dealing with HDB officer and intro us to a lawyer..
The processing of the flat handover with HDB took around 3 months time. I forgot exactly when was the first appointment, think around early or mid September last year. While the handover of keys, should be around late December but our ex-owner had requested to extend the stay till another 1 month as they prepared to moving out.
We started to look around for our home reno vendor early October last year, during one of the home exhibition at Singapore Expo.. Actually just wanted to see and look around first, but end-up we signed with one of the interior design firm and put our first deposit which later can be used for whole house painting services.. maybe we’re both too naive, we quite amazed with their design idea and the 3D images they showed us hehe.. when I came home, I begin to do research about the company.. we heard about the renovation forum, “renotalk”.. and to my surprise, so many bad words about this firm.. o.O
I still continue doing more researches in renotalk about which vendor is recommended.. then from that I got ask few quotations too from another contractors.. Thanks to the forumers, quite a lot info I can get from there regarding the first time renovation.. We decided to do minor renovation only, as this is only our first home..
After so much arguing with my hubby, whether wanna give them a chance or don’t wanna use them to continue the renovation, we decided to keep our peace of mind.. we dropped the firm and only use their painting service.. for the renovation work, we decided to use one of the recommended contractor in the forum.. the decision had been made after we’ve been comparing the quotations and met him in person and we think that was quite a reasonable price he gave us.. as usual, my hubby was the one who did the negotiation hihihi 
We made the right decision, the renovation works was done smoothly.. the contractor was good in followed-up the progress with us.. After the reno finished, then we continued with the whole house painting service that we got from the interior design firm.. luckily the interior designer that we rejected, still helped us to choose the wall combination colours for our house and gave some suggestions too.. hehe
Some of our own conclusion about the firm, we think that the person in office and the actual person who do the reno works were not in synch.. the designer may have a wonderful idea and talent.. but lack of control and management with the workers.. too bad.. compared with the contractor, himself who manage the workers and know the actual works on the field.. the painting was done a bit messy.. but we couldn’t say much, the designer also acted like he couldn’t do anything.. so we just accepted it.. a bit sympathy to the designer though.. I felt relieved didn’t take their renovation service intead trusted the reno works to our contractor
oh btw, our contractor is Henry Goh from Impress 21
Here’s some pics of the rooms before renovation started, when we went to view the house with Henry to get the first quotation..
main door, living & dining room, master room
master toilet, 2 common rooms, and kitchen
To be continued in my next post >> Home Renovation 2009 (II).
