The Birth of a Love Nest…Part 3

It’s been a long and tiring gestational period and finally we are in the final trimester! Our love nest is nearing delivery!

Renovating a new house is indeed an enriching, yet stressful event. It’s an event that is really trying for any couple. Any engaged couple or newly wedded couple, upon going through the renovation process, will definitely have many fierce exchanges. Sourcing for IDs, decision of designs, negotiation phase with ID, payment installations, frequent monitoring of progress, choosing of colours, choosing of materials, defect checking and rectification, all these are possible stressors and potential sparks for arguments. In addition to work stress, threshold for arguments is definitely lower. Renovation is not merely a simple affair of leaving everything to the ID and expecting a beautiful product. Gone are the days when there were honest professional contractors who has pride in their work and will deliver to their best ability, to give us the perfect product we so desire. Nowadays with the stress of high material prices, shop rental prices, workers wages and firece competition for business amongst companies, there is bound to be temptations to take short-cuts. Consumers, like us, have to make time and effort to check on contractor’s work in order to rest well at night. We cannot leave everything to our ID to settle (even though we so desire to do so), simply because we cannot convince ourselves to trust our ID.

Well, now that our renovation is coming to an end. I shall share the new look of our love nest!! Transformed from an empty space with concrete walls and cement floor to one which we can call our VERY OWN LOVE NEST!

Sketch and 3D picture of our living area

Sketch and 3D picture of our cosy area

Sketch and 3D picture of our MBR TV feature and MBR bathroom

The sketch and 3D picture of our MBR

Sketch and 3D picture of our kitchen

Of course, nothing is so easy in this world. Our ID definitely will cause problems along the way.
The first major problem….her plumber drilled into the kitchen water pipe within the wall while trying to install the backsplash! Of all places, the plumber have to choose a spot so close to the blue tape marking from HDB!

Notice how close it is to the blue tape?

Of course, the plumber have to fix it up! According to the plumber, welding is the way to go, really hope it does not create any future problems. HDB mentioned that we have to get our own plumber to fix it and HDB will not need any notification or report. Fine, ID have to do it and ID have to give us assurance that it will not leak in the future….Hope the water that spurted out did not cause water damage to the cabinets opposite as well as the oven.

Damage done

post welding

Patching up of kitchen tile

The next major problem is our kitchen entrance… …
It was initially planned to have an inner sliding glass door but just when ID have to order the glass, she realized a grave mistake…a rather amateurist mistake!! She got the measurements all wrong!! She mentioned that our original kitchen entrance is too big for her to make an inner sliding glass door. The glass door when pushed open fully, will result in our entrance narrowed to a mere 60cm width (this is because the side wall next to the fridge is not long enough for the glass to slide into, and the excess glass will eat into the space of our kitchen entrance). Ok, fine…so what next? She suggested extending our kitchen side wall, to make the entrance smaller, in order for us to have a swing open glass door. She says that the wall extension can also effectively cover up our fridge, serving 2 purposes. She is also very sure it will work. So it was made…

Wall extension

Guess what?? Surprise, surprise…now our fridge is jutting out of the wall extension! We did give our fridge dimensions to her before she proceeded to do the wall extension. As a professional ID, common sense tells us that there should a good distance between the back of the fridge to the wall for proper ventilation right? And it’s usually at least 5 cm…well, she only made allowance for 5 mm…..Isn’t this a super amateur mistake? Angry or not? Of course angry! Angry Bird!

Simulated fridge, showing the extent it protrudes out. Measuring tape shows height of fridge

So in the end, we ended up doing a sliding glass door on the outside of the kitchen. Not the best option but it’s one that definitely works. If only she has done her homework, if only she has foresaw this problem, we wouldn’t have to go through the agony and stress of making this kitchen sliding door! Stupid ID… …

The eventual clear glass sliding door

The next problem is our bathroom doors placement. Can you all accept this end result??

The exposure of bathroom tiles after door closed

How can anyone accept this? ID still have the cheek to tell me that some of her clients actually accepted this! She came up with a ugly suggestion of building a “kerb” outside the door along the passageway to “cover up” the exposure. OMG, no way man! We demanded a change in placement and told her to shift the door forward!

The nice end product! No more bathroom tiles exposure

Ok, now I shall show the readers around our almost completed love nest!

TV feature wall in living room minus the future 46" TV

Our cosy area, where mahjong and games will be played

Our dining area where Darling and Dar Dar will whip up and enjoy delicious dishes together!

Our MBR bathroom where we will make ourselves clean before Gai Gai or Orh Orh

Not forgeting the glass shower screen

We can dance in the rain while bathing!

Full height mirror for Darling to have the perfect view of herself after dressing up

Bedhead with crystals! Darling loves this to the MAX!

We have just completed a almost 30 item defect checklist for our ID to settle by the end of this week. Hopefully she can rectify everything and then polish our floor before handover.
Yay!! Our Love Nest is nearing the end….

Next event….Our Pre-wedding photography on 6 Nov 2011! Stay tuned… …

The Birth of a Love Nest…Part 2

Whoa, been a while since I updated this birth…haha, and it is almost ready!

Well, the next major step to renovation will be the fabrication of the false ceiling as well as the installation of lights.

The installation of the build-up wall and part of false ceiling

We did a built-up-wall in order to let our entire wall be flushed. This is to prevent a space behind half our sofa. And it looks neater this way too…of course this comes at a price but a beautiful home is always priceless. The dining area brick feature is ready but looks a bit raw. This is going to be one of our nicest corner of our love nest!! Can’t wait to see the finished product!

another view of our built-up-wall

This should make it clearer. The original HDB wall adjacent to the window is too short to fit our sofa in, so we decided to give the entire wall a continuous flushed look. The false ceiling really looks raw without lights and paint.

Our MBR ceiling

Once all the false ceilings are up, it’s time for our lights to take center stage!!

Cove lights up. Down lights up!

Once the cove lights and downlights are up, the living room is transformed into a more refined space…more like a place worthy of humans to live in! Haha.

Service Yard light

Bomb Shelter light

Kitchen light

MBR downlights and cove lights

The next major step would be the installation of carpentry. Our ID was quite lousy and slack and we wait almost 3 weeks after our lights installation before the carpentry finally came! How glad we were when we saw our “Lego-brick” carpentry arrive!

Our shoe rack on the left and parts of the display cabinet on the right

Our TV console and part of TV feature wall

Our kitchen in the raw

Our MBR bathroom vanity top

This is where our Super Comfy King-size Sealy mattress will be!

This is our MBR wardrobe...Ok, Darling's wardrobe, with a full height mirror!

This shall be where Darling chooses her beautiful clothes and admire her beauty everyday! A full height mirror to take in the beautiful image of darling! YEAH!

Our semi-finished cosy area, with the shoe rack, bomb shelter concealment, the satee and the display cabinet

The display cabinet is supposed to be a tic-tac-toe design, interlaces with black glass. This shall be our cosy area! We can play our Mahjong while watching TV, or even sit down on the satee while wearing our shoes.

Our TV feature wall, without the glass and mirror sides

Darling's mum checking out the faulty concealment door

The tic-tac mechanism is faulty in the first version of this door. Cannot close the door easily once it’s open! Of course we cannot take it lying down. We confronted the ID and she eventually got it changed.

The full view of our kitchen

The kitchen view photo is taken from the service yard looking in. The kitchen is small but it sure contains everything we need!

We love the colour of the laminates we chose. Good choice by darling!

This is where all the delicious cakes and roast will come out from

The initial proposed kitchen colour was black and white. So glad that darling is strongly against it! And we eventually chose silver with white. Excellent choice and unique colour combination that looks nice!

Now, the best time to test the lights is at night right? After 3-4 days of installing our carpentry, we have now installed our beautiful lights at our dining area and our living area.

Dining area lights

Our dining lights with its beautiful shadows

Our living room light when viewed from below

Admiring the lights with my parents

With the carpentry almost finishing and the lights all installed. We have considered ourselves completing a major part of our renovation. The next steps will be to finish up the rest of the carpentry, do the painting and plumbing works. It’s nearing the end Darling. Hang in there!

The next instalment will show you the final outlook of our love nest…stay tuned

The Birth of a Love Nest… …

As the title implies, this post shall be the start of a series in an attempt to document the progress of our love nest renovation. Renovation is a stressful progress, but I really hope that at the end of the whole time, we can sit back and relax over a cup of tea and tell ourselves that it’s all worth it… …
It all started from our BTO exercise when we got our very own home.

Road sign to our future love nest

Building in progress

The probable completion date

So we started waiting for the date to come….keeps going into the punggol forums to get the latest updates from our project engineer and finally it was announced that keys will start to be distributed in early 2011. We are however sad to hear that our block construction will be delayed due to some faults and that we can only start getting keys from July onwards. Well, we have to bear with the daily facebook updates about our neighbours buying furniture and doing renovation while we wait for our bunch of keys.

The exteriors of our nests

No matter how long the wait is, it has to come to an end and we eventually got our keys on 13 July. This post I have covered previously about us throwing in our “Ong-Lai” and Oranges. I shall now showcase our house interior.
Our love nest is just like a plain canvas waiting for us to give it colour and life!

View of dining area from living room

Our living area and bedrooms passageway

The next meaning visit will be on 3 August, when our flooring is being done! They are so so nice! Glossy, shiny tiles and it makes our Love Nest bright and happy! Good choice by Darling!

Darling examining the shiny floor of the living room

Darling inspecting our Dining Area feature wall

Come 10 August, our Dining Area feature wall is all done up! Looking impressive but wait till it’s fully painted, it will present a totally different feeling!

Our beautiful Dining Area

So far so good? Except the small kitchen…That’s the problem with all new HDB flats, the kitchens are damn small! Not that we are big cooks lah but nobody will complain that the kitchen is too big right? Big is always good! But if HDB were to ask me to choose a bigger living room or a bigger kitchen, I would choose a bigger living room anytime!

A glimpse into our small kitchen and our service yard beyond

After the flooring is done, we had the aircon man from Gain City out up the air-con trunking together with ID’s contractor putting up the false ceiling. After the false ceiling is up, Darling was saying that our love nest “looks more like a home”. I totally agree! Our love nest is slowly coming into shape…

False ceiling looking from living room window

Our living room with false ceiling and proposed TV feature wall in progress

13 Sept is our first delivery day!
Check out our stuff! We delivered the Oven and water heater, as well as the lights and our professional kitchen sink!

Our Bosch oven for our delicious cakes and pastries and a water heater for our bath after the baking session

These are the nice lightings goodies in those boxes.

Our Belllari professional sink

You may think that’s the end of delivery? Haha, there is still a long long to wait! Look at Darling” current house…her bedroom has already become a mini storage room!

Tip of the ice-berg in Darling's current home...overflowing soon

kitchen sink, bathroom towel rack and bathroom accessories

Ok, I shall end my post now. The next post Will be about our lights! Haha, A house with good lights just make it more cosy… …
Now we are looking forward to 28 Sept 2011…we are going to watch the Lion King @ Marina Bay Sands!

5 4 3 2 1

Yup, that is how fast we took to decide our latest addition to ever growing home appliances list. We were at Comex @ suntec and 5 seconds is all we took to buy our 32″ TV for the Master Bedroom. =p
I feel that it’s about time I officially introduce our main members of the home appliances team!!
The latest buy is our 32″ Samsung TV D4003 from the Comex fair, $499 hourly special price! Although it is not full HD and only 720p, we think it’s good enough for our MBR, at least it’s a LED TV and we are assured of quality pictures, especially with the free HDMI cable =)

Our MBR TV

Next up is his BIG brother, our massive 46″ TV in the living room! It’s really a luxury item and we are also assured of it’s picture quality! “It’s a Sony” =) Bravia rocks and it’s also an internet TV. Sony 46EX520, excellent specs, excellent price too! I think we bough it at $1179. Now looking forward to our soccer matches and HD DVDs. Maybe we can steal the free HDMI cable from our MBR or have a trip to Sim Lim to get a cheapo HDMI cable… …

Sony 46EX520

Next up is to introduce the place where most of our appliances will be……our humble kitchen! This kitchen we have really done a lot of research and put in a lot of “脚下功夫”. We more or less fixed on our hood and hob quite fast, but the fridge and especially the oven took a long long time.
We got the highly rated Fujioh FX 900, where it’s said to have high suction power and also easy handling of the “sucked in” oil. Apparently, the oil sucked in will slowly be collected into a cup and we only need to throw away the oil collected in the cup, no need for revisit.

The legendary FX900 hood

Next up is our pretty tempered glass top hob, also by Fujioh! And it is an inner flame.

Our hob, also from Jujioh

Next up is the pair of washer and dryer. We wanted to get a top load Fisher and Paykel but a visit to one of our neighbours shedded some new light. She has a point that since our area will be quite dusty still due to ongoing construction at the surrounding areas, plus the fact that our service yard is so concealed, it will be quite a challenge to dry our clothes. So decided, we shall get BOTH dryer and washer! But which brand leh? Looks like again, we turned to Harvey Norman at Mellenium Walk. The salesperson is extremely helpful and knowledegable. He went through all the pros and cons of the top brands and we ended up with these 2 fellas!

Front load 8 kg Bosch Washer

Bosch 7 kg dryer

Now left with the oven! We had initially thought of getting Brant but after much “background” discussion, and the frequent shopping trips to either Harvey Norman and Courts made us change our minds at least twice. We initially wanted a Brant since the PariSilk guy recommended it for its many function and cheap price but after going to many showrooms, we compared with the top continental brands and decided on Electrolux. Electrolux is another old brand and it is comparable to Brant and Bosch. It’s only until the 4th or 5 th time we went to Harvey Norman @ Mellenium Walk, that we finally decied to our current Bosch with 3Dhotair function! I’m so so soooo looking forward to using the overn to bake cookies and cakes!!

Front view of our Bosch Oven

Last but not least, it is our fridge. It’s almost love at first for darling. We have also been touring around for fridges and nothing catches Darling’s high standard eyes until this particular Panasonic model. It’s a sleek design with a stainless steel outlook. And it looks cool inside too!!

Panasonic NR-BY551VS1N fridge

So That’s All Folks! Looking forward to the next update! Next I hope to introduce our beautiful lightings! That’s a story for another day… …
Renovation is tiring and stressful but it does have its moments of fun! =)

New additions to our Home

Bellari is coming to our love nest. =) We bought a 18-10 stainless steel kitchen professional sink, 600mm length and 230mm depth from Bellari today and we are really impressed with it. Cost is about S$369 I think, invoice with my darling. It is an undermount sink and it meets our requirements of a deep professional sink, together with a tap mounted within the sink, so there is no requirement to cut a hole on our solid surface for the tap. Mounting a tap on the solid surface instead of the sink would result in a need to hire a plumber everytime we need to change a tap, since it will be inaccessible to us, as told to us by the various shop keepers. With a 60cm sink, we will have 140cm length of free space to install our 77cm hob and about 40-55 cm space for food preparation. Kitchen is small nowadays, so have to make the best use of spaces!
We also confirmed our lights from lightings.com.sg. We bought the lights for our living room center, our 2 bedrooms, master bedroom, 2 bathrooms, service yard, kitchen as well as the bomb shelter. We are only short of buying our dining area hanging pendant light and our downlights. It costs S$730+ for these lights but the killer will the downlights. We are thinking of getting the Philips downlights at S$33 each….hmm…dunno how many we need. Looks like we can only find out after the meeting with our electrician and ID next week!

Lessons on Air-con

I went Gain City today and learned a bit about air-cons but of course these are only hear-say from the promoters there.
1) All inverter units have an inherent small tendency for condensation on the trunking.
Reason: the inverter system maintains its entire system and circuit at a lower temperature compared to non-inverter systems, as such there is a bigger difference between the internal temperature and external environment. This bigger temperature gap increases the chance of “normal condensation”
Remedy: Use thicker insulation and use bigger copper pipings and Do regular servicing
Myths: lesser used air-cons requrie fewer servicing
The sales person says that there will be dust going into indoor aircon units even when it is not used, especially for units located near main roads, so regular servicing still needs to be done, but at lesser frequency, like 6 monthly.
2) The quieter the system, the more likely it can cause “normal condensation” due to some technology they use which I cannot exactly remember.
3) Reduce length of piping used, so that less chance for condensation, ie get most direct route from compressor to indoor units (AKA fan-coils in air-con terms)

So many new things = more headaches.
Aiyah, me and darling say hor, just get the system used most by people and do regular servicing lah.
Get the company who is experienced in doing air-con and just pay the premium.
Small risks cannot be helped lah, just pray that it don’t happen to us loh.

Air Con settled!

Today we made a small step towards our dream home. We bought our air-con system! After much comparing of prices and discussion, we have decided on a Systems 4 unit.
Well, we chanced upon this wonderful offer today while at the Suntec Electronics and Furniture fair.
We bought the Mitsubishi Heavy Industry System 4, which comes with copper piping, class “0” insulation and installation in 2 parts, trunking then indoor units. All for the price of S$3499 with a S$50 lightings voucher and S$180 servicing voucher.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industry air-con units are newer, having been launched in 2010 and it has an automatic Ionizer function as well as a self-clean function. This is in comparison to Mitsubishi Electric Starmex’s easy-clean function. Moreover, Starmex is launched at around 2008. The heavy industry system also has a more powerful compressor, so I guess less chance of over-working the compressor. =)
Overall, we are happy! This is a price cheaper by S$150 as compared to the quotation from EverJoint, so I think it is a good deal.
Good that we grabbed it at the last day of the fair and it’s the second last set on promotion we bought!
Good job on darling for bringing the quotation from Everjoint, so we can make an informed decision!

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Added on 11 August 2011.
We got from Best Tech at the ercent Suntec Road show.
We didn’t do any forum research on air con suppliers and we were shocked when we did a simple google search on best tech! They have the worst comments ever! Looks like everything was bad, from their technicians, workmanship and after-sales…the only thing good is their price.
We regreted man, and the more we read the comments (as recent as in June 2011), the more worried we got, we the next day after paying deposit, we went back to their shop for a full refund.
Surprising, the sales person seems quite cool about it, even when I told him about the bad remarks which dented our confidence. He just says that those are “competitors spreading rumours”….a bit too many competitors leh we feel, and how come not against other companies and only them? Nonetheless, we managed to cancel and get our full refund, so we are back to Square 1….
Now we have decided to just get from Gain City. Going to place orders by this weekend. A bit pricy but hope their claims of having more established and experienced technicians holds true!

First Inspection

I think this post has been long delayed!! Haha, decided to do some documentation of the progress of our love nest.

We have returned from Australia and paying a first visit to our Love Nest. Got news from my parents that my floor has been almost done up and that it look gorgeous….well, of course we knew it would look gorgeous, but it just feels so SHIOK when another person compliments it!!

Darling in our bright reflective living room, lucky she did not wear a short mini skirt.... =p

We did curbs for our 2 bathrooms too, to designate a shower area, which is prone to flooding. This is to keep our main bathroom area dry, especially in our MBR bathroom which has its own vanity top

Common Bathroom

This is the common bathroom curb for the shower area. We are planning on leaving it as it is but will buy a nice shower screen to prevent splashing =)

Long shower curb to accomodate our sliding shower screen

The above is our MBR bathroom. There will be a tempered glass sliding shower screen. There will also be a vanity top, just like in the hotel on the opposite side.
The only thing that is not done is our MBR floor, as they claimed that the tiles are not enough and there are ordering from the shop again.

This is how our beloved MBR look like when she's naked...haha

We have a nicely decorated dining area that is covered in brick tiles. It is going to be painted white tentatively. Then we can hang Black and White pictures of us! YEAH!!

Our semi-done Dining Area feature wall

And finally it’s the picture that puts places into perpective.

Darling in our Love Nest with dining area behind

Hope there will be more updates!

Proud Home Owners We are!

Today is the day we have been waiting for since March 2008! HDB is finally going to have over the keys to us!
We have been loitering around the Punggol Springs Forum for ages, and it’s torturing to read about other Springers from other blocks getting their keys while our own flat status remains uncertain. But all that shall end today!
We have been excited thikning about this day ever since we got the news last week. After we got our keys, we prepared for our “mini” door opening ceremony. Went NTUC and bough 2 sweet pineapples with 10 oranges, each got meaning 1 ok!!

We got our keys le!

Take a look!! I am so so so excited.

It's Magical!!

Darling Smiling to herself

The Keys to our Love Nest!

So we did some cam-whoring on the train. Roughly 40 minutes later on the NEL, we reached Punggol and transferred to the LRT!

Darling's first few LRT ride

I am ready for Flat Grand Opening

1 stop later, we reached Damai and had a short stroll over to Punggol Springs 615A

Spokesperson for Punggol Springs 615A--> My Darling!

Look at that smile! Priceless...

I love this smile and pose!!!

Show the readers your keys darling!

Now my turn to show off our keys! For the main door

HUAT AH!

After opening the doors, we do our mini-door opening!

Ong Lai bowling for Darling

Dar Dar's Ong :Lai

So we started saying auspicious phrases and words whenever we throw something inside the house =)

Strike for Darling!

My turn to roll the Ong Lai and oranges

After all the rolling and throwing, we stepped inside and started roaming around. This is our home, and we shall doll it up nicely!
It’s windy up here but it doesn’t catch a lot sun. We have to choose lighter colours for the living room since there is less natural sunlight penetration. The view we have is limited but there are still nice views… …

Darling enjoying the limited scenery

Darling is tired but no place to sit down, so... ...toilet bowl then!!

Darling tying on the good luck charm!

Darling placing coins at the corners of the flat

Darling and Me, surrounded by 10 children. Hahahahaha

We have spent a few hours here, shall leave it for now. But We will always come back to see you…Our new Love Nest =x

The sea view we have while waiting for the lift

We saw our Love Nest

Yesterday is like going to the O&G doctor to view the fetal ultrasound of our future baby….haha, we can glipmse at how our future home will look like!
We are meeting our ID Orange from InsideLiving for our 3D perspective drawings.
She is using mainly black and white as base colours, completing the modern look with glass, mirrors, glossy finishing.
I am quite pleased with the design as they look like “designed” rather than “cut and paste” from other projects.
I am glad darling loved the designs too!
We especially loved our dining arera feature wall, making us feel like eating home every day! Haha, Yah, it’s that nice!
Our TV feature wall is modenistic and our bedroom bedframe has the royal glam feeling! All in all, I am vey satisfied with most of the design proposed. The only thing left to decide is the kitchen cabinet colour combination….we are still undecided on the colour.It was proposed to be black and white too but we hoped it to be something cosier maybe? Leave the problem to our ID while we await our next draft! Haha, shiok! Now we can’t wait for our keys to come!!! Tentatively end of May, hopefully PS engineer didn’t fake me!!