Lighting for our home!

Before service yesterday, we went to Jalan Besar to hunt for lights since our IDs asked of us to have them ready for renovation. We narrowed down to a few that we fancied and since we had to make a dash for service, we KIV-ed those we short-listed. 

Today, I woke up with yet another cough. Probably the virus from what I had earlier this week. I had to give a birthday party a miss as kids were present. I had some rest and headed down to Jalan Besar to do more search. The ones recommended yesterday were kinda boring to me. I didn't like them completely. 

They were boring like these.

So I went hunting. After an entire afternoon of work in the hot sweltering sun, I have all our lights settled.

In my first shop, I chose this beautiful light for my corridor! One of the daintier pieces! (: The uncle gave me a really good price for this and the kitchen light I chose! 

I didn't fancy the boring round lights for the kitchen we chose yesterday and fell in love with this instead. The crystals are so pretty and I can play around with the lights. One flick of the switch gives me all white light, another flick gives me pretty crystal warm light and another flick gives me a combination of the two!

In the other shop I made my purchases, I got these.

This black and gold lamp for the middle of our bedroom.

This black framed energy-saving light bulb ceiling lamp for the study.

A simple small and flat light for our service yard where my washing machine and fridge are.

We also got down lights but as they were costlier, we managed to get cheaper ones through our IDs.

This black frame lamp is similar to the one in the study and we're gonna use it for our toilet.

And the hubby's pick for our dining hall! (: I also got us some T5 lighting tubes for our cove lights and for my kitchen to be placed above my back splash. 

It sure was tiring shopping for lights. And this is just the beginning! There's still the toilet bowl and furniture... 

Anyway, I was done about 6pm so I decided to head down to Bras Basah to grab some books from the book sale. It was Buy-One-Get-One-Free! 

I got 28 books as rewards for my kids, 2 Dan Brown novels for the hubby and 2 cookbooks for myself. 

I really love books and reading. Hopefully I'll be able to encourage my kids to learn to appreciate reading!

I printed mini reward cards to be stuck into their books. (: Can't wait to distribute them! 

And speaking of books.. I just got 65 books from Noq using the Groupon promotion! Information books for my kids next term, some cookbooks, a novel and some books from The Magic School Bus series! I just can't wait for them to arrive!

So as the week comes to an end.. I'm looking forward to Friday. It'll be the last day of school this term! I'll be having a full day PTC on Thursday, something I'm thankful for as opposed to after school or 'meet parents at your own time' PTCs. Next week we'll have having a staff retreat followed by First Aid Course which I'm really excited about! It's an essential skill I feel that everyone should be equipped with. And of course.. Hong Kong next Friday night. 

I just can't wait! (: 

Of many rectifications...

After loads of thoughts, I think we have my final colour scheme for the kitchen decided. This isn't the final draft though.. the fridge will be in the service yard rather than in that corner of the kitchen. Images are misleading. My kitchen is much shorter and cramper than this. Still awaiting the next draft of 3D drawings to finalise everything before we start work.

Here's a small video tour of our new place!

Post by Cynthia Lim.

Anyway, I was in a huge dilemma choosing the colours for our kitchen. 

Glad that we have finally decided on one. Picking the right colour combo was really tough.

Anyway, we collected the keys to our place on the 6th, hopeful that we could start renovation before we leave for HK... however, the list of defects was really long.. and they took a rather long time rectifying it.

The 2 guys working on our unit are amazing. They really put in their best in the rectification work. However, HDB s*cks. Our floor tiles were the part of the house that troubled us a lot. 

THEY WERE UNEVEN. 

Across our living hall, dining hall, kitchen, master bed room and guest room. The tiles were UNEVEN. We did even consider closing one eye and let the matter pass. But come to think of it, we paid 5k for it. Why should we accept sub-standard flooring? 

The worse part was probably the possibility that it may one day pop or explode like the stories that I have head, destroying the carpentry work that we are going to spend so much on. That really isn't a fear I want to live with. 

The 2 workers made a lot of rectification. They painted our walls. Scrubbed our floors. Re-grouted the flooring, mended holes in the wall, re-grouted our skirting and the list goes on. Let me share some photos of our defects with you, bearing in mind that we're merely a 3 room unit. The amount of defects was kinda alarming.

Loads of uneven painting.

And it was really a lot.

We wanted to write down the defects but after sticking so many pieces of masking tape, I gave up. We merely stuck them all over where there were defects. 

We even had a window frame that wasn't levelled like the rest. "It's safe one la!" said the site supervisor. "It's pre-fab so there's nothing we can do" he added. Seriously HDB? 

Uneven tiles in the MBR. More that we realised at a later stage. ALL IN OUR ONLY WALKING PATH. It was getting pretty annoying that most of the unevenness in tiles were in our planned walking space. 

We even had areas in our 2nd bedroom where water would collect. One part was raised and the other was concave. 

Dining Hall wall.

Pretty glad that we have a good view in our hall though.

Living up to the name Tampines Greenleaf (:

We have been then burning our Saturdays at our unit, waiting for rectifications to be done in the room we locked up on weekdays. In about 2 weeks, most of the rectification work was done. The 2 guys even painted our bomb shelter to make it look so much better! 

Here's how our kitchen tiles looked like when they did their regrouting. It dawned on me that if you apply grout between 2 tiles and scrape with a flat scraper, you'd be able to remove most of the grout no? That's how uneven our tiles were ): And it was for almost the entire unit.

The site sup and the HDB rep came to assess our flooring and were only agreeable to change 6 extremely uneven tiles in our kitchen. The tiles weren't even side by side. In addition, we had to 'accept' whatever colour difference there may be. 

We did agree to it but forgot to sign the document at the Building Service Centre (BSC) last Saturday. Upon pondering, it didn't make much sense to me that I have to accept the possible colour difference when they were the ones to screw up.

Well, since they didn't want to change all the tiles in the unit despite many instances of unevenness which in my opinion could make someone fall (especially kids), we wrote an email on Sunday night. We sent it to MP Baey to address the issue for us. He had been invited into our BTO's facebook group to assist us. We cc-ed several other people as well. 

Monday, no news.

Tuesday, BSC called me to make and appointment for the HDB personnel and several other higher management to visit our unit for an assessment. 

Verdict? They will replace the 6 tiles along with 6 other tiles in the area for a more uniformed look. Now, my kitchen tiles will have 3 shades of colour. How wonderful. 

Some days, I wish we had been wiser to not opt in for the tiles and doors. The quality of floor tiles and workmanship they have provided leaves me to wonder if it was really worth all my time, effort and money. In any case, we're now waiting for the tiles to be properly replaced... and for them to hand our padlock keys back to us. And since we're heading to HK soon, we will start renovation only when we return. It's all getting pretty exciting from here! 

Meeting our IDs for the second time

We've waiting to collect our keys rather soon. Our new place in Tampines, Tampines Greenleaf is almost ready. We applied for it in May 2011 and now that our HLE has been approved, we're waiting for the collection of our keys.

1.5 to 2 years ago, I started ID hunting. There are many many companies in the market and the competition is stiff. There were a few IDs which we fancied but never came to a decision as we didn't know what we wanted nor when exactly our place would be ready. When the date of key collection drew closer, we realised that we had to make a decision. We narrowed down to 5 companies... 

1) Renozone as recommended by Van (We spoke to Colin)

2) Vegas (we had great recommendations & service from our previous contact but they didn't reply our email this time round.)

3) Box Plan as recommended by Yang (We spoke to Ogata but he was really really slow in his replies)

4) Twerkz as recommended by Zelig (We spoke to Thomas and he was really slow in his reply too)

5) Absolook which I've fancied since our previous search 

We were really sold by the plans Colin had for us though the price was a little steep. But we were really comfortable with him and the plans he had. We met up and discussed the plans we had and what he could do for us. We were to meet him upon his return from his trip to discuss more before finalising if we wanted to engage him.

However, that very weekend, we headed down to Absolook's new branch in Yishun to meet up with Richie. He has been very helpful through messages when we discussed things we wanted in our homes and the quote he would then do up for us. Lionel was our other ID assigned to our case. As you may already know, the kitchen is sooooooooooooo important to me. And it really didn't help that we got a 3 room unit which is like SOOO SMALL. So maximising whatever space we had in the kitchen was my top priority. Lionel and Richie listened to all my needs and wants for the kitchen and even drew up plans for us on the spot. I was quite amazed.

They then introduced us to the package they had for promotion since they had just opened that outlet. But of course, with what we wanted, we had to top up a fair bit more. That, we were prepared. The hubby and I were contemplating in signing up with them. We narrowed down our options and it was between them and Colin. Colin was more expensive and Absolook did provide us with some freebies that would ease our load as we didn't have to fork out money for them... 

When the hubby and I discussed, we did not feel uneasy. In fact, we felt peace in our hearts. We then decided on Absolook. We were delighted then to have walked out of Absolook, glad that we have firmed up one more detail to our home.

Lionel and Richie then submitted our requests and had our 3D drawn up. It was to take 2 weeks but due to the lack of drafters and the long queue for 3Ds, it took us 3.5 weeks for our first draft to be delivered. We have to admit, the 1st draft wasn't exactly what we asked for. However, the hubby and I didn't exactly know what we wanted then... Nevertheless, let me share our 1st draft with you!

Here's the feature wall for our living hall. They did incorporate the wooden feel we wanted with black but it wasn't the feel that we wanted. After loads of research, the hubby decided on a look like this.

He loves the idea of the black frame.. and glass. Having met Lionel and Richie yesterday, we managed to discuss the new direction for the look of the feature wall and I'm sure the hubby loves it more! 

And as I did my research, I fell in love with the exposed brick wall concept. However, it costs a TON to have it done ): So sadly, we may just got for the wallpaper. 

I asked for an orange kitchen but truth be told, I was SHOCKED at the brightness of this kitchen! Then again, I didn't exactly know what I wanted. Since we met our IDs yesterday, we have since toned down the colours and the drafters will work on the design again. 

I did think of infusing white into the decor, making it white black and orange but was advised against the idea as it'd be too much. White and orange was too bright for my liking and managing a white kitchen isn't really to my fancy. 

As we LOVE to read and have plenty of books and also toys (we collect too much stuff!), we decided on a full length full height bookshelf. This part of the house is really expensive (other than the kitchen)... the shelf alone is 4 - 5k! But we decided on getting carpentry work so that it lasts better and longer as compared to commercial shelves. Richie also suggested a fake 'shelf' on the other side of the room so that more space can be used for storage and display. 

Our bathroom has the class casement separator that I love. The design will be modified again to match the rest of the house.

Having met them yesterday, it excites us even more knowing that our 2nd draft will be out in 2 weeks' time. Till then, I will share the photos with you again! (: