Renovation progress

Renovation at Hougang Nest is now in full swing. Hacking of the floors and walls is completed and tiling is in progress. But, dun think we reached this point so quickly. In fact, we had many meetings with our contractor, Richie of Rich Ideas beforehand. We first met up with him with our floor plan and a concise plan of what we wanted in each room, even down to the kind of furniture, wall colour, etc. And to get to that point, we had to browse through countless decor pages, tear our pages of what we liked, discuss together and list down neatly what we wanted for easy reference. Richie then went back to do up a quote based on our requirements, working out a 3D plan and tweaking some things. We then had to go through the quote with him again, decide what we want or not want, arrange a visit to the place though the whole transaction wasn't completed yet, wait for him to revert and the cycle continues.

Before reno started, we also went to settle the following:

1) Decide on our tiling
Richie brought us to a huge showroom called Soon Bee Huat at Toh Guan Road. It's really huge and displayed all kinds of tiles from Malaysia, China, Italy, Spain.. We spent some 2 hours there deciding on floor and wall tiles, the range there is mind-blowing! Just a tip, dun get for too light a colour for the living room floor cos any dust, dirt, hair will be very obvious. Try to get those with a slight pattern as it helps to mask the dirt particles!

2) Decide on our lightings
Went to Chan Huat at Balestier again. Since we were using mainly downlights, there was not much need to decide on special light fixtures. We are leaving the table lamps and other special ambience lighting to later since Chan Huat is quite limited in unique designs. We also bought our ceiling fans from here. Btw, do always ask for better pricing. I suspect they mark-up the pricing pretty much cos suppliers also lower prices when I ask. With a little more coaxing, you can get even bigger discounts.

3) Decide on toilet accessories
Went to the highly recommended Royal Fanco at Jalan Besar Road for toilet accessories. Before that, we checked out some other shops to get an idea of the kind of designs we liked. Sim Siang Choon has a lot of variety, but apparently quite costly. Quite glad to have bought our fittings from Royal Fanco, as the owner, Henry, is very helpful and showed us a lot of samples of the newest trends and designs in toilet accessories. Prices are also quite reasonable. We also got our granite kitchen sink, cooker hood and hob from here.

4) Source out wardrobe manufacturers
Initially, Richie quoted us based on the Alumix system but I didn't like the pole system. Find that with the pole system, when stacking clothes, they are likely to topple since there would be no side backing supporting them. Currently, the market leader in customised wardrobes is Closet Design but find that they are a bit pricey. Managed to source another supplier at a home lifestyle fair at Expo called Closet Robe. Yes, it sounds kinda similar to Closet Design, cos it is set up by ex-employees of Closet Design. Our design consultant, Eugene Soh, was very helpful and even went to the extra mile of sending us home after we had a particularly late meeting discussing the wardrobe layout. We included a vanity table within the closet which helps save some space in the master bedroom. Pretty excited to see the end results!

5) Ordered our aircon
At the same fair, Joe managed to source out an aircon supplier, Kun Seng, which may be a neighbourhood supplier but is quite reputable and offered reasonable prices as well. So, do check out of these fairs, usually held at Singapore Expo, as you can find some good suppliers. Some of these suppliers also offer innovative products like shoe cabinets with space-efficient stacking systems, clothes hanging racks, etc.

So far so good! Things have been going well though a few delays here and there. I must credit the smooth process to my darling Joe, whose proficiency in Hokkien has helped to endear contractors to us and move things along! Dear dear, you are the best! Many thanks goes to Jared too for providing lots of good advice and great contacts too!