What’s a better way to begin the year with? A new house (in the midst of reno works), a feature on cleo and a huge step to take ahead… Quite a bit of changes/shifts, a very happening and meaningful year indeed.
Here’s the cool feature in Cleo Feb:
We’re very occupied with our new place, together with my dad, we’re chasing everyone to step up the pace of reno. 
My left and right eye. 
These are the tiles we’ve chosen. Super pearl white homo (600mm x 600mm) for the living area and almost black ceramic textured tiles (400mm x 400mm with shiny specks you can’t see from the picture) for the balcony. Will have to top up close to $2 psf for these but I’m just glad we can say bye bye to the pink horror!
For the bedrooms, we’ll be selecting the colour for the parquet floor and bedroom doors this saturday. Initially, we wanted laminated floorboard cos it’s much cheaper. But in the end, we heeded cheryl’s dad’s advice. More money going into the reno!!!
Anyway, hacking works commenced and the place was a big mess! Too late for us to write little notes to our poor neighbors to apologise for the noise and dust though. Opps… Paiseh paiseh…
Second day of the hacking. Hack hack hack.
Went down again on monday to receive the tiles and to check on the progress of the hacking. Wah lao eh… the two indian workers actually SIT on a chair to do hacking (i.e. they drill abit, move the chair a couple of feet, sit on the chair, then continue drilling!). First time i see or even hear of such a practice. Super lazy lah! Argh. Their boss ah dee came down too and scolded them in front of me. Dunno whether it’s an act or not but at least he tried. There was still some work to be done before the tiles can be laid leh. Gotta hurry up cos reno works will stop during the CNY period and will only re-commence in the last week of february! Hope to get the ceiling works done before the break…
Tiles arrive on time on monday morning. But ma de… we found out later that ah dee (HDB contractor) underestimated the number of tiles we need. More delays as the china tile layers wait for the 16 or so homo tiles to arrive tomorrow morning. After they finish with the floor and skirtings, cement screeding for the bedrooms will be done so that the parquet flooring can be done by another contractor relative, wa zhai…
That’s our enlarged masterbedroom. The area with the rectangular air-con ‘hole’ will be for the walk-in-wardrobe. It’s a pity that the room will look smaller once we’ve built a partition wall to create the walk-in-wardrobe area. Personally i would have preferred to let the pole system wardrobe to be seen from the sleeping area… but martin advised that it will look very messy unless we keep the wardrobe super neat. Oh well, we’ll see…
Masterbedroom as seen from the walk-in-wardrobe area.
The new Apple iphone. Coming to asia in 2008.
Must… get… one…
1 January 2007
Went down to the contractor’s showroom at boon keng to discuss the initial quote of the renovation works on the first day of the new year, based on the ideas conveyed to martin earlier. We were excited yet worried at the same time as we had no idea how ‘expensive’ our ideas will be. As he went off momentarily to fetch some material samples, i quickly flipped to the last page where the grand total was found. It’s grand.
$34,000++.
Alamak. Thought my ideas involved minimum carpentry and we’re not even doing half the floors! However, as he went through the items with me, it was clear he added many luxury items that were great to have but not must haves (he thought so too hahaha). We’ll be trimming the quote and make sure we dun over stretch overselves excessively. I must admit - it’s not easy at all to balance cost and the aesthetics appeal of the house. Our next meeting will be on 6 Jan 07, this time at our place. I think he will flip when he sees how much we are scaling down hahahahaha.
3 to 5 January 2007
I don’t like to call my clients repeatedly to chase for things (though they do that to us) unless absolutely necessary. Getting our house fixed promptly by the hdb so that my contractors can move in to start work belongs to the ‘absolutely necessary’ category heh heh.
Step one: Called hdb officer-in-charge ms ng to get an update on the defects rectification. She has already given the keys to one of their appointed contractor (ah dee).
Step two: Called ah dee to get him to expedite the inspection of the floor tiles.
Step three: Call ah dee again to ask on state of our floor tiles. Keep emphasising that it’s in very bad condition. Got confirmation that he can start hacking of tiles (if necessary) next monday.
Step four: Call ah dee again to ask if he has checked our tiles. Triple-confirmed with him that he will be replacing our yucky dirty pink (i already washed once. conclusion. the colour is dirty, not the tiles) floor tiles.
Step five: Celebrate. Do a little dance.
Step six: Ask repeatedly when he can let us choose the tiles.
Step seven: Go to the house to look at the two choices (white or light pink ceramic). Negotiate to top-up a bit $1++ psf (ceramic tiles by hdb cost only $0.85 psf wah lao) for shinier and classier homogeneous tiles. Found out that hdb has already mended the wall that had badly flaking paint.
Step eight: Prepare to go to his supplier mr low to choose the homogeneous tiles at balestier after second discussion of renovation quote with martin.