Signed on the Dotted Line

After much comparisons and considerations, we have decided on engaging Johnson from Posh Design to be part of our first renovation journey. It was a close competition among the top 3 ID that we have shortlisted, but ultimately, it was Johnson outspoken and firm character that won us over.

He had vast experiences in ID and could give us many suggestions and ideas to consider when we were unsure of the designs for a particular segment, or that we had to do something else to save cost due to our tight budget. He was also brutally honest when we shared some of our ideas with him, where he would turn it down because it was not practical or just a bad idea. He would still let us make the final decisions, although most of the time his feedback were so reasonable that we throw our idea out ourselves. There were really great chemistry between him and us, and we are looking forward to working together with him on our future home.

Moving on to the next phase: The Planning

Lesson Learnt after Visiting IDs

It has been 20 days since we gotten the keys to our new house. We are still in the midst of deciding which ID to sign with, and have already shortlisted 3. The final battle is on, and we hope to be able to secure our ID by the end of this month.

As i was looking through all the quotations given by the IDs, it soon became frustration as I was unable to compare them in too many areas because each proposed design with each ID is different from the other. This was largely due to the IDs giving their suggestions on some matters, and we took them wholesale and added it into the quotations. Not that it is bad because it is not because that is what an ID is supposed to do, but it does make comparing a difficult task.

Hence lesson learnt and i hope to share with everyone is this: Decide on ONE design plan for the house, and stick with it no matter how inappropriate it is, or how great the idea from the several IDs may sound. JUST STICK WITH ONE PLAN. For the ideas from all the IDs, consolidate them and only share it with the final ID you have decided to sign up with. This way, every ID will quote based on the same design plan, making your job a lot easier if you are a calculative person like me. As you can roughly see from the picture above, it can be challenging comparing them if all the quotations are based on a different plan. Cheerios~

First Purchases of JB

When we first saw this sofa, we fell in love with it immediately. We love how we are able to have a deep sofa for us to lie in while watching our movies. We then tried to find a similar one in Singapore to compare the prices but to no avail. Recently we found a similar one in leather but it cost over whooping $3000. Hence we went back to take a look again, and placed our order. Cant wait for it to arrive in April!

We bought our storage heater too! This marks the start of us slowly buying appliances and furnitures from JB and bringing them over one or two items at a time. This allow us to save a little, by not needing to pay the 7% GST.

To know how it works: Each person when visiting JB for less than 24hr is entitled to bring back $150 of goods without needing to pay any taxes. If there are 2 of us in the car, we are able to bring back $300 worth of goods without having to pay the 7% tax. So what we are doing, is making multiple trips and keeping our purchases below $300 so that we can avoid the taxes. It is actually more expensive doing multiple trips if the sole purpose is just to avoid tax because every round trip cost about $15 in toll. However since we are already regularly going in for our massage and loklok fix, it will be more cost-saving for us to split our purchases into multiple trips.

Looking forward to more purchases soon!

First Bill

Opened our letterbox today and was greeted by our first bill from SP Services, along with several other miscellaneous letters. Mixed feelings about this moment actually. One side being excited about how this marks the start of our future where we are really owning a house and having to pay the bills for it, and another side feeling miserable on how the shit has hit the fan and we are now having to pay the bills which was once well taken care of by our parents. Oh well~

Meeting of ID Part 3

Preview of our house layout. Most of the BTO would look more or less similar but nevertheless, we are still quite happy with the layout.

Today we received our quotation from our last ID, hence we have officially closed the audition for the search of the ideal ID to turn our house into our home. After looking through all the quotations and evaluating how we felt with each of the ID, we have decided to shortlist the final 3.

1. John from P Design
2. WY from 9 Design
3. Jay from I Design

John has always been our top choice but he comes with a hefty price. WY and Jay are more affordable in terms of the quotations but doesn't give us the same confidence as John. For now, let's see if we can reduce our quotation with John first!

Sneak Preview - Projector

How to resist a 157 inch screen for our movies night?

Meeting of ID Part 2

We have finally met up with every ID we had plan to meet up with! It has been a tiring journey, but this only marks the beginning of designing our new houses. We have shortlisted some, and are still awaiting for 2 more quotations to come back to us before we can make our final decision to pick the chosen one ID. Of course, my chosen one has and always will be my Mrs Bee. :D Anyway, just some updates to the IDs we met thus far:

1. JS from P Design: Met up with him again at his office/showroom this time where he introduced us the materials and designs and features they got. Impressive it is, according to Mrs Bee. After the introduction was the quotation. JS was the only ID who did not ask us about our budget. Not sure if he missed it out or he genuinely skipped it so that he will not compromise on the standards initially but oh well. Quotation came up to 50k which was high, way high, way way high above our limit. However, we really click well with his character, and admire his expertise, and noted that we are able to remove several items in the quotations that we did not really want to, and so, we are still KIV-ing JS despite the price. His service and design ideas are really top notch too, which is what we expected of an ID. Most of the other IDs are merely taking in our proposed plan wholesale and not giving any suggestions or ideas, which often make us wonder why are we hiring a more expensive ID instead of a contractor. Just need to discuss a little on the quotation again. :/

2. K from S Creation: Summary from previous post, negative experience, and definitely a no-no.

3. T from Piu Design: Hmm, was one of our top choices, but taking a backseat now. Met T for the revised quotation after our FSM changed the entire floorplan but is still slightly on the expensive side at about 45k, but he was not able to impress and stand out from the other IDs we have met. He did wow-ed us last time, but after meeting a couple more IDs, he seem more of an average ID now. Furthermore, he is only an designer, and if we were to sign with them, there will be another project manager that will be dealing as the middleman between us and the contractor. This felt weird from the beginning because we may not like the project manager at all and may have problems working with him, but will never know, until its too late. Adding to that, the lump sum quotation and the lack of suggestions did bring T to the back.

4. N from I-forgot-where: The first ID we met actually. Was not impressed at all when he turned up late 30min with no texts or call for our first meeting. Seriously, first impression is a key aspect! After the discussion, he sent us a proposed floor plan based on what we discussed and it was totally different from what we had talked about. Seriously? Nevertheless, we drew a proposed floor plan for him (who's the ID now?) and awaits for his quotation, which has been a week with no news. Hmm. Definitely a no-no.

5. WY from 9 Design: First meet up at our house yesterday. First impression however was not impressive, as he was just taking down notes on what we would like to do, and not suggesting anything yet. However, we are keeping an open mind for now, as the suggestion part may come later when he designed the floor plan for us. He is also confident in meeting our budget, hence we are KIV-ing him for now.

6. JL from I Design: First meet up with him this morning, and had a good experience. He is easy to talk to, and provided us with some suggestions along the way when we were describing the things we want. He understand that we are trying to meet our budget, and had offered many ideas to our plan but at a cheaper price. Depending on his quotation, he may be our top pick too. Looking forward to hearing from him again.

That's all we got so far. Hopefully the quotation comes fast, and we will be able to announce our chosen ID soon!

Feng Shui Painting

Ordered our horse painting! According to our FSM, we should have horses pointing into the house at our main entrance so as to symbolise the wealth charging into our home. Hence we headed down to Raffles City to take a look at the CNY Road Show and found a master that was very skillful at carvings such drawings. It's hand drawn using a burning device on a wood paper, which all aligns with our FS since fire and wood is our elements haha! He had two paintings of horses which both of us loved equally much that we ended up flipping coins to decide as we couldn't finalise on either. Placed the order, and is looking forward to our painting!

Joint Savings Account

Registered for our joint savings account today! Purpose of this account is for the payment of our house bills, like utilities, home broadband, groceries, furniture etc. It would also be used as a saving account for our children education next time too.

Why open a joint savings account? To avoid problems like "why are you buying so many shoes instead of saving for our kids?" and "why are you spending so much on beers and games and not putting aside for our renovations?" Simply put, both of us would contribute a percentage of our salaries to our joint account, and the rest is for ourselves to splurge without guilt. Bwahaha!

We registered with UOB for the One Account, mainly because the One Card has great cashback programme, and together, the One Account actually have decent interest rates, since we will be spending significantly for the house, more so for now with all the installment payments for our furniture and electronics. A 12 month installment for all our electronics would guarantee us meeting the requirement for cashback for 4 cycles, without any other spending. Talk about savings!

Cleaning up the house

Finally 3 days of our wait is up. Bought our fav colored brooms and dustpan's to clean up the nest. It was really tiring as we had sprinkled a lot of rice, salt and tea leaves all over the house and now is the cleanup. We didn't bring our mops so we shall leave the through cleaning to next week!

Headed down to Causeway Point (CWP) to shop for our electric goods. Realised we have been window shopping for many times but we didn't write down anything, hence couldn't remember any. Always carry some papers and pens to scribble the details and models of the one we like, so that the window shopping will not be wasted. Gotten some quotations, and shall shop other stores to compare before purchases.

Meeting of ID Part 1

 
ID or Contractor? That's the question.

Well actually, we have a clear idea of how we would like the house to be. Hence, we often questioned ourselves if we really do need an ID, as technically, we have already decided on all the details. However in the end, we still choose to go with an ID as they would be able to give us the 3d image, which is easier for us to visualise, and also be like our middleman to the contractor, who we may have problem communicating the our idea to them. We had left the shapes and patterns of our carpentry to them so that they can advise us better. We had met up with 3 IDs today, while we will be meeting another 3 more shortly.

1. J from P Design: Chanced upon him when he was working on our neighbour house. Bad first impression when he was trying to introduce and sales talk us while our neighbour (his clients) were with him and he was 'ignoring' his clients while trying to attract us. However, first impression aside, he was very knowledgeable, and gave recommendations on several design features so our house is not boring or when some ideas were not feasible. Pleasant to talk to, and could feel a strong chemistry with him. Definitely one of our top choices.

2. K from S Creation: Chanced upon their open house on FB so headed down to take a look. He was very inexperienced and lack basic knowledge in BTO matters. (Suggesting to hack the toilet tiles without knowing about the 3 years rules is an instant fail.) Being unsure about their own choice of products was another turn-off. (Assuring me kompacplus is scratch proof and unsure about the blum system. Ohman this can't do.) Definitely no-no.

3. T from Piu: Introduced from Qanvast when we sent our quotation request. Very experienced, and wow-ed us when he did a detailed sketch of our MBR instantly to confirm with us if that was the design we are looking for. Felt like he could be in charge, although sometime we feel he may overpower us in decision making. Met him for the 3rd time, and all times were great. Had a rough quotation for our obsolete floor plan and it was kinda around our budget, although he lumped it together, making it hard for us to eliminate to cut cost, and also felt dodgy about the lump sum method. Nevertheless, one of our top choices.

We still have another 3 IDs to seek quotations for. Shall meet them soon and compare all the quotations before making a decision!

Collection of Keys

Collected our new home keys today! We had deferred the collection since Dec 15 till today because Mr Bee wanted to pop the engagement question prior to owning a house. We had constantly refreshed the appointment dates and time on a daily basis to look for a good date and time for our key collection. Great news is that you may change your appointment as many times as you want with no charges or penalties at all!

Was at HDB Hub early in the morning at 9am to collect our keys. Prior to that, we had to apply for our fire insurance at Level 2 before getting the queue number for our key collection at Level 8. It did not take long because there were so many counters there, and we were called upon after a short wait. The HDB staff guided us through the whole process, which was very helpful because we were clueless about most things being first-timers. Then we had to sign multiple (read: alot alot alot) documents and pay off the shortfall at Level 3 before getting the keys to our house finally.

We have finally gotten hold of the keys after seeing it sit at the table for an hour while we were signing away all the documents. Yes, it takes about an hour plus to get everything ready before you can lay your hands on the keys. We headed down to Level 2 to SP Office to create an account to start our water and electricity, since we were going to head over straight away for our house opening and defect checking.

We had made an appointment with our FSM who guided us on the things to do for house opening, as well as the rituals and praying to take over the new house. She also guided us on our lucky spots and bad spots so that we are able to renovate our house in a lucky way and hopefully have a great start in our new home. With the "new requirements" of the lucky spots and to avoid the bad spots, we had to make some changes to our interior design. We were glad we did not confirm any ID prior to getting the house, because there would be so many changes to the previous agreed plan. Moving forward, we had re-thought of another floor plan, and will be looking for ID to give us the quotations for the works.

Back to the house, did some simple checks like the doors and power points. Did not really went in depth because we were not dressed for it and we wanted to go out elsewhere later. Will post more about it when we head back during the weekends for a thorough check.

For reference, this were the items we brought for the house opening mentioned by our FSM.

a. 5 Huat Kueh

b. 1 Pineapple

c. 1 Bunch of Bananas

d. 25 Oranges

e. 1 Packet of Incense Sticks

f. 10 Red Candles

g. 25 Packs of Incense Papers

We brought some extra items which we saw on other people blogs, and mixed them up together to sprinkle around the house.

i. Tea leaves

ii. Rice

iii. Salt

Start of our new chapter

03 Jan 2016. Mr Bee got down on his knees. Mrs Bee says 'Yes!'

First post, an introduction. Started this blog mainly to track our progress in the renovation works for our upcoming house, hence the name of our blog. It would be done quite similar to how a T-blog in Renotalk works. Just going to give this a try and see where this lead us to! We hope that this would be useful for our friends and loved ones in the future should they want some references for their own home too.