House Renovation - designers or ala-carte?

[MMM]

Funz:

Just out of curiosity. How often do you re-paint your house? I remember when we were younger, my parents will repaint the house like bi-yearly and, naturally, we get roped in as free labour.


On that note as well, how often do you renovate your place? We may have to do some reno at our place since the kids will need their own rooms soon. We are just wondering, should we redo all the rooms and toilets as well as the living room or just the kids' rooms and toilets. Tempted to redo the whole house, but given the limited space in the kitchen, think no point doing kitchen this time round.

Renovation is a major ops. Usually we just do it before we move it and it is supposed to last us for years to come. We stayed in the last place for like 11 years before moving to current. No renovation/ repainting throughout. Painting is not difficult but moving furniture is.... The issue is also if you redo the whole house, must pack and store the stuff somewhere... After it's done, you still need to unpack... don't sound like fun.

But we do have some relatives/ friends who are into house moving. Eg. some sold their property banking on dropping property price so they can buy again.

In our case, our house is 3.5 years. We did major renovation before moving in but observed the outdoor area paint is washed down by weather and bird \"bombs\". But the key as to why we are painting is.... due to some communication issues, my very clever maid thought that my fil asked her to touch up the house paint when we were away for holidays.... Imagine our shock when we came back... patchy paints in car porch and storeroom :yikes: So it seems like we got no choice but to do up the entire car porch. Otherwise it will look awful for CNY. My dh's original thought is to paint the entire house every 10 years.

For my girls' room, i put those those wall decal. It is supposed to be paint friendly. However, I observed that over time, the paint will come down with the decal no matter how gentle we are. Right now their room is still very princess theme. I think I will do the painting (maybe this year Dec hols?) when we remove the decal.

We also like to keep to classic themes that won't go out of fashion. We also like to go for movable furnitures. So that we can change and who knows if we move again... we can move it along. We engaged a designer for the 1st house and alot of build in stuff. We cannot move anything when we moved. But we choose classic wood themes so till now when we look at it, it still look ok. It is currrently tenanted to a amercian couple who loves our house.

[blessed777]

MMM:

blessed777:

Thanks MMM


Those r also my consideration, if only $$ is not a concern.. coz i'm also thinking of changing flooring.. never done renovation before, is $.5k for countertop only ? (not including the cabinet) and what does it mean with top & bottom, thanks.

Hi,

It is 5.5k for entire kitchen cabinet including black galaxy marble top. We also had build in top hung cabinet as well as cabinets below and a full size at the size.

Since you are changing flooring, etc..., maybe should consider getting a reliable contractor.

thanks MMM

[blessed777]

hquek:

Hi blessed777,


Sorry I can't recall the price range. But I know that silestone is very very expensive compared with the other options and only available from 1 place. usually, you will have to get your contractor to quote based on the material you want. the companies selling these will only cut out the material using the model your contractor drew. No need to be shy, I usually get mine to quote different materials and then I compare to see what I want.

Even for solid surface, the price varies with pattern and brand.

Thanks Hquek, yes quartz(silestone, caesarstone) is one of the most exp. even more exp than granite, but it seems to be the best material for countertop. I think i'm going to opt for tiles (the thicker one fr counter top, not the one fr flooring or wall) as it is easy to clean, scratch free, heat resistance, not expensive and durable enough as long as you dont drop heavy things on it even if u do, it's easy to be fixed only need to replace the crack or broken piece with new one as long as u buy extra pieces when u order them the first time (in case u'll find trouble to find matching tiles in the future).
My concern for not opting the exp one is that i read when u need to change sink or build in stove u need to hack the countertop :yikes: there goes the $$.. unlike tiles that come in pieces, solid surface and silestone come in one piece so need to be hacked all together.. so i'm now considering of changing sink also on top of replacing stove n countertop :idea:

[xueyan]

Hi


Does anyone has a renovation contractor to recommend? My friend just bought a 3 room resale flat and is going to do up her flat with a tight budget.

Thanks!

[JusticeBao]

Try not to be influenced by them on your design…

[Autumn06s]

MMM:

For my girls' room, i put those those wall decal. It is supposed to be paint friendly. However, I observed that over time, the paint will come down with the decal no matter how gentle we are. Right now their room is still very princess theme. I think I will do the painting (maybe this year Dec hols?) when we remove the decal.


We also like to keep to classic themes that won't go out of fashion. We also like to go for movable furnitures. So that we can change and who knows if we move again... we can move it along. We engaged a designer for the 1st house and alot of build in stuff. We cannot move anything when we moved. But we choose classic wood themes so till now when we look at it, it still look ok. It is currrently tenanted to a amercian couple who loves our house.

Hi MMM,

you are right! over time the paint does fall off with the stickers. You can try wall candy arts brand, my girl peel and peel, re-stick and re-stick, not damage to my wall yet. bought from http://www.pinnaclewallarts.com

I hope I can save money by not repainting after she grows tired of her stickers.

[Sweet Joy]

DesertWind:

We considered ourselves very fortunate when we wanted to renovate our house about 1 1/2 years ago that we found a very reliable contractor. We obtained his contact from our new neighbour who just finished renovating his place with this contractor within 2 months (also somebody recommended to him).


Since we can see our new neighbour's house and our renovation requirement were quite similar ie. quite major over-haul like knocking down walls, build new walls, doorways, staircase, build toilets and over-all painting & touching up etc. and that this contractor managed to finished all these in 2 months, we decided to call him in to give us a quotation. This contractor is not cheap and when going through his detailed quotes, most items seems reasonable but couple of items seems exceptionally expensive. However, I kept forgetting that the prices have GST built into it which he did not show us but he is a GST registered company. I think some contractors, fearing that they will loose out on deals because of GST, chose not to disclose the amount in the quotation.

We just liaised with the boss and he had his own workers, electrician and contractors to do the carpentry, toilet/sink works, air-con, painting etc. We had very clear ideas of what renovation we wanted to do and told him all our requirements and he was able to give us very good feedback on what is do-able or not do-able. We shopped for all the toilet tiles and bathroom equipment ourselves, buy, get the shop to deliver to our house and the contractor will install. Even fanciful items like railway station clocks and paintings the workers can install. We also selected all the paint colours ourselves using the ICI / Nippon paint catalogs & cupboard materials and samples the contractor provided. By the way, \"Desertwind\" was the name of the ICI paint colour I chose to paint my house! Ke....ke...ke!

Overall my hubby & myself had a lot of fun and satisfaction during the renovation and saw our dream came true since we decided everything ourselves! (The amazing thing was that we hardly quarreled and had almost similar ideas of what should be done!) There was only one wall which was not done according to our requirement and till today felt quite bad about not insisting they redo.

We consulted another commercial designer at IMM before the renovation and was really having a headache whether to go to this interior design company or directly to neighbour's contractor. Asked my friend's hubby who worked in the construction industry for his opinion and he advised us not to go for the seemingly cheaper looking quotations but go for reliability. Very important since we do not want unexpected cost over-runs or schedule overrun! He said since my neighbour's contractor mentioned things like \"lintel\" over the doorway and the young interior designer did not and left out quite a number of things not quoted, we should go for the more reliable contractor!

After our place, we recommended our parents-in-law to use this contractor for their 4-room HDB flat and they were very satisfied with his service and work quality as well! Then I get him to do up my parent's 4-room HDB flat - re-paint, clean up, touch-up etc. at a reasonable price!

Recently, our roof was leaking and we managed to contact the contractor (whom my father-in-law called the 3-Brothers) who did the house extension for him almost 20 years ago. The 3-Brothers are still around doing renovation, painting and roofing work but no longer handling major overhaul due to their age. Their reliability is without question! They came & did a good cleaning of the roof for us and put up a panel of sky-light really well. We also did not have to worry due to their track record.

Therefore from our experience, one do not need an interior designer if you have very clear ideas of what you want and can find a very reliable contractor.

Happy renovating!
:celebrate:

Hi, appreciate if you could share the contact details of your contractor. Thanks.

[SarChar]

If you can afford the time, heart pain and headache, do it yourself will help save a lot of money.


We sourced for everything ourselves. From the lights, to windows, to tiles etc.

We knocked down the wall of our kitchen and was quoted $2200 for the sliding glassdoor by our contractor. We contacted a supplier directly and paid only $900+ with GST.

[randallt]

I think it depends if major or minor reno. When I shifted to another HDB for DS school..with already 2 children, I didn't have time to source different contractors for major reno etc..Some contractors have multiple projects including sub work from IDs and some don't offer suggestions in designing or space planning.


I source and read reviews at renotalk website but in the end I went with ID companies since I didn't have much time coordinating reno.

Finished my reno...some minor touch up needed...since they provide warranty...so like tap leak or solid surface scratch I just call the company and they fix it FOC.

I went to this site to get quotes...since competitive, the price and stuffs given is quite reasonable for my renovation
http://www.renotalk.com/main/Renovation/Quotation/RenoQuoteRequestFormpg2.php

[Byronaw]

I think I’m going to take a look at Rugman dot com and see what kind of clearance rug prices they have.