Our reno is finally 95% completed and I'm excited to share some before & after photos! Our old 4 room resale had a handful of awkward reinforced concrete (RC) beams the broke the visual flow of the space. Some were overhead above where the bed head was, others were vertical beams in the

Prior to the installation of our marble grained sintered stone backsplash, our ID showed us the cutouts for the sink and stove. It took a couple of rounds of edits to indicate what was desired. My main concern that no matter how the pieces were cut and connected, all the main grain lines had to

It's so magical to see all the LED strip lights installed finally, after 90% of the carpentry has been completed. Our rather dim entryway now can be fully lit. We have yet to visit the place when it's really dark at night to see how the lights illuminate the place. Our pendant light is also

90% of our carpentry was completed on the 4th day, with the exception of a few doors and the abs trimming. We thought we could visit our unit on Sunday and discuss matters privately, but were so surprised the carpenters were present and working!!! Anyways, here are some things we were pleased about

3rd day of carpentry installation. Today my other half joined me to do our Reno inspection of the carpentry works. And there were a few things that we wished we had done better. 1. ENSURE YOU HAVE DETAILED CARPENTRY MEASUREMENTS! As with all Renos your ID should provide a detailed drawing of th

All the parts to our carpentry arrived today. During material selection, we were very worried about how the colours / grains and design of the tiles and laminate would turn out. I recall fussing endlessly over 2-3 shortlisted laminates from Lamitak as I was clear on what I wanted when it came to wo

We were updated by our ID that vinyls would be done right after first round of cleaning the day before. FINALLY! The bags and bags of rubble and construction debris from the masonry phase of work have been cleared. FINALLY! Our long awaited vinyls have also been installed and I was surprised to fin

Rant time: Almost everyone uses the term "wabi sabi" so liberally when more often than not their homes are far too perfect to be truly wabi sabi. Tbh I do love the aesthetics and features commonly found in homes that are labelled as "wabi sabi". But in my opinion, I think it's

After our unit had been plastered smooth... from the original "popcorn" walls, it was time for installation of all the pipes... gas, water and aircon trunking. Gas pipe: because our unit's kitchen was located at the opposite end of the house from the main entrance, the gas pipe had t

Starting this online journal to document our first and hopefully forever home. Day one of hacking works took place while we were abroad during the December holidays. Excited for this project because of how old the unit was, yet the potential I saw in transforming it. This is basically a gut