It's been a long time
It's been quite a while since I last updated here. Since the bursting of the water pipe incident on 31 Jan 07, almost 4 months went by, with letters being exchanged between our lawyer and the developer and finalisations made to the survey report. It was only last Sat, 2 Jun 07, that we officially met up with the GM of the developer and some other key people to discuss the extent of rectification to our house.
On Tue, 5 Jun, the developer had commenced on the rectification works. To our surprise, the electrical circuit, which was earlier short-circuited, appeared to be working fine. They pulled out a sample of the parquet floor to determine the wetness so as to reach a conclusion as to whether it is necessary for them to replace the whole parquet floor. It was found that the junior master room's parquet were still pretty wet after 4 long months, while those in the master bedroom were not as wet. I think it's probably cuz we had redone the parquet in the masterbedroom prior to that and chosen our own contractor to do it, so the workmanship was much better compared to the one in the junior master room, which came with the unit.
At the moment, works has stopped for 1 day and there isn't gng to be any works carried out today either, cuz Piggy wants to wait for the developer to respond to our lawyer in black and white, regarding the works they have agreed to carry out before continuing the rectification works.
Guess it really is troublesome and time-consuming -- all this waiting and letter writing, but I guess since we had decided earlier on to pursue the matter through legal means, we should take it through to the end. Definitely, everything in black and white would safeguard us more, but that's at the expense of our time. I seriously doubt the house can be ready in time for our baby, but I guess we dun have much of a choice. I just pray that they will do a good job this time round and not cause us any further inconveniences.
Almost Done!
Yaay, our house is almost done! All the carpentry are up, the mirror and glass were just put up yesterday and the wall paper and granite tops will be up next week. The designer is expected to hand over the keys to us by 29 Dec 06. So exciting!! After that, we still need a couple of days for the developer's guys to patch up the remaining 2 bedrms' floor and then polish the marble floor. The last thing would be delivery of all our furniture and electronic items and the upholstering of the curtains and then presto! We are done and ready to move in!
Really looking forward to it! After these long months of planning, choosing, waiting and anticipating, we are finally seeing "completion". = )
Some bottlenecks...
As expected, it's the parquet floor again!!! Yes, the issue is still not settled. The developer has agreed to ask this part-time contractor, whom we find quite skilful to lay our parquet tiles for us. However, they are still negotiating with this man who is asking another 2 man to do the work. Haiz, so many layers. This is what I hate most about communication. It really slows down things and makes everything very frustrating. Looks like we got to chase the developer hard, cuz we have started paying monthly maintenance since Sep. So the further the delay, the longer we are not able to move in which means that we will be paying maintenance without making use of the facilities!!
Bits & Pieces...
View of the pool from our house:
A coffee table we like:
Design of sofa cushions which we like:
Giant size of teapot set which we bought from Vietnam:
Paint work Done & Lights Up
Haven't updated in a while..at present, all the paintwork has been done..and all the downlights have been fixed. Only remaining lights are the dining light & standing Manhattan light (from Bizlink) and the crystal light (from Lightology) at the foyer area.
See our pink & Blue rooms..for our future children...heehee
Had some problems with the colour of the bulbs as well as the colur of the downlight casing. Cuz it seems the light shop gave us some wrong ones and we had to exchange it a few times. But we finally got it all sorted it today.
After this, we are just waiting to do rectify the parquet floor and then the carpentry work can be done. In fact, according to our designer, the carpentry has already been done and can actually be put up tmw. But because of the debate still going on over the parquet floor, it has to be put on hold for the moment. So frustrating! See how bad our parquet floor is, denoted by the little round stickies...
Meanwhile, we have placed orders for our electronic items, namely:
1) Electrolux Washing machine EWF 1090 & Dryer EDE 429 to be stacked on top of each other
2) Yamaha Speakers YSP-800 for our MBR
3) Panasonic 3-dr Stainless Steel Fridge
4) 2 KDK Standing Fans for MBR & Living Rm
I really hope the developer can get someone to fix the floor for us soon!! Really can't wait to move in!!!
Reno Progress...
Haven't updated my blog for a while..quite a bit has happened over the past week..
As of today, all the false ceilings have been put up and the false wall in the dining area has also been erected. The existing 2 doors in the MBR and the connecting rm had been sealed up and the first coat of paint will be applied over the next few days.
We have also bought a number of items, such as our dining set from XZQT. Would say we got quite a good price for it..we had chosen a green frosted glass extandable table top complete with satin silver finish legs and 6 white leather chairs, also lined with satin silver. Guess which one is it in the pic below?
At the same time, we had also placed our order for the omazz mattress, filmore. (See http://www.omazz.com/product/mattress/fountain.htm) The one in the website is the "fountain oak", which is exactly the same as the filmore which we bought except that it is $300 cheaper in Harvey Norman. Had actually wanted to buy fountain oak from the omazz shop at parkmall but found that Harvey Norman offered the same Omazz mattress under a different range, so we bought from Harvey instead!
My FIL is helping us to order our electronic items, speakers and lights, cuz he can get them at a very good discount! heehee, so we can save some money...
My hubby's cousin also offered to give us some lights for our house, one of being the kreon lights. She is gng to give us 3, which will cut our cost by another $900 plus..yaay!!!
Bought our living room TV!
Bought our living rm TV from the Pioneer Suntec Rdshow today. Really quite satisfied with our purchase cuz we got a really good deal with 7 freebies and because it was the last day, they really slashed the price! The boss of the guy who served us said that they would rather quote a lower price in error than totally let a customer go! Heehee..really quite happy cuz this is the first big ticket item we have bought for our house!
Saw the electrolux washer and dryer which we were eyeing at the Marina Sq reno fair too, the prices for both items were about $400 lower than the market prices! However, we didnt get them cuz my FIL said he could get the same, if not better prices for us..anyway, there's no real rush for electronics items, cuz they are readily available. My only concern is the dining set and sofa, cuz those we are eyeing needs to be either imported or made and would take about 6-8 weeks. So I really hope we can order soon. Otherwise when our house is ready, our furniture would not have arrived yet.
Went to view sofas at this place which my FIL recommended to us at Millenium walk. My hubby & I really like this particular L-shaped sofa. It really feels so comfortable and it has this mechanism which allows the back rest portion to be either folded down or folded up for more support. But the price really threw us off! $!2,000!!! It's way out of our budget, think we will probably customise with one of the local companies, for a much lower price!
Went mattress viewing too, but we really tried until we were confused. Cuz there are just too many brands and ranges out there. For me, I personally prefer mattresses which are softer, but hubby prefers those firmner ones. So I guess, we have to settle for intermediate softness. However, hubby rather likes the omazz mattress which is really soft, but it costs $4399 at harvey norman after discount and today was the last day of offer. I think it's kind of expensive but hubby said he would rather spend more on mattress and less on sofa. I dun think we should spend that much on sofa too, cuz after all, if we get a cheap one and it spoils after a few yrs, we can change, so got variety. If we get a really expensive one, we will be stuck with it for ages!!
Anyway, was kinda pissed off with the Simmons sales person's attitude. This is the 2nd simmons gallery we have visited and we think their sales assistants or whatever you call them, have some kind of "stuck up attitude". Maybe cuz they feel that they are one of the few brands around, which have mattresses fully imported from USA/ Canada, unlike other big brands, which only imports materials from overseas, but manafacture their mattresses in Asian countries. Let me explain why we feel the sales person was stuck up. Firstly, when we walk into the shop, the sales person continued sitting at the counter, although she did throw us a slight, reluctant smile. Would you expect that of a shop with glass doors? You would expect the sales assistant to come up to you and say " May I help you?" or something to that extent. Cuz after all, the shop consists of different mattresses lying around and you dun expect a layman to go around the shop, knowing what is what rite? Then after a while, because we were standing there, seemingly lost, she came up to us. And we had to ask her whether she had a mattress, which is not too soft or hard. Imagine, she didn't even ask us what we were looking for! And she never even ask us to try the beds! But, of course, we took our own initiative and tried lah. Then she asked us if we were getting the mattress today. Wah lau, come on lah, your service also not very good, and we step in only for a while and you expect us to place an order? Of course, we told her we wanted to look at other brands too. Then she said, "Oh, you still want to look around?" or something to that extent. We were thinking, of course lah, you think we come in to your shop, means we have eliminated all other brands, is it? Finally, we asked her whether they threw in freebies like pillows and mattress protectors, which all the other brands do and happily tell us. And she just cooly replied that " we will discuss that when you have decided that you want to buy our mattress"! This type of service really puts us off, and somehow, we are not so inclined towards purchasing from them anymore although my original impression of them was quite good.
