Scope of Work for House Renovation

I met my secondary school pals recently for dinner and I was late for our appointment as I was still in a shop finalising the list of things to purchase and the pricing. When I reached the restaurant, they asked me why I'm doing renovation and the extent of the renovation works. Well, it's coming to 16 years and it's already quite amazing for things to last that long since things nowadays are not made to last, haha... 

In a nutshell, we have engaged ID/contractors to do the followings:

Whole House

• Electrical rewiring
• Paint ceiling, walls, bedrooms and bomb shelter doors, partition cabinet in living room and water/sewage pipings
• Install new windows and window grilles except for the toilets, and also install in the balcony area, which is currently installed with wrought iron grille
• Install new air cons for living room and all bedrooms

Living Room

• Remove existing doors between balcony and living room, lay new floor tiles and level up balcony area with living room, and box up the water pipe
• Install shoe cabinet with sitting bench at the door entrance area

All Bedrooms

• Lay new floor tiles to replace existing laminated flooring
• Install built-in wardrobe with sliding door and pull out mirror
• Install cupboard
• Install platform with storage

Kitchen

• Install new kitchen cabinets, with pull out drawers where possible
• Change the location of washing machine
• Install new sink and hob (not replacing existing hood as it was bought not too long ago)

Toilets

• Install new doors 
• Install new WCs, basin, shower mixer/bracket/head set, toilet accessories

Our considerations:

Electrical Rewiring - Since we have already been staying in our current house for coming to 16 years and our flat was actually ready at least 1 year before (we choose leftover unit), some of the electrical wires that HDB first installed were at least 17 years. We are likely to stay here for at least another 8 years, so it's time to change the existing electrical wiring. A friend told us to do it since we're going to do a major renovation, suggestion accepted!

Air Con - Our existing air cons, Mc Quay brand, have been performing well although it's not a well known brand. This brand is no longer available in Singapore but it's still selling in Malaysia. In recent months, the compressor started to get quite noisy. When we asked our servicing guy, he said there's nothing much that can be done and no point doing any repair. It's already long lasting enough, so either continue to use or change new air cons.

Laminated Flooring - It's just not as lasting as tiles. In the bedroom that my mum used to occupy, there's scratches due to dragging of furniture and even a small hole. The skirting for all the bedrooms, particularly noticeable at the bending, starts to "peel" off. Well, at least it lasted for 16 years, it's time to "retire" them. It serves its purposes when we first considered installing laminated flooring for bedrooms. It's not that cold when you step on it when air con is turned on for some time. Also, the impact when your child falls from the bed, it isn't as hard and painful as compared to tiles. This point was personally tested by my hubby! He was carrying our boy (baby then) on his laps at the edge of the bed, then he dozed off. I went in the room to check on hubby and baby as they were too quiet and I got a shock when I saw ah boy on the floor! Apparently, my hubby let go of him when he dozed off and baby fell on to the floor but he didn't cry at all. I also didn't hear any loud bang sound when baby landed on the floor. I supposed the "cushioning" under the laminated flooring helps to "break" the fall.

Wardrobes and Cupboards in Bedrooms - Well, we can't redo the flooring without removing existing ones. Anyway, the existing ones also start to show signs of "ageing", particularly the wardrobe in our bedroom, anyway that's the only built-in wardrobe now. The doors are no longer closing properly and the internal carcass often has yellowish spots (that's the problem when it's left white). The cupboards in the study room (eventually will be ah boy's room) are actually still okay except for the white internal carcass, then like I said, cannot redo flooring without removing them.

Platform with Storage - We started to think of renovation is to have more storage, besides that things are falling apart. It used to be enough when it's just 2 of us but with 2 kids, I find myself keep throwing away my things just to house kids' stuff! Hence, we're building a platform with storage in it and we just put a mattress on it, so it becomes our platform bed.

Kitchen Cabinets - Since I'm now a SAHM, I cook and bake more, so I'm buying more kitchen gadgets like my Rowenta oven, KA mixer, double boiler, etc. I need more kitchen top to put them and also more storage to put the cooking and baking stuff. As my current kitchen cabinets are using shelves, I find it's a bit tedious to take the things that are tucked further in, so I put in my requirement that I want drawers where possible.

Kitchen Island - It's not really an island as one side of it will be connected to the kitchen cabinets. This serves as a dining area for us and also gives me more preparation work space when I need to prepare for cooking or baking.

Sink - My current sink is a double bowl and it's not that deep, so now I bought a single deeper bowl so that I can "dump" more things inside if I'm cooking a storm or bake.

Does it sound like we're going to do a lot of renovation works and they're going to cost us a bomb? Well, I'm capping the budget at 70k for the entire renovation works, including buying some furnitures/furnishings. So far, glad to say that we're still within budget. :-)