Hbay SAFE talk on Renovation

Phew.. today is a busy day for us..

We attended the hbay SAFE tour today, and visited 3 completed HDB flats (by Strategic design) and visited Strategic design's workshop. The first flat we visited is at Toa Payoh, a Malay flat. It is about 124 sqm, 5 room flat. The owner has a cosy corner. However, we feel that it looks very cramp as she has quite a lot of items. The entrance has a small stretch of parapet flooring (near the shoe rack). The whole house is using homogeneous (matt) tiles, with the exception of bedrooms in parquet. Noticed that the house uses timber strips as divider. The kitchen top is also granite.. one of the hbay officer told us that granite has lines in btw, so even though it is more durable, she will still choose solid top because of asethetics wise. She also told us that water marks tend to be more visible on granite top. After hearing what she say and what i saw, I think I will prefer solid kitchen top than granite top.. hmm. Though my initial idea is to have granite top.

The second flat is at Rivervale. It looks more spacious. The most interesting is the feature wall used to block the home shelter. We saw an osim icology steam vacuum, just the one M is v interested in. The owner told us he regretted buying that as it is very difficult to use. I jokingly reminded M to take that in mind as i wasn't in for the idea of that steam vacuum. A few thousand dollars investment for a steam vacuum?! real expensive right, so no no... hee.

The third flat at Sengkang is already owner occupied. Again saw an interesting feature wall with shelves for putting pots of plants. The kitchen tiles is a bit more special and the living room flooring is made of granite.

After that, the chartered bus sent us to Strategic design's workshop at Ubi. There is a show room there with some kitchen and living room deco. We discuss with one of the designer on our needs and he try to introduce some designs for us. He suggested bathtub at the master bathroom, feature wall to cover the home shelter, partition at the entrance door etc. He also suggested TV console even though we told him we intend to buy our own.

Anyway Strategic is the onie ID so far who encourage us to take bathtub even though other 2/3 IDs we spoke to all recommend us to take shower screen instead as they say the space is too small for a proper bathtub. M is quite irritated with him as he thinks that he is out to get us to pay more by encouraging us to take on other items even though we told him we didn't want. I mean, some items can just buy from furniture shop right? Designer or built can be quite expensive and hard to replace in future leh.

I wonder how is the forum's feedback on Strategic design.. hmm will go read at sgbrides heeeeee.. :P