The Garden Wedding

To update (as we received complaints that we were no longer updating this space - busy busy busy!), we’ve moved into our new place for about a month now (much longer than I felt it was.. haha) and it’s been just great! Other than having to deal with household chores (cleaning the house is no mean feat mind you, along with washing the clothes, cooking, cleaning the windows, etc etc), the whole idea of coming back to our own home felt really good. Of course, being able to spend so much time together felt really good too!

We’ve come a long way since the beginning of renovations, and I feel really proud of ourselves for having accomplished building a beautiful and homely home despite our busy schedules… There were many things we had to DIY or find alternatives for in order to fit our budget, and there were good deals/ sales that we made use of to obtain certain items, that we required, at a lower cost. No doubt an interesting but tiring experience, putting the whole house together felt good for the both of us.

Here’s a peek at our ‘almost complete’ home (with many items from IKEA and Bangkok! haha)

The cosy corner..
Some DIY designs…
The storeroom door, on its way to becoming…

…this!

The lamp we lugged back from Bangkok (it’s about a metre tall ok! Not easy! )

The evening view from our window (Beautiful, but we don’t often get to see it ‘cos by the time we get home, it’s dark! haha)
The dining area…

House warming anyone?

(*Note: Thanks to all who came over for CNY to liven our new home! It was great having everyone over! Thanks to all who brought gifts, really thoughtful of you guys!)

Despite the troubles faced and “fires” fought while getting our new flat ready to be lived in, today was a really pleasant day, as we found our flat getting ever so much more cosy after the paint job was completed, lights were put up and drilling of essentials (and wants) onto the walls done. Just some pics to share (can compare to the earlier post where an empty house was pictured ):

The almost complete living and dining areas (lack of furniture mah)

The hallway (haven’t taken a pic of the hallway with the installed lights yet)

The MBR in a romantic color

The future Pooh room is a lovely blue

I really am loving our new home already, and am sincerely happy with the way our ‘design’ turned out!

Almost live-able now…Hee..

After having fixed the leakage in the pipes running through the kitchen and bathroom, we started our actual renovation of the house, starting off with painting. Alas, just when we were feeling happy over how the paint had transformed our home into a warm and cosy place, we were informed by our painter that the plaster of our ceiling at many places were falling apart (!!!). Take a look at them:


Then, we realised that the cistern of one of our toilet bowls constantly leaked water into the toilet bowl. This means that the water constantly flows into the cistern in order to top it up. The next day, Hubby realised that the pipes underneath the sink in the master bedroom (MBR) bathroom were leaking (leaking pipes again!!!)

The HDB contractors were called in to rectify the problems, and although somewhat fixed (except the leaking pipes, which will require much more work), I cannot help but feel that with this kind of shoddy work, HDB actually charged us so much for the flat. Plus, this flat was built at least 5 years ago, meaning that prices of building materials is probably much lower than that of brand new flats (like those built to order), yet we were forced to pay a price that is close to the market value of such properties (which translates to a lot of cash given the current hot property market). So much for public housing.

Just hope that problems can be fixed soon, and none occur again.

Having gotten our keys to the flat for a couple of weeks now, we’ve done practically NOTHING to our flat as yet. And why is that so? Simply because our dear HDB - the ONLY source for public housing in Singapore, does slip-shod work in building their flats. And who pays for it? The people who fork out HUGE amounts of money, almost a life-time of savings, to buy their bloody lousy flats - US. Yup, you heard me right, HDB DOES REALLY SLIP-SHOD and SLOPPY work. Or perhaps they might argue, it’s not their fault you know, afterall, it’s not HDB who builds the flats, the contractors whom they hire does the work.

And how do they engage the contractors? Give it to the lowest bid! I believe that everyone in their right minds would know that everything comes with a price. And the lowest price for something, more often than not, does not translate into something really worthwhile. Pay $400 to hire people to paint your house for example, instead of paying $1000. Then be extremely prepared to fork out another $1000 in the future to re-paint your home, as the people who do it for $400 will only do a substandard job which is unlikely to pass the layman’s expectations. A perfect alternative would be to do it yourself, if you have the time and effort to that is, if you’re not already tired out from working your ass off to pay for the house in the 1st place. In any case, it’s not like HDB forks out a huge amount of money to pay for the construction of the flats in the first place, given the enormous price tags they put to their flats. So why go to the extreme of giving the tender to the lowest bidding contractor? *disgusted*

I think I’ve not arrived at the main point after having ranted for so long. The whole POINT is, the pipes in our ‘new’ house were found LEAKING like crazy in the kitchen and bathroom. And after having complained to HDB about it, they sent contractors down to fix the problem, and guess what? The contractors left the water running (even after we’ve told them - the contact person for the contractors, the specific place where we observed the leakage) overnight, therefore staining our walls, up’ed the bills and somewhat made things worse. And they claimed they were looking for the source of the leakage - letting the water run OVERNIGHT? What a joke. PLUS, the pipes are concealed in the walls, how do you see where the water is leaking out from without removing the tiles???

Fine, so they said they’d make our leakage a priority to fix, as they say there are many other defects in the HDB flats in our estate they have to deal with. Haha, see what I mean about the flaw in getting the lowest bid to do the job? Fantastic. Whoo hoo. So clever. And it’s been a week since we complained about the running of water overnight (and almost 2 weeks since we first complained about the leaking water), and the progress is painfully SLOW. When asked about the progress, the contact person says she doesn’t know how it is as she’s not the one doing the job (so what IS she doing? Just answer the calls and tell the angry homeowners that somebody is working on their problems? There’s no need to communicate with the contractors is there?), and when asked further to check it out, she said she’d call us to update us on the progress. How naive we are to believe her. She hasn’t gotten back to us at all. And it’s the weekend, so guess we have to wait til Monday?

Perhaps while reading this, some of you may wonder, isn’t HDB going to bear the cost for fixing the defects, and so there is no problem whatsoever? In the first place, we BOUGHT the supposed ready-to-live-in house but found defects, and hence the seller, i.e. HDB, has every damn responsibility to fix it (and pay for it of course). The costs that they do not have to bear however, are the feelings of anxiety, anger and worry, as well as the inconvenience caused to us over the repairs (we have to go down to our new flat from time to time to take a look at what is going on don’t we? That takes TIME, EFFORT and MONEY), and wondering when we can start furnishing the new home. Painting, installation of lights, building of the kitchen cabinets and washing of the house CANNOT begin until they have fixed the leaking pipes and water-stained walls. So everything is delayed, and time and inconvenience is what HDB doesn’t compensate us for.

Angry? Frustrated? These are mere understatements of how we feel right now.

Took some pics of our empty (and dusty :p) new house when we went up to check on the taps and locks of our bedrooms! So here’s a peek at how our new house looks like!

Views of the currently empty living and dining areas…


The hallway to the bedrooms… I can put up photos on the walls!

And below is the view from the master bedroom window

And this one here is the view from the future Pooh room

We spoke to a contractor yesterday regarding the ‘construction’ of our kitchen cabinet. The entire one-length top and bottom cabinets came up to a whooping S$3.9k! This includes washing and polishing of our living room floor, as well as the masonry works for fitting our hobs and sinks. So I guess it’s relatively alright? It’s just that 3.9k is not a small sum, and having blown an entire life’s savings on the downpayment of the flat, we now still have to fork out money for so many things that we need (and want) in the new home. Ah well, money can always be earned back I suppose - it’s the homely feel that counts.

Oh, and we discovered that there is either a leaking or burst pipe in the bathroom wall! Water was dripping down from the tiles near the top of the wall, and a hole in the kitchen wall adjacent to the bathroom had water flowing out of it too! Imagine the horror I felt when I discovered this!
Good thing we turned on the water supply to check the taps, otherwise, when we want to start any form of renovation, it will be disastrous. We’d be complaining to the HDB in due course (couldn’t do it on a weekend could we?), and hopefully it’s nothing serious! *cross fingers*

For now, my mind is in a whirl just thinking about the painting process (it’s simply too expensive to get someone to paint for us, so we have to DIY), colors for the walls, the appropriate kitchen sink, hob and hood, as well as furniture. Oh man.. getting our home sweet home is indeed a lot tougher than I thought it’d be. Haha.. Looks like I overestimated myself and my abilities

*Amendment: My mother-in-law kindly sponsored us for the paint job as she feels that we will simply strain ourselves doing it DIY. And I’m glad she persuaded us to take up her offer, cos after seeing the painter do the job, it’s simply no mean feat!

Looks like getting our own love nest is not as easy as I thought… No doubt that we are grateful that our house came relatively smoothly in terms of the whole balloting and buying process, but getting it ready for moving in is another matter altogether! With a tight budget, it is so difficult to get everything done easily, as many items are just so expensive! From lightings to furniture and painting, everything requires both time and money to acquire and pick. Phew, what a headache it has proven to be!

And hubby and I have differing opinions when it comes to design, so, we are working around it, but are starting to feel some strain already. We are nonetheless looking forward to moving in! We just got our house keys today and went to view our house for the very first time! It was super dusty (having been vacant for quite a long while), but quite airy and bright! So we are overall pretty happy about it. Some parts of the flat are smaller than I had imagined it to be though. At least we are one step closer to having our own place now, so we shall continue to jiayou towards this current goal of ours!

Today (7th Nov) is a special day - Hubby and I have been together for a whole 8 years now!

Although it was a busy lab day, the evening together was fantastic. Hubby surprised me with a bouquet of roses (for which I had lots to comment about, haha.. But dearie, THANK YOU! It was really such a pleasant surprise, really!) when he came to pick me up from lab today, and brought me to this place that serves really delectable food! Other than being too cold (but there was a tealight to warm your hands with - definitely not meant for that purpose though), the restaurant called Absolute Haven was absolutely heavenly.

The interior decor - we strongly recommend it for the great service, food and ambience!

Started off the dinner with soup and a warm salad with fresh greens, thin cheese and portebello mushrooms - super duper yummy! The mushrooms were tender and juicy, flavorful like no mushroom we’ve ever tried before! A must-have for mushroom lovers! We had their soup of the day - pumpkin with orange soup, as well as a mushroom soup (non-creamy version with many small bits of mushrooms!) - I loved the former, and found the latter very unique, but not ultra tasty.

Here’s the yummy pumpkin orange soup! And it’s in an interesting soup bowl

And hubbydy’s mushroom soup:

This is one of the most interesting dishes for the night: chicken with spinach and bacon in the middle of it!

And the tasty Stella Artois battered fish and chips with delicious tartar sauce! Don’t expect any taste of beer though



Now comes the sweet sweet things for the night - desserts! The yummy crepe with ice-cream came complete with flambe, so it was a really cool sight to behold yet so yummy! And my tiramisu was served in a tall glass, with the really yummy coffee liquer at the bottom of the glass! hee..

THANK YOU HUBBY for a wonderful wonderful evening!

May we have many many many more memorable anniversaries to come…

OH MY GOODNESS! I simply cannot hide my excitement and surprise that we can get our apartment next week! We were not expecting to collect our keys til the end of the year! And Hubby just received a letter that announces that we can collect our keys next Tuesday! How cool is that?? Haha… To think that we went furniture scouting on Saturday, and I was busy browsing through websites for ideas on wall decorations (I seriously so want to paint my own walls! Though I don’t know how they will turn out, haha), and were just planning our budget for the kitchen based on IKEA kitchen prices! They will all come in handy really soon! Haha..

Looks like our constant complaining about ‘when will the keys come?’ have paid off, hahahaha YIPPEE!!!!

We finally received the letter of notification to go down to HDB hub to choose our flat. We were given a date and time, which if we were to change, we’d have to suffer the consequences of being pushed back in the queue of flat choosing, i.e. risk getting the flat of your choice being snapped up by somebody else. Fortunately, I do not have major experiments on the given date, so I can afford to go down at the given time slot (which is pretty early in the morning).

It isn’t easy at all, choosing a flat. We don’t even get to see the actual house, just the layout maps! At least we went down personally to look at views from the corridors (which should translate to the views from some of the windows in the flat), and the direction of the afternoon sun. Quite interesting, but not exactly the most fulfilling. Feeling down lately (I’ve been having many of these mood doses over the past month - major part due to lab), and I find it difficult to feel too excited about the new flat. BUT I do so want to get it soon. Would love to have a nest to call our own.

For now, it’s *cross fingers* that we get our first choice of flats, and that it’d be a good one.

I feel blissful to be married.

I feel so happy to be so pampered and doted upon by hubby.

I am glad that everyone in my life who are closest to me are healthy.

I am super duper happy it’s a Friday! (Yes, even if I have to come back to lab tomorrow at 7am)

I am looking forward to a good dinner later.

I miss many people and many places suddenly.

Cramps do not feel comfy.

I want to get our new home soon!

I want to go for a holiday!

 As mentioned in the title, just some random thoughts from my heart…