Friday, 21 February 2014

Renovating your HDB Flat - Meetings with your contractor

The date is coming close. You are getting excited about going down to HDB to pick up your key. By now, you should have already visited your contractor or designer a few times already. Since I only engaged a contractor, I will share what I have experienced.

You need to decide on your colour scheme. Things look horrible when you do not give any consideration how everything blends in. You will need to coordinate the colour of your furniture with your wall colours or wallpaper.

I used Nippon Paint for my home. Also, Nippon has a really cool online tool called iColour that lets you try out colours in your rooms.

This article in Renonation.sg provides a good guide on how to many those colours work for you.

Make sure you have your floor plan. When you get your keys, you will be given a copy of your flat's floor plan. Else you can also buy a copy of your floor plan from HDB. When I have not gotten the keys to my flat, I took the launch booklet that had a small picture of my home's floor plan, and blew it up, large enough to do some planning.

Be able to show what you want. Tell your contractor what you want. Show some pictures. If you can draw, draw them. If you can't, go take photos from furniture fairs or furniture stores. I had a lot of photos from IKEA to help visualise what I want. Do describe in as much details as possible. A good contractor should be able to draw actual diagrams just based on your descriptions.

Make use of your contractor. Your contractor will also draw from their experiences and provide their own suggestions. Listen to them. Mine had some fairly good ideas, but one or two not so great ideas too. Their office should also have some samples they can show you. Design samples, colour palettes, etc, are usually available.

Making your room look good. You will need to select the laminates for your cupboards. These will be glued to the sides of your cupboards, and some of them really adds a lot of class to the look and feel of your room. Pick from glossy to matte surfaces, with floral designs, or chequered patterns.

Be patient. My personal experience, a couple deciding on the actual colour, can take hours. If you think you have decided on a single colour so it will be a fast decision, you will be surprised. There is a surprising number of different shades and tints of one colour. My wife and I took ages to pick the laminates for the cupboards. My contractor was quite patient with us, but after 30 mins, he decided to give us some space to think while he go answer a few phone calls.

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