Of many rectifications...

After loads of thoughts, I think we have my final colour scheme for the kitchen decided. This isn't the final draft though.. the fridge will be in the service yard rather than in that corner of the kitchen. Images are misleading. My kitchen is much shorter and cramper than this. Still awaiting the next draft of 3D drawings to finalise everything before we start work.

Here's a small video tour of our new place!

Post by Cynthia Lim.

Anyway, I was in a huge dilemma choosing the colours for our kitchen. 

Glad that we have finally decided on one. Picking the right colour combo was really tough.

Anyway, we collected the keys to our place on the 6th, hopeful that we could start renovation before we leave for HK... however, the list of defects was really long.. and they took a rather long time rectifying it.

The 2 guys working on our unit are amazing. They really put in their best in the rectification work. However, HDB s*cks. Our floor tiles were the part of the house that troubled us a lot. 

THEY WERE UNEVEN. 

Across our living hall, dining hall, kitchen, master bed room and guest room. The tiles were UNEVEN. We did even consider closing one eye and let the matter pass. But come to think of it, we paid 5k for it. Why should we accept sub-standard flooring? 

The worse part was probably the possibility that it may one day pop or explode like the stories that I have head, destroying the carpentry work that we are going to spend so much on. That really isn't a fear I want to live with. 

The 2 workers made a lot of rectification. They painted our walls. Scrubbed our floors. Re-grouted the flooring, mended holes in the wall, re-grouted our skirting and the list goes on. Let me share some photos of our defects with you, bearing in mind that we're merely a 3 room unit. The amount of defects was kinda alarming.

Loads of uneven painting.

And it was really a lot.

We wanted to write down the defects but after sticking so many pieces of masking tape, I gave up. We merely stuck them all over where there were defects. 

We even had a window frame that wasn't levelled like the rest. "It's safe one la!" said the site supervisor. "It's pre-fab so there's nothing we can do" he added. Seriously HDB? 

Uneven tiles in the MBR. More that we realised at a later stage. ALL IN OUR ONLY WALKING PATH. It was getting pretty annoying that most of the unevenness in tiles were in our planned walking space. 

We even had areas in our 2nd bedroom where water would collect. One part was raised and the other was concave. 

Dining Hall wall.

Pretty glad that we have a good view in our hall though.

Living up to the name Tampines Greenleaf (:

We have been then burning our Saturdays at our unit, waiting for rectifications to be done in the room we locked up on weekdays. In about 2 weeks, most of the rectification work was done. The 2 guys even painted our bomb shelter to make it look so much better! 

Here's how our kitchen tiles looked like when they did their regrouting. It dawned on me that if you apply grout between 2 tiles and scrape with a flat scraper, you'd be able to remove most of the grout no? That's how uneven our tiles were ): And it was for almost the entire unit.

The site sup and the HDB rep came to assess our flooring and were only agreeable to change 6 extremely uneven tiles in our kitchen. The tiles weren't even side by side. In addition, we had to 'accept' whatever colour difference there may be. 

We did agree to it but forgot to sign the document at the Building Service Centre (BSC) last Saturday. Upon pondering, it didn't make much sense to me that I have to accept the possible colour difference when they were the ones to screw up.

Well, since they didn't want to change all the tiles in the unit despite many instances of unevenness which in my opinion could make someone fall (especially kids), we wrote an email on Sunday night. We sent it to MP Baey to address the issue for us. He had been invited into our BTO's facebook group to assist us. We cc-ed several other people as well. 

Monday, no news.

Tuesday, BSC called me to make and appointment for the HDB personnel and several other higher management to visit our unit for an assessment. 

Verdict? They will replace the 6 tiles along with 6 other tiles in the area for a more uniformed look. Now, my kitchen tiles will have 3 shades of colour. How wonderful. 

Some days, I wish we had been wiser to not opt in for the tiles and doors. The quality of floor tiles and workmanship they have provided leaves me to wonder if it was really worth all my time, effort and money. In any case, we're now waiting for the tiles to be properly replaced... and for them to hand our padlock keys back to us. And since we're heading to HK soon, we will start renovation only when we return. It's all getting pretty exciting from here!