Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Moved into Our House Finally!

Finished or unfinished, furnished or unfurnished, we decided to take the plunge and forced ourselves (+ contractors of course) to move into the house on Saturday.

I engaged a cleaning company to clean 3 rooms, but I must say that I was not too impressed with the cleaning quality. The cleaning company I hired was Suria Supply & Cleaning services. They sent 4 people to clean, but still missed a lot of dirty spots, so I would not recommend engaging them. Looks like there'll be lots and lots of rounds of cleaning still to do.

After months of back and forth, our container has also arrived from Bali on Friday. Unfortunately, some items were incorrectly sized and a few items were damaged. We still need to go through all items and measurements in details, so I'll blog more about this episode down the track.

Overall, it's good to be finally in your own house. It's taken us 6 months since we started planning the interior design and we're far from being done. I can only hope and pray that we'll be able to get major items completed asap, reassess and reengage a new contractor (hopefully a very reliable one) for all remaining items.

Wish us luck!

If there's any word of advice that I can give based on my experience, that'd be lower your expectations and never pay fully after a job is done, most of the time, you'll be calling the company to come back and redo something (be it aircon fittings, painting, water filter, cleaning - you name it, we've experienced it all :)

Here's to all home-owners who are going through renovation headaches like most of us here :)
Erika

8 comments:

  1. Hey Congrats been following yr blog for awhile now and must say its a nice feeling that you guys finally are moving in!!! =) Im sure that feeling of being in yr own place will be worth the wait! =)

    Khan

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  2. Congratulations On Your New Home!

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  3. Congratulations!! Hope you'll be happy in your new home!

    yati

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  4. Congratulations! I have been following your blogs and need to see you settle in your new home in JB. I too have bought a house in JB but in Horizon Hills.. Thinking about the contractor experiences that you have been through, I am quite worry on my project..

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  5. Thank you everyone for your kind wishes and for following my blog.

    @KT, I think the most important experience that we have learnt is to always go for more established firms. Ask to see their completed projects and if possible, to also speak to the owners of those projects. We thought that our ID person (Ray) would give it his 200% since it is one of his earliest projects, but lack of experience, sense of responsibility and aptitute do not make up for it. I think a lot of contractors here are always using the cheapest and quickest options, which most of the time resulted in poor quality work. Best of luck for your project! Pls feel free to drop comments if there's anything that I can help with :)

    Happy Sunday!

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  6. wow did a long comment not sure if it come to you, as i pressed wrong key it disappeared but just in case, it was to wish you luck and happy future in your new home.

    regards John

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  7. Hi Erika

    It's so lovely to read about your blog! Thank you for sharing, my husband and i, we have taken the leap by purchasing a property in HH. Now we are psyching ourselves up for the commute! Not to mention the renovation! hur hur....

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  8. Hi John,

    Thanks for the kind words & wishes :)

    Hi Izzie,

    Thanks for reading my blog. The commute does take some time to get used to, but sooner or later, you'll get used to it. The renovation is something that I am still trying to get used to :) As I'm typing this now, I have 4 contractors in my house installing our kitchen island workbench....hopefully the end result will be fine :)

    Best of luck!

    Have a great weekend,
    Erika

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