We've firmed our contractor! First stage to building our home!

Yes, we finally did it, after the long quest for the perfect contractor. We were kinda tired so we decided that to proceed with the most active contractor. Impress21. We told him we are looking at late september to have the house handed over latest which he accepted as a reasonable delivery date. Upon confirmation, he applied for our renovation permit cause we were doing hacking. We received the approval on 26th, but only saw the physical approval in our mailbox today. Realised that hacking was supposed to take place today, Mon and Tue. But Henry said that his workers might only be able to do it on Wed- Fri. I have no idea whether it's illegal to carry out reno after the permit period. Going to check with him later.

We choose our tiles last weekend. Shortlisted a few for the living, bedrooms and the kitchen area. How we wished we could have solid black tiles. Argh.... We were treading on thin grounds by selecting dark brown tiles. That's the closest we can get to black tiles. We should be opting for a non-skirting look to achieve a more modern feel. (Oh yah, I think we are going for modern look coz we dun want to risk having Hershey biting all our furniture. ) The usage of homo tiles for the entire house, in matt finishing was also our attempt to make the house more condusive for his stay. Matt finishing are better for dogs, so they don't slide when they run.

We read that there were cases of uneven flooring in our area, and true enough, when our contractor came down to check, they advised that HDB be called in to discuss ways to avoid having uneven flooring within the house. Heard from SO that they have this interesting spider like equipment that can detect the height discrepancy very easily. Cool. That aside, we have the option to lower our foyer area or build a kerb at the kitchen area. I'm fine with the foyer area but just feel shortchanged by HDB. The slanted walls might also pose problems to carpentary in the later stage. Thank godness the HDB guy was apologetic and promised to help us all he can. They'll also make my bomb shelter door shorter cause of the flooring issue. On top of that, we will be given a written permit to spare us from having to keep to the ceiling height requirement set by HDB. I always thought that the bomb shelter is untouchable- how wrong I was. Cutting the bomb shelter door will take 3 weeks. Meanwhile, hacking will take place first and we're likely to meet up with the electrician this weekend.

We spent last Sunday doing some wallpaper hunting too. Found ourselves in wallpaper paradise at Goodrich global. Some many wall paper. We had a big heahache trying to fine colour themes to match the modern look and fit in the fengshui requirements.

Shortlisted wallpaper:

But we have no idea whether we'll be going ahead with usage paper. Till then.