The part where the concepts become tangible.

January 10, 2013 (Happy new year), 4 days before the official start of the construction, our architects accompanied us in purchasing the materials: floor tiles, doors, lighting fixtures and other accessories.

We first went to MC Home Depot in The Fort. It's our first time there. The place is huge and you can easily get lost.

We first looked for Sliding Door mechanisms:

Because it's a condo unit and the space is limited, the architects advised us to have a sliding door instead of
the conventional doors. Mechanisms for 2 sliding doors cost 2,700 pesos.

We didn't find good doors in MC home depot, we'll just look for it on our next destination after this (CW at Chino Roces). But we found some fancy doors, though (haha):

We just looked for lighting fixtures here:

This will be for our Dining Area (wow lang. Haha)

 For the kitchen (looks like a cake).

 For the open space

For the masters bedroom

We also bought 4 of this for the dropped ceiling in the Living Room. The architect will also turn this dropped ceiling lights to dimmable lights for free :)

And we also found some cute lighting fixtures here!

For other materials, our architects brought us to CW Home Depot in Chino Roces. Our architect is a member here and with that we'll get 5% discount on our purchases.

First off, floor tiles. As mentioned before, we will be getting Vinyl 4x36 tiles. The design should be wood-like and we have to select two shades of colors. We'll use light tiles in the common area while brown tiles for the master bedroom. 

For the masters bedroom, we chose Hornitex 1.3mm Walnut color (2nd in the picture).  

And for the Common area we have Kent 2mm Beech Oak (2nd in the picture).

 Tip: they can actually provide an actual sample by placing the tiles on the floor so that you can see how it would look like. This is very helpful because it actually looks different when it is displayed on its own along with other designs and when it is placed like actual tiles on the floor. (Sorry for using the word "actual" too much in this paragraph because actually actual is really helpful haha)

They can also place another design side by side with your initial design to help you decide.

This is really helpful for us and of course, flooring is one of the design that you will first notice in a house or a place that's why it is important that you choose something that you really like. 

However, it is just sad that they don't have stock of the Beech Oak for the common area. But I would like to commend CW sales persons as they really helped us to decide by looking for colors close to Beech Oak just to give us an idea of how it looks like. We still ended up with Beech Oak because we didn't like other colors that they showed us.

The Beech Oak is the odd one in the picture. We liked it more because its design is more wood-like. While the other one could just look plain brown when placed together.

Next is doors for Masters bed room and The Daddy's office.

Wasn't able to take a picture of the whole door but the architect said that we were able to buy the same design as with our front door. 

It's not part of the original design and cost, but we found Cornice in CW and our architect asked us if we like to have it as well. Cornice are those placed in the corner of your ceiling as a design. 

Since the Cornice is just 150 per 8ft, we decided to add this to the unit as well. The cornice that we bought is the actual wood type of cornice and this is a lot cheaper than PVC cornice which costs 300 per 8ft.

For the light fixtures, we have decided to get LED lights for those. Yes, it costs way more than regular lights but LED lights can be left open for days and could actually be functional for n years. The GE LED lights that we bought even have a 5 year warranty. So if it won't open you can just replace it with a new one. :) Aside from that, LED lights are energy saver and would really give us enough savings for a long period of time. So this is a great investment, even if the initial cost is high.

Here are our LED lights being tested :)

So far, these are the essential materials that we have to buy for the actual construction on January 14. I am so happy that we are very hands on during this stage. It's like we have the chance to choose on what we like for every - even the littlest - part of our home. 

Kitchen and Cabinet

December 29, 2012

We visited our unit again to accompany our contractor for the Kitchen and Cabinet. We have a different contractor for this because we tried to canvass for other contractors for a cheaper price. "Kuya Cabinet," as we call him, is referred to me by an officemate. She is satisfied with his work that's why we also asked for his services.

When we visited the unit, we found out that the waterproofing is not yet finished.

Tip: This is something that we failed to do. When they turned over the unit to us, we were just like kids that are so excited and giddy and we just looked around then finally signed the turnover contract. We don't have an architect yet during that time to give us instructions. The inspection of the unit should be very carefully done before approving turnover. We signed the turnover even if the waterproofing is not yet finished. With that, this gave us trouble while we were on the furnishing stage already because they had to remove the door of the CR that cause some damages on the wall and we had to get mad at them for them to fast track this so that we could do our furnishing without any disturbance. You can also inspect the door if it is painted evenly, you can inspect every corner and demand perfect furnishing before you sign the turnover. Some clients even get the measurements on their own to check if they are getting the actual size.

Anyway, we have already demanded that they fast track the waterproofing as we are going to start the construction very soon.


This is Kuya cabinet and The Daddy discussing the designs:

We also opted to have the existing outlets move to another position to fit our pre-designed kitchen:

Contract signing :)

"Kuya Cabinet" will start within the time frame of the architects so that the same 5 week time frame allotted will still be met. By the way, the condo allows unit owners to have a max of 3 months construction but our architects said that this could be finished in 5 weeks time, hopefully including the kitchen and built-in cabinets as well.


And by the way, we received disconnection notice already. Hahaha

Materials

December 28, 2012

Some materials are not included on the total contract with the architect. These are floor tiles, doors, lighting fixtures and other accessories that we wished to have. The total contract price, on the other hand, includes labor, paint, partitions, modification of electric layout and the design.

Before the actual purchasing, The Daddy and I window shopped already in Wilcon Pasong Tamo to have an idea of what we will choose in the actual purchasing.

We also did some computations of the different types of materials so that we'll have an idea of their costs beforehand:

With this, we have a clearer idea of how less Vinyl tiles will cost compared to other floor materials. Other options are Ceramic tiles and Laminated wood. 

We chose Vinyl tiles because 1. they are a lot cheaper 2. Since there are just two of us in the condo (so far :)) it wouldn't cause much traffic and we can easily maintain the flooring. But we will have different thickness for the common area and the masters bedroom. Common area will be thicker (2mm) because most likely we'll have visitors every now and then so it's better if the flooring will be more durable. The masters will only have 1.3mm thickness. 

We checked on Doors, Counter top options for the kitchen and other accessories too. Next up, actual purchasing.

Architect Process

It has been a over month since my last update. During those times that I was not writing, we were already meeting up with our architect. We finalized the designs and the cost of the project. This entry will walk you through the step by step process that we have already accomplished with our architect:

The architects were referred to us by The Daddy's younger sister. We are so comfortable because we just belong to the same age group. They are the architects who decided to go solo and resigned from their respective firms or work. So every time we meet, it's like were just group of friends talking about design stuff.

1st meeting - November 26 at the Condo Unit. They checked the actual unit and we discussed preliminary design and theme. No costs yet. They are going to present it on our succeeding meet ups.

2nd meeting - We decided to meet at a Coffee shop because we're just going to discuss the design and theme with details and their service cost. We also have to choose from the designs that they made based on our discussion during our first meeting:

3rd meeting - After several discussions and also background check (The Daddy checked on some sources if the given cost were within the range), we have decided to get their services.

4th meeting - Now they have to show us samples or swatches of different colors that we can choose from. We started first with flooring.

5th meeting - The architects will finally submit the approved plan in the building admin so that we can finally start with the construction. The building admin just needs to review the plan so they can give the final heads up. Here is The Daddy signing the plans:

6th meeting - We meet again to finalize all the details because the building admin has approved our plan and the construction will officially start soon (yay!).

For this meeting, we were given swatches for Paint Colors:

We also  modified some details on the plan:

 And here's the timeline! The construction will officially start on January 14:

This is it. :)