The Right Contractor II

There's a bit of excitement and whirlwind flurry when it comes down to selecting THE RIGHT CONTRACTOR from my final shortlisted contractors. They are....

THE CONTRACTORS

Mr. Frankie Foo, who speaks with a loud voice

and.....

Mr. Phua Chu Kang (he everything also say 'can one~!', dunno can trust or not)

THE FIGHT


It was a tough fight between them... so I decided to dropped them both.


THE REAL CONTRACTORS

Seriously, my final shortlisted contractors are
1) Zhiseng (Queenstown)
2) Lego House Design (Paya Lebar)
3) Ah Soon (Queenstown)

So here's the twist-turning, gut-wrenching, belch-erupting 3-part encounter on how I finally settled on my contractor.

PART 1: Initial setup
I first went over to Zhiseng @ BLK 75, Commonwealth Drive, #01-507, Singapore 140075 and received quite a good quotation from their staff for the stuff I wanted. Wah, steady already.

On the next day, I went over to City Plaza and received a better quotation from Lego House Design. Desmond @ Lego was very friendly and told me a lot about how to best decorate my house. More steady than Bebop and Rocksteady~!

Bebop and Rocksteady

Round 1 ==> Winner = Lego Design


PART 2: Mr Yang's recommendation
Part 2 was possible because of Mr. Yang who lives on the 30th floor flat vertically above KFC. He's a friendly dog-walking retiree whom I saw by stroke of luck when I visited my flat to check out the place. He owns 2 dogs and one of them is a gargantuan Husky... dun pray pray with him.

As I wanted ideas of how to best renovate KFC, I tried to visit all the units above my chalet, starting with the top floor. Mr. Yang happens to live on the top and was very friendly to let me have a tour of his place. He then advised me to get a good contractor whom is trustable - and he recommended me to Zhiseng (whom I had been to before). He mentioned that he is a friend of the father-in-law of the boss of Zhiseng and set up a meeting for me and Mr. Ker (the father-in-law) to view flats done by Zhiseng and further discuss about the package at Zhiseng (may get better priced package!)

Being recommended by Mr. Yang, I agreed to meet Mr. Ker and proceeded to view 2 units done by Zhiseng, and I must say the workmanship is not bad. However, the 'better-priced' package still lost out to Lego House.

@ Lego House, Desmond introduced me to the ID who will be in-charge of my renovation, should I decide to take up Lego's package. The ID brought me to view two units done by Lego House, and I must say the design is not bad as well. However, the ID who brought me to do the house viewing did not seem to be too experienced.

Round 2 ==> Winner = Still Lego House~!

PART 3: Arrival of the dark horse
Just before signing the contract with Lego House, I went down with the ID to KFC to take a look and take measurements. Mr. Yang joined us as he was interested about my renovations and wanted to give advice.

At my place, the ID did not do much checking and was seemingly in a rush for another appointment, presumably a bigger fish than my ikan bilis of an ID project. He left shortly, and I proceeded to view look around with Mr. Yang and K.

After a not-so-thorough look, we left for lunch (lunch.is.impt.) On the way out, we chanced upon a flat @ level 1 undergoing renovations and we went in to look-see-look-see. Asking the workers if they were doing a renovation project at the house, we found out that they were actually from a firm contracted by HDB to do repairworks on flats in the area.

And they do renovation as well.

The lead worker gave me the phone number of his boss to call, and the rest was history.

As history is not a subject which everyone is familiar with (I only got A2 for it at 'O' levels) allow me to give a short topic of history.

APPENDIX: HISTORY: Contractor contracted!

Jason, Ah Soon's head worker, came over to view my house and look through the list of items I needed to be done.

He gave a rough quotation which by itself was a shocker - it is much cheaper than the after-discount prices of all the IDs and Contractors I annoyed throughout my Journey of the HDB kind - and I did not have to annoy him with birdie sounds (cheap cheap?).... yet.

I met up with Ah Soon and was subsequently happy with his workmanship and pricing.

My contractor is thus contracted~!