Month: June 2014

We got an awesome flooring deal!

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We finalised an awesome deal on floating timber floor today with a company named Ankors. We had collected a number quotes on timber flooring from these companies: Seven Flooring Colorful Flooring Sunshine Timber Flooring Bunnings Harvey Norman St George Flooring Centre But the standout was Ankors – a warehouse on a rather desolate side of Paramatta. It did not have the gloss and glam of Bunnings, Harvey Norman or other fancy showrooms (it actually looked a bit spooky initially) but it provided the same product and service for nearly half the price. And, these guys were recommended to us by friends who also got the product for super cheap and the quality of install at their place was good too. So why not! I must say, the lady there – Janet, was pretty patient with us. She put up with all our questions and un-decisiveness over the one strip or two strip or three strip timber, the type of timber, the gloss or no gloss and so on. It was not easy but we finally landed on Kempus …

Not a single soul to our first open house

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We had our first open house to let out our current apartment yesterday. We made sure to keep it spotless and organised – neither of us are very good at that, so it was a big task for us. We were very anxious about how many would turn up to inspect the property but it was a big shock to us when no one showed up. Yes NO ONE. Not a single soul. It was a shock because our suburb is considered one of the “hottest” for the rental market. This suburb has a major train station, big shopping centers and the local stores, quite a wide variety of restaurants, school and medical centres all within easy reach. But yet, NO ONE seemed to want to come to inspect our apartment 😦 So we looked into why people did not shortlist us: not long enough in the market – the apartment was only advertised on the property website 3 days prior to open house date. time clash with other competitive apartment – there were 2 other apartment that …

Our first apartment

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Some photos of our first apartment. I feel in love the amount of light throughout the room & the big spacious eat in kitchen. (And also because we could not afford that “dream house” with nice lawn and white picket fences.) As you can see, I am not much of decor person.

Damn these agency fees

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We have decided to let out our current apartment. Since this is our first time, we thought it would be best to leave it in the hands of the real-estate agent to deal with the tenancy nitty gritty. And the first real estate we contacted was of course the one that we bought our new house from. So the agent came over this evening to our place to inspect it. We had the apartment all cleaned up and shining bright. I had high expectations of how much rental return we would get but turns out I just loved my apartment too much. The recommended price was much lower than expected. And then deduct from that the long list of service fees: a whole week’s rent – every time the tenancy lease is renewed a residential tenancy agreement preparation fee a monthly admin fee a weekly management fee of 5.5% of rent These fees itself accumulate to nearly $2k per year – Heart Break (again). Damn these agent fees. Having said that, its a relief that they will be managing all tenancy stuffs including …

Quotes for timber flooring

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So over the week, I was hunting for companies that installed timber floors and thanks to hipages.com.au – they are basically (an awesome) website/company,  I got connected to 3 companies around our area that do timber flooring. 2 of them got back to me (Colourful Flooring & Seven Flooring) and fortunately both were pretty good in customer service and sort of matched in their quotes. Unfortunately, we are left with a confusion over which company to go with. Quotes we received from both exceed our expectations – AS USUAL. We were expecting around the 5k to 6k max. But the quotes has now come up to 7k (hardwood but excluding kitchen OR floating timber including kitchen). This includes the material supply, installation, 25 years timber warranty and 5 years service warranty. The sad part is that, this means that we are now going over our budget for renovation work, and we may not get to redoing our kitchen before moving in. Heart Break. Factors that contribute to the cost: The area of the floor to be floored. Ours …

The timber confusion

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I lhoooveeee timber floors. I think it gives a very warm and cozy feel – just how I like it. I thought there were just 2 types – either the real timber or the laminate one. But turns out there is an “engineered floating timber” too. Let me give a run down: Hardwood – This is the real deal. Its natural wood and you can choose the species you want like Bamboo, Oak, Maple & Birch etc. Laminate – This is basically the timber look alike. The top layer of this flooring is literally a photograph of wood. No kidding. Engineered Hardwood – This is a hybrid of the above 2 and perhaps the one that people prefer if they want the feel and quality of timber without the cost and effort of hardwood flooring. Laminate and Engineering hardwood are “floating floorboards” – as in they can be placed over any existing floor – even tiles. Its apparently just clicking the floorboards into place over an underlay. The markets sell this floorboards generally with the underlay attached to …