This is Home, Truly

This article was first published at Hipvan here.
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Our contractor escaped.

The nightmare that every new house owner feared the most landed on us. Nevertheless, we were still grateful that he was literally contactless during the last few stages of our home renovation.

Oh, before I move on, my name is Thomas, a 30-year-old home-grown boy. Together with my beautiful wife, Lydia, we got ourselves one of the biggest investments of our lifetime – a 5-room HDB (113 sqm) located at Punggol. I once told myself I will never move to Punggol. Prior to moving, we reside at Beach Road, where we could walk to our favourite hangouts such as Suntec and Marina Bay Sands, so Punggol is considerably further (but again, how big is Singapore?).

Getting our nest

Considering the long waiting times for BTOs nowadays, we decided to opt for a resale flat. Psst, they offer huge grants for resale flats now. We visited a few places at Seng Kang and Punggol, before choosing this flat. It was brimming with laughter, children running around, and the whole family was really amiable towards us. Without thinking much, we told the property agent, this is it and we dealt at $620K (down from the original $638K), which to be honest was still more than our budget.

The great thing was that, it is already well-furnished with the previous renovations, so we get to saved huge ka-chings on renovation. We had in mind what we wanted. A warm, cosy, Scandi-mix-modern feel to our house. We made a renovation list, which roughly reads:

1. Refurbish living room wall.

2. Retile two toilets.

3. Paint entire house.

4. Laminate headboard in master bedroom.

With that, we approached three interior design companies in Singapore, which quoted us close to $20K. Our budget was $10K, which includes $2K to buy furnishings, such as fluted panels, toilet accessories, etc. So, through a business contact, we got to know Mr. A (to remain his integrity, I will not name him), a freelance contractor. He could do it within our budget and we were delighted. Long story short, manpower was short, he did not pay his workers, did not do the final checks, resulting in our renovation being 90% completed. Thank God I was smart enough to withhold the final payment, which was later utilised to fix his errors.

So, here’s a useful advice: Make the last payment after completion and checks are done!

5 Breakfast Ideas Any Beginners Can DO! (Recipes included)

Most of us have fantasize your partner serving you breakfast in bed, as the aroma of toast and freshly grounded coffee filled up the room. There are only two scenarios. You are the one lying in bed, OR you are the one waking up earlier to make the breakfast. Morons can infer you're the latter (like yours truly) since you're looking at this post.

During the weekends, when I get to work from home, I tend to wake up earlier to whip up a simple breakfast for my family. No breakfast in bed after you have kids by the way, so we had everything proper on the dining table. To save any hassle, most of my recipes here will need less than 20 to 30 minutes of cooking and prep time. Combined. So you can get your beauty sleep as well.

Without further ado, I present to you my easy breakfast ideas that even any noob chefs can make. All this have a pretty high success rate since, you're either using the oven or waffle/pancake machine. If you do not have these equipment, not to worry, most of them can be cooked over the stove as well. If you're one of the noob chefs,  please make sure you have fire insurance beforehand.

Notes:

1. I got to emphasize that all ingredients are flexible. You just pop open your fridge and see what's there to use. As with every recipe, this serves only as a guideline. Like tomatoes? Add more. Don't like you food too sweet? Minus the sugar. Don't have fruits lying around? Sub with raisins. You get it.

2. If you're cooking for more people, apply your primary school multiplication on the recipe.

3. Unless otherwise stated, all ingredients are to be of room temperature. This helps for easy mixing and acquiring the desired texture.