‘Thanks, I made it myself’: How these handy Singaporeans DIY-ed renovation works for their spaces

SINGAPORE – Step into Mr Sim Kwang Wei’s 969 sq ft minimalist home and you might not realise it is almost entirely a do-it-yourself (DIY) job.

Though simple, the four-room Build-To-Order (BTO) flat in Eunos bears the same light wood flooring and Japandi-influenced Zen that so many Singapore homes favour. And the full job, including appliances, cost just $12,000.

The 35-year-old software programmer was inspired by a Bulgarian he met while working overseas a few years before the Covid-19 pandemic. The man had built his house in his home country from the ground-up out of scrap materials he found in shipyards over a period of eight years.

“I thought, if it can be done for a whole house, why not an HDB flat?” says Mr Sim, who is married.

After collecting his house keys in June 2023, he got to work. The only things he left to subcontractors were the kitchen carpentry and floor screeding. Over the next three months, he became a live-in contractor, installing the lights, four doors, vinyl flooring, kitchen sink and bathroom fittings himself.

He and his wife had opted out of the HDB Optional Component Scheme – which may include flooring, sanitary fittings and internal doors, depending on the project – and as such, the flat had no doors.

To get his home up to what he calls a “live-in state”, he spent a total of $6,100. The hardship was well worth it, he says. “It was a bucket-list thing.”

These days, it is not uncommon to see more Singaporeans learning to DIY the interior design aspect of their home renovations, but how many have attempted to DIY the actual renovation work?

In an era where first-time home owners do not bat an eyelid spending $100,000 on renovating their flats, a rare few have decided to take on the grunt work themselves to save costs and get their hands dirty for fun.

According to Housing Board guidelines, hacking and erecting non-structural walls require a permit. Certain electrical installations used for high-capacity equipment such as air-conditioners also require an HDB permit.

Common electrical tasks that do not require a permit include minor additions like new lighting points or standard power sockets, but these should be performed by a licensed electrical worker.

Mr Max Lee, chief executive of interior design firm SG Interior Design, has handled a few six-digit BTO renovation jobs in recent years. The finishes can add up – pegged to decisions like choosing European over Chinese sintered stone or using premium materials like microcement. For example, the labour for laying microcement can be threefold that of tiles.

He estimates that engaging an interior designer (ID) costs about 20 per cent more than working directly with a contractor.

According to him, a four-room BTO flat, if already tiled, can be renovated for $30,000 to $40,000 when engaging an ID; while a four-room resale flat can cost anywhere from $70,000 to $100,000, inclusive of hacking. Hacking typically takes up 10 per cent of the total budget and tiling at 30 per cent, with carpentry the most expensive at 30 to 40 per cent.

HIGH BARRIER TO ENTRY

Whether doing it themselves or outsourcing to contractors, those tempted to forgo an ID risk having shoddy workmanship, Mr Lee says.

Leaks can occur in plumbing, wires can be damaged by short circuits, and poorly laid vinyls and tiles can pop over time.

Singaporeans are not known to be handy, and are short on time, space and hard skills. The lack of readily available materials can also be a deterrence, Mr Lee adds.

For example, handyman shops here do not sell ready-made plywood planks like the ones in the United States.

The barriers to entry are high, says Mr Clyde Lim, 31, who built several pieces of wooden furniture with his wife, Ms Chew Yirong, 32, for their home.

“To even start a DIY project, there’s no knowledge. You must go to YouTube to learn. After learning, you need to commit to buying the equipment. I can understand the inertia,” he says.

For their dining tabletop and study desks, the couple, who are in the medical profession, customised and bought raw wood planks from local Singapore upcycled wood company Timber Actually in 2024. It no longer lists such products on its website.

From Mr Lim’s experience, he notes that it is possible to order wood online from e-commerce platforms Shopee or Taobao, but it would not be planed. To plane the wood – which means to remove the surface layer of rough wood for a smooth finish – “you might have to venture into wood shops in the deep west like Sungei Kadut”, he says.

Mr Lee advises curious DIY enthusiasts to proceed with caution.

For instance, third-party electrical services are readily available at a lower price on Carousell, but the workers may not come with the relevant certifications. Poorly laid electrical works can affect built-in carpentry, so he recommends keeping external jobs to the start or end of the main renovation, to avoid a needless blame game.

For beginners, he suggests taking on cosmetic renovations such as painting or laying vinyl flooring. “If you have the time and knowledge, make a fun day of it.”

Sanded, sealed, delivered: Married couple make good on woodworking hobby

How many Singaporeans can say they hand-crafted, sanded and sealed the mahogany tabletop of the dining table they eat off daily?

To add to an already impressive feat, Ms Chew Yirong and Mr Clyde Lim are also the novice carpenters behind the sofa settee, study desks and a coffee table in their 700 sq ft one-bedroom condominium apartment in Newton.

The DIY works were mainly to maximise the many awkward bay windows in their home, though they did engage carpenters to build their wardrobes, kitchen and bedframe.

Ms Chew says: “The dimensions were hard to communicate to the ID. And carpentry provided by them is usually made of cheap pine wood but charged at a premium.”

The married couple caught the woodworking bug during the Covid-19 pandemic years of 2020 to 2021.

It started with a chopping board-making course and progressed to stools. Mr Lim wanted to continue with the hobby at home and bought materials such as sanders and wood saws.

The first thing they made on their own was a small wooden countertop shelf for his mum’s kitchen. This was followed by a pine dining table measuring 160cm by 80cm that can fit 10 for Ms Chew’s family.

By the time it came to furnishing their own home in 2024, they were well-prepared.

They bought raw wood from Timber Actually, and stained and processed it themselves to make it food-safe.

The tedious job starts with using wood glue to join the planks, which are clamped for up to two weeks.
Then, the planks are sanded down to the same height before they are rounded on the corners, sanded again, and stained. They are finished by sealing with a protective base applied in a few rounds.

It took a month for the couple to complete all the furniture, which they made on the floor of their living room during the renovation phase.

“The actual woodworking doesn’t require skills,” Ms Chew says, referring to the tabletops. They bought the legs for their dining table, which doubles as a bar countertop, as well as the standing desk mechanisms.

There was a risk that their handmade furniture might be rough, rot or stain other items – or, worst of all, break after a while. But two years in and the pieces are going strong.

The monetary savings were a nice bonus. For a sofa and two study tables, they were quoted $2,500 and $1,600 respectively three years ago.

“If I bought the wood myself, the cost difference was quite significant,” says Ms Chew, a serial hobbyist who traces her woodworking interest back to secondary school, where she built props and structures as part of her creative problem-solving CCA, Odyssey of the Mind.

They ended up spending a total of $950 on wood alone, on top of $500 for the equipment – which included clamps, a saw, router, sander and wood finishing – amassed over the years.

It seemed less daunting seeing how Mr Lim’s American brother-in-law also has handmade furniture in his apartment in New York.

Mentality is the No. 1 hurdle preventing most people from getting their hands dirty, Mr Lim says. “Singaporeans don’t have this practice of doing things themselves. Most would have paid someone to do it.”

Enjoying the process of woodworking is half the battle won. “If you like it, it’s already a win.”

Although they no longer make new pieces on the regular, the couple have takeaways: When shopping for wood, pine costs the least, and the price starts increasing for different tiers of solid wood.

If planing services are available, pay for them. Untreated, unplaned wood is the cheapest – but not worth the extra time spent to try to make flat yourself. Tools can be bought from e-marketplaces like Shopee and Amazon.

Start small and work your way up to bigger projects, adds Mr Lim. “You’ll need a workspace, equipment and a mum who doesn’t get angry at you for dirtying the space.”

One-man show brings bare-boned BTO to life

For three months, software programmer Sim Kwang Wei lived in squalor in his incomplete four-room BTO flat.

He had moved in after the floor screeding – the final levelling layer for flooring – was professionally done. While licensed contractors renovated neighbouring flats, he was drilling holes for lighting and plumbing in his new space. Surrounded by dust, he slept on a yoga mat and took cold showers with a hose in the bathroom.

His wife, who works in banking, helped with laying the vinyl flooring. While doing the work, she was mentally prepared to have a proper contractor redo the whole place, but found that the outcome was better than expected, Mr Sim jokes.

“We didn’t want to sink too much into the flat because we planned to sell it,” he says. “And we did not have a fixed idea of the design, so it was easier to convince her to DIY.”

He has always considered himself a hands-on man – he fixed leaking pipes in his family home from time to time. He taught himself plumbing and hot/cold piping from watching YouTube tutorials and reading HDB wiring manuals.

It was easier to work on the flat while the rest of the BTO project was being built, as he could drill and cause a ruckus freely without worrying about disturbing the neighbours.

Some tasks were harder to complete alone, such as installing the wide kitchen blinds and doors, which were heavy and had to be aligned with hinges and ledges, Mr Sim recalls, wincing at the memory.

Small mistakes – such as drilling in the wrong spot, purchasing errors from Taobao and installing leaky pipes – were also “inevitable”. For example, the drainage pipe from Taobao for the kitchen sink was smaller than what was required to meet the regular size for the pipe’s opening in Singapore, so an adaptor was needed to seal it up.

After experiencing success with one job, however, one gains confidence, he says. “You have to have the ability to stomach failures and fix things along the way.”

Most people are not prepared for that level of commitment and would rather outsource the work to save time, he notes. His other DIY efforts for the flat included building his bed frame and a home gym set-up, as well as small wooden enclosures for the couple’s skinny pigs and birds.

By doing the bulk of the work himself, his savings were significant. For fittings, he spent about $400 on the vinyl flooring, $400 on doors and $120 on the lights. He engaged professional help and spent $2,900 on carpentry and $2,000 on screeding.

The total cost came up to about $12,000 – compared with the $50,000 his friend paid to professionally renovate his four-room flat in Bidadari in the same year.

Labour cost is rightfully expensive, adds Mr Sim, who held an office job at the time and worked on the renovations after work and late into the night.

But he would not have traded the experience for the world. He fulfilled a lifelong dream of putting together a home with his own hands. And with the flat having held up over the last two years, his wife is now convinced that they can do away with project managers and IDs, he says with a grin.

His advice for aspiring self-made contractors? “Don’t do things that could cause irreparable damage – high-impact works such as levelling the ground. And if you have little tolerance for mistakes, don’t do it.”

F&B entrepreneur behind Hopscotch built bar counters by hand

After getting “scammed” by an interior designer who left his bar incomplete, Mr Roger Yip, co-founder of the Hopscotch chain of bars, swore “never again”. He vowed he would handle the bulk of renovation works himself henceforth.

His customers are unaware that the 35-year-old’s handiwork can be found in each of his four bars: at Gillman Barracks, Capitol Singapore, Gardens by the Bay and the now-closed outlet at Red Dot Museum.

With the help of his co-founders, he has DIY-ed components including building the bar counters from scratch, plumbing, electricals and design features.

Mr Yip had learnt from a good friend how to do basic carpentry – and the mindset to “go and find out how to do things yourself”.

At the Capitol outlet, he raps one of the many tables with his knuckles and says: “You just buy raw wood planks for the tabletops, clad it onto the base bought from China and slap on the laminates. Very easy.”

The same goes for the bar counter. They formed the carcass out of timber planks purchased from local plywood supplier Ban Heng Long Trading before finishing with lamination.

It all started with the Red Dot Museum branch in 2014. The four co-founders were university students in their early 20s with no money and a dream.

They went with an industrial theme for the 1,000 sq ft resto-bar – “so you could get away with mistakes”, Mr Yip says with a smile. There were measurement errors in their rookie attempt, and the final result was “good from far, far from good”. But it cost them under $20,000 to renovate the entire space, including some professional work.

The bar closed in 2017, but the industrial look with brick walls and exposed copper pipes became a signature.

The next endeavour was the outlet at Gillman Barracks, opened in 2018. Mr Yip had engaged an ID for $60,000 to $70,000. But the ID disappeared with only about 70 per cent of the job done – leaving the feature wall, signboard, ceiling fans, LED lights and plant ceiling fixtures unfinished.

This unpleasant incident lit a fire under Mr Yip to pull himself up by his bootstraps. For their next branch at Capitol, he taught himself to solder and join lights, and draw up floor plans and single-line lighting plans for the building management’s approval. These basic electrical works were then certified by a licensed electrical worker.

YouTube is your best friend, he says. “After a few times, you’ll start to know the requirements. A normal power plug that’s 13amp, what kind of wire must you use,” he says.

The team also personally laid decorative “bricks” and made a copper pipe fixture for the feature wall.

The challenges faced were more administrative. Noisy works in Capitol had to be kept to one and a half hours a day.

Mr Yip makes it a point to involve the branch managers in all renovations. “When you build it yourself, you feel a sense of ownership.”

They spent the most on their biggest outlet, which opened in 2022 at Gardens by the Bay. Within the 3,000 sq ft space, they built the bar, a back bar and Supertree-inspired copper pipe features.

The total cost was almost $120,000 – but an ID would probably quote $350,000, he reckons. The costs are marked up substantially for commercial spaces due to the need for electrical plans, plumbing plans, floor plans and Singapore Civil Defence Force approval, he says.

There are some things he will leave to the professionals, though – such as partition and structural works, and cupboard carpentry.

Mr Yip, who taught himself to mock up 3D floor plans in the process, recently helped with the interior design for two friends’ residential flats.

The accountant by training recommends opting for a balance of DIY and engaging subcontractors. “Pick your battles. The learning curve is quite steep, but the easiest thing to start with is electricals.”

Begin with something simple like adding additional power sockets – which can save you $60 to $80 a power point.

As for simple woodworking, one hack is to lean on laminates and fluted panels to hide mistakes and achieve a professional look.

“Time is money,” he says, especially when one’s timeline is tight. “But no regrets. Because we know the process now, people can’t ‘cut’ and ‘smoke’ us so easily.”