98 330
PROPERTY
98
January14
The views are spectacular, taking in
the CBD and Duxton Hill’s traditional
buildings juxtaposed with The Pinnacle.
Currently under construction, however,
is the 67-storey Guoco Tower, slated for
completion in 2016, which will partially
block the view.
“ Th i s i s t he advan t age and
disadvantage of the whole area being
redeveloped. The construction views
may not be attractive, but the beauty is
that modern architectural design is much
nicer than that of previous decades,” says
Andreas. I ask if they can see runners
on the track on top of The Pinnacle, and
they say yes. “We can even see kids
bouncing on the trampoline on top of the
building, which looks a little odd and can
be worrying,” they laugh.
Starting from scratch
Andreas has lived in Singapore for eight
years, and he and Siew Bee had had
enough of packing up and moving every
two years. “We’ve been so annoyed
by the endless moving, and with the
landlords increasing the rent all the time,
so we decided to buy.
“We wanted somewhere that was
close to work and near an MRT,” says
Andreas. “We actually found this one by
accident,” adds Siew Bee. “We viewed a
unit on the 45th floor, but the owner was
asking for a higher price. We thought
we’d just take a look at this unit, didn’t
really pay attention to it, and a week
later the agent actually chased us to find
out if we wanted to make an offer. We
found out the owner needed to sell the
property urgently, we made an offer, and
it was accepted in July 2012.”
Although the apartment had been
recently renovated and was in fairly
good condition, they decided to gut and
renovate the place. “It was so funny when
we asked the contractor to knock out the
marble flooring; they nearly cried,” says
Andreas. Most units in the block have
three or four bedrooms, using partition
walls to separate the areas, but Andreas
and Siew Bee wanted to open the space
up by knocking out partition walls, false
ceilings and a huge centralised air
conditioning unit.
The contractor they used was a former
colleague of Andreas’s, Korene Tang,
who had started her own business,
Atelier Tan. Overall, the couple are
happy with the result. “They did fall
behind with their already busy sub-
contractors, and we also came up with
some changes during the project’s
execution, so there was a big delay in
delivering the flat to us.”
Having taken ownership of the flat
in September 2012, they’d given the
contractors until 30 November, when
they had to vacate their previous condo.
“It was a disaster; the contractors
just cleared an area for our furniture,
where it sat, covered, in the middle of
the apartment. We had a corner for
ourselves, and the workers became our
flatmates! In the end we moved to a hotel
This large
Buddha
statue was
purchased
from Eastern
Discoveries