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tans.humbleabode
My chef husband and I in our humble 4rm Modern Contemporary BTO
The Cost of Hacking a Common Bedroom
49
As a young married couple who has gotten our first home, it seems to be the trend to hack one of the common bedrooms. The more common layout is hacking 2 bedrooms into 1 and having one walk-in wardrobe. For us, we decided to make the living room larger the moment we first saw the floor plan. It was a no-brainer and I will be talking about the cost, the timeline and the application needed to hack your common bedroom. 
After BSC has done their defects rectification and my ID took over, she immediately came down and planned for the hacking of the walls. 
Timeline 14/2 - ID applied permit 16/2 - HDB returned application 17/2 - paid PE endorsement to hacking company 19/2 - ID obtained PE endorsement and resubmitted application 20/2 - HDB returned application due to wrong blk no. (The hacking company wrote the wrong blk) 26/2 - 1st hacking works postponed as application not approved yet 27/2 - hacking permit approved 5/3 - start of hacking works Looking back, we would’ve made the initial hacking date but was held up by the incorrect application twice. Also just for clarification, the hacking works was done by the ID’s workers. PE endorsement paid to hacking company: $450 
HDB hacking permit application 
Once the wall was hacked, we see metal frames all around the existing wall. The professional engineer (PE) is also there to ensure safety and structural integrity and certify whether it is a load bearing wall. The workers then cut the metal structure one by one and the hacking only took half a day. 
When everything was cleared, the living room looks so bright and spacious! That’s when we knew we made the right decision. 
The vinyl tiles were a headache by the way. Since the vinyl tiles in the former bedroom was placed when the walls were up, the workers removed everything and placed new tiles. We had to get around 7 boxes of new vinyl tiles for the new living room. The gap in replacement is because we wanted to wait until majority of the renovation has been done before changing to the new tiles in case there were more damages to the tiles. For eg, indented tiles, scratched tiles, has silicon glue on the tile, etc… Vinyl timeline 29/4 - placing the new vinyl tiles 22/6 - replacement of damaged vinyl tiles 
Alas, the final result.
7 November 2025
