Like any other new homeowners, Cheng Wee Hong and his new neighbours eagerly began renovation works when they first moved into their new build-to-order (BTO) flats at Treelodge@Punggol late last year. The initial excitement, however, turned out to be short-lived. Works on their new walls are leaving bigger holes than originally intended, chunks of wall were breaking off and requiring extensive touch-ups with plaster.

So you’ve read all four parts of the “Contractor or Conman?” series and learnt how to deal with sly contractors in your future home renovation projects. Unfortunately, you’ve read it all a little too late and have already fallen prey to some unscrupulous scum. So what do you do now?

Time is money, and when it comes to renovating your home, the more of your time your contractor wastes, the more money you’ll be doling out to him.Time has you wrapped around the contractor’s finger. After all, he’ll have nothing to lose if the project ends uncompleted. He has plenty more clients to direct his temporal, unsustainable attention to.

All home renovation projects start out bright and chirpy; you’re bursting with plans and ideas and the contractor you’ve engaged is nodding, smiling and telling you every plan you have for your home can be done.
But hold your horses and don’t get too carried away.

You’ve installed fittings that were promised to be of the finest quality and cost a bomb to match, but after some time, you realize that these materials aren’t really worth the price you paid. Chances are that you’ve fallen for one of the oldest tricks in the book; something we like to call Material Fraud.

Local contractors often hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons. Beds.sg exposes some of the dirtiest, darkest secrets of Singapore’s building and engineering construction industry in this three-part series so you’ll be well informed and prepared for any tricks a contractor has up his sleeves.