Home Improvement Programme:
Before, during, and after

I have just experienced a Home Improvement Programme project for my house, and I want to share my experiences and thoughts, in case anyone might find them helpful for your own HIP project in the future, especially if this is your first HIP experience ever.

Caveat: As each project is unique, please pay attention to the details of your project. But the overall theme is more or less consistent and have only improved since the last decade.

The HIP project was conducted in 2026. Things will likely be slightly different years later, but I don't think it will be much more different.

This is my second HIP experience, with the first one being around the early 2010s for another house, and it was a very different experience compared to this recent one.

4-12 months before

You will receive news about the upcoming HIP and will be asked to vote. There are two decisions and votes to cast as the Owner (non-owners don't get to vote; multiple owners of the same unit will vote as one):

1. To vote as a Block

2. To vote for your own unit

First vote as a Block must pass (probably simple majority) before you're invited to vote for your own unit.

They will erect showrooms for you to inspect and select your desired packages and whether you want to just renovate the main/kitchen toilet and/or the bedroom toilet, along with other special packages such as the EASE (Enhancement for Active Seniors) package, if offered.

You will be making these decisions early so that they can lock in the items needed for your house and get them prepared. There are clauses about cancellation fees, so be mindful that you cannot just make a decision on a whim. Discuss with the stakeholders living in your house and arrive at a clear decision together so that there can be no misunderstanding and miscommunication. You can still opt in for more stuff later (the smaller stuff, that is, not like deciding to renovate the other toilet when you only opted to renovate one) during the renovation period but you cannot reduce (at least not without penalty; read the contract terms for such cases).

When the drilling starts

It's about 3-6 months after the second vote concludes and everyone has submitted their choice of packages.

You may not be made fully aware of when it will be your block/unit's turn, but you will see the contractor building up temporary storage areas under your block. Their progress of building these areas is your gauge of when they'll start working on your block. They will also set up a temporary rest area and study room within walking distance, but this is usually built for the nearby cluster without requiring you to cross the road, so more than 1 block may share the same rest area and study room. They will also build temporary toilets and bathrooms (typically 1 for wheelchair access and has both a shower and a toilet, 1 for shower only, and 1 for toilet only; these makes a set each for male and female, so a total of 6 cubicles but only 4 for showering and 4 for doing business) for the block that is going through the renovation.

They will start from one block at a time, then they typically go column by column, one column at a time, starting from one side of the block and move towards the other side of the block. If your unit is at the corner columns and is at the top floor of that column, you will likely be the first (conversely, the lowest floor unit at the other end of the block will be the last). You will have no chance to "see what my neighbours are going through and doing" because you're the first of your block. You have to act decisively and swiftly upon getting notified of when they're going to start the renovation for your unit.

You will typically get notified about 4 weeks before it's your unit's turn. The contractor will send a team to inspect your house to run through the list of selected packages for your house with the house owner, and to identify any existing defects and hollow tiles in your house and collect evidence, and also advise you on how you can make space for the workers to move through your house safely to carry out the renovation. Please work with them closely so that you can make things go smoothly for everyone and don't step on each others' toes. They're here to work; you're here to get your toilets renovated properly.

About 2 weeks before your unit's turn, they will give you a definite date of when it will be. Take this signal to really start preparing your house for the renovation works.

Before the scheduled start date

1 day before the scheduled start date, the site supervisor will come to your house to brief you about what's going to happen on day 1. On the day itself, the workers will come to your house to start putting up plastic sheets along the walls of the rooms that are along the path from the main entrance to the toilets that will be worked on. Yes, you may not have to engage a private contractor to do the plastic sheets for you, but these preventive measures are not enough on their own if you don't do anything from your end to help make it more effective.

They will more or less seal off access to the rest of the rooms that not on the access path, so the actual work starts the day before it's your unit's turn. Hence you need to prepare way before the actual start date. They can't wait for you.

My recommendations

1. Start cleaning the walls, especially if you have not cleaned them in ages.
   Depending on your environment, dust, grime, and grease would likely have accumulated on the walls over time, especially at the top part of the walls. If they are going to put up plastic sheets for you, they are going to paste them along the top part of the walls. If the walls are dirty, the tapes won't stick well, and it will be worse if they can't reach up to paste the tapes firmly because of obstructions along the wall. If the tapes come off, the fine dust will move in, and the sheets basically become useless, and you don't want that to happen. If you are sticking up plastic sheets yourself, you can feel how not sticky the tapes are on the wall if the wall is dirty.

2. Move the furniture away from the middle of the room and away from the walls.
   Move them into other unaffected rooms. Don't expect to live in the house in the usual capacity. Plan to have an escapade or move to another place to stay for at least the duration of the renovation so that you can free up space to move the furniture away from the affected areas where the workers will be pasting plastic sheets on the walls for. If they cannot reach the wall to paste the sheets, the coverage of the sheets will be poor and the sheets will droop and eventuall drop, allowing dust to move in, which makes all these effort pointless.
   This act is also important if you want to have your own temporary toilet ("portaloo") in your kitchen space, as they need to have enough space to put the toilet, connect the straight pipes to the sewage pipes, AND still have space for the workers to move in and out of the kitchen toilet with their equipment and the materials. Otherwise you have to use the temporary toilets/showers downstairs at the void deck during the off-work hours. You cannot use the portaloo during their working hours because they have to disconnect the sewage pipes and store them in the portaloo so that they can work on the kitchen toilet. You will also not get a portaloo if you still have a fully functioning toilet that will not be renovated.

3. Do your own wrapping for really important items that you can't move out of the way.
   Such as your luxurious bed. Get your own plastic sheets or use a huge flat sheet to cover the entire bed, and move the bed to the far corner of the room so that the workers won't have to squeeze between your bedroom wall and your bed to reach your toilet. You really don't want that.

4. If you don't want the workers to step on any furniture/carpentry, cover up those areas yourself and then warn them as you watch over their activity when they're putting up their sheets.
   They will climb all over your non-fragile stuff so that they can put up the sheets properly. That's why you should move as much of your stuff out of the way as possible. If you don't want them to climb over your stuff, then you cover up properly yourself and tell them that you don't need them to cover/climb there. One of the workers nearly broke my aging kitchen counter top when he stepped on it and we all heard a loud crack. I forgot to tell him not to climb up that particular counter top. Fortunately, nothing was actually broken, but I definitely have to replace that aging counter top sooner than later.

5. Decide if you want to reuse anything in the toilet or simply discard/replace them
   Water heaters have a lifespan, simply because of wear-and-tear. Don't expect them to work properly forever, even if they have lasted you for the last 20 years. It may simply fail and electrocute you the next day. Just because something has not happened before does not mean they cannot happen in the future. Replace the water heaters, pipes, hoses, and taps if they have been in service for more than 5 years and especially if anything that has a warranty is already out of warranty and/or they're already showing obvious signs of wear-and-tear or are already starting to malfunction (e.g. leaking tap). If your toilets have existing water pipes connecting to your showers, they will replace them 1:1 for you, with the same material as your current water pipes (i.e. if you have steel pipes, you get steel. If you have copper pipes, you get copper, unless you top up for steel). But you get the option to adjust the location of your new tap/bidet, so you don't have to die die follow the old locations. Take this opportunity to change the bidet location to be more accessible (e.g. at the wall beside the toilet bowl, not behind it)!

During the renovation period

The renovation will take about 10 working days. The schedule I had was as follows:

• Day 0 (the day of briefing)

  1. Install dust curtains (plastic sheets; supposed to be Day 1 activity but they did mine on the day before).

• Day 1

  1. Provide effective floor protection measures (mats).

  2. Cover up furniture from dust (this happened on the day before the start date in my case, but may paste more sheets if needed).

  3. Remove existing toilet finishes (read: drilling. They need the whole day for tearing down both toilets of 1 unit.)

• Day 2

  1. Replace leaking UVPC soil/waste pipes (if any).

  2. Repair spalling concrete (if any).

• Day 3

  1. Prepare toilet floor for waterproofing.

  2. Replace toilet vent.

• Day 4

  1. Apply waterproofing (2 layers).

• Day 5

  1. Conduct water test

  2. Screed toilet floor

• Day 6

  1. Plaster toilet walls

  2. Paint toilet ceiling

• Day 7

  1. Lay toilet wall tiles

  2. Replace entrance gate

• Day 8

  1. Lay toilet floor tiles

  2. Replace entrance door

• Day 9

  1. Lay toilet doors, wash basins, pedestal pans & EASE items

  2. Reinstate existing toilet accessories (you need to be around at home to point out to the plumber where to install which item. If you're re-using anything that was removed on Day 1, you should clean them up before this day so that they can ready for installation straight without being caked in dust).

• Day 10

  1. Conduct water test

  2. Conduct final inspection, touch-up, and then hand over to residents

Their work schedule is likely from 8am to 6pm, Monday to Saturday, except public holidays. Be around.
Be around to unlock the gate and door in the morning. If you have wireless CCTV, it's a good time to use them to point at the main entrance and at various parts of the work areas so you can monitor them remotely from the comfort of the rest area/study room. When they're done with the day's work, their officer will sign off on the day's work and a worker responsible for cleaning will come in to mop the floor. If you don't see them mopping the floor, they're not done yet, and depending on their workload, they may appear well past 6pm (the latest I had was close to 8pm).

• On days 1 to 8, you are not really involved in the action since they don't require your input for these activities. If you're going to stick around in the house during or after working hours, you have to be VERY careful not to tear the sheets—they're very thin.

• On day 9, you will be actively involved because this is when you choose where to place which accessory. You may want to stay in the house for the whole day to make sure your things are installed properly. At the end of the day, they will remove all the plastic sheets and floor coverings and mop the floor quite properly for you (but of course it won't be clean enough to lie down and put your face to, but it's certainly good enough to walk barefooted on).

• On day 10, they will be doing the final touch-up and repairs of minor defects, such as uncovered holes in the corner of the tiles, so don't fret about this when you see all these little defects on Day 9. Just mark them out somehow (e.g. with a gentle, coloured tape) so that you and the workers can be reminded of where to look for defects to repair. They will also help to repair any damage sustained during the renovation work, but they will not work on anything that existed before the renovation work (they will mark it out clearly for their reference and have collected photos during the site inspection, so you cannot cheat them). You have to be around the whole day. Once you have signed off and all workers have left the house, the HIP is then considered completed and you're free to start putting your house back in order.

The aftermath

You are not out of the woods yet. If any of the plastic sheets came off at any time during the renovation period, fine dust would have invaded the space behind those sheets.

When they take down the plastic sheets on Day 9, the dust would also dislodge and get flung about due to the vibrations of the sheets. This is unavoidable. Therefore, you have to clean the house no matter what.

How you do this is up to you. You can offload this task to a paid contractor to do it for you, or you can DIY.

If you're going to DIY, I would suggest the following:

1. Start from inside out.

   • Assuming you renovated both toilets, start with the bedroom toilet and your bedroom first. Secure the resting area first so that whoever is staying in the house during the cleanup phase can have a proper place to cleanup, relieve, and rest.

   • Start with the ceiling, ceiling lights, walls, fan, aircon, the furniture, and then finally the floor. Reason is physics: gravity vs dust.

   • Sweep/vacuum any dust on the floor as you see them. Don't let them fly around.

   • Keep the windows closed. Minimise the airflow so you don't invite external dust from your neighbours and you don't let the wind stir up whatever dust that's already in the room. It's warm, it's sweaty, imagine you're having a sauna. Keep yourself hydrated.

   • The space you made in the living room in preparation of the HIP will now help you in allowing you to move the things in your room out so that you can perform a deep clean on the room and the items before moving them back in.

2. Kitchen and kitchen toilet next

   • Don't expect to do any cooking so soon, what with all the dust in other parts of the house. You can still da bao or order a delivery, but you cannot do the same for sleeping, bathing, and relieving (especially sleeping), so kitchen is the second place to clean up after the bedroom.

   • Same thing: start at the top and work downwards.

   • You'll likely have to wash every single piece of kitchen appliance that are not stored in airtight cupboards, and that's a lot of work on its own.

3. Living room last

   • The living room should have the least things to clean up if you had cleared it out to make space for the renovation works.

   • You're an expert in cleaning by the time you come to this part of the house. You don't need further guidance.

Closing thoughts

While the HIP work takes about 10 working days (excluding Sundays and Public Holidays), the preparation work and especially the cleanup phase would easily take just as much time, if not more, to prepare the house for the works and to return the house back to usual function and order.

Be prepared to take leave from your work on the following days:

1. Day of briefing (to attend the briefing and to supervise the workers putting up the plastic sheets)

2. Day 1 (drilling, making sure your daily plans work)

3. Day 9 (to give instruction to the plumber to put up your toilet accessories)

4. Day 10 (to supervise the fixing of minor defects and to sign off)

5. Day 11+ (to clean up the bedroom if you're DIY, especially if you're going at it by yourself or with just your partner)

If you're going to be the only point of contact for your house during the period, you have to be around your house the entire time while the gate and door are not locked. Apply to WFH or defer your office work somehow.

If you have prepared and planned things ahead, you will be able to enjoy a smooth HIP.

Last but not least, be human. Treat the workers with respect and they'll respect you just as much. We're all working for a paycheck, just in different ways. The last thing you want is to offend the people who are handling things that you yourself can't deal with and would require a lot of money to fix later. Why sabotage yourself? You don't have to be friends with them, but you don't have to be rude to them either.