Ciseern

We started looking for an Interior Design firm to help us with the designing and renovation work for our new home in the beginning of 2021. We spoke to a few Interior Designers (ID) from a few firms and contacted them to talk to them, to view the designs that they had done before and carpentry workmanship. We contacted and visited Ciseern at their showroom at Kaki Bukit Road. We were assigned to Zax Zeng for our visit and discussion on our ideas and plans. When we first met Zax, he was very friendly and tries to understand our renovation requirements for our new home. He also arranged to bring us to view an actual home that he had designed for one of his customers to show us the design and the carpentry workmanship. After much deliberations, we decided to sign the renovation package with Ciseern and contacted Zax in June 2022. As it was after almost a year since last contacted Zax, we requested to view another site to make sure that we really like the workmanship of what Ciseern can provide. To our surprise, he actually brought us to view his new home as he has just renovated his home. We managed to see the finer details of the carpentry workmanship this time round. Our renovation started in Dec 2022 and we just completed our handover on 29 May 2023. Kudos to Zax for his excellent work in handling our home renovation. He is very responsive, replies queries and messages on time even though he was on medical and hospitalization leave. Many thanks for your help, Zax! Great job! Will definitely engage Zax again for subsequent renovation work! Kudos to the other team members of the team too! Carpenter (Mr Junior), Tiler (Mr Jack and Mr Shawn), Electrician (Mr Tumble), Parquet guy (Mr Yu Xiang), False ceiling guy (Mr Ah Xiong) and Plumbers.

We didn’t have good experience for our first house (the contractor keeps on complaining when fixing certain defects and at the end we didn’t bother to keep on asking him). For the second one, we decided to ask recommendations from our friends. We had 3-4 quotations and decided to go with Ciseern (Zax) because he will continue to lead the whole projects (vs. others who will lead the design / quotation and ask their project managers to do the renovation). We also asked to look for sample unit ‘near finish renovation’ for us to check on quality of workmanship and in our opinion, the Ciseern is the best. Overall our renovation went well. The overall design might not top notch but thats secondary for us. The most important factor for us are the responsiveness and quality of workmanship. We had a few issues during renovation (e.g. wrong color code for fluted panel for our TV console) but Zax fixed it straight away (without additional cost). He is also willing to fix the defects (mostly minor defects) without any complain. Since we want to have ‘near perfect’ house and keeps on asking him to fix defects (repaint some area, pattern painting at our kids playroom) and do some minor alteration (e.g. decided to add epoxy grouting at our kitchen area and install additional lighting at our master bedroom) - which he did gladly - our moving date has been delayed by 4-6 weeks. We also decided to redo our overall kitchen (dry and wet kitchen) and add settee storage; which resulted in VO of 30-40% of original budget. But we are happy with our decision. In summary, its been great experience having Zax as our ID as he is very friendly and nice to work with (never heard him complain on anything and always have ‘can do’ attitude). If you are looking for an ID with quality of workmanship, responsiveness and responsibility, you will not regret in choosing Zax from Ciseern.

Unlike other designers who either say “can do” or “cannot do”, we are happy with our ID, Frank, who is able to provide multiple suggestions based on our design preferences. He also explains clearly the advantages and disadvantages of options he suggested. The timeline of renovation is also kept within promise, despite it being done during circuit breaker. One improvement would be the workmanship of the carpentry. There are unfinished touch up which we have discovered post reno, but was quickly resolved when we reached out to Frank for help. Overall we would recommend Frank from Ciseern.