Toh Tuck Road Landed — Bespoke Carpentry Across Three Storeys

A two-and-a-half storey landed home off Toh Tuck Road, undergoing a full interior refresh. Brief: cohesive joinery across all three floors, restrained material palette, no decorative excess. The owners had previously lived with an over-designed renovation in their last home and wanted everything in this one to feel quiet.

The brief

The owners — a couple with two teenage children — had been in the house for fifteen years and were renovating to "settle into it properly." They came to us specifically for the carpentry; an architect was handling the structural changes and an ID was handling soft furnishings and lighting. Our scope covered every fitted timber element in the house.

Working with three professionals on one project means clear scope boundaries from day one. We agreed in writing what each party covered — we owned anything that involved board, veneer, or timber; the ID owned upholstery, fabric, and freestanding pieces; the architect owned anything load-bearing. Cleaner separation, fewer disputes.

Scope

Eleven pieces across three floors:

• Ground floor: family kitchen with island and double-oven tall pantry, library wall (4.2m wide, floor-to-ceiling with integrated ladder track), TV console run
• First floor: master walk-in wardrobe (3.8m × 2.4m, fully fitted with leather-wrapped drawer fronts), master bathroom twin vanity, two children's bedroom built-in wardrobes
• Second floor (loft): home office with fitted desk and overhead shelving, guest bedroom wardrobe, attic storage joinery
• Stair core: oak veneer cladding to the staircase walls with concealed LED in the handrail recess

Design choices

A single timber tone — pale European oak with a matte oil finish — runs across every fitted piece in the house. We took this approach after the owners explicitly asked us not to "mix woods" the way their previous house had. Continuity is the design.

The library wall was the most considered piece. It's 4.2m wide and runs from floor to ceiling, with adjustable shelves throughout and a brass ladder track for accessing the upper shelves. We built it on a 50mm modular pitch so the owners can rearrange shelving as their library grows. The ladder hardware came from a UK supplier with a six-week lead time, which we built into the schedule upfront.

The master walk-in wardrobe is the second most-discussed piece. Leather-wrapped drawer fronts — vegetable-tanned tan leather, hand-stitched at the edges — give the wardrobe a hand-made feel that laminate or veneer alone can't match. We sourced the leather from a Singapore supplier (Vibram-grade) and the wrapping was done in-workshop.

Home office is the quiet piece — a fitted desk along the dormer wall, overhead shelving for files, and a concealed cable tray feeding power and ethernet from the wall through the desk to the monitor mounts. No visible cables.

Materials

• Carcass: 18mm moisture-resistant plywood throughout
• Fronts (visible): pale European oak veneer, matte oil finish (Osmo polyx)
• Library wall, staircase cladding: solid European oak edges + veneered panels
• Walk-in drawer fronts: vegetable-tanned tan leather over MDF backing
• Kitchen tops: 30mm Caesarstone Statuario Maximus, integrated drainage grooves
• Hardware: Blum soft-close throughout; Häfele full-extension drawers; brass library ladder from UK supplier
• Lighting: Häfele Loox 2700K, integrated under every shelf face and in the staircase handrail recess

Process and timeline

The project ran in parallel with structural work; we measured after the architect's changes were complete and the floors were finished. Workshop fabrication ran ten weeks — longer than HDB or condo because of the leather wrapping, veneer matching across long runs, and the brass ladder install. Six days on site for installation, sequenced floor by floor.

Two issues during the build, both resolved without delay:

1. Leather batch variance: the first leather batch had visible colour variation across two hides — we rejected the batch, re-sourced from the same supplier two weeks later. Cost absorbed by the supplier.
2. Ladder track late from UK: arrived four days late. Final library wall install pushed to day six rather than day five. No impact on overall handover.

Cost range

This build fell in the S$48,000–S$62,000 range — substantial because of the scope (eleven pieces, three floors), the materials (veneer, leather, brass hardware), and the lead times on imported components. A comparable landed home with laminate fronts and Singapore-sourced hardware would run S$28,000–S$38,000 for the same scope.

Where to go from here

Looking at a landed carpentry build of your own? WhatsApp Alan with your floor plan. Landed projects with material variance like leather or veneer take longer to fabricate; we'd want six weeks of lead time before site measurement.

For pricing context across all property types, see the pricing page. For the materials side of bespoke joinery, the plywood vs blockboard vs MDF guide covers the structural choices.