How Long Should Your Renovation Actually Take?

A typical HDB renovation runs 9 to 10 weeks from the day hacking starts to handover. A condo of similar scope often lands in the same range; a full resale unit with more extensive works, or a landed property, can run longer. Any quote that promises a dramatically shorter timeline for the same scope is worth questioning, not celebrating.

Design, material selection and the permit application happen before day one and aren't part of the on-site weeks at all. Once work starts: protection and hacking in the first week or two, wet works and electrical rough-in through the middle stretch, then carpentry installation, painting and flooring toward the end, with a final week for cleaning and defect checks before handover. Carpentry is usually being fabricated in the workshop in parallel with on-site work, which is part of why keeping design and carpentry in-house keeps the schedule realistic rather than sequential.

Late decisions on materials, scope changes introduced mid-project, and permit delays are the three things that reliably push a renovation past its planned weeks. The construction itself is not what causes the delay. A firm that commits to a specific week-by-week schedule at the design proposal stage, and sticks to it, is doing the hard part before the visible part ever starts.