Our Home Renovation Journey - Shopping for Furniture and Fittings (Part I)

Since tiling is expected to take about 3 weeks to complete, we decided to make use of this time to start visiting some furniture and bathroom accessory shops to shortlist some items for our home. 🏡

There are so many things that we have to shop for - furniture, electrical appliances, lighting, bathroom fittings and accessories.

First stop.... Castlery. Castlery is a local furniture firm that offers surprisingly affordable furniture. I first saw their advertisments on facebook and instagram and I really liked the overall feel of their furniture selections. Upon checking their website with husband, we felt that their furniture suited our theme and at the same time was within our budget! Hence we planned a trip to their showroom at Turf City. 

For furniture, we are planning to get a L-shaped sofa, a dining set and maybe a coffee table.  We have been to Courts, Ikea, Big Box, Furniture Mall and some furniture shops in IMM to briefly take a look but have yet to see anything that caught our eye. 

Upon entering Castlery, this coffee table caught our attention, but I felt that it was quite low and the open shelving would probably collect dust. Hence, we decided to carry on and see if there were any better options. 

We chanced upon the Seb expandable dining table and we both really liked it. The table is made of textured wood, stained in a soft honey brown colour. It can definitely blend in easily with the theme of our home. With the butterfly mechanism, the table can be expanded from 150cm to 200cm easily, sitting 8 people comfortably, though we will probably only expand the table when we have guests over. 

The Seb dining table also comes with a matching dining bench that comes in both 130cm and 160cm in length. Both the table and dining bench has rounded corners, pretty "baby safe". 

Although they offer a dining set comprising of the dining table, dining bench and 2 chairs, we felt that the matching dining chair wasnt comfortable. Looking around, we found the Debbie chair in dark grey and placed together (picture above) it looks as if it was part of the Seb range. 😍 The cushion of the chair is really puffy and comfortable, the back support is good as well. We could imagine ourselves sitting on the chair, playing mahjong for a few hours. 😂

Castlery has quite a number of nice and comfortable sofas. Some of their seats were very comfy but it did not give adequate lower back and shoulder support. The Hugh sectional sofa on the other hand gives excellent back and shoulder support although the seats were definitely less comforable. The headrest can be easily adjustable and the cushion covers can be removed easily for washing. The black powder coated steel legs elevates the sofa just to the right extent to make cleaning easy.  

However, since its the first furniture store that we really took time to look around with the concept of our home planned out, we decided to not make any rash decisions and to look around a bit more before placing an order. But I have to say, Castlery left a very good impression on us. 😁

We then made our way over to Changi to check out Hupfarri and Bathroom Warehouse. Thankful that dad accompanied us and sent us around. 😘 We first went to Hupfarri, which is the sole distributor of Otto products. 

Although our ID suggested us to go for the barnyard style sink for your master bathroom as we cannot construct a deep enough vanity due to the placement of the door, the both of us still preferred the countertop sink and hence we decided to just go ahead with what we like. 😬 Besides, he did not take into account that the both of us is tall. Having a barnyard sink would be leveled with the vanity countertop, meaning that we have to bend very low when we wash up. 🙄

We found this countertop sink at Hupfarri and decided to have it in the master bathroom.  We will probably have the rounded edge slightly outside the vanity top. After discount, we got it for $288. We didnt see any taps that we liked and since dad was with us, we decided to just do a cash and carry. One item down.. 👍

We then headed to Bathroom Warehouse nearby to look at other bathroom fittings. Initially we planned to just change the shower mixer set in the master bathroom and keep the one given by HDB for the common bathroom but our fabulous ID threw away everything without asking us! 😡 Upon questioning him about this issue, he claimed that once taken out, if we were to fit it back, it will DEFINITELY leak, which I really think its... bulls**t. He should have at least informed us when they dismantled and when he wanted to throw them out. 🙄 

That aside, we have been to the Bathroom Warehouse at Tradehub21 and the Changi branch is quite big as well. They carry a range of brands such as American Standard, Grohe, Hansgrohe, Kohler and their house brand h+m. 

Previously we have already purchased our Blanco double bowl kitchen sink from Hoe Kee, so we were looking for a kitchen mixer that could be extended to allow easy rinsing of the sink. Most of the taps that could be extended were stainless steel, hence when we chanced upon the h+m one shown above, I loved it! 😍 It would definitely match the kitchen sink that we already bought. Furthermore, Bathroom Warehouse is having a sale where their house brand will entitle us to 5% discount. We decided to buy the kitchen mixer, which cost us $276.60 after discount and do a cash and carry. Another item down! 

We spent some time looking around for a sink for the common bathroom as well as shower mixer sets with rainshower. The sinks from American Standard was quite nice. Most of the rainshower mixer sets costs at least $500 to $600 but we found one from h+m that was nice and at the same time there was some sale going on, selling for only $288! 

We were told that there was only 2 sets left at the Tradehub21 outlet and that they would put on hold for us for 3 days. We decided to reserve but not confirm as there were quite a number of shops at Tradehub21 selling bathroom accessories and we wanted to take a look first. 

As we were out since morning and it was already in rather late, we decided to carry on with the shopping another day.