Furniture Costs

[ropentie]

Will be moving to Singapore in Jan. Looking to find out general costs to put furniture in a three bedroom condo. I am not looking for silly expensive furniture,, leather couches, dining table, bedroom sets, etc. Even a range would be good. ANy help is sure appreciated

[rajagainstthemachine]

get an Ikea Catalogue and do the math.

[ropentie]

wow man, classy reply! Hope the expat community here has better to offer than this

[the lynx]

Will be moving to Singapore in Jan. Looking to find out general costs to put furniture in a three bedroom condo. I am not looking for silly expensive furniture,, leather couches, dining table, bedroom sets, etc. Even a range would be good. ANy help is sure appreciated

Seriously, raj has a point. You really need to give more info because the sky is the limit, even though you already mentioned that you don't need "silly expensive furniture,, leather couches, dining table, bedroom sets, etc". Then what exactly are you looking for?

1. Are you looking for squatter style? Do you intend to have only one table for work and food, and one stool to sit? And just one mattress without the bed frame per room?

2. What about white goods? Are you buying them or do they come together with your apartment?

http://www.ikea.com/sg/en/

Seriously this is a good start. Browse through for a rough idea of how furniture and what-not cost in Singapore.

[rajagainstthemachine]

heh! you didn't want classy furniture, you want classy answers? Ikea will suit you just fine.

[ropentie]

OK Raj, you make your point. Forgive my rudeness, relocation just is not my favorite sport. Let me ask this way
Im not looking for "Ethan Allan" quality but good quality furniture, preferable leather for the couches...can you suggest a store here in SIng that would be a good place to start. Not a snob by any means just not an Ikea kind of guy, never had much luck with it.

[sundaymorningstaple]

wow man, classy reply! Hope the expat community here has better to offer than this

Frankly, the expat community uses the heck out of Ikea. Especially if you don't know how many years you are going to be here. Used furniture does not sell well in Singapore so you will either have to ship stuff home (costly if it's on your own nickle) take a beating if you try to sell it before your go, OR, buy from Ikea and don't worry about it when you leave. Donate it to the Salvation Army (but you will have to pay for transport as they don't collect used furniture any more. Ikea is the best place to start. Look at their online catelog for Singapore to get an idea on prices and sizes. Also, good thing to remember is that beds in Singapore are around 6" shorter than American beds and bed linens are sized to match.

[Steve1960]

OK Raj, you make your point. Forgive my rudeness, relocation just is not my favorite sport. Let me ask this way
Im not looking for "Ethan Allan" quality but good quality furniture, preferable leather for the couches...can you suggest a store here in SIng that would be a good place to start. Not a snob by any means just not an Ikea kind of guy, never had much luck with it.

I would suggest taking a look at Courts. It's where we bought our leather sofa, dining room table, coffee table and rugs.

[the lynx]

OK Raj, you make your point. Forgive my rudeness, relocation just is not my favorite sport. Let me ask this way
Im not looking for "Ethan Allan" quality but good quality furniture, preferable leather for the couches...can you suggest a store here in SIng that would be a good place to start. Not a snob by any means just not an Ikea kind of guy, never had much luck with it.

I would suggest taking a look at Courts. It's where we bought our leather sofa, dining room table, coffee table and rugs.

Here's some help for our friend: http://www.courts.com.sg/

[JR8]

OK Raj, you make your point. Forgive my rudeness, relocation just is not my favorite sport. Let me ask this way
Im not looking for "Ethan Allan" quality but good quality furniture, preferable leather for the couches...can you suggest a store here in SIng that would be a good place to start. Not a snob by any means just not an Ikea kind of guy, never had much luck with it.

Some random thoughts:
- IKEA is a very useful benchmark, hence why it was suggested by some others.
-- Most people are at least vaguely familiar with their offering.
-- I am firmly of the mind that some of their stuff IS tat (poor quality), but also that some of their stuff is surprisingly good quality. You just need to sort the latter from the former. We have an oak veneered dining table with leaves that pull out on either end to make it possibly max 8'*4' for when we're having a pretty full-on party. The dining chairs we have are in solid light oak with padded white cloth seats, a simple contemporary design: We bought 6 I think, they look classy/great and were a relative bargain. They could be simply reupholstered if needs be, or likewise, sanded down and revarnished if the weather gets to them. They are things I would pay to take home with me.
-- Inspecting Ikea armchairs and sofas has never been that impressive to me, the quality of manufacturing is not generally at all high quality (but that is not their market segment). I have bought them to put into rental flats in Europe, for my tenants, but I'm a 'bit beyond that stage in life for my own use now' if you know what I mean
-- IKEA are also good for things like big storage boxes, simple bookshelves, TV consoles etc. And in the relatively very small homes here, cheap/versatile storage comes such as this comes in VERY useful.

- Rooms here are small. So suddenly you find that you're being forced into buying almost 3/4 sized furniture (beds especially). Back home I had a king-size extra-long bed. I would not get such a thing into the bedroom here. Full Stop. Instead the locally bought bed (Courts) is a local 'Double' or Queen size. I usually wake up with my feet and shins hanging maybe 8" off the end. Hence this is not a piece of furniture I would dream of taking home.

-- Do not buy larger items of furniture until you have a home lined up. When viewing it take lots of photos, and if you have time (expect the agent to nervously laugh/check their watch) take room dimensions, and hence later at home work up a decent enough scale floorplan, noting position of doors etc. Cut out scale-sized bits of paper (either the sticky bits of Post-its, or use spray-glue) and consider where furniture could go, and the 'flow' as people move from the front door though a home. Floorspace here ('GFA') is for various reasons calculated differently to back home. My current experience is that a quoted '1200 foot' home here, has about the viable space of .... perhaps 700 foot back home, quite possibly less. Either way shrink each room by say 1/3rd and little or nothing of my stuff from home will viably fir in here without making the home an obstacle course.

- IKEA have pretty good order/delivery lead-times. Though the faster you want something the more limited and poorer quality your options. Some other places have a lead-time of weeks. We got our current bed from Courts. Meanwhile we spent perhaps 2-3 weeks with 2 deckchairs and sleeping on the floor on a jumbo 'aero-bed'.

- As with a lot of stuff here (clothes in your cupboard here) it degrades very quickly. Clean clothes get mould which makes them stink, and if it's the dreaded red mould it's terminal, and you might as well chuck them out. This also very much applies to leather furniture!

- Last time here we got sofas from Courts. Vinyl.... the idea of which almost makes me sick with embarrassment/shame (I exaggerate, but from Europe, that IS really pretty 1970s and nothing to be admired). But there are realistically few alternatives unless you are living in a 24/7 air-conned unit (think $500+/month air-con bill). This time we brought a couple of sofas from Europe, but only as they are sumptuous, look $$$, were silly $$$$$ new in our rented place there, and when we left we got them from the landlord for $, an absolute token sum as he was considering a future unfurnished let. They're made from that suede looking type cloth (can't remember for the life of me what it's made of, perhaps cotton or something, I believe it is natural). They, a little surprisingly, are holding up perfectly well, but they do show dirt.

- Consider that you might be here perhaps three years. If you then go home, no one here will really have any interest at all in buying your stuff if you try and sell it off. It is a cultural thing that second hand furniture is verging on taboo. Plus the transport issue.... it's not like back home where everyone has 'a mate with a pick-up or van' that you can borrow for a morning. So you should consider what ever you buy (leather, vinyl, timber, veneer) as upon delivery probably having nil future value.

- If you do buy stuff that you think you might want to take from here with you, if it comes flat-pack this will make the freighting MUCH cheaper.

- You will find topics in the 'Relo/Moving - What to bring' section that builds out on this further...

- Last time we were here I went to the trouble of hanging quite a lot of my pictures. Do not underestimate how much this visually 'shrinks' an already relatively small space.
-- Hanging them is a pain as the walls are usually skimmed concrete. Adhesive hooks don't work for anything of any value. Expect the landlord to demand that the entire unit is repainted when it comes time to leave because of what your picture hooks have done to the walls.
-- This time, all my lovely historic pictures, prints, antique maps and so on sit in a vertical stack on the floor behind me in the study. Also keep in mind the UV light destroys anything like this if can reach it, and that also includes nice floor rugs.

It is a very brutal climate, and you need to adapt your tastes to it. Otherwise you are going to engage in a very expensive ongoing battle against the elements.

Good luck. Hope that's some food for thought.


p.s. Reading back through the topic, it's interesting to see the replies since I started typing mine..... a recurring theme in many aspects...

[rajagainstthemachine]

@JR8 : use 3M strips for hanging pictures, they don't leave a mark and hold frames upto 7 kilos, when I moved houses I pulled off those strips and they didn't even leave a trace.
They cost about 5$ and you will find it one of those DIY shops.
caution: do not buy any other brand apart from 3M, I doubt they are as reliable.

@OP: I'm not sure how much money you've budgeted for your furniture, the budgets vary from 1500$ to say 5000 or more.
Leather sofa's are prone to Mold, in which case you'll have to invest in a dehumidifier and keep that on all the time and then your power bills go up.
Do not underestimate how quickly mold grows on everything here. Aghast is the word I used to describe what it did to my favourite jacket and belts.

[Girl_Next_Door]

There is a furniture mall here, with various brands. There are a number of furniture shops here that makes "designer inspired" furnitures as well, without the price. Its hard to name a few because there are quite a number. When you are here, flip through the newspapers on Saturday and Sunday and keep an eye out for "warehouse furniture sale". The sale is not great, but you can get a good idea on what are the various furniture shops out there. You can start checking out those on the papers and its a reasonably good start.

[Steve1960]

Leather sofa's are prone to Mold, in which case you'll have to invest in a dehumidifier and keep that on all the time and then your power bills go up.
Do not underestimate how quickly mold grows on everything here. Aghast is the word I used to describe what it did to my favourite jacket and belts.

That's you and JR8 and no doubt many others but I have to say we have never seen the slightest sign of mold in our apartment in two and a half years. Not on the leather sofa, our clothes or anything else. The bedroom air con runs all night but is switched off all day and the living room air con runs all day but is switched off all night. Strange.

[JR8]

Ah, might simply be because we don't use air-con...

[sundaymorningstaple]

I've never had a problem with our leather furniture regarding mold, but leather shoes/bags/and certain clothes whether leather or fabric and even the walls in one bedroom (one without any direct sunlight at all) all tend to get white mold. The walls were just repainted with a mold resistant paint so we'll see how that goes but as the new paint is white, it won't show up like it did with the "deep orange" walls my son wanted when it was his room. But that is to be expected because we don't have any aircon at all, day or night. My heavy black leather topcoat/carcoat (?) I have to keep on a hanger outside of my closet and turn it around every couple of days to prevent white mold from growing. At least my bedroom is bright but put it in the closet and bang, white spots in a matter of days.