Our Reno Journey Step 5: The Start of Our Shopping Spreeee!!!



Air-con: $4,433

Sunshine was the one researching on this. He insisted on having air-conditioning in the living room on top of having them just in the bedrooms and I just cannot talk him out of it. =.= We decided to get it from Gain City due to its reputation and we bought it at one of their usual Expo Sale. Sunshine was deciding between Mitshibishi Starmex and Heavy Industries, one or two compressors and 2-ticks versus 5-ticks. At the advice of the sales promoter, we got Starmex, one compressor and 2-ticks <– again, I tried but failed to convince Sunshine to buy the more environmentally-friendly option. Sigh~ We paid a nominal deposit at Expo and went to pay our balance at Changi City Point subsequently. This is because I am a Fraser member and I could accumulate points for exchange of vouchers if I spend at Frasers! Every penny saved means happy news for us!

Lighting: ~$300+ (including shipping) and $195

After reading quite a number of reviews that people bought their lights from Taobao, I finally managed to convince Sunshine to get our lights from Taobao too! He was initially very adverse to it as he felt that their products may not be as good as local goods. However, he was suddenly convinced one day and thankfully, was willing to learn how to navigate Taobao to buy our lights. Hehe. We bought our LED strips, track lights, ceiling lights for the bomb shelter, toilets and service yard via Taobao.

Step 5 TB lights

We also tried searching for our dining room lights online for a very long time but were unable to find something we both like. Hence, we decided to look for dining room lights locally. However, lights are really expensive locally! Each unit of a pendant light costs more than $100 (and the trend nowadays is to have about three pendant lights in the dining room)! We did see one that both of us liked: It was a a bulb covered by a dome-shaped glass shade with beautiful coloured glass reflecting the light in various colours and directions. Very pretty!!! However, as it costed about $300-$400 and was too shiny and bling, I thought that it would not be very practical for daily use. Feeling disheartened, I turned back to Taobao in the search for our perfect pendant lights and alas, I finally managed to find something both Sunshine and I like! It was not very fanciful; in fact, it was just a simple design. The plus point? It costed us only about $55 including shipping!!! OMG! It was so much cheaper as compared to buying here in Singapore! Sometime later, we saw an advertisement pasted on the walls of lifts at our new flat showcasing the exact same design of the lights we bought! We were both sure that it would cost so much more here. Haha! *happy* It was a satisfying buy! Presenting our simple dining room lights! Ta-da! 

Step 5 Our dining room lights
Our dining lights!

We bought our remaining ceiling lights (for our rooms and kitchen) from Sglightings! Our friend recommended this place to us for the relatively cheaper pricing as compared to the rest of the shops locally and for their good service rendered. When Sunshine and I visited, I felt heartened to see a group of elderly, trying their best to maintain their humble shop 🙂 They were old yet all healthy and strong. Haha. Besides their friendly disposition, we found that their prices were definitely much cheaper, almost half of what their competitors quoted! Yay!

Step 5 Ceiling lights
See the bling bling! =D

Mattress and Storage Bed Frame: $3,000 +$500 (storage)

We actually had no idea how to start shopping for beds: where to shop, what to look out for and what do the fancy terms mean etc. However, while we were shopping around Gain City@Sungei Kadut, they actually have a huge section on sale of mattresses! As it was relatively empty that day, on the advice of the salesperson, we started to lie down on some of the beds to see if we liked the feeling. At the guidance of the salesperson, Sunshine and I realised some factors we want in our bed: Queen-sized bed (because Sunshine and I felt that this is sufficient); Medium-soft beds; A bed which does not transfer a lot of movement from one side to the other (this is because I am a very light sleeper and would be awaken if I am able to feel Sunshine’s toss and turns); Storage bed; and; one with high bed frame (Sunshine’s request, so that he can nua in bed while reading).

Step 5 Our bed 2

After trying Sealy, Simmons, King Coil and Max Coil, we realised that we both preferred a certain King Coil bed. However, as we still wanted to shop around, we only note down the name/type of the bed. However, we later learnt from another salesperson that different shops name their beds differently! You cannot find another shop with the exact same bed. We do not understand why but we indeed cannot find the bed we KIV-ed at another place. Lol. =.=

Step 5 Our bed
Our bed

My mother happened to see an advertisement on the newspaper, showing Metro’s Mattress Sale at Centrepoint. She then recommended us to take a look at the beds to get a sense of what we would like and/or what type of beds would our budget allow us to buy. We tried many beds that day as well: Tempur, Simmons, Sealy, King Coil and Dreamweavers. We shortlisted two beds, one from Sealy and the other from King Coil (again). Haha. In the end, we chose the King Coil bed as we just liked the feeling better. As part of Metro’s promotion, we were told to sign up for their membership and we were entitled to $250 worth of Metro vouchers for our next purchase. As a result of this, I told Sunshine to only change to storage bed at our next purchase. This is also because, regardless of how much one spends, there will be a maximum number of points awarded for spending in a particular day. Fraser awards its shoppers a maximum 500 points per day/receipt and I was very sure that the $3,000 we spent on the bed would already hit the ceiling (I was correct). As we wanted to choose the colour of our bed frame on another day, we decided to top up for storage bed frame another time as well.

crop 0 0 1024 578 0 Step 5 Our headboard
The headboard we chose! Pretty pretty! ^.^

As part of the promotion, we were entitled to a free 20″ luggage bag from Metro and one mattress protector and two pillows from King Coil. The free luggage bag was timely for Sunshine as he was going overseas for a work trip and he does not have a luggage bag of his own then. Haha. The auntie me also managed to bargain for another mattress protector and another two more pillows for free!!! OMG! Haha! =p

Read Step 4 here.
Read Part 2 of Step 5 here.


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Rainbow

A novice baker =)

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