The Minton: Ideas and Renovation – 17 – Furniture (I)

Our first sofa set was a cheapo fabric-based unit that we picked up for around $300 from Beng Tuan, a local furniture shop here. The sofa’s fabric cover wasn’t comfortable and didn’t fare well against our tropical humidity, so we ditched it after a few years for an Ektrop series sofa from Ikea. I liked this over-sized 2+2 unit sofa a lot, though it also didn’t take long for us to discover that the sofa had its own share of issues. Comfortable yes, but the inner lining of the cushions was quite fragile and tore easily. Several cushions’ inner linings have torn over the nearly 5 years we’ve had the sofa. So, for our new Minton home, we hunted for a new sofa unit for our living room, and one that hopefully would be visually consistent with the Scandinavian theme Ling has adopted for the general design of our home.

Thing is; Scandinavian and Nordic-theme furniture outside Ikea are so not cheap here. We checked out several Danish-design furniture shops here, and as nice as several of the sofa units were, they were priced well out of our budget. We visited the Courts Megastore at Tampines too several times, found a couple of possibilities that were comfortable enough and priced at what were were willing to pay for, but weren’t quite in our desired home theme.

Our designer early on suggested we check out Taylor B, a fairly new furniture warehouse situated at Keppel Road for furniture out of the usual Star Living and Courts variety. The warehouse comprises three levels, with each featuring different types of design and furniture types: contemporary, antique, outdoor and the like. Several of the furniture items looked more appropriate for large landed property homes, but on the first visit a week ago, we found a sofa unit that we both like and at a price we thought reasonable. When we didn’t find anything else equivalent or as suitable in the interim days, we returned for a second visit close to the weekend and bought it. The sofa will be sitting at their warehouse for a while though until later this month when main renovation has completed, whereupon our home will be ready for it.

Taylor B @ Keppel Road. A must-stop for homeowners looking for furniture other than of the usual variety.
Taylor B @ Keppel Road. A must-stop for homeowners looking for furniture other than of the usual variety.
A three-seater, and costing just a little under $1.2K.
A three-seater, and costing just a little under $1.2K. We saw, we loved it, we bought it!

This sofa line has a companion single seater that was out of stock during our second visit, so we looked elsewhere for it – eventually settling for a 1.5 seater (didn’t know there was such a size LOL) from Ikea’s Stockholm line. The sofa apparently retails normally for quite a bit more than the $399 we bought for it on sale.

The Stockholm 1.5 Seater Gammelbo Beige color.
The Stockholm 1.5 Seater Gammelbo Beige color.

The unit can just seat the both of us adults snugly, or alternatively one of us with Hannah comfortably. Ling already envisions this sofa as a children’s reading corner. Ling is a little worried that the color is somewhat similar that one might look at the two sofa units and conclude that we’ve been trying too hard to find matching items. I don’t personally mind though.

With the sofa set down, next up is the dining room set. We’ve identified one possible – more notes to come on that later.:)