Home3 common things we DON'T have in our living room
housethingsgoing
A frog and a duck living in a 4rm resale flat
3 common things we DON'T have in our living room
45
- Minimalist
- HDB (Resale)
- ~900 sqft
- 3 br
- Couple Living
We were absolutely spoilt for choice when we were planning our living room reno. There were so many things we could get! Electric reclining sofas, fluffy carpets, quirky side tables, super fancy state-of-the-art sound systems... Making the decision to stick to our budget was not easy- so here's our thought process behind why we don't have some of these common features/items in our living room. 
1. We don't have a power track! We toyed with the idea of having a power track for the longest time - even went to do price comparisons in JB hahaha. Also some of the designs out there look really trendy and cool :) But in the end we decided to do away with it, and instead focus on concealing our wires for maximum neatness and minimalism instead! We have 4 sockets concealed inside our TV console, made possible by us choosing this unique Taobao console that has a huge cut-out at the back, as well as some precision work on our electrician's part. The sockets are currently being used for our router and dehumidifier, with 2 extras available for use to charge our appliances and/or for a soundbar in future if we need one. If we had a power track, we'd also probably not exceed 4-5 sockets on it (to avoid over-taxing the circuits - not sure how to phrase this cos we're not electricians LOL). So essentially we realised that we didn't need a power track and chose the more affordable (and less easy to break down) option of just having normal sockets. Also... if you look at our TV, you'd realise that there's no exposed TV plug wire! This leads us on to the second thing we don't have... 
2. No false ceilings and false walls! Back to the point about the TV wire - to hide the wide, most IDs would recommend that homeowners build an additional 'feature' wall panel or drill through the existing wall to create a tunnel for the TV wire to pass through and emerge behind the TV console, where there's a socket it plugs into directly. We realised the problem with this was that it would cost more definitely + we couldn't quite figure out if we would ever encounter issues taking out the wire if we wanted to change our TV. So instead of doing all that, we just chose a 'fatter' TV (aka not the slim, wall hugging Samsung Frame) and had our electrician install the socket RIGHT at the corner of the tv where there's enough space to fit the socket and the plug :) And there you have it... a concealed TV wire with no additional cost (than the cost to install an extra socket which was maybe $60?). We also don't have a false ceiling - our HDB ceilings aren't that high and we didn't want to lower it any more. Instead of building a false ceiling to conceal the lights, we simply opted to have lights in a style that matched the rest of our house! In this case, the black metal track lights align with the black frames used on our entryway panel and dry pantry glass panels. Plus, we also found out from Frog's parents (who have a false ceiling) that it can get complicated to replace fans and lights once you have a false ceiling so... it was quite a no brainer decision for lazy people like us :') 
3. No carpets and no coffee table Fun facts: One of Duck's secret talents is being able to spill water absolutely anywhere - she has banned herself from drinking anything while sitting on the sofa oops. That's also the reason why we don't have carpets. While they make the living room look super cosy, we're also aware that they can be hard to clean and trap dust quite a bit (not great when the homeowners are two long-term sinus sufferers). We have these two tufted rugs - and we're already tired about having to clean them :) We also opted to get an IKEA C-shaped side table (see our first photo!) instead of a proper coffee table. This side table can be pulled right in so we have our snacks beside us during Netflix time, instead of having to reach out and bend over when we want to get snacks. The side table also transforms into a small makeshift coffee table (just turn it and readjust the table top) if/when we really do have guests around. Our sofa is a sofa bed that opens up into a full queen sized bed, so not having a coffee table also creates more space for us to open up the bed and stretch out when we're watching TV. 
Those are the three things we didn't get for our living room! Hope y'all are not tired of seeing all these kinda similar living room pictures - our living room is THAT small :)
