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ourbtohome
Crafting our first BTO home! Japandi and Santorini vibes
How much budget to prep for your renovation, furniture and appliances?
7795
In one of our earlier post, we shared that our renovation cost was around $30,000! In this post, we deep dive further to the other costs involved to furnish your home into move-in condition! Beside the main renovation cost, do note that there are also other costs like BTO defect checks, gas pipe installations too! 
For large furniture and appliances item, we bought them from Audio House! We initially paid a small deposit to lock in prices with Mega Discount Store a few years before the GST hike. But eventually, we found that the prices were better at Audio House during a 7.7 sale due to the cashback campaign! So we ended up jumping ship to Audiohouse. We saved about $1k, for getting the exact same items! We also saved some money by getting some furnitures from tabao such as bomb shelter racks, TV console, bedside table, dry pantry cabinet and coffee table. For toilet cabinets, we decided not to put all our eggs in one basket, and got one toilet cabinet from a carousell seller (which essentially ordered from Taobao), and the other one was from a shop in SIngapore. The reason for getting one of the toilet cabinet from the carousell seller instead of directly through taobao is protect us against the risk of the ceramic sink or glass mirror breaking during the transport process. If you are ordering taobao, any breakage will not be covered, but by ordering through a carousell seller, if there happens to be any breakage, you can still reject it/ request for an exchange of the item. Hence, we decided to pay abit more for this "added protection". 
Other items that require your contractor to install for you are listed here! For ceiling fans, we decided to opt for the reliable KDK brands. As for corner ceiling fans, we bought them from shopee whenever there was flash sale. To save some money, we also got 90% of our home lighting from Tampoi shop in Johor Bahru! We did not have any fixed carpentry for our study room and service yard area, and got most of the essential basic storage cabinets from IKEA. For better home living, we also installed solar films and insect netting on our windows, and of course a digital door lock! (Fun fact: To save on cost, we decided not to get a digital gate lock. I mean, most condo units dont have a gate also right? haha!)
20 July 2025
