Alright; so we had our designer make customize bedframes for us, which in turn necessitated the hunt for new bed mattresses. Our bed at our current Rivervale home is a Queen-sized, and we decided early on to bump it up to a King-sized in our new Minton home. That Hannah is no longer sleeping in a cot also meant that we’d need to get single-sized mattresses for her too. Mattresses in Singapore are not cheap though. Oh, there are lower-priced mattresses that can cost less than a thousand, but the premium ones from the well-known manufacturers routinely cost around $4K and upwards.
Early on, we found a local manufacturer of mattresses that ran a pretty energetic blog that presented a very candid view pointing out that there is no reason why one should be paying (very) premium prices for premium mattress brands. That blog is – cutely – named Tilam King, which for our Ang Mo bud, translates exactly to ‘Mattress King’, with Tilam in Malay meaning ‘mattress’. This manufacturer apparently is a generational family-run business, and their showroom is just 5 minutes away from The Minton. One of their key claims to having been in the business for so long is because they make their own mattresses using the same technology and offering the same quality as the premium brands, but as they sell direct to customers, all the additional costs accrued through middle-men are cut right out.
We were both served by the father and the son of the business on two separate visits and tried out a range of their mattresses, and picked up one – DSD by Friven & Co – over the weekend that was just very slightly more on the soft side than hard. And it cost $1.2K – compared to twice that price we paid for our current Sealy Queen-size. Whether this new mattress is going to be any good we won’t know until much longer-term, but both father and son certainly knew their tradecraft. They both could rattle off about the intricacies of mattresses, how they are made, what is (really) inside each part of the mattress etc.
Mattresses need bed linen. We checked out a Homestyle bed linen shop at the mall where our designer’s office was situated and found Sintex Tencel linens. Tencel linen is regarded as eco-friendly, and offering smooth and soft surfaces. We’ve had a lot of luck with Sintex linen in our current home, and while the Tencel line of linen of 465 thread count was pretty pricey at $299 – already discounted as these apparently sell for quite a bit more – for each of the King-sized sets, they felt so silkily smooth that we didn’t need much convincing from the attending sales lady to give these a try. Interesting read of this material here, and the sales bib for Tencel linen reads like this (source here):
Tencel is a biodegradable fabric made from wood pulp cellulose, completely natural and toxic free. It is well-known for its soft, smooth silk-like feeling, cool and gentle to skin. The unique combination of the most desirable properties give you ultimate comfort and long lasting durability.
Most of the store’s Tencel current stock at the discounted price had already been sold out, so we settled for two, one of which was a color that wouldn’t had been the first choice for either of us, and a third linen set of 300 thread count that was of slightly more modest grade and also price at $149 that still felt comfortable enough.
We’d found an ash wood dining table at a Scandinavian furniture shop while checking for lights at the Jalan Besar stretch at an earlier weekend. When we returned today to make the purchase, we were a little disappointed to hear that the item was no longer in ready stock, and might only be available in early to mid May, well after our projected move-in date. We can’t be living in a house without a dining table, but Ling really liked that item nonetheless. After some (intense) deliberation and discussion with the attending salesperson, we requested that he get back to us this coming week to let us know if he is able to squeeze our order of the table into the April shipment; and if yes, we’ll then be buying it. If not, then we’ll really have to look for other options.
Coffee table, and also dining chairs next at some point, but the latter only after we get the dang table first LOL.
Hi CY, my wife and I have been following your blog while waiting for our keys. We finally collected our keys yesterday and are rushing to complete our renovations by early Apr.
Wanted to let you know that we saw a similar dining table at Harvey Norman Millenia Walk. My wife and I almost bought it, but eventually settled for something else. You might like to check it out if the other shop you visited can’t meet your schedule.
Btw we’re at Blk 12B. We’ll probably be spending a lot of our weekends there to keep an eye on things. Do gimme a tinker if you’d like to link up. Wld be great to meet you in person.
Cheers
Adrian
Hey there Adrian; thanks for visiting our blog, and also the tip that a similar table is at HN. I did see the dining tables/sets there at their web site previously, but found the ones that looked the same as More Less quite pricey. Will keep in mind nonetheless in case what we hope is indeed available for early shipping at More Less, and if not, might indeed have to relook at HN again.
If I recall correctly, the dining set at HN was abt $1,049 or so…with 6 chairs included. If u send me a whatsapp, I can take a pix from the HN brochure and send to u
Hi Adrian; thanks for the note. We’d actually just bought our dining table and matching chairs just this afternoon. Thanks for the follow-up nonetheless! :)
No worries. Great that you finally found the right tables and chairs : )
Hi CY, how is the tilamking mattress doing?
Hi Pat; still all good and as comfortable as it was when we purchased it. It’s just six months though, so that still might not be a long enough period to tell how these mattresses fare very long term.
Thanks!