Our3 best Taobao furniture purchases (and tips for new homeowners!)

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Minimalist
HDB (Resale)
~900 sqft
3 br
Couple Living

Marrying a serial Taobao shopper was, for Frog, probably one of the best decisions of his life. He got to clock in regular workouts un-crating and opening parcels, while also enjoying the surprise of having mystery parcels turn up at his doorstep because he had no idea what was going on in Duck's Taobao account. Jokes aside, here are some of our Taobao furniture wins, which we're still using in our home more than a year after we moved in.
- #taobaobuys
1. Our TV console! We'd always wanted a sleek, clean look for our TV console (but were too broke to do a built in console) so we're thankful that we found this one on Taobao for a really affordable price. There's a cut-out built in at the back for the skirting so it flushes to our wall and we didn't have to remove the skirting to get that seamless, built-in effect. The middle section of the console is also 'empty' in the sense that it doesn't have a back board so that's where we have our power sockets, without having to do any additional concealed sockets or hacking. Our humidifer and Wifi router wire are connected to the sockets hidden inside the console so we were able to achieve a clean look without having our wires all over the place.
- #tvconsole
2. Our curtains and curtain rails While buying curtains in Singapore is really convenient, they can also be rather pricey, so we opted to put in the legwork and have our whole curtain setup custom-built on Taobao. We found the curtain rails and actual curtains from separate sellers, did a ton of measurements ourselves and sent the numbers off to our sellers for them to custom-cut the rails and curtains so they would fit EXACTLY like they do in the picture. (Duck is particularly proud of the fact that our curtains hover just 2cm above the floor - high enough to not 'drag' on the floor, but also not so high that it exposes too much of the wall behind the curtains and spoils the effect). While we managed to save quite a bit (the curtains in Singapore might have easily cost 2x) - the process was involved quite a bit of back and forth and long discussions about things like whether the rails would be able to fit into the lift) so we wouldn't recommend it unless you're fluent in Mandarin and don't mind the additional hassle.
- #Daynightcurtains
3. Our dining table This was actually one of the last items we got from Taobao because it was so difficult to find one that fit all our criteria - here's what we were looking for: - Sintered stone top - Extendable to fit up to 8 pax (there's 7 people in Frog's family, including us), but also small enough to just fit 4 when not extended so it wouldn't take up too much space - Rectangular in shape -. Easy to extend without complicated mechanisms - All white and minimalist (no funky prints or gold legs - not even kidding we saw a table in SG that fit everything we had but the legs were golden) So... it's a miracle that we actually found something we wanted. And also, Taobao is truly amazing HAHA. But anyway, we're pretty pleased with the table because it's super easy to open and close, AND the sintered stone has been such a breeze to clean. Our table is 1.5m in length and extends to 1.8m - when extended it seats 8 people just fine! We've attempted to squeeze 12 people around it before, but this was not an ideal dining situation cos the couples had to hold each other like they were on the Titanic. The only drawback though, are the chairs, which are clearly not of the same quality as the chair - they're not the most comfortable and the paint work is starting to chip a little along the edges. But this isn't really an issue for us as we're open to changing out the chairs in a few years' time. It's much easier to change the chairs than the table... right?
- #Extendablediningtable
And lastly, some tips from our own experience to take note of if you're considering getting your furniture from Taobao too: 1. Crating is good... and bad. We used a 3rd party forwarder for the big furniture items because they provided the option to crate up the items at the warehouse to prevent damage while shipping. Crating did help to protect most of our items, but taking apart the crates requires a considerable amount of energy and effort (and some level of risk/danger because you will have rusty nails literally sticking out of the wood at some point) 2. DO YOU KNOW YOUR LIFT SIZE? This is super important especially if you live on a high floor. Remember to measure your lift size and inform your sellers so they can pack the items into appropriately sized boxes that fit into your lift. E.g. our curtain rails and blinds all had to be cut into 2 sections (the rails were later re-connected with a connector they provided) because while they're very skinny, they're super long and definitely wouldn't fit into our lift. 3. It's okay to pay a premium sometimes. There are a lot of shady sellers and shops with not-great quality products, so when we're making big purchases, we tend to stick to established sellers, especially those with awards or who are listed on TMall. They might be slightly more pricey than a random seller, but having poor quality things that can't be refunded isn't a risk we wanted to take. Also, having reviews isn't always enough as Taobao has an auto-review function - the best shops are those where the reviews are from customers who post their thoughts and photos of the actual items in their homes! Having these more 'real' photos gives you a better idea of what the item could look like in your house since the seller provided images usually have some level of photo-editing done. And... that's our top 3 favourite Taobao furniture buys! Happy shopping :)
- #taobaofurniture