Busy shopping

Since coming back from Hong Kong a week ago, we had gone to check the progress of our new house. According to the building supervisor, it was on target for completion by late April or early May. That means after inspection and settlement, we will probably move in by late May/early June.

And that means we need to serious look for furniture and furnishings for the house now, since lead time can often be long (up to 8 weeks).

We have been doing some serious shopping around over the past few days. Unlike casual browsing, this exercise is much more intense and tiring, since we need to ascertain the specification of each product and compare among similar ones. Some which look wonderful may turn out to be not suitable to be put in the place we intend to, for example.

So far, we have placed an order for two sets of sofas from King Furniture. One is a conventional set, while the other is a modular one.

We have also placed an order to custom build a bookcase which will be 4.2m wide and 2.1m high. We have considered a bookcase from Singways, but eventually decided against it.

The CD cabinet has given us the most headache. At the moment, we are using a CD tower which houses 1,000 CDs. We still have 1,000 CDs more to put. Unfortunately, we have not been able to find a CD tower here in Australia. And the many US sites which sell this type of product all ship to the mainland of North America only. The stainless steel CD shelves from Boltz has a good reputation though I am not so sure about the steel "look" (fans of steel multimedia shelves may also consider those from AV Mechanica).

We are also considering the miltimedia storage cabinet from Can-Am, but the courier rate is punishingly high (almost twice the price of the cabinets - we are now exploring the possibility of ocean shipping). An Australian company Multifile sells a similar product, but we have yet been able to contact the company.

We now have the option of custom building a similar cabinet with timber. We are also looking at a huge cabinet of CD pigeon holes by a Melbourne-based furniture maker.