Beds, beds, beds

An ex-colleague of mine who got married some 4-5 years ago gave her husband relatively free rein in decorating their Sengkang home. But she had one request - a four poster bed. After she told us, she had to endure some weeks of merciless teasing about all the interesting possibilities a four poster bed could be used for. A four poster bed is really quite a sight in a HDB flat in Singapore. But, I suppose, it makes your home feel just that little bit more like a castle.

Much as I enjoy reading fantasy, and would really like a dragon in the moat, or a moat monster, as a pet (and to keep out unwelcomed visitors), I don't really want my home to look like a castle. I like a simple clean look. Especially for the bed.

Big & I spent Sunday afternoon trawling Paya Lebar for a suitable bed. We already knew that we want a bed with some storage space. Val and Mel have one that pops open (like Dracula's coffin), to reveal storage space below the bed. But considering my size and my propensity to accidentally injure myself, that wasn't very ideal for us. I would probably end up getting trapped in there myself. So, we went in search for a bed with drawers instead. And it had to be in dark wood to match the room.

Beds with drawers are so not "in" nowadays. In any decent furniture showroom, you would find maybe 1 out 5 beds with drawers. And the drawers tend to be rather shallow too. For those with drawers, there were a lot of other issues to tackle - the height, the size of the bedframe itself, and colour and design of the headboard. And I can tell you those headboards come in all kinds of strange designs! There were padded ones and non-padded ones with wooden slates (NO way!). My favourite was the one with the padded headboard with a little ledge on the top (good potential for alarm clocks - which would probably fall on someone's head after being hit in the morning), and which opened to reveal - voila - two compartments! The most memorable was a padded one in dark wood whose design looked like a chocolate bar - seriously - which was vetoed immediately.

And then we came across this shop which sold metal (probably brass) bedframes. They were really BOOMZ. Do people actually sleep in those things?!

By 5pm, only after 2 hours of looking at beds, beds and more beds, punctuated with chests of drawers and shoe cabinets, I called for a coffee break. As always, they were all starting to look the same. And I was ready to say we should just slap the damn mattress on the floor and do with the stupid bedframe.

By dinner at 9pm, we had narrowed down the choice to 2 beds. Both were dark wood, and had drawers at the front. One was the bed with secret compartments in its headboard. The other had a padded headboard with a simple design.

Big went down to do some measurements today. So, if we get a good deal on the one with secret hiding compartments, we'd probably get it.