WHEN housewife Wong Siow Yuen, 36, wanted to furnish her home last year, she gave the usual furniture stores a miss.
She headed to a nondescript store off MacPherson Road, where for $600 she nabbed a grand total of six items: a pair of brass table lamps, two wooden bedside tables and two oil paintings of blue and white Chinese vases.
The place is Hock Siong & Co, a second-hand furniture store which sells items formerly used by local hotels. She says: 'It would have cost much more if I had bought them brand-new.'
Visitors to her two-storey terrace home at Pasir Ris are unable to tell that the pieces are used.
'I had the bedside tables sanded and restained and they look good as new,' she says.
Savvy home-owners are heading to -hand stores such as Hock Siong. Some items go for less than half the price of a new one.
Read the full story in tomorrow's edition of The Sunday Times.
