Much ado about hobs, hoods and lightings

We went shopping for hobs, hoods and lighting today.

I must confess that I am not fond of window shopping. I find it very exhausting.

As such, we narrowed down our search for hobs and hoods to Hoe Kee at Tanjong Katong Complex. This building is popularly known amongst those who live in the eastern part of Singapore as "Yokoso" (the supermarket that used to be located in this building years and years ago). You will be surprised - if you board a taxi now that is driven by an older taxi driver and you inform him that you would like to go to Yokoso, chances are that he will drive you to the correct location!

Upon our arrival at Hoe Kee, we went straight to the glass top hobs section. Hoe Kee sells the glass top Technogas hobs (85cm x 50cm) at S$449. For S$35 more, you can ask them to add a safety gadget where if the flame gets blown out, the gas supply will automatically cut off.

There are 4 colours to choose from. Other than black, there is white.

And there is sand.

And finally, silver (which the shop assistant said is a new colour). I would venture to say that it looks more like "greyish white".

Delivery and installation of the hob are free of charge.

As for hobs, Hoe Kee is currently selling all the Technogas hobs at $298 each. We have settled on the Technogas hob model 958 (90cm x 43cm), which is the upper hob in the photograph below. The height of the upper portion of the hob is 7 cm, which should be able to fit. Delivery of the hood is free of charge but there would be an additional S$35 charge for installation.

Lighting posed a bit of a challenge. Ordinarily, we would patronise the lighting shops at Balestier. However, since we were already in Tanjong Katong/Gelang area, we decided to take a walk to Geylang to check out the lighting shops there. This time, we did mainly "window shopping" (which I mean in the literal sense - we stood outside the shop, peered through the glass panel and bypassed the shop if we did not like what we saw). There was only one shop that we decided to enter - Vlux Lighting located at 722-730 Geylang Road.

After much deliberation, we selected the lighting that you see below for the dining area and the passageway leading to the bedrooms. When I first looked at the display model, the word "IKEA" immediately came to my mind. It was so "IKEA-like" and I fancied it. For the passageway, we chose the same design but we ordered 3 separate bases so that the 3 lights could be installed separately. After discount, 2 sets of the lighting and the 3 separate bases cost us S$530. Delivery of the lighting is free of charge but if we require their electrician to install the lighting, there would be an additional charge of S$75 if there is no re-wiring required.