Colombia Forum

cafetero
Joined 2015
Posts: 2328

5 years ago

Cost to furnish 1-bedroom apartment

5 years ago

For newcomers like Dallas Steve I've been thinking about what it would cost if I started over.

I would plan to furnish a one-bedroom apartment even though I might likely rent a 2 or even 3 bedroom apartment and use the spare bedrooms for office space which is what I do..

Here's a list:
Bedroom, platform bed with medium mattress and two nightstands 800,000 pesos

Two sets of sheets, pillow cases, two pillows, two blankets, two lamps. About 800,000

Kitchen, many apartments come with a stove and oven, or with a counter-top cook-top. My apartment has the cooktop, so I purchased a Black and Decker convection pizza oven for less than 400,000 which I also use for baking and roasting. If I bought a nice freestanding MABE stove/oven I would pay about 800,000 on-sale at Alkosto.

Silverware and pots and pans and dishware and miscellaneous kitchen stuff comes to about 400,000

I´ve never purchased a washing machine. I rent one once a week and he brings to my apartment and comes back four hours later to pick it up and I pay 5,000 per week. If I purchased a washing machine it would cost about 800,000

Refrigerator, I bought a nice small Electrolux on sale at Olympica for 800,000. It is more than sufficient for two people because we shop fresh every other day in local tiendas.

Dining room, a decent set of table and four chairs will be about $1,000,000

My desk and executive office chair came to $800,000 total.

My girlfriends desk and office chair $400,000

So, if I replaced my whole shebang today I would plan on spending about 6,000,000 to 7,000,00. Without the cookstove/oven and the washing machine I would save about 1,600,000.

if you rented a one-car garage to store all this stuff for 6 months it would cost about 100,000 - 200,000 per month.

Of course, others will spend a LOT more than this to furnish there apartment or house, with top of the line furniture, guest rooms, fully applianced kitchen and laundry, and more. I've heard of people spending 15,000,000 to furnish an apartment.

but, entry level, to test the waters and see if you really want to live here, I´d start with a furnished Airbnb or Apartastudio.

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