Ship it or sell it? Why we redesign the furniture you already own

Relocating families are usually told the same thing: sell the furniture, it will not suit the apartment, buy new when you arrive. Then they spend their first months in Singapore sitting on a rented sofa, missing a table that held twenty years of dinners.

Almost every piece can be reworked. A roll-arm sofa reupholstered in linen belongs in a warm minimal living room. A dark mahogany bed lightened to its natural grain sits happily against an upholstered headboard wall. A farmhouse table cut down becomes a kitchen island top. Old wardrobes become a wall of children's shelving. Lamps are rewired and re-shaded in an afternoon.

The home is then designed around what the family owns, and the result is something no showroom can produce: a new house that already has their history in it.