New home Furniture

Desperado99

Avoid Harveys! (my personal experience - we had a dining set from them, took ages to arrive and when it did it was faulty).

Renew is great (if you have it in your area) for secondhand stuff as is facebook (loads of local selling groups). If you're set on new, don't forget any locally owned shops - we have a nice one near us that is so much cheaper than the big chains, we got two really nice sofas for £1K.

spunkweazle

another vote for British Heart Foundation from me, i furnished most of my house with stuff from there, although i did get my sofas from dfs (they had a sale on as luck would have it)

19lottie82

millwalll wrote: »

any good online furniture sites that are relative cheap ?


thanks

my experience with furniture is that you generally get what you pay for.

in terms of a sofa and bed I would definitely buy the best that you can afford, especially with a bed (mattress).

Jellybean_Jo

I've just done all this when I moved into my place about 8 months ago. My advice would be similar to some others; only buy the essentials at first. I'm still regularly buying furniture etc. because as you live in a place, you realise what you do/don't need.

I got a lot of stuff from Ikea, some from Next. One thing I will say...don't be fooled into thinking you're getting a bargain from Ikea! Some stuff is great, cheap and reasonable quality. That's just the stuff to get you through the door, as some of it is horrendously expensive!!

I also agree with lottie above, a bed/mattress is not the place to scrimp on money!! My mattress cost about the same (if not more) than most of the rest of my furniture combined. You really do get what you pay for!!

Ivana_Tinkle

I love Ikea, but you do need to keep your head screwed on a bit. Often, their really cheap stuff is really rubbish (if you look at the stuff on display that's been sat on a few times, it's often pretty tatty looking), while the very slightly more expensive stuff is much better quality.

As a rule of thumb, the shops that give you interest-free credit sell rubbish (the sale price is inflated to cover the cost of the credit and so that they can do all those sales where everything's half price!).

Agree that second-hand is a really good idea, not least because everything's "pre-worn" and you know it's not going to look significantly more tatty six months or a year down the line.

Norma_Desmond

Try your local auction house too; vintage and antique furniture is almost always better quality and made of (shock, horror!) real wood.

Yorkie1

Just make sure you don't take out any credit (card, account, etc) to buy the items before you move in. Sometimes mortgage lenders check at the last moment and it can cause undue anxiety!

<sebb>

Freecycle and ebay are definitely the way to go!

V_Chic_Chick

Around here (Manchester) there's a good St Ann's Hospice shop which does all manner of furniture; I'm sure you can find other local charity shops that do furniture.

On a national level, Emmaus is a charity that gets homeless people off the streets and into the workshops to refurb donated furniture, which is then sold on at really good prices, for a really good cause.