To not want to buy cheap furniture?

[Mastmw7g]

We bought a house. It's a lot bigger than we had before, so we need to buy furniture. My husband wants to buy cheap furniture, like used ikea and we can replace it later. I don't think we need to furnish everything perfectly, but I want to buy furniture we don't plan to replace.

Go to auctions or on eBay and furnish your house with beautiful vintage or antique furniture. I have furnished every house I’ve lived in like this at very low prices. And the stuff is so much better quality than the new stuff.

I second antiques from auctions or even Facebook marketplace.

I got a fantastic French, triple wardrobe, solid wood for £140. I could even get an IKEA one for that.

Also got a three piece, 1930s begere suite for a sunroom, for £20 from a local auction. It was £30 for a van man to bring it home.

Depends - if you need certain items then ld go cheap second hand (eg if you needed a sofa or a dining table and didn't give the money saved for nice stuff).

But if its just "we have a spare room that's empty let's buy stuff just to fill it up" then no - hold off.

Can you afford all new nice furniture upfront?
Do you know for sure what you need and what layouts work?
You have to choose nice furniture more carefully and sometimes wait a while for it to be delivered - have you got time to choose carefully and wait?

I spent my money on the furniture I thought was most important (a good bed, mattress, nice sofa and a desk) and got everything else second-hand, but mostly older and more solid than Ikea. Where I live there is a lot of second-hand G-Plan and similar mid-century furniture.

But if you've got some furniture already, just not enough to fill the whole house, I agree with a pp who said to wait and see how you'll use the space rather than just rushing to fill it up.

No spare rooms, but we need beds, chairs for the table, stools, a sofa, and a desk.

I don’t mind second hand stuff that isn’t fabric, I think you can usually find something a bit more unique.

We’ve got a few charity shops for furniture near here.
one in particular has incredible bargains, beautiful dressers for £15. Solid oak Chests of drawers for £25.
its amazing and they deliver.
thats where I get a lot of our stuff from now instead of cheap stuff that doesn’t last. There’s loads of chalk paint colours as well. Pinterest is great for ideas

A good compromise would be to buy some cheap furniture and some expensive furniture. Would that work for you?

We have an ikea sofa and I love it. It’s really comfortable, actually looks quite nice and the cushions are washable! We also have metal ikea beds in the kids and guest rooms. Again can’t fault them and I think they look really nice. I think you just need to be selective in what you get from there and I’d go new not second hand as IME it doesn’t move well and someone else’s prior building skills + reassembling with an allen key missing or whatever probably won’t leave it massively stable. Then I’d mix it up with some vintage stuff, more expensive where you’ve got the money etc. and with some thought you can pull together quite a good look.

All of our furniture is second hand but of good quality (eg. Cotswolds, John Lewis etc) and we have saved a ridiculous amount of money doing it this way. A lot of it not even used! I don’t see the need to buy anything new if you can avoid it but I wouldn’t get anything of poor quality.

I'd not buy a second hand bed but a dining table and chairs, chest of drawers or wardrobe I would buy. Look for woodworm though.

We did buy new mattresses though!!!

Older furniture can be cheap as chips and much better quality than modern flat pack rubbish. There is some real garbage out there.

I have a mix of new stuff and old. I wouldn't want a second hand sofa after reading what some people do on them on here, but stuff like tables that can be cleaned fine.

Your place may look a little disjointed, but it depends on how important that is to you and whether the money can be better spent on other stuff. For example I would be more likely to buy cheap s/h stuff that could be thrown away later and focus the money on stuff that improves the infrastructure of the house - electrics, kitchen boiler etc, then buy new stuff before the decoration is done.

With the added advantage that if it gets damaged during any decoration it won't be smart new expensive stuff that gets wrecked.