My word, furniture is expensive

[Caterpillar0]

Just saying!
I'm looking at dining ables on Heals, which seem to start at £500. Why does wood cost so much? I'm seeing plenty of plain wood tables about the place for £1000+
And let's not start on sofas.
Arghhhh
Furnishing a property from scratch

Ikea.

Auction. I got a gorgeous Victorian oak dining table with intricately carved legs for £50. It was about 15 years ago, but you can still pick them up for a snip. And so much more interesting and better quality than some of the shite that is turned out these days.

Have you got a charity furniture shop near you? You can sometimes get good things in there, but you have to keep looking.

This is why we get ours on eBay now.

We just bought a 30 year old mahogany cabinet for £70 and it looks brand new.Also got a beautiful matching coffee table for £50

It's from the same range (Stag) that we paid a fortune for for when we got married 18 years ago.

I got some gorgeous "upcycled" (painted with Farrow and Ball) Stag bedside tables a few months back off eBay, for a snip. Proper dovetail joints which pleased DH.

Yes, if you will look at Heal's

Tbh even some ikea furniture when I first went in there when I needed to buy furniture I was a bit at how much it is. Ebay and a tin of paint is your friend and look on freecycle/freegle and if you have local charity shops which sell furniture they're great too.

Ebay, Gumtree, auctions. Possibly even a 'wanted' on Freecycle, if you can collect.
'Brown' furniture, ie dark wood, is really untrendy at the moment so goes for a song.

Yes, furniture from heals is expensive. Try ikea.

No, no, no. HEALS is expensive!

The furniture itself isn't anywhere near that much to them, but they saw you coming.

I love Heals but the prices are just stupid and a bit, well, arbitrary.

Try somewhere normal? Anywhere really.

Heals is a very expensive shop. There are lots of other options that are cheaper. Ikea, Argos at the other end of the scale. Yes you may not find the table you want forever but it would do in the meantime and then you can replace as funds allow.

My sofa is from Argos. It's on its last legs but I've had it for 15 years! It was £250. Start off buying the basics and work from there. When you can afford to replace something then do.

You need eBay and Annie Sloan paint.

I'm such a beginner. I thought Heals was where everyone went. It'll be ebay and free cycle now for sure. Our last flat was all second hand stuff. It was fine but I had ambitions of creating a stylish contemporary clean furnished interior this time round - basically a boconcept house - but I don't live in reality .
Still, after discounting Boconcept I;ve been looking at Heals, John Lewis, M&S and others and they're really pricey.
I like the idea of painting furniture myself. I'm on mat leave and imagine I could get quite absorbed in furniture up cycling

I don't know anyone with furniture from heals. I have what I consider to be a good job and a child at private school and all my furniture comes from eBay or the local junkantique shop.

Our house is stylish contemporary yada yada. It consists of eBay stuff, auction stuff, inherited stuff, bits of wood from the front of the house made into tables and kitchen unit fronts by a local joiner ( not expensive ) , a bit of Ikea and a lot of DH made stuff, bespoke MDF.

Dwell has the occasional reasonably priced nice thing, not that I've ever bought any of it. Other than sofas and beds, we tend to go second hand or Argos and its ilk.

I got a light from made.com

www.ikeahackers.net is great for ideas on how to customise Ikea stuff

We have 2 sofas in our sitting room - one we had custom made and cost over £2k and the other we got for £50 from gumtree. We love the gumtree one the most and the £££ one we rarely sit on as it's just not as comfy! Got to get the nice/decently priced things quickly though as they seem to get snapped up.