How to furnish a first home sustainably on an £8k budget

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Help! I am totally lost.

I have recently bought my first home, a 3 bed house in London.

I have no furniture (have been living in furnished accommodation - where I am able to stay indefinitely so not in rush to furnish the new house) and have realised I have utterly no idea where to start with choosing or purchasing furniture.

I would rather not buy new if possible - both for cost but mainly for sustainability reasons. I have a budget of about £8k in total to furnish 3 x bedrooms and the living room.

My taste is very minimal - the home is Edwardian so would like to mirror this (but not so much that it looks like a period drama!) e.g. iron bedframes.

I also have a fulltime job which is 5 days in the office with a 2.5 hour round trip each day (hence why I am moving!) So I really can only work on this on Saturday and Sunday mornings each weekend, not in the week.

If you were me, how would you go about doing this in the most efficient way?

I furnished a house almost entirely from ebay- only the bed was new.

There are loads of companies who sell 2nd hand stuff, you just have to find them on eBay. Buying from companies made deliveries much easier rather than an individual. For example I got 2 sofas and an arm chair for £2000 refurbished - they are Fired Earth cost £10k new. They delivered them. I also got some painted furniture all from the same place and it was delivered together.

Architectural salvage yards, ebay, local charity shops, fbmp...
How exciting!

My only caveat would be ...no sofas or beds 2nd hand...bed bugs etc
The ikea ektorp sofas are great and you can change the covers.

Are there any antique shops near you?

I've just bought second hand oak furniture for the bedroom for about £500. The one near me sells a lot of nik knacks but furniture too.

Try looking for auction houses who do house clearances and also the British Heart Foundation for a sofa and other items. I'd buy my own mattress.

Shop the sales and/or factory shops for towels, bed linen, table and homeware.

Be careful with auction houses. The cost of getting this stuff delivered is more than the cost of the items!

Depends what style you want, but MCM furniture (G-plan etc) is normally pretty high quality and fairly cheap on ebay and other sites.

The problem is always transporting the stuff.

I like things vintage/antique and mainly source things from charity shops, a dirt cheap local auction, eBay, Gumtree, etc. It’s generally much cheaper than buying new, too.

I picked up an amazing antique sofa and armchairs for £340 from eBay. The seller was even paying the P&P.

Secondhand is the way to go - ebay auction houses and charity furniture shops like BHF. The latter will usually deliver. If you want secondhand beds then metal frame is the way to go and take apart and scrub down every nook and cranny with disinfectant. New mattress would be a non negotiable for me though.

Most of my house is from ebay and similar. Auction houses like Roseberry in Norwood and Lots Road in Chelsea can be quite cheap too. If you can drive you can hire a van for a couple of hours to pick things up.

Be imaginative with what you use furniture for and remember that a lick or tow of paint can transform a piece.

Get the basics that you absolutely need and then take your time with everything else to fill the gaps - don't rush to buy everything at once. eg if you can't find the dining chairs you like but see some nice ones for the garden get those and use inside until you find what you really want.

I've recently done similar.

If you can hire a van for a weekend or ideally a week and are not super fussy (not meaning you'll accept any old shite, more like you might really hope to find a leather Chesterfield but you'd settle for a standard sofa in good nick in a colour and style you can live with) you can probably get most of what you need through Facebook and ebay for a couple of grand.

Especially in London people don't have transport so if you can collect bulky stuff you can get great deals.

Local WhatsApps often have people giving stuff away.

Prepare before with a hitlist of what you need to get while you have the van. We committed purchases and agreed collection slots a couple of days before so we had a clear schedule for the time we had the van.

Think about what you would be happy with second hand and what has to be new - for us the mattresses had to be new and we ended up with new beds simply because no one was selling beds we liked in the time we had the van, and new bedclothes, bath towels etc. And the airfryer, toaster and microwave were new. But pretty much everything else was second hand, including kitchen stuff, cutlery and plates etc from charity shops.

Charity furniture shops will sometimes deliver.
The cheaper furniture tends to be the darker brown wood stuff because it's out of fashion. However you can it whatever colour you want.

Do you have to buy appliances out of the 8k as well?

I would buy sofas and mattresses new and then source everything else second hand. EBay, gumtree, marketplace etc. I got an oak dining table and chairs for £100 it was probably 2k new. I buy ye olde dinner sets for a fiver and have mix and match plates that were somebody’s keep for best thst were never used. Posh glassware too.

Theres lots of really lovely wood furniture out there. My drawers are all solid wood with dovetail joints, cost about the same as mdf from ikea.

British Heart Foundation furniture shops!

British heart foundation.
Or any good charity shop.

They'll have sofas, beds, tables, chairs, cupboards. Kitchenalia too.

originally,our place was pretty much all charity shops, coffee table, dining table and chairs, 2 easy chairs recliner local hospice shop.. Curtains eBay,vinted. I do draw the line at a bed though, but our spare room has trundle beds, bought from someone who had died,brand spanking new,still in the plastic.. we have a tiny kitchen, but a 1960s Kitchen Maid cupboard,small pine cupboard from e bay. Bureau from a charity shop now all painted to match.

Do you need to have all of the bedrooms furnished from the start or can you do it gradually as you find bits?

Clearcycle on eBay has refurbished and overstock furniture. There's quite often an extra discount code for them too.

Personally I’d find the exact sofa and bed you want and spend a lot on it. Then the rest for secondhand and slowly.

what will the other bedrooms be if it’s just you?

Only if you get the far-away auction house to deliver it. A couple of burly pals and a hired van collecting stuff from a local auction house works out quite cheap, especially if you've bought several large items together.

I’d buy a new bed, mattress and sofa then look at second hand antique/ vintage furniture to match the character of the house. EBay and local Facebook pages are great for this as people have mentioned. I recently bought a gorgeous cabinet from this charity - https://restoredfurniture.co.uk/ they are not the cheapest but it is stunning and a real centrepiece. I was actually wishing I could refurnish my house from scratch with some of their pieces 😆

Check what the local auction rooms find difficult to sell. Hopefully it will be a style that suits your house, and that you like. I've noticed that what's in/ out in the used furniture market varies around the country. For example, someone upthread mentioned that MCM (mid-century modern) like G-Plan, is cheap. Well, it's very popular in some areas, and priced accordingly in 2nd hand shops. Have fun creating your unique look.

Auction houses. Last time I moved I sent loads of furniture to one, including a £9000 couch that sold for £350! You can pick up stuff for peanuts at them.

Ebay and Facebook marketplace are great. Ive often rubbed a piece of furniture down and painted it up. Even now I have odd kitchen chairs that have been painted. Also see if you have something like a repair cafe nearby, they can be great for advice.

We got loads of our furniture on our local free recycling Facebook page and the local tip shop! Things like an antique linen cupboard, an Edwardian knock down wardrobe, Victorian chest of drawers, farmhouse table and chairs. It takes a little longer to acquire this time and occasionally used a man and a van to collect things that were too big for our car!