Taking time to furnish a house

Did anyone wait to buy furniture for certain rooms or decide to furnish your house slowly over a year or so? What rooms did you start with and how long did it take you? I don't want to buy all inexpensive furniture right away b/c I know we will want to replace it eventually, but know that we won't be able to outfit an entire house with the "perfect" furniture right away, either.

Re: Taking time to furnish a house

Since we both had lived on our own for a long time before getting married and buying a house, we didn't need to get alot. When we were in contract for the house, we went out and bought a new bed for our master bedroom, and a couch set (chair, couch, love seat) for our basement. We waited a year before buying bedroom furniture because we wanted to paint the master bedroom first.

Our livingroom is still empty, but that's going to be a room and we had other priorities with the house first. That room is getting a make over and being furnished this summer.

We've been in our house 2 1/2 years.

Re: Taking time to furnish a house

We are planning to do exactly that because we'd rather wait and get furniture of quality than buy something cheap and have to replace it, thereby paying double for the same things...

Re: Taking time to furnish a house

We bought our first house together and waited to but furniture a little bit at a time. I'd rather buy one good, quality piece at a time than settle for something I'd replace in a few years. We started with the living room, went to the kitchen, dining room, and now are looking at bedroom sets.

Re: Taking time to furnish a house

It has taken about a year and we are almost done. We need a few odds and ends and a master bedroom set. Which hopefully we'll get before the end of the year.

Re: Taking time to furnish a house

we live in a house apartment and just recently bought nice furniture that will transfer over to a house someday,

i would say buy atleast one really nice furniture set b/c it will be too expensive for you to buy all new furniture for your house.

i hate buying things twice. i know once we get a house our money will be tied up in so many other things that if we didnt buy our good stuff now, we would be living with odd end furniture for a lOOONG time!

we concentrated on the bedroom and living room.

Re: Taking time to furnish a house

We currently rent, but are basically doing exactly what you are suggesting. Little by little we are getting furniture. I think it is better to get quality furniture that will last then furniture that will only be good for a short period of time.

Re: Taking time to furnish a house

It's taken us over a year but that's because we were so busy w/ IF treatments after we moved in. I also didn't want to spend the $$$ on much furniture knowing we might need it for treatments. I only wanted quality furniture, this is our second house and we are a bit older so I wanted the "good stuff". We only pay cash for furniture.

Now that both DC's are here:
1. I've had no time to shop for furniture.

2. They'll be little "cavepeople" the first few years so we are only concentrating on finishing our bedroom, the formal dining room and livingroom (two rooms they have no need to be in on a daily basis).

We have two mismatched couches in the den/playroom that they can destroy over the next few years. That room will be furnished last.

Next up:
finish livingroom (tables/rug)
finish diningroom (chandelier/prints)
office

Then their big boy/big girl bedrooms when we separate them probably next year.

Message edited 4/26/2008 2:07:37 PM.

Re: Taking time to furnish a house

We are using our furniture from our apartment..We bought decent stuff for the LR, DR and bedroom when we moved in together.

Eventually we want to buy a more formal DR set with a china cabinet but we aren't rushing to get that.

Now we are having the walls redone and painted and getting window treatments for the LR and DR. We just moved in December so that is where we are at now.

We still want to redo our downstairs bathroom and kitchen and dormer the top of the house..but that is years down the road.

Re: Taking time to furnish a house

We didn't bring much from our apartment so we basically did room by room. I had an idea of what I wanted so when I found it I bought it. I started with the den, then did living room and dining room (took a while to arrive because I ordered from NC) then I did our bedroom last. The office and spare bedroom have the furniture from our apartment.

Re: Taking time to furnish a house

We furnished all rooms within the first month because I could not stand having empty rooms. We used some old furniture from our apartment, some hand me down furniture, and bought some new pieces.

Re: Taking time to furnish a house

We bought our house last year. We moved in from a condo so we had den, our bedroom and dinning room furniture already. We did buy a kitchen set right away because we have an EIK and our dinning room set would not have fit. We also immediatly painted the dinning room because it was an ugle color. We haven't done much after that except the baby's room.

So after a year we still have:
no furniture in the living room
two unfurnished bedrooms
an unfurnished finish basement

Someday I would love to redo the kitchen.

Re: Taking time to furnish a house

We have been in our house for about 2 years and some of our rooms are not fully furnishes...most are not even complete.
We need to do it slowly. We do, well DH does the work himself and we need to save $ to do our projects. Once we complete our master br renovation (attic to master br) we are going to buy a headboard for our bed and some nice end tables.

Re: Taking time to furnish a house

we've been in our house for 2 1/2 years, we've been renovating one room at a time......we started off by gutting the kitchen & dining room. Bought cabinets first & countertops. then we bought our dining room set, that was last year.

this year, we'll be buying a new desk for our office area, and once we sheetrock our living room and paint, we'll be buying a new couch (although I did already buy end tables & a coffee table, couldn't wait for them!!).

we won't be buying a bedroom set for a while- maybe next year?

Re: Taking time to furnish a house

I lived with my son in a townhouse for many years before I met DH. Over that time I bought some good furniture & also inherited lots over my grandmothers thomasville & ethan allen stuff, its all older furniture.
When we moved in our house we only had to buy a matress & boxspring for the guest room & furniture for our basement family room. We had everything else. I would have lived with empty rooms or took hand me downs rather than buy cheap stuff or put everything on credit cards or finance cheap-ish stuff through the furniture store.
We bought tables from target for our basement & although they were very affordable they've held up great, so I guess it depends on what room it is.

Re: Taking time to furnish a house

we grubbed furniture from family....in time we will replace each piece.

The furniture we have right now is fine

but we def are going to slowly do room by room

Re: Taking time to furnish a house

I am sure it's going to take us awhile

I don't want anything I personally have to put together- I want stuff that is delivered in 1 piece - after 6+ years in an apartment- I want "real" furniture

it took my parents a few years to finish their 2nd house- it was 3 times the size of thier first-

I don't see the harm! do it right the first time! it's cheaper!

Re: Taking time to furnish a house

I'm sitting in my living room on the hand-me-down, slipcovered sofas that BIL gave us after we moved in, watching the old TV (not even a flat screen or HDTV) that's in a wall unit given to us by DH's former co-worker. Not my choice, but they work. We want to do some renovations on the house so we're holding off on purchasing furniture until the bigger changes are done. Only "good" furniture we've purchased are our king size mattess (no headboard yet), a great dining room set (Drexel Heritage) and a nice sectional and tables for the family room. We're purchasing as we can afford it, not going into debt just to have new furniture.