furniture posts

Woah! Cost Plus World Market is having a huge online furniture sale. Get 25% off furniture with coupon code NOVFURNAF. If you click on the above link the coupon code should automagically appear when you put an item into your shopping cart.

You can also get free shipping on purchases over $50, which is not bad at all, though it does not include furniture. It's unclear when the free shipping deal expires.

The sale also includes up to 60% on bedroom furniture, up to 50% off on dinnerware and lamps, up to 40% off on dining furniture, and up to 30% off on leather furniture. I like this brown leather chair, pictured at right. All you need is a blanket and a book to curl up with.

Caveats: Online only. Not valid on food, wine, gift certificates or previous purchases. Cannot be combined with other offers or promotions.

The closely held company is raising its prices by an average of 20% to 30%, taking a strategic tack that seeks to differentiate the retailer from competitors such as Pottery Barn and Ethan Allen, according to Advertising Age. The move comes after the company's sales dropped 10% last September and another 10% the following October, according to the article. Like other home-furnishing companies, the housing crisis and recession had crimped sales. After all, who wants to buy a $1995 printmaker's sideboard when your house is in foreclosure?

While raising prices in the midst of a recession might seem like brand suicide, Restoration Hardware might just be making a smart move, says Derrick Daye, managing partner and a brand consultant with The Blake Project.

"The first thing to understand, recession aside, is price reductions threaten brands," says Daye, who is based in Rochester, N.Y. "The normal consumer knows if you have a product that is of great value there is an expectation they will pay more for it."

Instead, many retailers have a knee-jerk reaction when sales start to drop to lower their prices, Daye says. But that might backfire if consumers begin to associate the brand with lower-quality. And slashing prices may only serve to lure price-conscious shoppers into a store, the kind of buyer who won't return once the sale is over.

Joe Ley has been selling antiques in Louisville, Kentucky for 43 years, and he's seen his revenue drop 20% in the past year. He also has a bit of an issue with the way people shop for furniture these days:

"Kids today are buying things made of pressed cardboard imported from Thailand instead of aged wood," he told the New York Times. "A lot of young people don't want anything older than a pizza box. But you can't sell that cheap chain-store junk at a yard sale in two or three years, while good furniture holds its value. Good is always good."

As I look to furnish my new condo -- I close on it at the end of May and move in in August -- the Ikea vs. flea market battle has been raging in my head for months. Ikea is clean, neat and easy: I can take a van there, buy everything in one fell swoop and head home to a nice-looking, European-style modern apartment look. Or, for approximately the same amount of money, I can buy inexpensive older pieces at the Brimfield Fair and go for a more rustic look.

Overstock is one of my least favorite companies on the planet for a whole bunch of reasons but I have no problem shopping there. Why? They've lost about a quarter of a billion dollars since inception, so it's not like people shopping there is really doing them any good.

But this corner desk is actually quite nice for $174.99, perfect for those of us whose bedrooms double as home offices. Shipping is just $2.95. According to Overstock:

Staycation has become the marketing buzzword of the season. I've been guilty of using it in writing myself, but last night I was watching TV and a commercial came on that made me think it's all gone too far.

The furniture store Raymour and Flanigan was having a Staycation Sale. "Gas prices put the brakes on your vacation plans? Take a staycation instead and create the ultimate getaway with Raymour & Flanigan!" their ad says.

Lots of retailers have tried to jump on the bandwagon of people saving money by staying at or near home for vacation this summer. USAToday reported in May that big box retailers were targeting homeowners with backyard equipment. I've seen ads just on Maine cabin rentals hawking their places as a staycation for other Maine residents.

If you're going to save thousands of dollars by not driving or flying out west this summer, sure, go splurge. Buy a new grill or Adirondack chair to make your backyard more fun. But spend hundreds or thousands on furniture instead? Raymour and Flanigan furniture may be nice and might well be a great improvement to your home. But I think it defeats the purpose of saving money by staying near home.

If you've been waiting for the market for Victorian furniture to weaken, now is your time to pounce. Antique prices are finally falling, reports the Wall Street Journal [or here if you don't have a subscription]. They point to a 19th century Chippendale-style desk that only sold for $14,000, but would've gone for $25,000 last year.

But the trend seems to be impacting things normal people might buy, too. In Pennsylvania, antique dealers are saying they're seeing prices from the 1970s and believe this is the bottom. In Texas, sellers have seen some prices fall 75% in a year. In England the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors reports that the super-rich are still buying antiques, but mere mortals have backed off.

I'm not really an antique-store shopper, but I have noticed just on eBay that prices have fallen for things I might actually want, like an old Hoosier cabinet. Antiques are the opposite of commodities. Condition, history, quirks matter. But it's still a market with macro trends. The Journal thinks people may be just sick of antiques.

I wonder if the bed bug scare has turned people off other's people furniture. Just like with real estate, there are the hold-out sellers who haven't gotten the memo and are still trying to get boom-era prices. And just because something sold for more last year, it's a mistake to think of that as what it's somehow really worth. But I'm looking at those Hoosier cabinet auctions a lot more closely.

Between the sofa that I inherited from my parents and the chairs that I accumulated in Virginia thrift stores, I've never really needed to worry about furniture all that much. However, now that the sofa has died an honorable death and we're living in a new place, my wife has put her foot down: we need to buy new furniture.

Of course, we'll probably end up going the IKEA route. Their pieces are fairly durable and looks nice, although a bit generic. My wife really likes the EKTORP series loveseats. Personally, I think that "EKTORP" sounds like the noise a cat makes when it's vomiting, but I have to admit that the furniture is blandly appealing. On the bright side, the slipcovers are really reasonable, which is a pretty big selling point, given that our 2-year old daughter has juice-spilling issues.

On the other hand, we recently came across HomeReserve.com. Like IKEA, HomeReserve sells furniture that is designed for self-assembly. It comes in a wide array of fabrics and colors, and (supposedly) only requires a screwdriver to put together. Also, like IKEA, Home Reserve sells an array of slipcovers. On the other side, Home Reserve's lines are all designed for shipping, and their costs are surprisingly reasonable. Best of all, their prices are significantly less than IKEA's.

Definitely something to think about...

Bruce Watson is a freelance writer, blogger, and all-around cheapskate. His wife has made it abundantly clear that thrift store furniture shopping is NOT happening in New York.

After a long day on the job, I like nothing better than flipping off my steel toe work boots and plunking my aching carcass into my favorite chair. I never actually get to do that because I turn on the computer and start blogging instead. However, if I did take the relaxation route I'd like a chair similar to this one. It would be the perfect refuge for my tired body after moving 4 tons of particle board sheet stock by hand.

This retro style, leather messaging lounger has a very attractive sticker price. At just $360 plus $35 shipping, it looks more attractive than much of it's competition. This chair has classic appeal with touches of tubular steel and real wood accents setting off it's black, top grain leather seat and back. The chair's chaise lounge styling makes it a real stand out among it's puffy and clunky looking cousins. The chair even swivels for perfect body positioning, right in front of the television.

With touch button controls activating a five speed vibrating / pulsation massage system, this chair is prime for end of the day relaxation. It looks great, the price is right, and it can even make you feel good. It just might be the next best thing to a cute, kind, and loving woman.

There sure are a lot of tech and gadget minded people out there. From true geeks to just the tech interested people on the user end, we abound in gadget literate people. The bloggers on our sister blog, DIYLife have done a great deal of touring around the blog-holds of the Internet and I would now like to bring you on a tour involving six tech, do-it -yourself, and gadget blogs which they've introduced to us or have helped us to become more familiar with.

There's something in my blog list for almost everyone, you'll have to look at them all to decide which ones are for you. I present them in no specific order of value. Some of these blogs are from our own Weblogs Network and the truth is that they are all great. I'm also providing links to some outstanding material from and about these blogs for you to review.

The news that The Bombay Company, a home furnishings chain, was closing all of its U.S. stores, didn't come as a huge surprise to me. I must have walked in and out of that store at least a dozen times without buying anything.

It always looked so tempting when you walked by the window displays – visions of my house furnished as an olde world-style gentleman's club always ran through my head. But once you got inside, the traditional-style furniture always looked a little tatty; you could already see the chips and nicks on the display pieces. All the furniture seemed to be made out of some type of compressed wood, covered with a veneer, which made it impossible to repair.

I guess cheap furniture dolled up to look expensive doesn't work in this marketplace. Either you have cheap furniture and you're proud of it (see Ikea) or customers will go for something a bit higher end, such as Crate and Barrel or Pottery Barn.

That said, Bombay Company, which had several hundred stores, did have a certain charm. The stores had a great collection of blue and white porcelain, and some attractive lamps. And if you were looking to furnish your house or apartment on a budget without looking too much like a college dorm, Bombay furniture could pass muster – as long as you kept the lights down low and didn't look too closely.

This post was written as part of a series on on 2007 departures. Read about more products, companies and people you won't see in 2008.