Websites Where You Can Find High-Quality, Low-Cost Furniture
Furnishing an apartment comes with its own set of special challenges. Your rent payment may eat up a huge portion of your paycheck, limiting the range of places you can shop. If you live in a dense city like New York or San Francisco, you may not have a car to haul the furniture to your building. If you live in a walk-up, just getting your new furniture up the stairs may require the help of a few strong friends who owe you some favors. On top of all this, your options are probably limited by the size and shape of your apartment, with its strangely shaped rooms, narrow staircases, tiny bedrooms and low doorways.
All these obstacles can make you want to throw up your hands and maintain a monastically simple apartment, living with nothing more than a bare mattress and stacks of milk crates. Thanks to the Internet, it doesn't have to be this way! You can find a number of reliable places online to buy cheap, high-quality furniture. You won't have to worry about transporting your new pieces or hauling them up the stairs. The size specifications are usually noted right on the website, so you can easily determine whether they'll fit. You can do all your shopping from the convenience of your own apartment. Need some ideas?
The Bedroom -- Whether you need a new bed, dresser or wardrobe, there's no limit to the amount you can pay. Luckily, you can buy discount bedroom furniture online. The first places to look are websites for well-established discount furniture stores. Many of these offer shipping all over the United States. Wal-Mart and Ikea offer the same low prices and selection as their store locations. Wal-Mart's bed frames start at $90 (photo) while Ikea's bed frames will run you anywhere from $30 to $400. Fortunately, mattress companies also deliver.
The Office -- If you work from home or attend school, you may have carved out part of your apartment as office space. The more stuff you bring home, the more you'll need furniture to help store and organize it. At Staples, you can buy discount office furniture online. Many file cabinets cost less than $100 and will help keep office papers from creeping into the rest of your apartment. Desks at Ikea run anywhere from $60 to $300, and you can also purchase inexpensive desk chairs. One of the drawbacks of having a home office is that many of your storage options can make your apartment look like a prison cell. Instead, check out cabinets and shelves available at The Container Store, which contribute to -- rather than detract from -- the homey atmosphere in your apartment.
The Living Room -- If you're in the market for a coffee table, bookcase or other shelving, it's easy to find inexpensive models at Target, where bookcases start as low as $30. The real living room challenge is finding cheap couches, chairs and ottomans. Overstock.com features page after page of low-cost furniture, often for less than the manufacturers' prices, and they deliver across the United States. Before you make any online furniture purchases, review the shipping and handling costs carefully. They can easily break your budget. If you'd like to save a little cash by buying online and picking the item up yourself, see what people are selling at Amazon.com, Ebay.com or craigslist.org. Each of these sites has a separate furniture section. If you have a little patience and access to a van, you can get incredible deals from people who need to unload their furniture and don’t care much about making a profit.
The Kitchen -- You may not think you'll need to acquire much furniture for your kitchen in the first place. But if you're running out of counter space and your cabinets are overflowing, your kitchen might benefit from the addition of a few cabinet racks or a movable island. Ikea and Crate and Barrel sell sturdy kitchen islands that increase your counter and cabinet space at the same time. Models that can be assembled at home may be less expensive and have lower shipping costs.
The Patio or Porch -- Patio furniture can transform an underutilized outdoor area into another room of your house. You'll need a few chairs, a table and umbrella to make your patio a place where guests want to spend time. If you live somewhere that is cold for much of the year, a heater designed for the outdoors can be great for parties that spill outdoors. Companies that offer discount patio furniture online include www.patiowholesale.com. Remember that wood furniture may need to be treated or stained before it can be left outside in the rain or cold weather.
These are just a few suggestions of websites that will take the hassle out of shopping for cheap furniture. Are there other sites that you’ve successfully used in the past? Places we need to stay away from? Add your suggestions in the comments section.
