Buying Furniture

[edost]

I assume Amazon wouldn't have the furniture assembled or the TV installed upon delivery. Local stores probably would, though.

[ANDS!]

Amazon offers a TV set up service. I do doubt they'd assemble any office furniture. . .that's ok by me.

[CJBert]

Craigslist! I'm at home this summer and beginning a PhD program this fall. I just completed undergrad and didn't have any of my own furniture. So far, I've purchased a desk, small dining room table and chairs, large bookcase, and a fifty year old Ethan Allen hutch. Total cost: $205. Bonus: Everything is made out of real wood. I'll be renting a U-Haul trailer and driving about 150 miles to the studio apartment I just rented near my campus.

[Pius Aeneas]

Buying furniture is the main thing making me consider graduate housing over an apartment. I can picture myself in 100+ degree weather in Tucson traipsing around looking at furniture and other housewares. I hadn't thought about using Amazon though until I saw someone post about buying furniture through them upthread--I'd definitely consider that since I've been buying other things from them for ages and have had no real issues.

[Hank Scorpio]

Amazon in the US must be way better than here in Canada. Scoping out the Canadian site, it's like $1500 on average for a sofa. Ikea it is.

[ANDS!]

Amazon in the US must be way better than here in Canada. Scoping out the Canadian site, it's like $1500 on average for a sofa. Ikea it is.

God damn. What kind of sofa are you going for. Prime has (and this is all in terms of grad student functionality over form) a good selection of sofas under 1000. Now, how comfy they will be or if they will meet your personality remains to be seen.

That said, there is something to be said for going the IKEA route (I'll be purchasing my bed frame from them).

[TakeruK]

Prime isn't available in Canada. Generally, if you search for the same item on amazon.ca vs. amazon.com, the US site will have more of it and for cheaper. A lot of items aren't even available in Canada! Many people I know (including me) sometimes ask our friends south of the border to receive things for us and then we drive down and pick it up

[Sigaba]

For our next move this fall, to PhD school.

@TakeruK--

Re the city where you're going to be this fall. Due to the mild winter and spring, conditions are very dry. In my experience--and I lived in that city for 5+ years--this combination leads to insects (specifically American cockroaches) doing a lot of exploring. As an example, I was out there last week. While waiting for a bus as night fell, I saw a critter boldly walking down the street--not the sidewalk, the street. It stopped long enough to pick up a used cigarette. I am not kidding. It left it behind out of a loss of interest.

My point--I respectfully recommend that you do what you can so those pods are not sitting outside any longer than necessary. While this breed is not especially prolific as other types of roaches, if they get into your place, they will reprogram your DVR, drink the last can of soda, and startle the holy bejeezers out of you even as you send them to the great beyond.

This comment aside, by my reading of your posts, you're going to like your new town. Especially if you like coffee.

HTH.

Edited June 29, 2012 by Sigaba

[TakeruK]

My point--I respectfully recommend that you do what you can so those pods are not sitting outside any longer than necessary. While this breed is not especially prolific as other types of roaches, if they get into your place, they will reprogram your DVR, drink the last can of soda, and startle the holy bejeezers out of you even as you send them to the great beyond.

This comment aside, by my reading of your posts, you're going to like your new town. Especially if you like coffee.

HTH.

Thanks! Sounds like some mean critters! We haven't had many cockroaches to deal with yet, but there are some pretty big centipede thingys up here, especially in the summer.

UHaul keeps its pods in an indoor storage unit (so they say, anyways) until we pick it up and we're planning to unload it all in one day -- either pay for them to take it to us / pick up the pod (but our future landlord might not have a space for us to use in this way) or rent one of their trucks/vans to unload the pod on location, and take it back to our place. Fortunately, I already have a good friend in the program there so many hands will make light work, hopefully! We don't have a lot of things but the bed, sofa, and all the small kitchen stuff add up to a lot of value! Given that it will take a little over 2 weeks to arrive in Pasadena, and we will probably be moved in for ~1 week before our things arrive, we will probably want to get the pod ASAP anyways!

We're really excited for the fall but the current worry is trying to find a place -- we are probably going to fly down and sign a lease in between the submission of thesis and my defense (i.e. end of July), which works well with California's 30 days to vacate notice. We're looking at ads, padmapper, etc. every day to see if there is something open for Sep 1 (or maybe even Aug 1, cause paying an extra month's rent is roughly equal to the cost of flying down) and asking our friend there to check the place out for us. We're also on the school's waitlist for their unfurnished apartments but it seems like the list is very long.

[ANDS!]

Padmapper recently got slapped with a C&D by Craigslist. Use LiveLovely instead (for now).

[TakeruK]

Oh, that would explain why we noticed a dramatic decline in listings! Thanks for the alternative and I hope padmapper and Craigslist work out some kind of partnership / licensing.

[socscholar]

I think I just decided to get my mattress and bed from Overstock. The shipping is cheap, great, and fast, according to the reviews anyway. I was originally going to rent a truck and drive to Ikea to bring back some loot, but Overstock has the same type of products I wanted, with a few better prices, and cheap shipping. Just seems like less of a hassle.

I'm moving to a college town from California, so I have like 5 days to go from blank room to comfortable home...

Any suggestions?

[wheninhell]

MapLiv is also a decent Padmapper alternative.

Locafree aggregates all the Craigslist free stuff on a map in the same way as Padmapper, may come in handy if you're scouring for free furniture within your immediate vicinity.

[OregonGal]

My strategy for furniture is that I am going to buy some things when I arrive and buy some via Amazon Prime. Thankfully I have a good friend in my new area who is willing to not only pick me up from the airport, but also take to Ikea before we head to my new place. I've already researched mattresses/frames/desks/chairs so I'll go in, try them and hopefully buy them and stuff them into my friend's car. (I compared to stuff on Amazon and they're comparably priced, so I'll take the chance to try them in person over ordering them online). I'll be buying most of my accessories via Amazon--cookware, bakeware, appliances, etc. All in all, I'm spending over $600 which does make me wince but hopefully I'll be able to hold on to these things beyond my 2-year graduate program.

Also, for all those raving over the legal tax-dodging abilities of Amazon--they're giving up on that in favor of rolling out same-day shipping. Amazon has agreed to start applying state/local sales taxes, in exchange for the ability to set up more regional distribution centers to cut into brick-and-mortar business with same-day shipping (the tax dodge was through not having a physical presence in those states).

Here's the article I got the info from at Slate

[juilletmercredi]

I agree with the advice to not buy the cheapest mattress, but I extend that to other things especially if you are in a PhD program (which can take 5-10 years). Buy things that will last if you can afford to do so. With furniture that may not be as doable because it's very expensive upfront, but I will testify that IKEA furniture actually does not last long - at least not the particleboard stuff, even if you don't move it very often. Especially things like dressers that you have to open constantly. (But the upside is that IKEA uses metal slider racks for their drawers; most particleboard stuff from Target and Wal-Mart use plastic ones.) I had a solid wood bed frame from IKEA's Hemnes line; it's more expensive but it held up beautifully.

But stuff like cookware/bakeware, drinkware, flatware, desk chair...those are cheaper items and with the food stuff, you're going to use it every day for 5 years or more. Go a little more expensive - not top of the line Lenox stuff, but something like mid-level, so that the stuff will hold up with daily wear and tear and perhaps dishwasher use if you have one over the course of five years. That's especially true for cookware if you plan to cook - I had to replace a pan I bought from Target for really cheap pretty fast, but the T-Fal set I got is actually pretty nice and it was relatively inexpensive ($40 at Wal-Mart, actually). I'd say under normal circumstances I cook 4ish days out of the week.

Desk chair is important, too, if you have back issues. The desk chair is probably where you'll spend the second most amount of time, after the bed.

One other thing - in some cities IKEA does contracted shipping services for pretty cheap relative to what shipping furniture costs, so you don't have to bring a U-Haul. I went to IKEA in Brooklyn and they deliver everything to Manhattan for a flat rate of $90, which is way cheaper than ordering it online (UPS charges by weight). They also offer student discounts on shipping in the beginning of the year - last year they had half off, so all your haul is shipped for $45. I bought all my furniture from there my first year of graduate school, and they brought it up my 4th floor walk-up, too. You can also pay them to put it together, but I'm handy with stuff like that so I assembled it myself. (The dresser was a nightmare, though. Everything else was fast and easy, but that dresser took me a while.)

[rising_star]

Oh cookware. So necessary and such a pain, at least initially. My strategy for that was to buy a few really nice things and then get the rest used/secondhand (hey mom, you know that set of pans you don't use?... yea, those are mine now) until I could afford to upgrade. It's worked out ok, especially since I now have a much better idea of what I need and use and what isn't necessary. You can get a lot of decent kitchen equipment for good prices at secondhand stores, TJ Maxx, Marshall's, Ross, and Big Lots. Seriously.

[OregonGal]

Yeah I'm planning on taking a gander at the discount/outlet stores; I've also found what seems to be a really good set of copper-core stainless steel T-Fal pots on Amazon for $110, which I'm super tempted by. I'd rather have a set of good pans than a bed frame!

I also got surprised by my mother the other day with some good news; when I mentioned I was planning on hunting through Goodwill for a stand mixer her response was "oh, I assumed once you got settled you'd take mine, since you're the only one who uses it!"