A Guide To Furnish A House
If your wondering how to furnish your first house or apartment, you’ve come to the right place!
Buying or renting your first house is an exciting process for a lot of people, but the purchasing phase is usually the most expensive part, and deciding what type of furniture to invest in is usually a surprising afterthought! However, finding quality stylish furniture is not as expensive as it first seems. In this guide I’ll demonstrate the tools, techniques, and the things iv learned to furnish and style my first home 🙂
1. List Big Essential Items
In this section, I’ll show you the framework of a highly effective person before you go out purchasing your first bit of furniture.
Firstly, start by writing down all your Big Essential items like, your bed, fridge, washing machine and a couch.
This way, you get what you absolutely need first! Secondly, the look of your big items will dictate what the rest of your smaller furniture will look like. So, take the time to figure out what style of big items will suit your home.
Then, the next step, is to move onto your smaller items.
2. List Small Essential Items
Now, once we have our list of big items, we can start creating a list of Smaller Essential items we need.
Your smaller items will be like your microwave, kettle, bedside tables and chairs.
Once we a list of all the things we need, we can start budgeting how much we can spend
3. Create A Budget BeforeHand
Here, I’ll show you why it’s important to budget before racing out buying furniture.
Before you pull out your credit card or cash, first, state your total budget for your home. Then list all the prices you think you might pay on each item. Iv listed my major items in this article that all add up to less than $2k!
Heres something to think about, you can save money on a cheaper item, like a bed, then use the extra money to buy a higher quality item like a HD TV, coffee table or leather couch! Because all you really do on a bed is sleep anyway!
4. What Style Will Your Furnished House Be?
In this section, I’ll give you a list of things to help you decorate your new place.
When furnishing your home, ask yourself, will these furnishings suit my place? Understand the style you’re going for unless you’re not particularly worried, your apartment might look strange with a white bookshelf, light timber coffee table, brown leather couch, and steel dining chairs!
Oh, and it’s ok to wander from the original plan. If you find something that sparks your imagination, good, just run with it and enjoy the process.
Use your imagination, do you want the art-deco look, the ultra-modern, Scandinavian, or maybe a minimalist vintage look, its completely up to you. Just remember, the ultimate goal is that it should be a nice relaxing place to live.
I love just relaxing at home, as you can see iv gone for a Balinese type dark wooden furniture with some light touches to brighten up the place a bit, this just makes it so nice to be home.
5. Measure Your Space And Furniture Before Purchasing
I want to share something with you before you go buying heaps of stuff for your apartment, make sure you know your dimensions. Could you imagine bringing back furniture only to realize it’s too big or small for your place?
First, figure out how much space your furniture can take in your apartment, for example, use a tape measurer to note the dimensions and write it down on some paper or your mobile phone.
- TIP: Measure your front door so you know if your larger items will fit through.
- TIP: Less is more
6. How To Furnish A House Cheap
In this section, I’m going to show you how I source good quality low price furniture, but did you know…
Most people today have so much unwanted stuff it’s not funny, I think I read somewhere that its more than 20 unwanted items in each house!
So It comes to no surprise that nearly everyone’s handing off perfectly good furniture for 30% to 70% (sometimes free) off the original price. That’s insane!
This gives the buyer the power to find great deals for their first home.
If your budget permits, sure you can buy brand new from a designer store somewhere, but even those supposedly cheap stores like IKEA can be still expensive.
But honestly, how much COULD you spend? $10k or $20k on new furniture? Easily! Just watch an episode of a renovation show.
But we live in the golden era of the internet!
Jump on Craigslist/ Gumtree/ Facebook MarketPlace/ Kijiji (i find Facebook Market place the cheapest)
Iv saved so much money with this and iv never had issues with second-hand items. And to be honest, I have no issue going out buying another $50 dishwasher anyway! haha
7. Quality Check Of Furniture
I don’t want to sound like your mother, but…
Check the quality of the item before you agree to pay for it, it’s so annoying when there are parts missing or damaged. Oh, and check for mold, you definitely don’t want mold!
If it’s paint damaged, its totally worth the discount, we just fix that up with a bit of paint!
8. Furnish A House One Room At A Time
I’ll tell you why you should only furnish one room at a time
You don’t want to stress yourself out, buying everything at once is really hard and might lead you to make hasty decisions and lead you to buyers remorse. Instead, focus on one room at a time, get that room perfect, then move on to the next.
Start with your priority rooms like your kitchen and bedroom where you spend a lot of your time. Then when you have a comfortable idea of what the style will be, move on to the other areas in your home.
9. Take Your Time To Furnish Your House
Take your time furnishing your house, it’s one of the most fulfilling things about real estate, so take your time and just enjoy it 🙂
If you find something you love on Craigslist, quickly message the seller and ask for a discount, and be ready to pick up the item once a price is agreed on. You gotta be quick, because there’s always people online hunting for furniture and they’ll snap up your item if your not quick enough.
Don’t lose your marbles if you cant find what your after straight away, if its expensive just wait a few days as new stuff pops up all the time. Just enjoy the process! And if you can’t decide on a piece of furniture, sleep on it, come back to it later and you’ll find you probably changed your mind.
Next up, i’ll show you how i furnish a house!
How I Furnish a House
This is my home! I bought everything inside from Gumtree.com!
How To Furnish a House Examples
Here are some examples of items iv found on Gumtree that are far below what you would pay brand new!
How To Furnish A Kitchen
A fridge for $100 bux! : http://bit.ly/100dollarfridge
Dishwasher $30: https://bit.ly/2YuTLug
Microwave $20: http://bit.ly/lovingbeingclevermicrowave
Kettle/ Toaster combo $15: http://bit.ly/lovingbeingcleverkettletoaster
Coffee Machine $80: http://bit.ly/clevercoffeemachine
TOTAL: $245
I’m so surprised I was able to shave so much cost here as the kitchens packed with white goods. So that’s $300 for most of the kitchen!
How To Furnish a Living Room
Many people hand off great furniture sets on these websites, so it’s easy to find everything already together. I even found a free leather set!
Lounge room set $400: http://bit.ly/lovingbeingclevercouch
Tv set: http://bit.ly/lovingbeingclevertvset
Coffee table: http://bit.ly/lovingbeingclevercoffeetable
Tv cabinet set $70: http://bit.ly/lovingbeingclevertvcabinet
This lounge set is FREE! Some leather cleaner would bring this back nicely! http://bit.ly/diyloungeset
Living area total: $470
How To Furnish a DINING AREA
Dining table $100: http://bit.ly/lovingbeingcleverdiningtable
Total: $100
How to furnish BEDROOMS
All of the sets iv found for you come with the bed frame and bedside tables! I like wood as I find them relaxing but there are a lot of cheap steel frames as well.
Bed set 1 $280: http://bit.ly/2OmhpW9
set 2 $140: http://bit.ly/2GwEVte
set 3 $120: http://bit.ly/2JYOof6
Chest of draws $70: http://bit.ly/2Oxef22
or
Chest of draws $40: http://bit.ly/2MjNgnD
Total: $160
How to furnish LAUNDRY
You don’t need to buy two seperate laundry units anymore so luckily we have two way systems instead 🙂
Hybrid washer/ dryer $250: http://bit.ly/2KbYwzK
Hybrid washer/ dryer $200: http://bit.ly/2Y9Tzl4
Total: $200
How to furnish Laundry
You could have a lot of fun here and get more seats and stylings depending on your taste.
Outdoor dining table $200: http://bit.ly/32Yeru0
Total: $200
Hope you found this helpful 🙂
Stay clever!
kristian
