A few years ago I was at a friend’s house, working on finances of course, and I noticed her desk. It was a leaning bookcase desk that I had admired for years from Crate & Barrel. I thought about buying that desk many times but the $437 price tag kept me back. Then I took notice of all of the furniture in her apartment and I realized all of it was from my favorite stores like Crate & Barrel, Pottery Barn and West Elm.
When I commented on how much I loved her furniture, she told me she had paid a fraction of the price for the furniture by buying them from… Craig’s List!! I asked her, how did you happen to get such good furniture by chance. And that’s when she explained her technique to me. She didn’t happen upon this furniture, she actively searched for each piece and just waited until it popped up on Craig’s List. So her and her now husband would browse these high end stores for pieces they liked and then go online and search for them. They were able to get all but one item on their wish list. That was her easy tip on how to buy good furniture for cheap.
So recently I decided to test this technique out. I had my eye on the Spotlight desk from Crate & Barrel. It retails for $499 for the smaller version and if I purchased it, I was going to spend around $650 total, including shipping and tax. Ummm, no. I found a knock off from Target but it just wasn’t hitting the spot. I even contemplated refurbishing my current desk. Keeping it real, my boyfriend did all of the searching. But he kept finding the spotlight desk in the wrong size/color until he hit PAY DIRT!
He found the spotlight desk and two credenzas that currently retail for $599 each, for a total price of $450! I nearly lost my mind, lol. If you do the math, with tax and shipping, those exact pieces would have cost me $1937 and I paid $450! The only drawback was the fact that the folks selling the pieces lived in West Bumble so we had to drive over two hours, but for the amount of money I saved, it was totally worth it.
And one extra tip, expand your search area to as far as your willing and able to drive.
