Buying Furniture For Your Property - Part 2: Buying It!

Having not succeeded in pre-ordering furniture from the UK (see yesterday's post), there was only one thing for it - going to Florida and furnishing my flat from scratch!

I went out in January with my mother (who I couldn't have done it without!) to furnish my holiday home as best as a could - quite a task, given that we only had six days! My flat was hooked up to water and electricity and - of course - had a fully-fitted kitchen and bathroom, but beyond that it contained nothing. That meant we had two options: a) either stay in a nearby hotel until our flat was a little bit more habitable, or b) camp in it!

We chose the later. Armed with a few pieces of bedding (blankets and pillows) that we'd brought from the UK it wasn't all that bad at all - the warm Florida weather helped somewhat, of course! And given that we'd just been on a nine-hour flight and were tired and jetlagged from travelling, we could have slept on anything - so sleeping on the floor was fine.

By day two we were able to buy ourselves an inflatable mattress - I believe we bought ours from Macy's. This was invaluable to us, providing a bit more comfort at night, and should prove great in the future if we have unexpected guests.

First Furniture
Our first port of call to stock on up some real furniture was Ikea. Luckily for us, a brand new store had opened in Sunrise, Florida - about a half hour drive away. There are also Ikea stores in Orlando and Tampa (as well as further locations across the US). You will be surprised (and at the same time, not) how identical Ikea stores in Florida are to the ones in the UK. Just with better car parking facilities and friendlier staff.

At Ikea, we didn't really stock up on any big furniture pieces - that was just our personal choice. We did, however, find the store invaluable for crockery, cutlery, glasses, floor lamps, table lamps, towels, coffee tables and so on. Plus a nice dining table and four chairs. Which at least now gave us something to sit on!

Kitchen Appliances
We found that kitchen appliances can be best found at stores such as Macy's, Sears or JC Penney. Your best bet is to go to your local shopping mall (the wonderful Aventura Mall, in our case) where you'll find at least a couple of these stores. One thing we found puzzling: electric kettles seem to be something of a rarity in the US. In the UK, I'm used to going to a store and having a choice of 20, maybe 25, different kettles. In each store we went to in Florida, they only ever stocked one! I guess people prefer to use stove kettles.

Best Buy also stock home appliances - we found a great compact vacuum cleaner there. (Given that we have tiled floors in our flat, we didn't need a heavy duty one!)

Sofas
So, we now had stuff to sit on and stuff to eat with. The next thing we decided to buy was a sofa bed - which we choose Rooms To Go for. They have a reasonable selection of items, although they do seem to be quite keen on Laz-E-Boy recliners and massive leather sofas. (Both very popular in America, I guess!) We chose a nice, neutrally-coloured sofa-bed - or "sleeper" as they call them. We were given a choice of getting it delivered in four days' time - and being told a two-hour time slot for delivery - or in two days' time and being given no time slot - just sometime between 8am and 10pm. Given we were going back to the UK in four days, we had to choose the latter. Unlucky for us, the sofa arrived at 8.30pm, which meant a whole day waiting for it!

Beds
We didn't actually have time to buy a bed whilst we were out there (our comfy sofa-bed was enough for the time being, in any case) as most stores seemed to stipulate a one week/ten day delivery time.

Just a point of note, however: we're used to divan-type beds - or "platform" beds, as I believe they're called in the US - and many furniture stores didn't seem to sell these. We did find that Macy's had a good collection, however.

TVs
America is the land of the giant TV. Go to Best Buy or Circuit City and you'll find plenty of choice. We haven't yet chosen to sign up to cable - we're not going to holiday in Florida just to spend all day watching TV! I simply connected our TV to the aerial socket, and got about 10 free-t0-air channels including the main American ones such as NBC, ABC and CBS. (There's no such thing as a TV license in the US.)

In six days, we managed to furnish our flat almost entirely, and I'm sure you can do it too. It's relatively easy as there's so much choice. There's also so many superstores that exist all over the place, so you won't even have to travel far. Good luck!

Would you do the same as I did? Please do let me know!