Furniture....furniture...how I do loathe furniture....

[contradictacat.livejournal.com]

All right. Quick little intro thingie- I just moved here from Upstate NY a little more than a week ago with little more than clothes, my computer and boundless optimism.

Note: No furniture.

Now that I've gotten settled in a bit more- found gainful employment, etc. etc., I've figured that it's time to make my apartment look a bit more like home.

This involves buying furniture.

So I come to you, O Long-Established Ones, a lowly supplicant at the feet of your boundless knowledge:

Where can I find decent furniture (a full/queen mattress, a chest of drawers) for a decent price without having to go to the far ends of the earth?

I've looked on Craigslist, but a lot of the cheap stuff there is way the hell out of the city, and as I have no car, mildly impossible to get to.

Any advice?

Comments

[inahandbasket]

1. Join Zipcar.
1a. Drive to said locations for under $10/hr
2. Check out the Goodwill in Davis Sq., it's moving time and they probably have a bunch of stuff.

I'd suggest buying a mattress new, Boston had a mild epidemic of bedbugs recently.

[ruxxell.livejournal.com]

my name is ruxxell and i approve of this message.

[ravenword.livejournal.com]

You can restrict your Craigslist searches to posts that include "delivery" or "deliver" and see if anyone selling will bring you stuff for a small additional fee (or free).

IKEA will deliver.

[douxquemiel.livejournal.com]

Method of Transportation: Zipcar.
Store to Buy From: IKEA. No, seriously.

As someone who is also carless and usually revels in this fact (except for moments like this), I strongly suggest Zipcar. It's handy, user-friendly, brilliant, and pretty damn cheap. Pay the yearly fee of $25, Zip to IKEA for four hours, costs you less than $100 total.

Honestly, check Zipcar out. It's really damn awesome. My only regret is that now that I've moved closer to Medford Square than Davis Square, getting to a Zipcar is not quite as easy. WOE.

[cowhockey.livejournal.com]

You could always order online from IKEA or somewhere else and have it delivered, but that tends to hurt cheapness.

[veek.livejournal.com]

Check out the Somerville FreeCycle (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FreeCycle-Somerville-MA/)? There've been some furniture posts recently.

Also, yes, Zipcar rocks, and IKEA is good.

Keep up that boundless optimism! Welcome!

[chenoameg.livejournal.com]

There is a long stretch of furniture stores in Cambridge along Mass Ave between Central and Harvard Squares. All of these stores deliver. They're not the cheapest, but there's something for everyone. (One of those stores, CIty Schemes, has an outlet location on Kent St, off Somerville Ave in Somerville. It's sort of between Union Square and Porter Square.)

There is a new wood furniture store where Beacon Street meets Somerville Ave (near Porter Square). I don't know if they have chests of drawers or not.

There's a decent used furniture store on Elm Street (the other side of Porter Square) between cross streets Hancock and Cherry. http://www.cityschemes.com/page_info.php?pages_id=4&pages_name=store%20locations

There's a consignment furniture store on Highland Ave outside Davis Square (a bit further out than Kick*ass cupcakes).

I concur with the recommendation to buy a new mattress.
For a mattress I often see sales in the Macy's ad, and it's easy enough to get to Macy's on the T (Downtown Crossing stop).

Try asking on Freecycle; you never know what someone is ready to get rid of. Good luck!

[chenoameg.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I dropped the CitySchemes location link into the wrong paragraph.

I have a chair

[trtls.livejournal.com]

I have a chair I'm looking for a home for, but I'm too lazy to do much work, so it's still here. It's a black loungy-type chair with a black pad. Good condition. Only problem is I don't have a car either, so you'd have to pick it up. It's pretty light and I live on Cameron Ave. You can email me at karenlm (at) gmail (dot) com if you're interested.

[clevernonsense.livejournal.com]

Bob's discount furniture (for mattresses only, their furniture is dreadful) and Ikea are right near each other--rent a car for the day.

For $100, Ikea will deliver pretty much an apartment's worth of stuff to cambridge--I forget the exact details. Something like "12 units" where a couch counted as 2 units) You can't do this delivery method online (the online delivery is crapexpensive). I'd check out Ikea.com first of course to see if you like the style.

Or, you could rent a uhaul for the day and do the same.

bobs mattress question

[jforlizzi.livejournal.com]

dear sir / mam: how do u like ur bobs mattress? thinking of getting one and i'm worried that it might be too cheap....pls advise how your experience w/ it has been....thx

Harvard science center yard sale

[pearlythebunny.livejournal.com]

Habitat for Humanity Sale
Harvard Habitat for Humanity is holding its annual yard sale on the Science Center lawn over 4 consecutive weekend (futons, couches, dressers, kitchen tables, etc).
Sat and Sun, 8.25 and 8.27, 9-3PM
Sat and Sun, 9.1 and 9.2, 9-3PM
Sat through Tues, 9.8-9.11, 9-3PM
Sat and Sun, 9.15 and 9.16, 9-3PM

Harvard Habitat for Humanity presents: The "Stuff" Sale. $80,000 worth of furniture, appliances, electronics, office supplies, housewares, rugs and clothing to meet all of your apartment and dorm-room needs.

More than 180 truckloads of used furniture, housewares, and clothing — futons, bulletin boards, soap dishes, oriental rugs, lamps, alarm clocks, televisions, microwaves, ironing boards, mirrors, jackets, and much, much more — will be unloaded in front of Harvard’s science center on Oxford Street, making the sale one of the largest of its kind in the country.

The event is organized by Harvard’s Habitat for Humanity group. The group collects items for the sale each spring when Harvard students flee their dorms for the summer, or when they graduate. Some items are donated by students who don’t want to lug them back home, while others are simply scavenged from abandoned dorm rooms.

Other items, including business donations and university-issued furniture, are collected through Harvard’s recycling department, which stores the goods at a warehouse and trucks them to the science center. Browsers can find affordable, solid pieces for guest rooms or kids’ rooms. Regardless of what you’re after, organizers say shoppers can save a pile.

Re: Harvard science center yard sale

[chenoameg.livejournal.com]

For those who haven't memorized the Harvard map, I'll point out that the Science Center is at the outside corner of Kirkland and Oxford Streets in Cambridge.

[iammcperlin.livejournal.com]

I got a used Full size bed and mattress and box spring for 170 at cort putnam furniture rental in central square. I got everything else from ikea, but i didn't think the beds and mattresses there were any good. The cort clearance center has a deal where for 999 you get an entire used bedroom set, dining room set and living room set for 999 and they also have a 10 percent off coupon you can find online. But quite frankly I think you can find better elsewhere.
Best of Luck!

Mattress Advice

[ex-mbraude.livejournal.com]

My sister gave me some really good advice for buying a mattress. First, all mattress prices are negotiable. The markup on mattresses are amazing - those things cost them at most a couple hundred bucks, but they try and turn around and sell them for much more. Second, 1-800-mattres almost always has the best prices on mattresses. Trust me, it's true. So here's what you do:

1) Go into a mattress store and look at mattresses until you find one that you like. I went to mattress discounters on Mass. Ave. near the Boston / Brookline border.
2) Find out the exact make / model name for the mattress, and call 1-800-matres, while you are at the store, and ask them how much they want for the same mattress.
3) Without a doubt, you will find the 1-800-mattres is cheaper. Tell the guy at the store you can get it from 1-800-mattres for less money. Most likely, they will beat that price and sell it to you for less.

I bought a queen size mattress from Mattress discounters that had a sticker price of ~850 bucks for 450~ish (my memory is foggy, it's been a number of years) by doing this. The 1-800-mattres was 300-400 dollars less than mattress discounters' price, but they not only matched 1-800-mattres, but they beat it by 5%.

[secretlyironic.livejournal.com]

If anyone wants a free white laminate-and-particleboard bookshelf, ping me. Perfectly serviceable but not stylish enough for my high-faluting yuppie lifestyle.

I'm gonna put it up on Craigslist for free later this week. (Also some motorcycle boots size EU 40 and a 17" LCD monitor, but those aren't furniture).

[constantinela.livejournal.com]

Use crates, boxes, and foam to build your own.