Top 10 Tips for Furniture Thrift Shopping

Furniture Thrift Shopping is a great way to build your home interior without spending a whole lot on furniture and decorative items. Second most expensive part of the home building project is furnishing your home with the right themed and styled furniture and interior decorations. By following the top 10 tips, you should be able to make the best of thrift stores to offer for your needs without breaking the bank.

Table of Contents

1. Furniture Touch Test
2. Furniture Construction Details
3. Check for Furniture Labels
4. Time to Mastery in Thrift Store Shopping
5. Thrift buying for redo works
6. Do your research on furniture thrift stores
7. Avoid Impulse buying
8. Shop Off Season
9. Inspect the Product
10. Rinse & Repeat

1. Furniture Touch Test

   

   Getting the feel for the furniture is not just cliche, it's more than that. It's about trying to feel for the wooden material used and by touching the prominent surface of the furniture, you should be able to tell whether the furniture is made from solid wood or artificial wood based material such as MDF boards, Plywood or particle wood.

   Sometimes, it's easier to get overlooked by the furniture finishing that people don't check the build quality. By getting the feel for the product surface and its parts, we should be able to better assess the quality of the material used.

2. Furniture Construction Details

   Furniture construction details are often not checked by the prospective buyers when thrift shopping for furniture. The construction details such as dovetail joints, different parts interfaces, interior finishing, back of the furniture finishing, moving parts in the furniture are tell-tale signs of how the furniture is constructed and how it's going to hold for long term utilization of the furniture. Having better build quality helps in extending the useful utilization of the furniture.

3. Check for Furniture Labels

   Often the furniture has information on where it is made and what wood material is used in the furniture written on the backside or hidden panels inside the furniture. Sometimes the material used is stencil etched on the material used inside or hidden panels. They contain markings related to the wood used as well as the original manufacturer of the furniture. A simple online search of the manufacturer should help you assess if the furniture comes from a respected manufacturer in the industry. If it only contains the wood used and if the wood is of good quality, then you should be able to judge the material used for building the furniture.

4. Time to Mastery in Thrift Store Shopping

   It takes time to get good at furniture thrift shopping. By visiting multiple thrift shops around you, you should be able to increase the chances of finding the right piece of furniture for your home and office requirements. In each case, if you see a piece of furniture that meets your requirements, take time to get a feel for the furniture, check for build quality and then assess if it suits your needs and comes within your budget for the furniture.

5. Thrift buying for redo works

   

   Furniture is often donated to thrift stores due to its wear and tear and lack of newness or finishing due to its long term usage. By finding the right furniture of build quality and construction, by lacking in its finishing, you should be able to get the furniture for cheap. If you’re willing to redo the furniture, you should be able to get a good set of furniture. To bring the furniture back to its glory, sometimes all it takes is chipping off the old paint and applying a fresh coat of wood stain.

6. Do your research on furniture thrift stores

   Knowing the right thrift stores is not enough to get good thrift store furniture. You should check on when they have special offers or if they have weekly discounts or other promotions that should help you get the best bang for your bucks. Goodwill Stores has a color tag system offering discounts on different days. They also offer a fresh load of thrift items every hour or two in its bigger stores for encouraging impulse buying. By knowing the intricacies of the thrift store, it should help you save those hard earned cash another day. There are also stores such as Habitat for Humanity ReStore that offer quality furniture and home improvement items.

7. Avoid Impulse buying

   This is one of those tips that helps you avoid regrets after making a purchase of furniture from a thrift store. It's easier to get mesmerized by the quality of the product and price point of the furniture product offering at the thrift store. We should take time to assess the furniture by following the above tips from touch test to construction and build quality tests as well as assess your need for the furniture at your home, office, basement or garage.

8. Shop Off Season

   Knowing when people sell or donate furniture and thrift items will help you dial down on getting the best furniture at the right time. Sometimes it's useful to find the independent thrift stores in rich neighbourhoods where there are better chances of getting good quality furniture for affordable prices. Shop off season is meant to be general terms for describing how it's often better to optimize the external and seasonal factors to drill down on purchasing the best furniture from thrift stores.

9. Inspect the Product

   This goes without saying, but people still make such mistakes as that will end up taking your space at your home or garage instead of becoming a useful piece of furniture. By thoroughly inspecting the product before purchase, we can be assured or at least to be of better certainty that the time and money spent are for a better use and application.

10. Rinse & Repeat

    You start by purchasing small furniture through thrift stores. By becoming good at finding gems overtime, you can expand on your budget and furniture requirements to bring home better hauls to build a better part of your home, garage, basement and office interior and design works.