Buying furniture

On Friday we went “unconditional” on our offer on the house at Puketotara Road. This basically means that we have bought it and will get the keys on the 6^th April.

We negotiated a further discount on the asking price as the building inspection found that some of the wood cladding on the front of the house wasn’t put on very well. We got an estimate from a local builder and then the vendor agreed to take this amount off the price of the house.

So, today, we went to Whangarei to buy some furniture. Some places have a 6 week delivery time so we thought we’d better order the essentials as soon as possible. Yesterday we went to a local furniture store and found a bed but the sofas were really expensive so we thought we might have more luck in Whangarei.

First we went to Harvey Norman (a big furniture and electrical store). We found a sofa we liked and also a dining table and chairs. They also had a washing machine and fridge/freezer that we thought would be ok.

Our Mum’s would have been proud as we spent nearly an hour in this shop – a miracle for us! J We’re not really very good at shopping around but we thought we maybe ought to look at least at one other shop, so we went into Whangarei centre and found a couple of other furniture stores. After about two minutes in each shop we both suggested going back to Harvey Norman and buying the first things we saw (now being exactly like my Mum J).

So, we bought a three seater sofa, a two seater sofa, a coffee table, a dining table with six chairs, an outdoor dining table with six chairs, a washing machine, a fridge/freezer, two bar fridges for our spare bedrooms and a George Foreman grilling machine!

We also found an oven that we might buy. There is an oven at the new house but it’s a bit grubby and has gas burners for the hob which look horrible to clean! We found one on offer in Harvey Norman which is the same size but with a ceramic hob. The oven is 900mm wide so we are quite limited in choice and they all seem way too expensive. The one we found is on offer at $2789 (reduced from $4700) so we might add it to our order.

I asked the salesman if I could take photos of the things we were buying – I think he thought we were a bit weird but he let us take the photos anyway.