Are people much richer these days or just more ‘picky’?

Three weeks ago I sent a mahogany table, six dining chairs including two lovely carvers and two display cabinets to the tip.
I kept a coffee table and matching lamp table as they are small enough to store for now.
I want to make my redundant dining room into a sitting room temporarily with plans to turn it into a downstairs bedroom for me when stairs become more difficult than they are now.
I offered them free on Facebook and one charity who didn’t even reply.
They were large and unfashionable but lovely and immaculate.

Agreed biglouis.

When my sister and I cleared out my mum’s house it was full of solid vintage furniture which neither of us appreciated at the time - we were both young and into ‘modern’🙈

Now I look back and regret getting rid of it - particularly the most beautiful wardrobes, old chest of drawers and, most of all, a fabulous sofa which was genuine 1930’s deep red leather. It sat in my childhood ‘front room’ which no-one was allowed in (apart from special visitors) so it was hardly used.

I can picture all this beautiful furniture in my house now and really wish we still had it - much better than the flimsy modern stuff.

My granddaughter was about to chuck 4 federation chairs out, complete with kangaroo carvings on the back. I told her what they were, from the turn of the 20 th century so now she loves them ! They are gorgeous, made from Huon pine (valuable Tasmanian ) so thank goodness she didn’t.

Just browsing in the garden centre this morning. A nest of pine tables, about £150.

I pointed them out to DH, we agreed the set I bought at a car boot sale in the summer, £5, served the purpose just as well.

(Why on earth do GC’s need to be selling things like that anyhow? Stick to the plants!)

Not everyone is into new. My house has a happy mixture of secondhand/ hand me downs/ newer stuff and my children's homes are the same.
We are not large people so one daughter was particularly pleased to be given ercol dining chairs circa 1950 something, which have a much smaller profile than modern ones and fit her space perfectly. They are beautifully made.

Walking down my road I've seen almost brand new bathrooms and kitchens thrown into the skip.
I had my house valued in the summer and the estate agent said , don't bother to replace the kitchen and bathroom ( both tired )
I can sell it in a couple of days and I guarantee that everything will be thrown out the day after whoever moves in .

Yes! Disheartening, isn't it. We're thinking of having a new kitchen installed but I know the quality won't be as good as the very old solid wood kitchen we have now. I said to DH that, if we sold, whoever bought the house would rip out a new kitchen and make substantial alterations anyway but he laughed and thought not. Two younger people have said that yes, that's what they do.

nanna8

My granddaughter was about to chuck 4 federation chairs out, complete with kangaroo carvings on the back. I told her what they were, from the turn of the 20 th century so now she loves them ! They are gorgeous, made from Huon pine (valuable Tasmanian ) so thank goodness she didn’t.

I have a Huon Pine chopping board 😁 but no chairs, alas! The chairs sound unique.

I don't know what federation chairs are, but carved kangaroos sound lovely. Probably not in the same league, but I have some old Ercol chairs which I've recently had restored, and I'm very happy with them. We have a table in the kitchen as well as one in the dining room (with its own set of chairs) though, which is old fashioned these days. If we sold our house it would probably go to a family, and the odds are they would knock walls out and put in a kitchen island, so half of the chairs would be redundant.

Similarly, many people use Kindles so don't need bookcases. We had trouble finding decent bookcases recently, and ended up having bespoke ones made. The ones we could find were far too short as they are built to fit in new builds which tend to have lower ceilings. We have an old bureau which I use to store knitting supplies rather than correspondence. There is no chair in front of it so it is never used as a desk, but nobody sits down to write letters nowadays, so that's fine. My children wouldn't give it house room, as they use their houses differently from us, just as I didn't want my mum's hostess trolley when she offered it. She couldn't understand why not, as she was very proud of it when she got it. I think she saw it as an investment, but dealers won't want them, any more than they want my husband's 80s stereo stacking system, with its mahogany cabinet. He loved it, and can't get his head around the fact that nobody wants tape-to-tape decks these days, or that speakers are not better for taking up half the space in an average room. To him, it should still be worth a month's pay, or whatever he paid for it in c1986 - preferably in today's money. I have news for him - our children won't want that either . I would get rid of it too, if not for the fact that he is so attached to it.

I've never bought household things as investments. I get what I like at the time, and tend to hang onto things until they are no longer useful, either because we've changed the use of a room, or because they've worn out. We still have things (eg the bureau) that we've had since we got married. I don't care that they don't have a resale value, as that was never expected.

It’s true it’s hard to get a lot of things accepted by charities here in the UK.
Round here we just put anything unwanted outside the house, it usually goes within 20 minutes.Where to I have no idea.😃
The old boiler went in minutes, same as the old fridge and a wooden chair.

Monica you’ve said that your house is really old, so will suit old furniture but it wouldn’t suit a lot of other house that are much newer.Even a 1960’s house would look dowdy with old brown furniture in it, let alone a more modern one.

Ours is a Victorian terraced house, inclined to be dark so we make an effort to keep the interior as light and bright as possible.

We have a large charity shop locally, solely for furniture, which seems to do pretty well. It’s in aid of the local hospice. I’ve often seen virtually new looking sofas for £150-200, which would probably have cost ten times that when new.

A dd in Oxford has bought a number of 2nd hand items from shops or e.g. FB marketplace near her, inc. a brilliant modern, light wood dining table, originally from John Lewis. There is absolutely no stigma among her social circle about buying 2nd hand - they all seem to do it. Saving the planet, as well as saving money!

In 2014 we spent what would be £10,000 in today’s money on mahogany furniture made by Strongbow. It’s not popular at all today and looks overpowering in our downsized house. But it has very little monetary value. Still I can’t bear thinking it’s only good for firewood.

CORRECTION I put in the date of our last house move which was 2014. It should have been 1996 and would be worth £16,500 at today’s rates.

Oreo
Make sure it's on your drive/path and not on the pavement and has a not on. "Please help yourself " or similar.
Someone recently got fined for leaving something out on the pavement!

glammagran a friend of ours took our inherited bedroom suite and made some really lovely fitted shelving with the rather lovely wood.

If you have nowhere for it but like the wood you might consider doing something similar?

We have a mix of bought ( but a good few years ago), and some of my parents lovely furniture. Our DD has my late parents' bedroom chests and cabinets, we have a second hand dining table bought for £60 when we moved into this house, as we had to sell our dining table and chairs which we had in our previous bigger house. My son tries not to have too much furniture as he is in rented and it costs money to move it from place to place!

glammagran

In 2014 we spent what would be £10,000 in today’s money on mahogany furniture made by Strongbow. It’s not popular at all today and looks overpowering in our downsized house. But it has very little monetary value. Still I can’t bear thinking it’s only good for firewood.

Some people might be interested in it as it's sold online, if you can find a second hand dealer near you. You may not get much for it but better than it go for firewood.

Maybe the French bed-bug scare of very recent years has put people off second-hand furniture no matter how well preserved it looks.

Yes Allira a similar thing happened with my DD. They had a beautiful new bathroom installed in their house about a year before putting it on the market.

House sold and new owners moved in; a few weeks later we drove past only to see the virtually new, entire bathroom suite in a skip on the front drive.

Heartbreaking and so wasteful!

😯

If it had been taken out carefully, someone could have collected that as I'm sure not everyone is so wasteful.

mae13

Maybe the French bed-bug scare of very recent years has put people off second-hand furniture no matter how well preserved it looks.

Bedbugs in a chest of drawers?
Dining table and chairs? 🤔

Our next door neighbour put in a new kichen and bathroom before they sold. The buyers told me that he should have had the house rewired instead. Victorian house and old wiring as is ours.

They ripped out both the bathroom and kitchen very soon after moving in.

Looking round our house, everything apart from the white goods is second hand. And the white goods are pretty old now.

New neighbours across the road threw out the elderly widower's Ercol furniture!!!!! When they moved in. I was too late to retrieve it but to be honest I have no room. And have my mothers dearly loved Ercol furniture anyway!!

mae13

Maybe the French bed-bug scare of very recent years has put people off second-hand furniture no matter how well preserved it looks.

What have bedbugs got to do with tables, chairs, occasional furniture, book cases etc. bedbugs means beds, bedding and bedroom.

We recently sold our house in France. The new owners bought most of the brown furniture off us, they liked it so much. We took several pieces of English brown furniture to the local Depot de Vente ( a second hand shop that sells on commission). Several of these pieces we had first offered, in photo form to an English auction house that just said now In France we got nearly £500 for them and most sold within 24 hours

It is a particularly British thing to want cheap shoddy new furniture rather than good quality older furniture.

Not everywhere MOnica I bought large French linen cupboard 30 years ago, I recently returned to the antique dealer to ask if he could sell it for me. He said it is firewood these days. It is such a shame. I could dismantle it, hire a van and offer it to a charity warehouse or leave it on the street for the household collection we have each month but I haven’t got the strength. Big houses are being converted or knocked down to build flats. At the moment I use it to hid the television.