In an effort to upgrade our rental home in North Carolina my husband and I dropped nearly $3300 on a dishwasher, two love seats, two dressers, two end tables and four kitchen chairs. Every year it seems we replace at least one piece of furniture. One year we replaced the couch, the next year a coffee table, then a dresser and a couple of night tables, but we’ve never plunked down this much money on furniture all at one time.
When we first moved in we replaced only those items that were in desperate shape, but within a year or two we began to understand just how important clean, comfortable furniture can be in a rental home. After all, renters want to enjoy their stay and their is nothing worse than spending thousands of dollars to rent a house each week and then realizing that there isn’t a comfortable chair to sit in.
Over the last four years we replaced quite a bit of outdated, dilapidated furniture, including a twenty-year old set of crate-based living room furniture. Today we were finally able to throw out three more pieces of hideous, heavy crate-based furniture, including two side tables. We also replaced the stinky old love seat, which I am unbelievably thrilled about.
Yesterday I mentioned the need to upgrade our house, but I had no idea that we’d spend $3300 in one afternoon. We managed to purchase everything on our list except a new kitchen table. Although we slapped down a significant chunk of change I couldn’t convince myself to spend $2000 on a new kitchen table. Maybe I can refinish our current kitchen table instead?
Sense says
Wow! i hope you get to enjoy your rental home as well as the renters…such a shame to spend all that on someone else. 🙂
$2K for a dining table? i have never bought ‘real’ furniture (hellooooo, IKEA!), but is that normal?? that seems really high to me…
One Frugal Girl says
@sense — We’re also big IKEA fans. In fact, over the years we’ve dragged an IKEA three-seat-sofa, a dresser and a nightstand all the way down from Maryland.
The loveseats we purchased yesterday were actually cheaper than the loveseats we found at IKEA and much prettier!
$2000 seemed rather insane for a kitchen table, which is the reason we didn’t buy one, but it seems that is the going rate for a table of the size and quality we are looking for. I actually looked through IKEA but they don’t sell a table that matches the dimensions we need. The space in our house is quite unusual and we need an oval table of very specific dimensions.
After plunking down so much money, I certainly wish we didn’t have to rent! It is a shame to spend so much money on items that might be damaged by our guests!
taloola says
frugal????
One Frugal Girl says
taloola — By definition frugal means, “Avoiding unnecessary expenditure either of money or of anything else which is to be used or consumed.” In the case of furniture for a rental home I would argue that these expenditures are necessary to consistently book quality renters over and over each season. So yes, the expenditure is frugal.
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