Furnishing an Apartment Secondhand

The chair I'm sitting in as I write this cost $15. It's a wooden spindle-back with a slightly wobbly history, bought from a neighbor two streets over who was moving and had put a handwritten sign on it that said "good chair, honest." She wasn't wrong. Almost two years later, it's still the most comfortable chair in the apartment, and Olive agrees, judging by the fur.

When Sam and I moved into this one-bedroom in October 2023, we had my studio furniture, his boxes, and not much else. A brand-new living room set wasn't happening, and frankly I didn't want one. So we furnished most of the place secondhand, slowly, over about six months. Here's what we bought, what we'd skip, and how we hauled it all up three flights of stairs.

Where we found things

• Neighbors and building move-outs. Our best finds came from people moving. The end of the month, especially in late summer and early fall, is when perfectly good furniture appears on sidewalks and in online neighborhood groups.
• Thrift and charity stores. Great for lamps, side tables, mirrors and kitchen stuff. Less great for sofas, which tend to be either beautiful and enormous or small and sad.
• Online marketplace listings. Most of our bigger pieces. Patience pays. The same bookshelf listed for $80 on a Friday was $40 the next Thursday.
• Family hand-me-downs. Our bed frame came this way. Free, sturdy, and no strangers involved.

What we bought (and what it cost)

The couch isn't in the table because it came a little later and was its own debate: a used full-size sleeper sofa, $250, in November 2023. More on that below.

Our rules for buying used

Measure everything twice, including the stairwell

We live on the third floor of a walk-up, and our stairwell has a tight turn at the second landing. Before we look at anything bigger than a lamp, we check the measurements against a note on my phone: the doorway width, the turn at the landing, and the space where the piece would go. This saved us from a gorgeous armoire that would have stayed on the second floor forever.

No upholstered pieces from unknown sources

This is why the couch was the one piece we were picky about. We bought it used, but from a couple moving out of state who let us look it over in daylight, unzip the cushions and check every seam before we paid. Upholstered furniture can bring in bedbugs, and in an apartment building, that's not just your problem; it's everyone's. Wood, metal, glass and hard plastic can be inspected and cleaned. Fabric from a stranger's curb is a gamble I wasn't willing to take.

Wobble test, drawer test, sniff test

• Wobble: Press down on each corner. A bit of wobble is often fixable with a screwdriver or wood glue. A cracked leg is not.
• Drawers: Pull every drawer all the way out and push it back in. The dresser we bought had one sticky drawer, and a rub of candle wax on the runners fixed it.
• Sniff: Smoke and mildew smells are very hard to get out of wood and almost impossible to get out of particleboard. If it smells, walk away.

Bring a friend and a plan

Sam carries more than I do; I'm better at spotting problems. We go together. We also only pick up things we can move the same day, because "we'll come back for it" has a way of turning into nobody coming back.

Cleaning it up

Everything that comes home gets wiped down on the balcony before it enters the living room. For wood, a little dish soap in warm water, a dry cloth, and sometimes a coat of furniture wax. For metal, a scrub with a non-scratch sponge. The thrift-store rug went to a coin-operated rug wash service, then got a day in the sun.

The biggest surprise, two years in, is how much more I like the secondhand pieces than the new ones. They have dents and stories. The dining table has a faint ring someone else left, and every dinner we've hosted sits on top of it. The couch is fine. It's comfortable. But nobody wrote a sign for it.