Furniture!

[Marjorie<EM><STRONG>Marjorie<STRONG><EM>]

Can anyone recommend a reasonable shop in the Charente area for furniture ie beds, linen, chairs, tables etc??  Something like IKEA.   I believe that the bed and pillow sizes are different from the UK?

[winterbunny]

Bedding is not so difficult as it's all metric, but getting fitted sheets 200cm long can be tricky, although you can buy the longer beds no problem!  You can buy the rectangular pillows UK style from most of the large hyper stores, and there are web sites as well such as La Redoute, 3 Suisses, Bequet, Camif; and the Linvoges catalogue, who do quite a good linen range.

There is an Ikea in Bordeaux, not so far from Charente and they do deliveries at a cost and some sales by internet for larger items like beds. 

Buns

 

[Marjorie<EM><STRONG>Marjorie<STRONG><EM>]

Thanks Buns for your help.  We're visiting the department in October and pricing up a few 'bits'!

Did you transfer your household furniture etc from UK - was it successfully done, or would you have done it another way in retrospect ie sold some of your things beforehand and buying new/secondhand in France?

 

[Cerise]

Hi Marjorie

Good luck with the move.  We did bring a lot of our stuff with us and it has moved OK - we took the opportunity to get rid of anything cheap and nasty (yes we had quite a bit of that) and anything we had never liked then moved the rest.  We still had to buy a lot of stuff here but have managed to mix and match.

I bought beds and bedding from La Redoute (if you want a catalogue send me a pm and I'll be your new best friend to get you one!!)  They deliver large items to the house - a great boon if like me you live nearly 2 hours drive from IKEA.

You need to decide about bedding as English & French sizes are not the same.  We decided to buy rather beautiful bed covers and have all boring white linen which makes life a lot easier as you don't have to look for matching pillowcases when in a rush.  We have one French (square) and one English (rectangle) pillow for each place.  I buy reasonably cheap ones and throw them out regularly.  They get stained and bettered quite easily so you will need to replace quite often.  If you are doing B & B you will need more linen than you could ever imagine - plus a place to keep it.

If you are getting beds, make sure you can get them in.  The sommier (base) of French beds does not come in 2 bits and I had the bright idea of buying an extra long bed for one of our rooms.  Suffice to say it would NOT go up the stairs and its subsequent journey via the back terrace and the upstairs office window, supervised by my neighbour's mountaineering son-in-law with appropriate ropes, the plumber, various other neighbours and my horrified husband is something that will be talked about in these parts for a long time to come.  If we ever sell the house it will be staying here!

Maggi

[Missy]

Have you tried going to any of the Emmaüs places?

I visited one near Angers (49) some while ago and it had lovely country furniture and at a fraction of the price that a 'brocante' would charge. There is one near Limoges (87) which I am visiting at the end of the month.

The furniture comes out of old people's homes where the successors don't want the 'old' stuff i.e: not fashionable enough... and they can't be bothered with the 'Depots de Ventes' or don't realise the value of these lovely pieces of furniture.

Emmaüs is quite a good place to be looking for bargains of any kind. If you look in your 'bottin-section pages jaunes' I am sure they will have one near you (where ever you are)

Just an idea if you want to put a bit more character to your B&B/Gites/Homes.

Though I can see the attraction of it, IKEA somewhat doesn't do it for me in rural France...

[Battypuss]

Unless you can GET to your nearest Ikea and carry the stuff home, forget them. You will pay twice as much for delivery as you did for the stuff. La Redoute charge little and if you collect it from one of their 'depots' (normally a tabac and one in most places) you get it the next day. I had them once deliver a bed in mid winter, down 300yds of track backwards in the snow and they were still smiling! Even the post lady hadn't ventured out...La Suisse is also worth considering.

In both cases, I suggest ordering online or your phone bill will go through the roof.

[Paul Bradford]

Hi,

If you buy a bed in France, it is sometimes necessary to purchase the feet separately for some reason. We only found out when we got the beds home!

Gifi is a very inexpensive shop if there is one near you. We used Conforama for some furniture and took the opportunity of using their van hire service, paying by the hour. The cost for a transit sized van was about 20 euros for the hour! Excellent value.

Regards

Paul Bradford

[Coco]

Gifi is a very inexpensive shop if there is one near you. We used Conforama for some furniture and took the opportunity of using their van hire service, paying by the hour. The cost for a transit sized van was about 20 euros for the hour! Excellent value.

And if they work on the same principle as 'But', if you hire your van from say 11.15am for an hour, you don't have to get it back til 2.0pm, 'cos they're closed from 12-2!!!

[Fi]

Hi

We've taken a fair bit of furniture & other bits & pieces that we've collected from various family members but we still need some things - does anyone know of an Emmaus or good brocante type place in dept17 (we're near St. Jean D'Angely)?

Thanks very much

[Fi]

Hi

We've taken a fair bit of furniture & other bits & pieces that we've collected from various family members but we still need some things - does anyone know of an Emmaus or good brocante type place in dept17 (we're near St. Jean D'Angely)?

Thanks very much

[Missy]

[quote]Hi We've taken a fair bit of furniture & other bits & pieces that we've collected from various family members but we still need some things - does anyone know of an Emmaus or good brocante ty...[/quote]

There is an Emmaüs near Niort at Prahecq so about 50 minutes North of St Jean.

I think the address is 'route du Chaume' can't quite remember it? Going there at end of the month to deposit all my french books which I can not sale in English car boot sales!

I know it's a long way from UK but my folks live about 10 miles from there so a good excuse to go and see them!

Will keep you posted if you want more details. I did find a website for them but lost the link! Silly me!!

[tj]

Hi Marjorie

A simple question, a simple answer, IKEA is in Bordeaux an hour from, Angouleme, Cognac, Saintes.

regards

 

[Lizzie15]

Hi.There is an Emmaus a little way south of you as well at St Roman de Benet-we've not found much worthwhile in the furniture dept though!!The " Antiquaille" (sp?, maybe Anticaille? can't remember)near Saintes( on the Rochefort road) is good for older furniture usually.