Smart Shopping: Furnish your nest with twigs from many trees

By: SANDRA PHILLIPS

Getting married doesn’t involve just the wedding itself. What it really means is that you are about to set up a new life—and a home—together. You have to combine what you each have and then blend your personal tastes to form a comfortable nest.

Buying furniture can be a long process, from the time it takes to figure out what you need or want to buy, then shopping around for it and finally waiting months for it to arrive.

If, after running around to furniture stores in town, you have not been able to find the chair of your dreams, or perhaps the prices were too high, there are businesses that do most of their selling by catalogues. There is such an enormous overhead to stocking furniture that these stores pass the savings on to you, often 30 to 50 per cent.

Flash Decor is one such company. It has samples on the floor from different companies so you can see the quality of the workmanship.

The storefront of Flash Decor, a family business, has a small showroom of living room, dining room, bedroom and kitchen furniture, but the majority of what they sell comes from 24 catalogues featuring 200 companies in Canada (lots from Quebec), U.S and China. 5343 des Laurentides, Laval. 450-625-3945, flashdecor.com.

For those who have no patience or really don’t like sitting on the floor, Meubles 123 has opened in Montreal. You don’t have to wait for your order, since everything is there to see, sit on, and be delivered within the month.

Meubles 123 sells Ashley Furniture, a well-known North American brand that is sold in easy-to-shop-in mall-size stores, and we are lucky to be the first in Canada to have one. The quality line (16-20 collections) is cleverly displayed: living rooms (sofas start at $399), dining rooms (start at $399), bedrooms and home offices.

If you don’t see the one you want, the friendly salespeople will show you all pieces available in that line, and they have an iPad catalogue for you to peruse. Delivery is three to four weeks. If you want to one-stop shop, you can accessorize with lamps, end tables, TV stands, Sealy mattresses and even some linens. Financing is available. 2101 Dollard, LaSalle. 438-380-3456, furnish123.ca.

Lastly, furnishing a house is not only about the furniture, but also about the accessories. Bouclair, a name you all know, has reinvented itself as Bouclair Home. It focuses on home fashions and the belief that something can look nice without costing a lot of money. The clean, crisply organized stores are a pleasure to shop in. They travel the globe to make sure there are new products every week.

You can easily set up a bedroom (even for kids and teens) with this season’s colours with linens, comforters, duvets, storage ottomans, baskets and mirrors. There are ready-to-hang curtains, blinds in faux wood, or inexpensive verticals or horizontals.

Add spice to your living area with leatherette dining chairs, tons of pillows, vases or jazz up walls with metal wall decor, shelves and picture frames, and finish off the look with lamps and rugs. With 103 stores in the chain, it’s easy to find one near you. bouclair.com.

 

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