Looking for oak furniture

[L00b]

Chez, I'll dig up some contact details for a very good local woodworker when I get home later, but in the meantime, with ref to your £3-4k budget and your thinking of commissioning pieces rather than buying ready-made, can I ask how 'big' the 7 or so pieces would be, which you are thinking of commissioning?

 

FWIW, £3k was the going rate for an 8 to 10-seating dining table made to order (meaning "designed then built", admittedly in wild cherrywood, not oak), when we had ours made 10 or so years ago.

Edited September 1, 2015 by L00b

[Annie Bynnol]

For new stuff try TradeSecrets which have a warehouse near Burton. They sell furniture which firms like John Lewis ordered for customers but not bought.

 

If you are looking for good quality second hand oak furniture then the best period is the 1920s and 30s as there was very little oak of quality available in the 40s 50s and 60s.

 

One source are house clearance companies-large ones near the grey coast. Some are happy to give you the nod about a houseload they want shut of -take the lot and offload what you don't want later. Costing more are second hand shops in places such as Boscombe, Poole, Southampton and Portsmouth. There are other better places to discover but they will be well away from London.

 

Avoid buying sanded wood and check the joints for paint or glue.

[Chez2]

Thanks for the advice folks. I will keep your suggested suppliers for future reference. Some of those heavy oak items would make a fantastic free standing kitchen or kitchen / diner. I have these in mind for our next house and hubby likes them too.

 

We decided to go with the stuff we saw at Oakfurnitureland. We are hoping to have a bespoke house built some time in the not too distant future so I don't want to invest heavily in furniture for just a few years that might not fit the next house. I would like to downsize but hubby is not keen on the idea of downsizing. If we didn't use three rooms as offices for our business our current house would be too big for the two of us.

 

We do have a lot of second hand furniture as well as some that we bought new. We bought stag minstrel from 1986 through to more recent time when someone took them over, somewhere around ten to fifteen years ago.

 

We also have several pieces of utility style oak furniture from the 40s/50s mixed in with other heavy new oak pieces but they are in other rooms.

 

The problem with this room seemed to be sourcing a fairly plain glass china cabinet in a similar style and colour either second hand or new. Its the lounge we have done so we bought; 2 x glass fronted cabinets, a book shelf, small sideboard, widescreen TV stand, console table, coffee table and lamp table.

 

I'm not looking forward to the waxing. Virtually all our furniture now is the stuff you have to wax.