Home furnishing tools and tips

Furnishing my house has been quite a journey.

When we first married, my husband and I furnished our first apartment as well as we could with the small amount of savings we had. We found great sales on a couple of couches, a kitchen table and chairs, and a bed and dressers. Other than that, we furnished with the few college items we had, and we got an old square coffee table out of my in-laws' garage. Later, we bought a desk from a furniture salvage store.

When we moved into our current house, we didn't have any furniture for the living and dining rooms. It's one big room, so we joked that we could put in a volleyball court in there! Slowly, with cash, we bought dining room furniture and living room furniture, as well as furniture for our children's rooms. And we've replaced the original kitchen furniture and couches.

But the bedroom is still the original furniture, and we still have the desk and the coffee table. We even rescued the coffee table's mate, a long rectangular table, from the garage years later; I'm typing this blog post on it!

I'd like to refurnish more, but we have a lot of other financial goals to meet first. Still, it's nice to dream!

If you're planning to furnish or refurnish your home, I found some great room refurnishing tools and tips at HomeFurnishings.com, run by the National Home Furnishings Association.

• Plan out your room before buying furniture or moving anything around.  You can use this online room planner, where you can graph the size of your room, then move items around until you like the arrangement you've made. 
• Keep track of all your furnishing ideas in one place, like with their "My Ideas" section.
• Learn as much as you can about furniture styles, fabrics, materials, and colors before you buy! 

And of course, look both in person at stores and online before you buy living room furniture or any other kind of furniture.   You'll want to use online sources to compare prices - one great source is TheRoomPlace.com -  but you'll also want to see items in person.  There's no test like sitting and lying on a couch to see if it's right for you!

After doing all this research about refurnishing, I can't wait to be able to refurnish my house!

(Disclosure: This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of TheRoomPlace.com. All opinions are 100% mine. Please see my disclosure policy for more information.)