Monday, December 19, 2005

market for old and used furniture

this one's at jogeshwari west, on s.v.road. its does to furniture what fashion street in town and linking road at bandra do for clothes. cheap, old antiquities are spruced up and polished to look like new. tastefully done, i can see how they could lend a touch of class to one's home. but a word of caution, get carried away here and you might end up with a house that looks like a bengali film, as a friend would say.

a few hours spent here calls for some serious motivation. you have to walk in and around cramped places that are chockfull with furniture pieces stacked one on top of the other. in every conceivable place and in a few not so conceivable ones too. theres definitely no premium on display and the craftsmen are working on orders right next to the finished goods.

if you can put up with the dirt, dust and bargain hunting then you must really love your house and are prepared to go the distance to make it look the way you want it to. the rules of the game are the same as those in every flea market. check everything you possibly can, haggle like your life depends on it, etc.

keep in mind the fact that unlike clothes and shoes you cant take these pieces home in a bag. so one needs to account for the cost of the transportation too. no free home delivery here. 250 bucks for a taxi and 350 for a minidor, depending on the size of the package.

after two hours of trudging through very narrow spaces we've picked a centre-table for our drawing room. its broken and dirty right now but on accepting a 30% advance the chap agrees to have it fixed, polished and ready to display in my living room by friday.

definitely one of the most physically punishing ways i've spent my money.

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