viviennef

I sold all my non sentimental ornamental items. Had an open house. I sold most of my furniture which was all brand new and quite expensive. I brought my dining table and chairs and about 7 tea chests of things like photos.

I would bring everything - I am sad but 7 years on I still buy stuff in the UK. Everything is quite expensive here. The choice is abysmal. I like nice furniture (havent got enough but that is what I like). that meant the initial fantastic furniture spend was really quite temporary and I feel like I have been symbolically living out of boxes for years. It would have been in storage a lot though as we did move around. Things like fridges are better sold at home unless its large.

When I go to the UK this year, I plan to buy some older wooden furniture, get it french polished and ship it back.

When you get here you will have enough to spend your money on.
Viv

Japonica

We only shipped boxes as it was going to cost at least $16,000 Cdn (not counting insurance or other fees) for a container and nothing we had for furniture was THAT nice.

I don't know what kind of taste some folks have, but we've furnished the place decently without going broke. IKEA...new beds etc. Super A Mart, Fantastic Furniture and other places with sales for sofas. Good Guys for electrical stuff. We haggled the prices down on each item too. We got a lot of nice condition, solid timber pieces off either ebay or gumtree. Great looking bookcases, dining suite etc. at less than half price of what we'd pay new...

So, I guess it depends on what you have at home...if it's in good shape and the cost of a container is not prohibitive, then bring the furniture. Otherwise, there are deals here to be found if you look...

obewan

not a lot
Goods are generally more expensive in aus, there is the odd exception and you need to be prepared to hunt for bargains or offers.
If you want an idea of comparitive prices, take a look at Ikea websites for UK & Aus. Even if you don't have Ikea furniture, just take a sample of products on the UK site & find them on the Aus site as well, and that gives you an idea of the kindof markup you will typically find in Aus.

Tubbs2Oz

Hi there,

Just thought I'd add what we did too! We brought most stuff. TV worked fine even without set top box, brought dishwasher, tumble, washing machine, (haven't used any as in rental, but glad we've got them - all Siemens/Bosch). We didn't bring our useless Argos flat pack bed and bought new in Ikea, double bed frame for $299, bunk beds $229 + $149 x 2 mattresses. We wished we'd brought our adsl wireless router as it would have worked with a phone adapter / new cable from socket to router - then we bought one to use on cousins network so that we could share internet access - then we got a free adsl2 wireless router with our broadband. I guess in the same way we should have brought our dect phones. We can't confirm yet if our freeview receiver works here as our signal is rubbish, but they use the same standard so we're hopeful.

I guess the thing is if something is decent quality shove it in the container. We actually ended up throwing away too much and had space in the container - nothing major just some things that could have been useful. Folding chairs...

I'd have a bundle of not really needed but chuck in if enough room.

Good luck with the move, we've been here since 30th Oct and loving it.

1968_karen

Well you have convinced us to bring our stuff.

Can you recommend your shippers (or not) and tell me approx how much it cost and what size contaner.

Thank you.

ice mocha

ooo yea.... why didn't i think of that LOL! thanks

Tubbs2Oz

We used Brittania and they were great. They cost £3580 for a 20' container + around £700 insurance (we sat and worked out the value of everything - insurance is 3% of value). There are a couple of minor things that we might try and claim for on the insurance, someone put one of the drawers to our dresser in the wrong place (think it was this end) and now it's stuck, our 14" telly case is split at the seam and some other minor stuff. But crystal, denby, picture frames, all really delicate stuff absolutely fine. The guys did a great job packing. I think that Doree Bonner are really good too, I hadn't heard of them so didn't see them til we'd already accepted Brittania anyway.

Good luck with the move.

Tubbs2Oz

Definitely, a potty that was £1.25 in the UK just cost us $4.99 and the spinny chair for kids I think was about £60, is $160. (From memory!) It has had to travel a lot further though I guess.

juddy

I would air on the side of caution on bring in your stuff out here, we more or less bought everything, and to be honest the things I left behind I needed the things I some things I shipped here I wish I never had. Any kind ok UK furniture is a waste of time, reason are it looks out of place here and you can purchase cheaper here, I know every body’s budgets and needs are different but, based on a average house size here in QLD, and based on most English people will buy a new 4 bed room house then you will need at least 3 sofa’s. plus a very large dining table, will your old uk stuff look good in your new oz house, plus, when you get your shipping quote, include all your uk furniture, then ask the shippers to cost you with out your furniture, you will be amazed to see the cost saving.

Bring pots and pans, bedding, cd’s clothes, garden tools etc, we left out bikes, big mistake, and things like hose pipes, things you will need here. Of course if you have old furniture then ship it….

stmatt

Hi

We paid £3500 for a 20 foot container. Our bed cost is £2000 and our settee cost £3500 so we figured we might as well ship the majority of stuff over. We realise that we will may want to buy new furniture which fits in with our 'new house' when we buy it. But in the meantime we are going to spend a year or so living in rentals and don't want to be buying new furniture each time.

We're still waiting for our container to arrive. We moved straight into a rental so have had to buy a few things to keep us going mainly fridge/freezer, washing machine, TV, 2 x single beds, a bed settee, garden furniture and some basic kitchen stuff and we've already spent loads of money. So I am glad that we've shipped everything over.

We used John Masons who have been good so far.
Karen

ice mocha

hmmmmm...... interesting re: size of furniture from UK... right now we have just bought a new 3+2 sofas because our old one was really worn out and trying to sell the house.. we thought... best make the place look nice-ish
so we will take that with us...
as for dining table/chair.. they're new too.. i guess we'll just have to see how it fits in our "new" place only rental so prob going to be fairly small to start with

now what do people think about bringing dishwashers & wardrobes? many said it nearly always come as fitted wardrobe in the bedrooms.. and dishwashers are always included in rentals?

Kayelem

We are only taking 2 small wardrobes as we to have been told by shippin company that most bedrooms come with fitted ones, so taking them incase any room doesn't have them. As for dishwashers I don't know but we have been told not to take cooker as most aussie homes have fitted ones and our fridgefreezer is a no no as UK ones can't cope with Aussie heat. We to are renting to start with and rentin ours in Uk. Our house here is pretty big so we will wait to see if our Aussie one is bigger we think it may be smaller as we are having to downsize on bedrooms in Oz as we have a 4 bed here but can only afford to rent a 3 bed in Oz as they don't come cheap.

stmatt

Hi,

We made a list of things like wardrobes that we probably wouldn't need here in Oz and had these loaded on the container last (we flat-packed our kids wardrobes which were fairly decent quality but left our cheap Ikea ones). When the men came to do our quotes we had enough to fill a 20 ft container with some over spill, although I hadn't realised that some of our boxes in the attic were empty! We figured that if there was room for these items we would bring them, if there wasn't then they'd stay behind.

In the end we managed to fit everything that we wanted onto the container.

hth
Karen

ice mocha

i keep hearing things are more expensive there...?? sigh....

Alfresco

That's why we're stocking up on good stuff to take. Just got a new dishwasher & fridge (recently) for example. Will see in the coming months waht else needs replacing here and shipping over.

I'm sure UK fridges do work Ok in OZ.