ste1070

Hi all,

We are just in the process of selling up our furniture/TV's etc but our friends who already live on Sunshine Coast are saying they wish they had shipped everything out, saying how dear it is there to set up home again.

We don't have loads of fancy stuff, a 2 piece suite, single and double bed, bedroom furniture etc so I would have thought would cost more to ship out there than what it is actually worth. Obviously appliances etc are no use out there.

Thoughts please??

dbd33

Take everything.

It's more expensive to replace it all than you'd think and, upon arrival in a new country, do you really want to be slogging around looking for tea towels and chests of draws? Rather than buy something hurriedly on arrival, make do with it for a year and then bin it when you see one you really want, it's cheaper to make do with the old one from England.

JonboyE

I would err on the side of shipping more rather than less. Generally, houses are bigger so you need more stuff and it takes time to learn where to find the stuff you like at reasonable prices.

If you need to set up a home in a hurry you will paying too much or end up with crap.

ste1070

What would we be looking at as an estimate to ship out there though? I assume container is standard measurement from UK to Vancouver, what do you think we would be looking at???

ste1070

just been reading, if we based on 20ft container from UK to Vancouver??

Mikeypm

Depends what you have got and what you want to bring, anything from excess baggage, through to grouapage, 20ft container or taking absolutely everything and going for a 40ft container.

Costs to bear in mind is if shipping a container do you pack yourself or get the movers to pack it. Then there is insurance and so forth. No definite figure till your work out what you will bring and get quotes

Dotty P

The stress of buying EVERYTHING from scratch is horrendous and Canadian furniture can be expensive. Trouble is, you have to buy a lot of things whilst you wait for your shipment to arrive, so we found we ended up with two of a lot of kitchen items, the essentials you can't do without, once our stuff arrived here. We could have done with getting rid of more to be honest. Ikea was our BEST friend though, you just can't go wrong with starting out with their stuff. The biggest downside is you have to build the furniture (although I think you can pay extra for them to assemble it).

If you have antiques of value and furniture/items that mean a lot to you, ship them over. Otherwise I'd scrap it and start again....but I think I'm going to be in the minority with that view and purely because I love Ikea!

Piff Poff

We wish we had brought more stuff, shopping for new furniture when your newly arrived is a nightmare especially when north American tastes are very different to what you may be used to

Geordie Lass

We brought almost everything with us - we have been together quite a while and we have decent stuff - so cheaper to bring it than sell it for next to nothing and replace.

Stuff we brought that is useless and in the basement are microwave, coffee maker and lawnmower.

We came over on a TWP so we really didn't know whether to ditch stuff like the lawnmower or bring it and hope it worked. We also didn't know whether we would be back 2 years later etc. Tough call to make if you have some decent kit.

Aviator

We brought very little and started over, just personal stuff. The quality of the furniture we bought here was way better then anything we had in the UK.

ste1070

This is our logic. We are renting a small 2 bed terrace at minute as we sold up last year ready for this. We have got rid of loads of stuff. I can nearly put money on it that shipping would cost as much as what we have if not more. Is there a few Ikea's dotted about? Haven't checked yet.

hamazz

i believe it is always more piece of mind to bring it over in a container, i moved things from the uk to egypt a few times, and took advice of friends, and bought extra items that i threw in to fill the space up like a moped, quad bike, ride on mower, extra furniture etc, ( the cost of the container is the same, so why not make it more economical) as you normally dont get charged customs so might be piece of mind to get a few extra items that you might need, if you have a good shipping agent you can also sometimes claim back a chunk of vat on things that have been bought recently. i would hit the sales just before shipping my container and get some new furniture or electronic items.


really depends on what you have, and whether it will fill the place you get in canada.


hamazz

prairiechicken

Interesting thread. I've been wondering the same, but thinking that as there is a room full of work stuff that we would have to take with us for my husband's job, we would have to ship that over and it would probably therefore be worth us at least shipping over the really good furniture that we have. We have a great bed, lovely dining furniture, an antique oak dresser, and a bunch of Chesterfield stuff, which I'd be pretty sad to leave behind (and which would cost a lot to replace).

ste1070

This is it. May be worth it for you but we have nothing really worth moving. We are quite happy to spend out on a load of new ikea stuff when we get there. This would probably equal what it would cost to get a container, packing, insurance etc then the waiting. Certainly be more aggro that what we would gain in my opinion. (For us anyway)

prairiechicken

To be honest the real biggie for me is our bed. I have back problems, and the mattress alone cost nearly £1K (well worth it for me as it helps my back loads). The bed frame is a solid wood sleigh bed, superking size, so as you can probably imagine, that wasn't cheap either. So I would fully expect it to cost at least the same to buy similar in Canada, not to mention the hassle of actually finding a mattress that suits me.

My husband also (for some reason that I can't quite fathom) hates Ikea with a passion, so would definitely not be content with a house full of Ikea stuff.

In my head, I have decided that we would probably buy some cheaper items to use while we wait, which could then be transferred to other rooms like guest/family rooms when our good stuff arrives.