Does anyone have any pros and cons regarding shipping your furniture from Uk to Canada when you move over there?

Is it better/cheaper to just sell up and buy new over there?

We're not talking antiques, just sofa's, Welsh dresser, that sort of stuff.

I'm pretty certain that electrical goods will be of no use over there so what are the comparable costs of replacing fridge/freezer and TV's ?

Hope I posted this is the right place (newbie...as if you couldn't tell !)

Thanks

Hi there - there are numerous threads on this - just do a search on "shipping" and "removals" and you will have more info than you could ever have wished for!

Basically though I think it depends on how much furniture you have and how (a) good it is and (b) old it is.

If our house was all Ikea furniture we wouldn't ship it but as we have a lot of antiques - we're shipping it!

Ah !! Search facility too eh ?!

Thanks.

Funnily enough I was thinking the exact same thing just this lunchtime and gave myself a mental note to search this evening!!

i think i was prompted by driving past a convey of shipping containers and was working out if i really had enough stuff for a 20ft container, would it be worth filling it with furniture or would the cost of shipping outweigh the cost of buying when we get there (not til next year, so plenty of time to think about it!)

My very same thoughts.

The pros are you have your personal possessions around you, the cons are it costs a fortune and you can replace most of your possessions for the price it costs you to ship them over.

We shipped our stuff in a 20' container and the cheapest quote we got was 4000 pounds.

If you ship your possessions over you are not allowed to sell or dispose of anything within the first year of your shipment arriving.

Personally, in hindsight, I would have stored everything in the UK until I decided that Canada was the place I wanted to settle. It has been a very expensive lesson learned!

If you arent particularly attached to anything then probably better to sell it off before you leave the UK.

Well we left behind most of the electrical stuff, had numerous car boot sales, filled two skips and still managed to fill a 20' container. Unless you have a load of money to replace evrything i'd do some calculating on cost of shipping versus replacing. It was a no contest for us and you may well live in a larger house here so you may have more than one living room (basement?) for example. Buying two additional suites can be painful.

Also surely you have personal stuff that you would wish to take and if that's the case how do you plan bringing that - kids toys, documents, photos - clothes?

there are loads of posts on here about replacement costs but the four grand the container is going to cost you won't go far in the replacement stakes.....

Hope that helps - but each to his own

As a family of four there is no way I could have replaced all our furnishings for the cost of shipping (3200 GBP). For example, beds can cost around $1000 each and that does not include bedding or headboards.

You will have to buy new electrical items and that certainly adds up. Even the smaller items very quickly add up. Don't forget to add on taxes to any prices you see online.

Remember too that your new home may be much larger than you already have and its pretty common here to have a family/rec room so you may need two sofa sets, etc.

We shipped over a 20ft container and boy was I glad we did. It was like Christmas time at our house when we unpacked all our goods. It was great having a mix of new and familiar things in our new home.

Very useful information. Thanks.

It certainly does seem that for the 3-4k for the cost of a container we could save ourselves a tidy sum, and appears to be the sensible option for those with furnished homes already.

Very useful comments.

I've already planned to not be taking anything electrical, so it was mainly going to be books, cds, photo albums, clothes etc

Having just had to furnish-from-scratch a 3-bed villa in Turkey I know how quickly the costs mount up, and we weren't even buying day-to-day living items!

Thanks for the input!
Kristi

Hi
I've been through the same thought process. Another couple of factors, told to me by people who are 12 months ahead:
- if you don't bring much with you, you risk buying because you 'need' a sofa, rather than you've found one you love - and living with the consequences.......
- it becomes a chore to shop! It's enough to be replacing all your electricals without everything else as well, at a time when you're finding your feet with so many things
- depending on the area you settle, there may not be much choice in furniture, so you could end up with something you're not happy with.

I'm bringing a 20foot container and a bit, with the aim being that we have most of life's essentials, without the electrical stuff, and then we can replace at our leisure, and when funds permit.

A 20 foot container ? How Deep & how Wide would that be. Do you know the cost of sending Tea-Chest size containers which may be sufficient for our needs?
Also I guess the destination affects the price. We will be going hopefully to PEI which is an lot nearer than most other places in Canada.

A 20ft container is about the size of a single garage.

Here are 2 helpful websites to give you an idea of size:

http://www.loknstore.co.uk/storagegu...ldStorageGuide

http://www.westfields-storage.co.uk/...ount-num=63357

Some electrical stuff you can bring over - DVD players and PCs* are generally dual voltage (120/240v) as are most things you charge up via an AC lead and adaptor (laptops, cameras, MP3 players, etc.) - so don't bin them until you've checked.

Would agree on the ship or buy new debate though. Furniture's pretty expensive here and the quality's not always as good as the stuff at home.



*Usually via a small switch on the back.

For anyone bringing over a multiregion DVD player - first check that it is dual voltage and switch it from PAL to NTSC BEFORE you come over as when we went to switch ours over the TV screen was rolling at such a speed we could not make out the new programming instructions which have to be done via the remote control. We were all a shade of green and had to give up

Went out and bought new HD-DVD players and tweaked them to play all regions.

Our 'Bose' iPod docking bay/speaker is dual voltage so I just use a travel adaptor to plug it in.