Furniture Consignment Gallery Blog

     Sometimes, I gotta confess, you see the damndest things when you're picking up furniture in people's homes.

      "Oh, that," said the lady of the house, waving airily at a small baggie stuffed with crisp brown leaves sitting on her coffee table. "Just ignore it," she added. "My stepson should know better than to leave his weed out where anyone can find it."
I had no interest in the baggie, but the furniture looked good, so we took it. Carrying a desk down the stairs and out the door, Matt and I almost stepping on a different plastic bag, neatly bundled, that she'd left sitting on the front stoop. "Watch out," she barked. "Dog shit!"    
      Oh, the perils of furniture pick-up. Don't get me wrong, though. I'm happy to be back in the truck. For the last few months, I've been tied to my desk working out the details of staffing and filling our new store in Plymouth, which, happily, opened to great reviews on March 1.

    Finally, now, I can get back to hunting through rough waters and green pastures for great furniture.

     What was that quote by Jack Kerouac? "Nothing behind me and everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road." We former English majors think like this when we get a few miles from home and office.  

   Our next stop was to see a retired firefighter. Her name was "Murf." If your home was ablaze, you would want her manning the hose. Built like a fireplug, she was competent and compassionate - and she knew more about furniture than me. Her father, it turns out, was a salesman for woodworking equipment. She'd spent part of her childhood visiting the big furniture factories that once dotted the landscape. Murf was witness to a great era of American furnituremaking and she didn't even know it.

     After Murf, we visited a couple of storage units, an upscale house in a country-club development, and a couple of homes in the ragged stage of renovation. The result: an action-packed day for me and my trusty travel companion Matt who was subbing in for Nick who was home with his new baby boy. Coming home, the truck was stuffed with furniture and we were stuffed with tales of the riot of humanity out there.  

    He'd gotten it right, Kerouac. Keep on rolling, he said, and "lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies."

As I trundled into the gym last Monday, I heard a familiar voice call out, "You're welcome, Jay!" The place is always mobbed in January and February, as everyone does penance for the holidays. So I couldn't actually see who was hollering at me, but I knew the voice. "Thanks, Jim!" I hollered back. That's been our weekly ritual for years.

Every Monday, I go to the gym. That's largely because of some wise advice from Jim, a retired retail executive who has been a kindly counselor to me for years. Jim knows well the demands of managing a fast-growing business. He insisted from the start that I take a day off every week. So our stores have always been closed on Mondays.

Jim was right. I needed a day off. For the last seven years, I've been a jack-of-all-trades. I answered the phone and drove the truck. I picked up furniture. Back at the store, I sold furniture - then jumped in the truck and delivered it. When things were quiet in the showroom, I paid the bills, managed the books and swept the snow off the front steps.

But things change. Furniture Consignment Gallery has grown. Soon, we'll have three stores with many more customers and big challenges. But we also have a strong infrastructure now. We've developed dedicated and experienced staffers like Ron, Jeff, Sam, Christa, Matt, Nick, Judy, Theresa, Denise and Brad who share our vision. They do their jobs well and I trust them to take care of our customers.

So starting this Monday, Presidents' Day, February 18th, Furniture Consignment Gallery will be open seven days a week. That means we won't see any more disappointed shoppers circling the empty parking lot in Hanover after tugging on our locked doors on Mondays. They'll find our doors open and our showroom filled with quality furniture, art and accessories. So will the folks in Chestnut Hill. And our newest store in Plymouth also will be open seven days a week starting March 1.

As for me, I'm still planning on going to the gym on Mondays. I'm working off the holiday pounds one bench press at a time. And I know Jim will approve.

This American beauty danced into our Hanover Furniture Consignment showroom a few weeks ago. The inlaid veneer work on this table is exquisite and the size and height are unique in its styling. So many coffee tables have turned into mamouth beasts with storage compartments and hefty shelving. Sure they serve a purpose, but this table is a very fine piece of furniture. The Councill Craftsman name brand also boosts the value of the piece. The name says that it is handcrafted in America, made from America's finest woods from our beutiful forests. The Councill name also tells you that special care was given to this piece in the production process. That was properly finished and constructed. Councill Craftsman is a name brand that we can trust when we are fortunate to sell it when it comes into our Furniture Consignment showrooms. In general, it is the name brand that gives a reproduction piece value. The name brand lets you know that the piece will hold its value in the event of a future sale.

This inlaid cocktail table is $1,299.99

You can find beautiful, high end, name brand furniture like this Councill Craftsman cocktail table in either of our two locations in Hanover, MA or Newton, MA. We also have a new showroom that we will be opening on March 1, 2013 in S. Plymouth,MA

Just days before Christmas, the ping pong table went on sale. I couldn't resist. So I bought it and hid it from my wife and boys in the garage.

What fun this will be, I thought, giddy with anticipation. Best gift ever! We'll spend hours playing together, laughing together, hugging, high-fiving our victories. Everyone knows that ping pong is the Elmer's glue of family bonding.

On Christmas Eve, with the boys tucked in bed, I raced to the garage. My wife stood at the front door, skeptical. My last-minute no-list shopping expeditions have been known to be problematic. Every year, I set off like a 17th century explorer: armed, determined and dangerous. She never knew what I would drag home.

As I rolled the table up to the house, it looked more and more like an enormous mastodon. We could hardly squeeze it through the door. Suddenly, I realized with a crushing sense of doom, we'd never wrestle this baby down into the basement.

"Brilliant," my wife snarled.

Fortunately, I've got furniture-moving expertise. And our family room was full of furniture - pretty much all of it unnecessary in my view! I tipped the sofa on its side, rolled a chair around the corner, and flipped the ottoman into another room. When the dust settled, I'd created a sports arena with the table in the center.

Christmas morning arrived, and there were shrieks of joy from the boys. We picked up our paddles and the battle began. Outside, snow flurries whipped around the house. Inside, ping pong balls bounced off the walls.

When grandparents, and uncles arrived, they had to suck in their bellies to squeeze around the furniture stacked by the front door. A crowd gathered around the table. Merrily, we fought for ping pong supremacy. My wife even managed to forgive me - that is, until a ball splashed into the pan of gravy bubbling on the stove.  

And then it hit me. Maybe I wasn't the only fool who brought home a gift so large it required us to empty the house of furniture. So if you, like me, got swept up in the holiday spirit and you need to sell off your furniture to accommodate a new ping pong table ... well, Furniture Consignment Gallery is here to help.

But as for your fuming spouse, you're on your own.

Closing up the other night, I checked every corner of the store. As always, our showroom has seen a lot of traffic, and I've found everything from balled-up tissues to my own business card - with trample marks - on the floor.  But I can always count on finding at least one item that will make me smile.

After a busy day, I always find remnants of lollipops scattered around the store. A blue wrapper in one corner. A red one under a dresser. Here, a well-gnawed white stick. You wouldn't think I'd like picking up trash every night. The truth is, I'm O.K. with it.

That's because lollipops changed this business.

Seven years ago, Diana and I bought Furniture Consignment Gallery from the couple who started the business. They'd had some good years, but they had grown weary of the grind of moving furniture, and they wanted to move onto the next phase in their life. To us, it seemed, they'd also tired of the challenges of retail.

The showroom was littered with signs, none of them friendly. "Don't Touch Me" was stuck on a topiary. "No Strollers" greeted shoppers at the bottom of the stairs. "Keep Children in Hand" was taped to the front door. Tacked in the stairwell: "No Food or Drink."

On our first day as new owners, Diana gathered up all the signs. Stopping in to say goodbye, the former owners were appalled. "What if someone spills coffee on a white sofa?" the woman demanded. "What if someone trips on the stairs carrying a stroller?" her husband asked.

"Well," I offered, a bit hesitantly. "We think you were missing a market."

"Really?" the woman huffed. "Which one?"

"Moms with kids," I said.  

The next day, Diana filled a bowl with lollipops for our customers. By the end of the week, it was empty. We filled it again. A few weeks later, we got a bigger bowl.

After seven years, I can offer the Federal Reserve a reliable new indicator of business growth: lollipops. The faster we go through candy, the higher our sales.

As it turns out, moms with kids aren't the only ones who love a sweet treat while shopping. So do newlyweds. And twentysomethings furnishing their first apartment, "empty nesters" outfitting the new townhouse. And even the seasoned business man who was unraveling a root beer flavored pop. He was asking me why we seemed to be doing well in this difficult economy.

I gave him a dum dum answer.

So, stop by anytime. We promise to keep the showroom stocked with quality furniture - and the candy bowl filled with lollipops. Try to throw your wrappers away, but if one sifts through your fingers and hits the floor while you are admiring a glistening mahogany chest of drawers; I won't mind picking it up at the end of the day. Really.

     Our once-a-year sale requires all hands on deck, so we were pretty happy when an old friend stopped by the showroom to help. Jim is a former corporate executive who suffered a brain aneurysm, and a heart attack eight years ago. His health problems cost him some cognitive ability, but he hasn't lost his confidence, his talent for leadership or his sense of humor.

      All of those were in evidence when a customer decided to buy a beautiful hand-planed barn board table. She drove to our showroom from her home in Connecticut, prepared to haul home her treasure. She brought a U-haul - and her dad. Both father and daughter were concerned that the trailer's worn-out shocks would mean a bumpy ride and, ultimately, a damaged table.

     Jim came to the rescue. Rummaging around our storage room, he found a case of paper towels and a half-dozen rolls of duct tape. "This might do the trick!" he announced, "Oh, and Jay," he added, "I'm going to need a saw."

     A saw? Near this spectacular table? My heart seized up for a minute, but I decided to trust him.

     An hour later, the table was secure in the trailer - and packed so carefully it could withstand a collision with a Hummer. First, the table was swathed in bubble wrap. Then, Jim constructed a crate using scrap wood. Placing the table into the crate, he used rolls of paper towels to act as shock absorbers. He topped it off with a tarp in case of rain.

     Father and daughter honked to say good-bye as they pulled out of the parking lot, happy with their treasure and with the innovative packing that insured they'd get the table home without a scratch.
     Jim is one lucky guy to have survived a health whammy. And we're lucky, too. He came out of it with his big heart - and his creativity - intact. Thanks to him, our customer will be serving dinners on the table of her dreams for years to come.

     He parked his bicycle outside the store on Route 9 in Chestnut Hill, opened the door and staggered into the showroom, out of breath and sweating profusely. "It's hot out there," he announced, wiping his brow.

      "My wife sent me to check out some chairs," he told us. He was an older gentleman, but it was apparent from his build and his firm hand-shake that he may have been quite an athlete years ago. We pulled up a chair for him and offered him a gulp of water.

     Like him, the Chippendale chairs had a rich patina, were full of character and solid as a rock. He looked them over and bought them decisively. The decisiveness is a trait that had likely served him well during, what we guessed to have been, a successful business career.

     He decided to forego the bike ride home, and called his wife for a ride. Twenty minutes later, a woman strode into the store, clearly exasperated. She was a bit younger, pretty and a polished suburban wife. "What were you thinking?" she scolded the man. "The bike? In this heat? Route 9? Are you crazy?"

     Despite the lecture - and a tumultuous medical history - he didn't look a bit sheepish. In fact, he ignored the rant and turned to us with a reasonable request. "Put those chairs aside for me. I'll be back to get them a bit later. Oh, and don't sell my bike."

      After he left we thought: who wouldn't want to almost kill themselves by bicycling down Route 9 in blazing heat to buy their wife some chairs from FCG? It all made perfect sense to us.

"Beautiful!" the octogenarian bellowed at his wife a few feet away. The pair was admiring a massive cherry hutch with beveled glass they found in the showroom and intended to buy. "We can move this ourselves," his wife hollered back with delight. "We don't need to pay the delivery fee."

Looking a bit doubtful, he gingerly made his way over to the hutch and attempted to lift the top half of the hutch an inch or two to gauge its weight. "I think we can get it," he announced with confidence to the entire population of Hanover, MA. She made her way to the opposite side and concurred. "Oh, yes, dear, we can."

To this pair, life is a bucking bronco - and you'd best grab it by the horns.

Married when Elvis was crooning Love Me Tender on the Hit Parade, the two were still feathering their nest and having adventures. After a buying spree in our showroom, they were going to look at motor homes for a cross-country jaunt. 

He was 82. She was 81. The fun, they assured me, was just starting. 

The two actually preferred the view at 10,000 feet. Both have been aviators since they were first married. They have flown the friendly skies in his-and-her single-engine planes for more than a half-century.

Hers is a sporty 1968 Beechcraft, a plane that just begs for a flight outfit of go-go boots and a miniskirt.  She went out to the car to get photos. "I'll never sell it," she exclaimed. "It's my baby." Her husband just put a new engine in it for her.  

As for the hutch, I proposed they leave the heavy lifting to the pros. Why risk a slipped disc when there's so much more left on the bucket list? I convinced them to let our young bucks bring the hutch home for them - and they almost had me signed up for flight lessons.  

Those two old birds are doing it right: life at full throttle, even in your 80s.

Love the Adventure book featured? Buy it here.

So you tackled a redecorating project, but things went awry and you’re not exactly sure how it happened. Worse yet, you have no idea how to fix it. Here are five common decorating disasters and some tips on how to avoid them.

The Floral Fiasco: After agonizing over swatches for days, you finally found a chintz you liked for the sofa. So you decided to double down on that bet. You did the chairs, the ottoman, and the window treatments in the same fabric. Heck, you even bought another bolt to cover the bar stools and make a shower curtain. Yes, it is possible to have too much of a good thing – even if it is of good quality. I love tiger maple Eldred Wheeler, but a room full of it is boring and predictable. You might love the look of an all-white room in a design magazine, but err in the execution and your home will feel like an igloo. Good design is a skillful mix of patterns, color and texture.      

Photo: Bedroom 324 of the White House- "The room as the Chintz Bedroom, circa 1963  (Kennedy Library)"

The Skittles Color Scheme:

You wanted every room to have a unique personality, so you did each one in a different color. Now, your guests are looking for the pot of gold in your home because they think they’ve wandered into a rainbow. Pick a pleasing neutral that flows through your home, and you can still infuse your decorating scheme with spicy pops of color.

Photo of Color experiement Exhibit at Salone del Mobile in Milan by Porro

Scale Snafus: A small rug in a big room looks like a postage stamp on a pool table. There’s no excuse for that kind of mistake even if you must show off your beautiful hardwood floors. Scale is a tough challenge for a decorating newbie, but it is absolutely crucial. Cramming oversized furniture into a small space just shrinks the room – and causes bruising when you try to navigate around it. On the other hand, a big room looks cold and uninviting with furniture that is too small or too dainty. Scale isn’t just about the furniture, either. Patterns in fabric also affect proportions. Misunderstanding scale is where many inexperienced homeowners run amok in their decorating projects.   

Welcome to the Museum: Turning the little-used guest bath into a luxurious spa is a lovely idea, but it shouldn’t be your first – or even second – project. Dedicate most of your decorating budget to the rooms you use every day. We often see homes that boast a state-of-the-art home theatre or palatial guest quarters, but the family actually lives day-to-day in a space that has shabby furniture, bare windows and poor lighting. Don’t spend all your decorating dollars on the rarely used specialty rooms just to impress once-a-year guests. You and your family deserve comfort and beauty every day.

Dim-Bulb Design: Lighting should be

layered in almost every room. That typically means a combination of recessed lights, lamps large and small, and perhaps sconces and chandeliers. Plan for a variety of lighting in your decorating budget. I also recommend dimmers to set the mood. Dull lighting can make your rooms look gloomy and washed-out. On the other hand, no one feels comfortable in a place so bright it feels like an operating room.

The Black Monster: The television is a critical element in most family rooms, so you should take extra effort to make sure it is placed correctly. This can be a challenge. Putting a flat-screen above the fireplace could mean big chiropractor bills in the future. When the screen is set too high on the wall, you may get a crimp in your neck watching it. And you can’t always stick the television in a corner, either. When you invite folks over for beer and Bruins, you don’t want them executing a bizarre yoga twist just to catch a glimpse of the screen.  Finally, resist the temptation to buy the biggest flat-screen in the store. The television shouldn’t dominate the room.

Still, everyone makes mistakes. You shouldn’t punish yourself and force your family to live inside a cocoon of cabbage roses … if, say, you were the one who went overboard with the chintz. Call Furniture Consignment Gallery and we might just find another home for your mistake – and put some cash back in your pocket.

"I would accept a reasonable offer on the altar table." The gentleman - and potential consignor - indicated with a sweep of his hand on the long, rectangular table in his living room. The piece was clearly old, but it was rough-hewn and lacking any ornamentation.

     Curious, I asked him what he would consider reasonable. "A good offer would be twelve thousand," the man said firmly, "and a reasonable offer would be six thousand." 

     I gulped. Would that be in dollars or peanuts? I thought. I quickly squelched the comment, because I knew he wasn't joking.

     Asian furniture occupies a special niche in the consignment business. China is an ancient country, and treasured possessions such as porcelain and furniture typically have been passed down from generation to generation. In this case, the eight-foot altar table was more than two hundred years old. Its construction and workmanship suggested it had been built during the mid-Qing Dynasty, China's last dynasty, which ruled from 1644 to 1912.

     How did the table get to Boston? The gentleman's mother had been a pioneer of Asian-influenced interior design who had visited China frequently to scour that country for antiques after it opened to the West in the early 1970s. Some of her most important pieces had been consigned to the Boston Design Center, where showrooms had built vignettes around items she had collected in Japan, Korea and China.

      Her son had inherited some of her favorite pieces, including the altar table. While it wasn't as rare or exquisite as something you might see in the Shanghai Museum, it was beautiful for its history and provenance. Yet the price he was seeking was still astounding - at least for our customers.

     Sentimentality sometimes creates a fog of confusion for consignors when it comes to the value of their furniture. In this consignor's mind, the altar table may have represented his mother's adventurous spirit in venturing into a place as economically chaotic and primitive as China in the 1970s. Or the table may have been a reminder of her celebrated career as the doyenne of Chinese-inspired décor in Boston.

     But our buyers wouldn't see those things in this rough table and we couldn't command the price he was asking. We agreed that Furniture Consignment Gallery wasn't the right place to sell the table, and we parted as friends. In leaving, I offered him some advice. Antique stores that specialize in Asian furniture attract knowledgeable connoisseurs. After visiting with some specialty stores his pricing expectations could be validated or he may find that he would need to reset them. They would at least appreciate his altar table - and the story of the woman who launched it on its long journey to the U.S. Secretly I was hoping he would decide otherwise and give us a chance.