Furnishing the House
The custom in Spain seems to be that when you buy a house, it is sold with some basic furniture included. You may be able to negotiate with the vendor to buy some other pieces that they were intending to take away. This is something you will arrange among yourselves - the solicitor doesn't seem to get involved in this process, unlike in the UK where a big deal is made over exactly what gets taken and what is left behind. When I went back to the house I eventually bought, the lady of the house took me round each room and explained to me (in spanish) what would go and what would stay.
My experience of this is that the furniture the vendors "gave" me was the stuff they simply didn't want - or couldn't be bothered to take away. This included old chipboard wardrobes with broken hinges, a large number of tubular steel-framed chairs, some rather tired chairs and a sofa and a several bedframes. As mentioned in other articles, the bathroom suite needed replacing and there was a rather old fridge in the kitchen. Thankfully, the vendors did take their freezer full of meat.
One thing I have noticed and that seems to be bourne out by others is that (in my area, in particular) the local people are considerably shorter than northern europeans and the size of their furniture tends to reflect this. Beds are shorter than I was used to and the kitchen units I inherited are significantly lower than the modern standard sizes. The biggest issue however is that door jambs are a lot lower, which always causes me a sore head and has laid others out cold.
Where to get furniture in Spain
On the basis that sooner or later you will decide to get rid of all or most of the furniture you were left, the next question is "what to replace it with?". One of the drawbacks of rural Spain, that I'll address in more detail later, is the lack of big shops - due to the smaller number of potential customers. This leaves you with two alternatives: buy locally or go to a city. The small exposure I have to local Muebles (furniture) shops is that they tend to go for "chunky", one-off type pieces with little choice of colours, styles or finishes. Unless you have pieces made specifically for you, they will tend to be made for spainish-sized people. The stuff also seems to me, at least, to be very expensive - as you would expect for hand-made furniture. If, lyou are used to buying furniture from specialised stores, your choices seem to come down to El Corte Ingles: the best description I can think of is like John Lewis, some large one-off warehouse style outlets, or IKEA. Be aware that these places only inhabit the more populated areas, so you will have to travel and al
so have to work out how to get your stuff home - or have it delivered. My house is at least 100km from any of these places and therefore well outside their delivery zones.
This lack of delivery options (plus the inevitable "Yes sir, 2-4 weeks. No we can't be more specific") meant I felt I was pretty much on my own so far as getting furniture was concerned.
I'm a buyer, not an orderer.
OK, this is a bit of a rant, but it is something I've learned about myself over the years. My idea of buying an item is to go into a shop, select the product I want, pay for it and take it away. Now I appreciate that this only works for small items, such as Mars bars and for larger pieces - say a double bed, I do need to get it delivered. However, unless I can get a precise date for the delivery I am quite prepared to walk out, and will probably end up paying more at another place for the certainty of knowing when my stuff will arrive. It's a continual mystery to me why no major furniture retailer has discovered that there is a large proportion of the population who can only accept deliveries in the evening or at weekends. The supermarkets have no trouble delivering at convenient times, why do other retailers have such a blind-spot when it comes to letting you have the stuff you've already paid for?
Ahhh, I feel better now.
OK, back to the question of furnishing the place. For the above reasons and personality defects I came to the conclusion that I was going to have to get the furniture myself. Since I wasn't in a position to wait an indeterminant time (as my visits to Spain were quite limited) I needed stuff I could see/buy/take all at once. That left no alternatives to IKEA. There was a new store recently opened in Murcia, so during May 2006, I hired a van from the Hertz office (€90 per day - I only kept it a few days!) and hit the road to Murcia and the furniture store.
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