The Thrift Fail that became our Biggest Sale

We love love LOVE finding charity shop treasures to furnish and decorate our home. We thought we had found something a bit special – but we couldn’t keep it. Here is how that most painful of fails became our biggest ever sale.

The Sighting

We were driving past a charity shop on the opposite side of the road, in heavy traffic, and in a hurry to get home. As I turned my head, I caught a fleeting glimpse of a magnificent chair – no, it was a throne – in the window of the shop.

It was glorious. Although I only saw it for a second, I knew I wanted it for our home. And although my husband hadn’t seen it at all, he knew he wanted it too. Because I told him he did.

We went home chairless, but with plans already being made to make another trip the next morning to bring our chair home. In my head I was rearranging the living room furniture, and everything was perfect. In my head, anyway.

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The Purchase

My husband made the journey early the next morning, hoping that our beautiful chair would be waiting for him. Sure enough, there it was – and with a squish and a squeeze, and a lot of stubbornness, he got it into the back of the car.

The manager of the shop said that there had been a lot of interest in our chair. He had done his research, and it was a “Varier,” which meant nothing to us. Lots of people had sat in it (how dare they?!) and loved it (noooo!) but none of them had been willing to pay the £50 to make it theirs. Lucky for us.

The Fail

Oh, the pain. This part is hard.

We carried our beautiful beast of a chair into our little living room, and… it didn’t fit.

I mean, it wasn’t even close. The chair was huge. Massive. And our living room is cosy. Snug.

We didn’t give up, though. We huffed and puffed that monstrous chair up the world’s narrowest stairs – a triumph of hope over physics – in the hope that it might become a bedroom chair. With less furniture in the bedrooms, surely that would work?

Yes, if we had removed a bed or two. And some wardrobes and drawers. Maybe a wall.

It just didn’t fit anywhere in our house.

Yes, we considered moving. That is how much we loved that chair. We also considered the garden shed but a chair so special deserves something less spidery.

The Chair

Here it is. (Not our photo; there was no room in our home big enough to get a proper pic. The rooms in this person’s house must be massive.)

It really doesn’t look that big but in person it was a behemoth.

Why was it so special?

It turned out to be a Varier Gravity Balans chair, designed by Norwegian chair design superstar Peter Opsvik.

The idea behind the unique shape is that you can use the chair in a number of different ways. You can tip it forwards and use it as a kneeling chair, for working, or you can sit upright, or tip it backwards and feel like you are floating on air.

Everyone in the house – and some people not in the house – tried it out, and we all loved that chair. But, if something doesn’t fit in your home, it really needs to find another home, where it can be loved and cherished by someone who can tip it back without putting a foot through the window.

We decided to sell.

At which point, our luck changed for the better, and our fail turned into something special after all.

The Sale

A Varier Gravity Balans chair, it turns out, is worth a lot of money.

Brand new, this might cost anything from £2,500 to £4000, depending on the optional extra finishes and upholstery.

But would it sell second-hand?

Yes, as it turns out, it would.

Having checked the sold items on eBay and finding all kinds of wild and wonderful prices, we decided to list it high and accept offers, with free postage to help things along.

Luckily for us the chair actually disassembles and packs fairly flat – but postage was still coming in at around £70.

We listed on eBay and hoped that someone else would fall in love with it the way we did – and that they would have the sense to measure their home before trying to squeeze this giant chair in.

And then someone did fall in love with it, and now they are probably tipped back, defying gravity, floating on air even as I type. I am delighted for them.

• Are you ready to Resell?

The Lesson

Two important lessons here;

• Measure, measure, measure. Know how big your space is, and don’t estimate, no matter how much a chair is calling you from the window of a shop as you whizz past in the car. And don’t huff and puff a chair upstairs of it definitely won’t fit into any of your upstairs rooms either.

• Sometimes a fail is just a sale in disguise. Although we bought the chair for our home, and were bitterly disappointed that it was too enormous to fit, it then gave us a huge boost when we needed it when it sold.

While I would strongly advise against rushing out to buy unsuitable furniture in the hope that it will make big money on eBay, I will definitely be looking more closely at furniture in charity shops from now on.

If you have the space to store the odd item for a while (furniture can be a slow seller,) and if you research your postage options carefully (nobody wants to have their fancy antique heirloom piece delivered in a broken heap,) then why not try a furniture flip? This one worked out for us, and has been an inspiring experience. We will be on the lookout for the next something special, and if we find it, we will share it here with you.