apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I did this too only I have a really weird story to go with it!

I posted an ad on Craigslist for the furniture that I wanted to get rid of before moving cross country.

I recieved a response from a girl that said "do you happen to live on Lanier? I think I just looked at your apartment for rent?" She recognized the furniture and the apartment in the photos from the ad.

Well turns out, she actually rented my apartment and bought most of the furniture I was trying to sell. Neither one of us had to move it! It worked out perfectly if not a little weird.

My sister tried to do this when leaving her basement studio in Georgetown. Even her landlord was astonished when the incoming tenant expressed no interest because he (the landlord) said he had never seen such a successful use of the space. We even turned an under the stair nook into a workspace to take the desk out of the main room, and finding a tiny enough desk for that space was a chore!

Most of that furniture has since found new homes through CL and donations, but we still wonder what the new tenant did with the space...

i did that with shelving and blinds that i had installed. i felt a bit weird asking but it saved me un-installing and selling and saved the new tenant buying and installing. brilliant!

I think that this is such a great idea.

I did this too after moving from my Hoboken apt (I was leaving the country and couldn't take anything). The new tenant bought nearly everything and what was left, I sold via CL, a stoop sale and my then-current roommate. When I eventually moved back to NYC, I bought my current furniture from the previous roommate.

My parents tell a story of when they were living in Boston while my dad attended law school, that the building they lived in had a treadition where the graduating students assigned over their leases to others wanting to move in, on the condition that the new tenant bought any furniture the one moving out didn't want to take.

When I was in the USAF, we all had small refrigerators (Beer Coolers) that went with the dorm rooms - each one was bought for $25 bucks from the last guy and after the tour of duty, sold for $25 to the next guy...

My first apartment when I got married 3 years ago was a tiny but adorable garage apartment in a beautiful old neighborhood, but we had to move on because it didn't have a real kitchen and I love to cook. We had a hard time moving our furniture up the narrow and oddly angled stairs tucked under a low sloped ceiling, and found it utterly impossible to get the sofa out. We tried every possible way and even put a hole in the wall trying. (Yes, yes, how does something fit in but not out, we stayed up for nights plagued by this engineering problem.) Luckily the next tenant wanted to keep it so we just left it there. Unless the owners of the house want to dismantle the sofa or drop it out the window, it's going to be there for many more tentants!

AmyV, I have a similar sofa story except I was the recipient and we didn't want it We tried unsuccessfully for hours to get it out until we resorted to the Saws-All. It was too bad since it was in decent shape, but so unbelievably ugly.

I just bought 18K worth of furniture for 3K from my new home's previous owner.
She moved to Hawaii and didn't want to take it all.

There were also pieces she passed on from previous owners as well as the original blueprints, newspaper and magazine articles, as well as notecards, historical photos, and artwork of the house.

Made me feel like I'm a curator rather than owner, and I love a house with a past!

We are in the process of moving into our new apartment, which is smaller (simplify!), so we asked the couple moving into our old place if they'd like some things.

Oddly enough, the platform bed that has bruised my shin repeatedly (just mine, of course!) is the one they'd already been thinking of buying from IKEA, so we're leaving it for them.

We also installed a "bar" and overhead light (mostly from the as-is section at IKEA), and they absolutely love it. Since we have no use for them, we're leaving those too.

It's a win-win!

the previous tenant of my apartment left a lot of her furniture. We didn't ask for it, but we got it anyway... she left a lot of expired prescription drugs. We think she was crazy.

The only reason why I was willing to move into my first Manhattan apartment, which was VERY tiny...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/artycurtis/sets/72157602155505156/

...was because the previous tenant had built in a loft bed. Otherwise that apartment would not have been workable at all for me.

In some of those pictures is a huge piece that I had had custom built as part of an even huger piece when I was in my Astoria apartment (right before that one), and which I brought to my next apartment, which was a 1-bedroom.

I ended up leaving it for the friend who sublet it from me when I bought my first co-op apartment. It was nice to not have to move that.

Then when I sold my first apartment, I left these two IKEA-esque mirror-front armoires that almost looked like built-ins that I actually bought at Macy's, because it really was the only way to get any decent sized closet space in that apartment. The Buyer was very happy to have them, and to have the Murphy bed which I left there, and the lighting I left and --- yes --- the towels I left there, which matched the mural that I had done the bathroom, which made it look like a subway station. The night before the closing I finished changing the name of the "station" (in faux-mosaic paint)from my name to his.

Curtis, I just checked out your first apartment - awesome, about the same size as my first Paris apartment, but with twenty-times more creative flair. :)