Buying Furniture at an Estate Sale: What to Check First

Why estate sales are the place to buy furniture

The furniture in an estate sale was bought to be lived with, often decades ago, and much of it was made better than what the same money buys new. It is priced to leave the house in three days, because the company has to empty the rooms before the clean-out, and the last day is usually discounted. And you can sit on it, open it, pull it away from the wall and look at the back, none of which you can do with a photograph online. For a solid-wood dresser, a well-made sofa frame, a dining table or a desk, an estate sale is often the best combination of quality and price available to an ordinary household.

The catch is that it is sold as it stands, it is yours the moment you pay, and it is usually your job to get it out of the house. Everything that goes wrong with an estate sale furniture purchase goes wrong at one of those three points, and each of them can be handled before you leave home.

Measure before you leave home

The most common furniture regret is not a flaw in the piece. It is a sofa that does not turn the corner on the stairs, or a wardrobe an inch taller than the ceiling of the room it was bought for. Measure the destination before the sale, write the numbers on your phone, and take a tape measure with you. The guide to what to bring puts the tape measure near the top of the list for this reason.

At the sale, measure the piece in all three directions and note whether anything comes off: legs, a mirror on a dresser, the top of a hutch, the back of a sofa on some designs. A piece that seems impossible is often two pieces bolted together, and a sofa that will not go through a door upright will sometimes go through on its end. If the numbers are close, the answer is no. Close means a scraped door frame and a sofa in the hall.

How to inspect a piece in five minutes

You will be looking at the piece with other shoppers waiting, so have a routine. This one takes about five minutes and finds nearly everything that matters.

1. Rock it. Push on a corner. A table, chair or case piece that racks or sways has loose joints. Some can be re-glued cheaply; a chair with every joint loose is a project.
2. Open every drawer and door. Drawers should run without binding. Look at the drawer sides: dovetail joints, hand-cut or machine-cut, mean a better-made piece than stapled or glued sides. Look at the drawer bottom, which is where a maker's stamp or a retailer's label often hides.
3. Look at the back and underneath. Turn a chair over. Pull a dresser from the wall. Solid wood, plywood and particleboard are obvious from behind, and the back is where water damage, old repairs and pest evidence show.
4. Check the finish and the veneer. Lifting or bubbled veneer, especially on a top, is expensive to repair well. Surface scratches and rings are usually not. Run a hand over the top rather than trusting your eyes under a household lamp.
5. Sit on it, lean on it, lie on it. For upholstered pieces, press the seat where the frame is. A sagging deck, a broken spring you can feel, or a frame that creaks is what you would be buying.
6. Smell it. Smoke and mildew are the two odors that never fully leave upholstery and rarely leave the inside of a case piece. Open a drawer and put your nose in it.
7. Look for pests. Small round holes with fresh sawdust are active woodworm. Dark specks along seams and in the corners of an upholstered frame are a reason to walk away from any upholstered piece, whatever the price.
8. Count the parts. Leaves for a table, keys for a locking piece, shelves for a bookcase, the glass for a cabinet door, the hardware for anything that is missing a pull. Ask the staff; a missing leaf is often in a closet.

None of this needs expertise. It needs the willingness to get down on the floor in a stranger's house with people watching, which is exactly what the buyers who never regret a purchase are willing to do.

The pieces worth the effort, and the ones that are not

Whether a piece is worth carrying out depends on what you want it for. For a home, the question is whether it is well made and fits. For resale, the question is whether anyone is buying that kind of furniture right now, and the answer has changed a great deal in twenty years. Prices depend on condition, maker and local demand, and nothing below is a valuation.

Usually worth the effort:

• Solid-wood case pieces of any period: dressers, chests, desks, bookcases, sideboards. Good joinery and real wood outlast anything sold flat-packed.
• Mid-century pieces from named makers, and unsigned pieces in the same style with clean lines and sound joints. The mid-century furniture guide explains what to look for and why the demand exists.
• Dining tables and sets of chairs that are sturdy and a size people can use, particularly smaller tables and sets of four to six.
• Upholstered pieces with a good frame, bought to reupholster. Only if you have priced reupholstery locally first; it often costs more than the piece.
• Small pieces that carry easily: side tables, plant stands, stools, nightstands, small chests. They sell to anyone and fit in any car.
• Outdoor furniture in iron or teak, which is expensive new and lasts.

Usually not, unless you want it for yourself and it fits:

• Large dark-wood suites: full bedroom sets, china cabinets, tall secretaries, formal dining sets for ten. Well made, heavy, and very hard to sell on, because buyers no longer have the rooms. The antique furniture guide separates the exceptions from the rule.
• Particleboard and laminate furniture, which does not survive a second move.
• Upholstered pieces past their first decade unless the frame is exceptional, and any mattress.
• Anything with an odor, active pests, or lifting veneer over most of a surface.
• Pianos, which are free in most markets for good reason.

If a piece is old and priced high, check that it is what the tag claims before you commit. Reproductions of period furniture were made in enormous quantities, and a family often believed their reproduction was the genuine article. The guide to spotting fakes and reproductions describes the tells: machine-regular joinery, uniform wear where wear should be uneven, plywood where there should be boards.

Prices, and when to offer less

Furniture is the category where the day you shop matters most. On the first morning a company expects its price for the good pieces and will usually say so. By the last afternoon, anything still in the house has to be moved by somebody, and a reasonable offer on a heavy piece is often accepted with relief. Many companies announce a percentage discount for the last day; some will negotiate below it on furniture specifically. The guide to which day to shop lays out the trade-off, and the guide to negotiating explains how to make an offer that is taken seriously.

The risk is obvious: the piece you wanted may be gone by Sunday. A sensible middle course is to buy the piece you cannot replace on the first day at the asking price, and to bid on the pieces you could live without at the end. If a sale takes bids, leave one on the first day and let the company call you if it is still there.

Getting it home

Once you pay, the piece is yours, and at nearly every sale it is also your responsibility. Staff will put a sold tag on it, and most will let you collect it later the same day or on a set pickup day after the sale, but the company is not a moving service, does not insure what you bought, and will not hold it indefinitely. Read the sale's terms for the pickup window before you buy anything you cannot carry to the car, and read the guide to paying, holds and pickups for how holds, sold tags and collection deadlines generally work.

For the move itself:

• Bring help. Two people for anything a case piece, three for a sofa or a large dresser on stairs. Staff will sometimes lend a hand with a door; they are not obliged to and often cannot.
• Bring blankets, straps and a dolly. A furniture dolly and two moving blankets cost less than repairing one gouged top, and a piece sliding in the back of a pickup is how most damage happens.
• Take it apart where it is meant to come apart. Remove legs, mirrors, hutch tops and drawers, and put the hardware in a labeled bag in your pocket, not on the seat of the truck.
• Protect the house as well as the piece. The family's house is still someone's home, or is about to be sold. A scraped door frame on the way out is not yours to leave behind.
• Rent the truck for the pickup day, not the sale day, if the company allows a later collection. You can buy on Saturday and move on Sunday afternoon with the right vehicle rather than improvise with the wrong one.

If you cannot move it yourself, ask the company whether it works with a local mover or delivery service; many keep a name to hand. Get that arranged before the pickup deadline rather than after it, because a piece not collected by the deadline is usually treated as abandoned.

Once it is home

Clean it before it comes inside. Vacuum every drawer and the underside, wipe the interior with a mild cleaner, and let upholstery air outdoors on a dry day. If you have any doubt about pests, keep the piece in the garage until you are sure.

Then resist the urge to refinish. Most old finishes clean up with a gentle cleaner and paste wax, and a piece that is worth something is worth more with its original surface than with a fresh coat of anything. Stripping and repainting is the right choice for a plain, damaged piece you want for daily use, and the wrong choice for anything a collector might want. If you are unsure which you have, the guide to finding out whether something is valuable shows how to check before the sander comes out. Re-gluing a loose joint, replacing a drawer runner and touching up a scratch are all within reach of a careful amateur and do not change what the piece is.

What to do next

Measure the room and the route into it, write the numbers on your phone, and put a tape measure, blankets and a friend's phone number in the car. Then browse upcoming estate sales near you, open the listings with the most photographs of full rooms, and read the terms for pickup before you go. The holds and pickups guide and the beginner's guide to shopping estate sales cover what happens once you are in the door.

If you are on the other side of this, with a house full of furniture to sell, describe the estate once and local estate sale companies reach out to you, free.

Frequently asked questions