Looking to remodel your basement? Or hankering for some wainscoting in the dining room? Maybe your plans are more modest. Maybe all you want is for someone to replace a few splintery planks on the deck.
Good luck finding a tradesman to tackle your project. So heated is the home-improvement frenzy that you are probably looking at a wait of up to two years before someone will undertake the job. Meanwhile, the cost of building materials, furniture, appliances, and fixtures is soaring.
For many new homeowners, typically Grand Millennials, this is a kind of interior-design purgatory. Their dreams of transforming a tight and boxy colonial into an open-concept dream home are on hold, indefinitely. They’re going to – gasp! – have to learn to live with the houses they bought for quite some time.
So that means putting a nix on the wooden plank tables popularized by Arhaus and Restoration Hardware. You know, the tables that could seat an entire monastery? Massive kitchens with quartz countertops and double islands? Mudrooms with built-in cubbies and a dog bath? Without the building materials or the tradesmen to install them, many new homebuyers have had to set these plans aside.
What does that mean for those of us in the consignment furniture business? At FCG, we’re seeing a stunningly swift shift back to traditional furniture, the kind of furniture that was designed and scaled to fit the homes millennials are trying to furnish.
Brian, manager of our store in Hanover, was taken aback by the number of young families scouring our showroom last weekend for mahogany dining tables with double pedestals and banded inlaid veneers. These young homeowners are learning how to furnish – and live in – their colonial Capes, Tudors, and Garrisons, as originally designed.
Fortunately for them, FCG has plenty of furniture for them to look over, try out and, best of all, take home immediately. Or have it delivered early next week. We’re probably the one place where homebuyers can fulfill their dream of a fully furnished, comfortable, and stylish new home without waiting years.
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