No, I'm not afraid to bring home used furniture, and have done it plenty of times! I'm not particularly germ or bug-phobic, and while I do realize that I'm taking on a certain amount of risk by bringing home used stuff, I don't spend time fretting about it. And so far I haven't brought in anything that contained any "surprises"! ;-)

I will qualify this, however, and say that if I were (for example) to go and take a look at a chair that I saw advertised on Craig's List, and discovered that it was in a filthy environment, I'd walk away from that. I've brought home rugs and chairs from CL sellers, though, who obviously had clean and well cared-for homes, and didn't even think twice about it.

I don't know if I'd call someone paranoid because they fear bedbugs and similar creepy-crawlies. I guess I just think, "to each her own!"

I don't think there's anything wrong with being careful. I had not thought about used furniture bringing bedbugs with it. I have read and seen news stories where they can be a real problem though - they do bite and can be quite hard to get rid of. The stories I've seen/read have mentioned motels, etc. and what to look for.

I suppose I am a bit cautious as just out of personal preference I have not (as of yet) purchased used upholstered furniture.

tina

I've been much more "successful" in bringing home cats ... with fleas.
;-)

All of my second hand furniture has been wood. Tables and chairs and bookcases. So I think there is far less chance that there will be bugs in it.

It's not that I'm opposed to buying upholstered furniture second hand, it's just that I can't find things I like well enough to buy. I would if I could. If I were worried about bugs, I'd keep it out of the house until I could treat it or get it reupholstered.

But then, 90% of my furniture was purchased second hand or passed down from family, so I'm used to the older stuff.

All of my used upholstered furniture has been bought through CL and been in nice homes. I'd be more wary about purchased used upholstered items in a flea market environment unless I had plans to reupholster. I did purchase a used rug through an antique store that I had no knowledge about the background and have yet to have professionally cleaned, though I probably should do so--so far no problems.

I will say when I recovered my antique DR chairs I found a lot of suprises under the the upholstery which goes to show you never quite know what is there:

Oh my. Do my eyes deceive me, or does that cushion have a backbone?
=:-O

I saw a lovely old fashioned settee at the curb the other day and almost put it in the car. I passed because I didnt see the inside of the house. I drove back latter thinking I would give it a good look, but alas she who hesitated lost it. It was no longer there. I never thought about it in the past until I read that stupid article.

OK, this thread prompts me to post this video. (I love this! ;-))

Here is a link that might be useful: What's that ... smell?

You guys are creeping me out -- I can't stand bugs of anykind
.
Couple weeks ago, I broke my promise never to buy used upholstery furniture and brought home an used sofa. Now I'm thinking I should air it out & look for bugs!

Okay -- so after typing the post, I went to clean out the sofa, making sure there's no creepy stuff hiding in there. Well, I found a bunch of changes, couple chinese food menus, a brand new remote control (!) and a gold lady Bulova watch with diamond (!) It doesn't work so god know how long it's been seating there.

I am just glad there was no used condom. That would be creepy! ;-)

No but my DH worries. Even about wood furniture. He thinks roach eggs can live in the teeny cracks in the wooden joints and hatch in your house. He was upset that I curb shopped a wooden bench. And a desk. I would hate to think what he would do if I curb shopped a fabric piece. And I don't think bed bugs are on his radar screen.

I did stop and drag the desk partway out of my car when I got to work so that I could get the spiderwebs and egg sacks and spider off the desk. Just as a coworker that doesn't get it walked by!

I seldom get anything used, too squeamish. Seriously, I would never bring home a used mattress.

This is perfect timing as someone on my local CL recently posted a warnng to check for mice and mice nests when buying off CL. In this case, the person purchased a dryer and found the nest and claimed that the mice had gotten into their house.

I do know that roach eggs can live in furniture. I like someone else mentioned above would never buy if I got to the location and it was filthy. Similarly is skeeves me when people post pics and the rooms or whatever are an absolute mess. My thinking is that the piece probably has not been well cared for.

I'm very careful about who I acquire upholstered items from. Making sure they are clean (the people and their home). I sat very quickly on the pieces I purchased and don't plan to sit on them again until they are recovered. Gives me the creeps thinking about someone else's bedbugs.

I would never, ever buy a used mattress.

We travel a lot and, even though our house looks nice, I am not sure what creepy crawly things might be living in our furniture! So, no, I really don't worry that much about older furniture. (Which is good because almost all my furniture is old, second hand, hand me down stuff that has been slipcovered or redone).

Also worth noting: new furniture can have all kinds of chemical oders and toxic stuff and contribute to overflowing landfills. So I am not sure which is a better/safer buy: older stuff with possible creepy crawlers or new stuff with possible formaldehyde outgassing.

Bedbugs are just due to someone being unclean. And they are transported from place to place very easily. Travel is a big reason for the spread of bedbugs.

I did read they can hide in cracks of wooden furniture. Not only will they feed off of humans, but they like our pets too.

Something to think about and to watch out for. LOL

tina

Here is a link that might be useful: bedbugs

bellaflora.....ha ha.....used condoms! funny stuff!

I brought home 2 used breakfast bar stools once, they were wood. My DH said they smelled like smoke. It was 3 weeks before he allowed them into the house. :0)

Very, very late one night I saw a great old curvy sofe on the curb. I immediately made DH get out of his jammers and go pick it up. He did so willingly but the next day when I came home from work HE WAS NOT HAPPY! Apparently it was infested w/ bugs that came out once they warmed up inside. So my answer would be no. While in the past pre-bug sofa days I'd brought home plenty of upholstered curb finds, I haven't done so since 'The Incident'.

I am a real germophobe, and I don't think I could go for used upholstered furniture. Bedbugs! ack! Used mattress? Double ick! Friends of ours were bitten by bedbugs in a nice hotel recently. A work acquaintance and his wife were stung by scorpions in their hotel room bed!!

However, most of the wood furniture, art, and accessories in my house are second hand, hand me down, or antique, and I have never had any concerns.

I buy furniture off CL all the time! However, I would NEVER, EVER buy a used mattress from anyone, not even a family member! That is just too disgusting in so many ways! I am also very, very picky about upholstered furniture, rugs, etc. Anything I buy used has to come from a pet free, smoke free, spotless home! Even with all my picky prerequisites, I have still managed to purchase quite a bit of great furniture pieces at truly awesome prices.

I can honestly say that except for mattresses, I do not see myself ever buying furniture at full retail price again. There are just too many great bargains to be found! The hunt is so much fun. Plus, my husband and I are recently debt free and I have no intentions of incurring any debt again in the future! CL is so much fun and being debt free is totally liberating!!

Gee ttodd just when i thought it might be safe to go curb crawling again you have to reinforce my fears with that story!! I did haul home an old restaurant 3 bowl sink. thank god for garbage picking girlfriends with access to hubbys' pickup trucks. It is in the backyard waiting to be turned into a great potting bench so i didnt have to worry about the whole bug issue.

During my couple of years of upholstering, only once did I open an upholstered piece that had fleas. On the other hand, there were more smelly pieces than I care to think about. The most common found items tucked in the crevices were quarters and scrabble pieces. Oh, I was offered a vintage armoire that had enough roach poop in it to fill a coffee cup. I clean it up and painted it and today it's one of my most treasured finds.

there is a new resurgence of those type of critters unfortunately..also there are things like bookworms and woodworms, my sister said they were infesting everything in Hawaii..so be careful of buying furniture from military families coming from such ports as Hawaii where they might have those things in them..those are wood and paper products not just upholstery

Many years ago I bot an antique upholstered rocker. The fabric was in bad shape and I could see straw peeking thru so I removed all that outside and redid it from the "bones". Wasn't taking a chance on that straw and IMO that's just common sense.

I have nothing against buying wood furniture or anything that can be easily cleaned second hand. Haven't been as interested in upholstered furniture so I've only bot two upholstered chairs at a consignment shop but they passed my sniff test and look brand new. I think, having seen so many nice finds here, I might have to let go of this hang-up.

I know there has been a warning about bed bugs on the one CL I frequent. If anyone is not too squeamish they can google bedbugs to learn how to detect them. Even clean looking houses can have them apparently.

LOL. Glad I'm not the only one. We purchased used office chairs, left them in the garage and treated them with rid before they came in the house.

My husband and I like to travel. First thing I do is check the mattress in the hotel for signs of bedbugs. You never know. Never ever keep your luggage on the bed or the carpeting (use a stand), as you are less likely to carry bed bugs home with you. Nonetheless, we always check out hotels on trip advisor prior to our travels just to be sure.

Posted by tinam61: "Bedbugs are just due to someone being unclean."

That is NOT true, not true at all.

Bedbugs feed on blood just like mosquitoes. You would not say that someone who got mosquito bites was unclean would you?

Bed bugs are very tiny and hide in seams and crevices. They do not come out in the daytime so they are difficult to detect in the early stages of infestation. They are very resistant to insecticides. They can easily hitch a rid in luggage or come into a home numerous ways.

Are you guys just trying to scare people from using CL, so that you can snatch up all the good stuff for yourself?

good try! :-)

I'm not the squeamish type, but I usually reupholster any CL furniture, so I can check it out from the ground up. There are truly some amazing deals to be had if you're patient and keep an eye out for 'good bones'.

Not sure I would ever pick up an upholstered piece that was sitting outside on the curb, nor a used mattress (ick).

I just posted a sofa over on conversations. I'll take bets on who wouldn't bring this thing home. LOL

Dilly-Dally! I can't believe I posted that! There is supposed to be a NOT in my sentence. (Can you tell I didn't proof?) Someone before me had posted about buying only from clean houses, etc. and I was responding to that. That's why I posted the link re: bedbugs.

Thanks for drawing my attention to that. What a blooper I made!

tina

This is creeping me out! I have never bought used upholstery. Whenever we travel, I also check the room esp. around the bed for bedbugs. Just in case, I always vacuum the outside of our luggage before bringing it inside. Bedbugs and lice can be present in clean environments. In fact, lice prefer clean hair!

Apparently bugs aren't the only things you can bring home in furniture. This was on Yahoo! News this morning:

SPOKANE, Wash. Â The mysterious mewing in Vickie Mendenhall's home started about the time she bought a used couch for $27.

After days of searching for the source of the noise, she found a very hungry calico cat living in her sofa.

Her boyfriend, Chris Lund, was watching TV on Tuesday night and felt something move inside the couch. He pulled it away from the wall, lifted it up and there was the cat, which apparently crawled through a small hole on the underside.

Mendenhall contacted Value Village, where she bought the couch, but the store had no information on who donated it. So she took the cat to SpokAnimal CARE, the animal shelter where she works, so it could recover, and contacted media outlets in hopes of finding the owner.

Sure enough, Bob Killion of Spokane showed up to claim the cat on Thursday after an acquaintance alerted him to a TV story about it. Killion had donated a couch on Feb. 19, and his 9-year-old cat, Callie, disappeared at about the same time.

___

Information from: The Spokesman-Review, http://www.spokesman.com

That's a cute story about the cat, and I'm glad it had a happy ending! My kittens have "torn my furniture a new one" -- they've opened up holes in the underneath side of my box springs, sofa, and a chair, thinking they're excellent hiding places. (And they are.) One of the projects on my never-ending to-do list is to fix those darn holes.