Buying Furniture on Gmarket

Furniture can cost a surprising amount of money in Korea.  The tradition of second-hand stores such as Goodwill and Savers is not as strong in Korea as in some Western countries.  Furthermore, rummage sales are almost unheard of (although there are some in the expat community once or twice a year).

 

Thankfully, Gmarket is a resource you can count on for affordable quality furnishings.

 

Now, if you are an English teacher, you may have been provided with an apartment that was furnished with all the basics.  Perhaps what you have is good enough.  However, the furnishings with which we were provided were all very low-quality.  Our chairs, a combination of aluminum and plastic, broke after a couple of short months.  On Gmarket we were able to buy these gems for about 20,000 won per chair (shipping was 7,000 won for both items together):

Remember our gmarket highchair?  Yes, our new chairs match!

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One of the very first pieces of furniture we bought off of gmarket, however, was this wonderful lifesaver:

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Our computer desk came with a 4-shelf bookshelf and a computer tower.  The ensemble cost around 30,000 won together, and probably 7,000 won for shipping.  The pieces do not come with any hardware – everything is supposed to balance together without attaching.

 

While that may work in some households, we knew it was a disaster waiting to happen in ours.  To prevent a very busy toddler from disassembling such a delicate balance, we went ahead and just nailed the thing together.

Issue resolved!

Our most recent prize is our new couch:

PapaFish models our fancy new couch!

 

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This couch is actually a sofa bed!  The back folds down to two positions: it can either fold into a reclining couch or all the way down to a bed.  I thought it would make our apartment feel more cramped, but at 183cm long it actually is pretty much out of the way.  I think our place is quite a bit roomier now!

We bought the couch on sale for 84,000 won, and shipping was an extra 30,000.  The delivery guys set it up and assembled it for us, too – and they also delivered it a week early!  The initial delivery date was more than 2 weeks after I ordered it, but I begged them to deliver it sooner as my dad was in town visiting us.  They did their best and it was here for his second weekend. 

 

All in all, we’ve been able to furnish our little oneroom apartment comfortably and with a decent amount of organization.  Thank you, Gmarket!