Finland is an expensive country.  Super expensive.  Super-duper expensive.  So expensive that when we go to London (a notoriously expensive city), we bring our dry cleaning, because it’s cheaper there.

So, it should come as no surprise, then, that buying used is also SUPER DUPER expensive.

But somehow I am surprised.  Shocked, even.  Because HOLY CAMOLY!  It’s outrageous.

Exhibit A:  The coffee table I got from the local charity shop.  If I were a proper DIY blogger, I’d have remembered to take the photo before any sort of restoration work had been done.  But I’m not.  So, I only remembered after I’d painted one coat of white on the legs.

The charity shop originally wanted 40 euros for this table.  FORTY EUROS.  I ended up paying 15 (not because I haggled- the price had been dropped).  People, it’s chipped and dinged.  It’s not even real wood!

It should have been free at the dump!  They should have paid ME to cart it away!

And the really crazy thing is that we live in the land of Ikea.  I could get a brand new table ding-free for 10 euros.  But then it would have been Ikea. And I didn’t want my whole office to be Ikea.  So I passed on Ikea and paid for overpriced used.

Exhibit B:  The arm chair I got from the same local charity shop for a whopping FIFTY EUROS.

It’s outdated.  It’s worn down.  It’s- as my dear friend Anna described- so fugly.  And FIFTY EUROS.

I’ve been reading these websites with slipcover tutorials.  Of course, they all live in America and are like, “Ooh!  Look at this awesome chair I got at a garage sale for 4 dollars!  What a steal!”

And then they go to the Walmart and get cheap fabric to cover the chair, and 20 bucks later they have brand new furniture.

Yeah.  Not so much here.  The fabric- at any place other than Ikea- is so prohibitively expensive it’s a wonder they can sell any at all.

Exhibit C:  The china hutch I tried to buy on Huuto.net (the Finnish Ebay).

I found it for auction last night- the auction was ending in something like 6 hours and the hutch had no bidders.  It was going for 100 euros.  Finally!  thought I optimistically (naively) Something reasonably priced on this website!  

Because it seems that on Huuto.net, the seller can simply paint any old, crappy piece of furniture white, label it “maalaisromanttinen”  (country romantic) and sell it for hundreds and hundreds of euros.

But I digress.

An hour before the auction finished, there was a bidding war between another customer and me, but I was victorious!  Huzzah!  A beautiful china hutch to hide the hideous wall in my office for only 112 euros!

But wait.

My bid didn’t meet the hintavaraus- the secret price the seller lists before he puts the item up for auction.  If the auction doesn’t surpass this hintavaraus, the seller isn’t under any obligation to sell the item.  So even though I won, I didn’t win.

He sent me an email today, saying I could get the the hutch for 200 euros.

Okay.

Here’s the deal.

1.  If you wanted 200 euros for your hutch, I guess you should have started the bidding at 200 euros.

2.  No one bid 200 euros for your hutch.  No one even came close.  It was there for 2 weeks and NO ONE bid on it, except for me and some other dude an hour before it closed.  You’re not going to get 200 euros.

So, needless to say I’m furnishing my office for a whole lot more than I’d need to if I lived Stateside.

But I guess if I lived Stateside, I’d have a 9-5 job doing something responsible like insurance brokering and I wouldn’t need a photography office in the first place.

Huh.  Funny how that works out.

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