Shopping Furniture in Hickory, NC

Hi, friends, my schedule is severely off these days and I’m not sure when it will get back to normal.  Hopefully after we get moved in the house and things settle down, but right now I’m in crazy mode, with after Haven recuperation, my dad still in rehab, getting married very soon, the house renovations happening, packing and moving.  Need I say more?!

I’ll give you a quick update on dad a the bottom of this post.

This week, I’m totally off schedule for Fashion over 50, so you’ll have to bear with me on that.  Outside of Haven, I have barely been dressed in anything but yoga pants or jeans, so fashion is taking a backseat at the moment. I’ll be back soon with a recap of our Haven Conference this year, but I’ll just tell you this….we think it was the best Haven ever!!

A few weeks ago, Mark and I took a day trip to Hickory, NC to check out the Hickory Furniture market up there.  I’ve heard about it for years, but never had the chance to see it for myself.  Let me warn you, you really need DAYS to see all that is up there, especially if you want to visit all the surrounding areas and the furniture outlets that are there.  We only took one day and had a few hours, but really enjoyed what we saw.  If I had more time in the future, it would be great to drive a U-haul truck up there and be prepared to bring home some bargains. I would love to do that, although not sure when it would happen.  It’s about a 4 hour drive from Atlanta to Hickory, so the day was very long and tiring but we decided to come on back since most stores are closed on Sunday.

One of my sweet readers, Connie, who lives here in my area contacted me and told me about shopping in Hickory, so that made me really want to check it out since we are in the market for a few things.  Furniture shopping is SO overwhelming and you really don’t know if you are getting a good deal, but let me assure you that furniture is marked up SO much so it pays to shop around and get the best deal you can get. And shopping on the phone with a dealer in NC is your best bet, even with paying for shipping.  We have a lot of furniture manufacturers here in Atlanta, but it’s really hard to see all of the brands here that you can see up there. That’s why we thought it would be worth it to drive up and see it for ourselves.  Connie shared a really neat book with me too and gave me a copy to keep, which was so nice of her.  It’s basically a detailed list of all the stores and outlets in the area and what the author thinks about them all. It lists the brands that each one carries too.  I see it doesn’t have that great reviews on Amazon, but I thought it was a good one.  Again, you really need days to see everything in Hickory and in one day you can’t get around to much of these.  That’s an affiliate link, by the way in case you want to check this book out too.

In case you didn’t know, High Point and Hickory, NC are where the hub of furniture manufacturing is centered in the U.S. and if you know what you’re doing, you can score some amazing deals on furniture. My family has known about this for years and we’ve all called at different times some of the dealers in NC to order furniture that we’ve seen in person here in Atlanta so that works well too.  We have a favorite dealer in Andrews, NC called Gibson Furniture and we’ve called them and ordered from them many times over the years. If you find something locally, all you have to do is call on the phone and give them the model number or name and brand and they can get a price for you.

They all ship to Atlanta and some of them ship for free, so you just have to do your homework and try to get the best price and shipping combo you can find. Ask all the questions before you order.  With all that in mind, you really can save 50% and up to 75% or more on furniture by buying in and through NC dealers.

One of the dealers in NC that I’ve called is Furnitureland South and they gave me the best prices on things that I was checking on, so I’ll probably end up ordering from them when I do order some things.  They are not in Hickory or we would have gone to their huge showroom and visited. They are about 1 1/2 hours past Hickory, so we opted to just go to Hickory this trip.

So, with all that in mind we went up there to browse.  I have lots of furniture but some of it won’t work as well in our new house.  We have less walls and the spaces are all different, so what is working in my current house won’t necessarily work in the new house, so we are still trying to figure all that out.  We probably won’t know everything until we get the furniture in there and start moving it around.  We also want to buy new bedroom furniture so we’ve been looking for something that would appeal to both of us and that’s a tall order too at times.  I’m going to put my current sleigh bed in the guest room to use.

We narrowed down our “like” list to king sized panel beds and that’s where our search has been. We both like that style, the tall panel headboard and shorter footboard, made out of wood.  These look and feel very substantial and work for both masculine and feminine tastes. I thought you all would enjoy seeing and hearing our process of trying to mix things in our new house for both of our taste.

On arriving at the Hickory Furniture mart, we got a map of the place and there are 3 floors (I think) of all different brands, so they carry most of the major brands in here.  It’s nice to see things in person rather than online so we saw and touched a lot of furniture in one day.

Here are some of the brands we saw:  Stanley, Hickory Chair, Maitland-Smith, Pearson, American Classic Furniture, Coaster, Klaussner, Magnolia Home, Trisha Yearwood, Drexel and Thomasville, Amish Oak and Cherry, Bradenton Young, Craftmaster, Sam Moore, Sligh, Smith Brothers, Tommy Bahama, Universal, Hancock and Moore, Harden, Jonathan Charles, Century, American Drew, Canadel, Rowe, Robin Bruce, Mitchell Gold & Bob Williams, Hooker, Huntington House, Hickory White, LaZBoy, Basset…..and a whole bunch more!

There are rug dealers and all sorts of furniture and accessory shopping here in the mart.

I have some favorite brands that I’ve known about for a few years, like Hooker.  I’ve admired a lot of their furniture over the years and think they are a decent brand. The thing about furniture is this.  You can spend all price points on furniture and each person has to decide how important furniture is to you.  There are low priced brands, as well as mid-range and high-end brands in furniture and you do get what you pay for in many cases.  I tend to stay with the mid-range brands for the most part, but the higher-end ones can definitely be heirloom quality that you can pass down to generations.  Those are not in my budget!

I snapped lots of pics that day and don’t remember every single showroom we went in, but we visited several higher end shops and many that were mid-range.

So, remember we were talking about buying some bedroom furniture?  I found out early on when talking to Mark about his taste in furniture styles, the man like Mission style.  Mission style is probably one of my least favorite styles of furniture.  It’s just so straight lined and heavy dark wood, not what appeals to me at all.  So guess what we found at the Hickory Furniture mart?  A Stickley showroom.  He was in man heaven in this place and kept walking around looking at all these masculine pieces, like this massive bed.

And this one that I named the Paul Bunyan bed.  I just can’t get on board with the Stickley pieces, but he loves them. What can I say!  Maybe he can fit a piece of this in his man cave.  These are the sorts of things that men and women have to deal with when we start decorating a house together.  So we talk about what we both  like and try to find a meeting in the middle.  We both have to compromise.

We looked at a lot of pieces including chairs and sofas.  I really am looking for some swivel chairs for the den one day, so we checked out a few of those.  I still didn’t see anything priced as well as the ones I saw at Scott Antiques a couple months ago, so will probably check out that company again too, I have his card and he’s there every month and is also out of NC.

Looking for a long console table for the foyer coming in the front door and need something narrow and long for the stair wall.  I think something like this would be pretty, so we will see what we end up with. We saw a few similar to this and liked them. This piece is by Hooker and we got a price on it of just over $500.

We looked at some sofas too, although I think we will use all my sofas for now and maybe find something else later.  I have enough sofas to fill  up our rooms, but may end up recovering my Ethan Allen sofa that is in my current living room. It’s 13 years old so time for a new fabric on there.

We liked the style of this sofa and chair.

And I really liked the lines and rolled arms of this sofa and the linen like fabric.  Sofas can be so hard to buy.  I love a well made sofa and I think the old standard of 8 way hand tied is still the best rated sofas.  They can be relatively inexpensive to thousands of dollars. I’ve never spent thousands on a sofa, but I do enjoy looking at the higher end ones.

This one was made by Smith, a brand that I don’t know, but I’m sure there are plenty of brands I’ve never heard of that are good deals and well made. You can see the discounted price here and many of the dealers in the mart had an extra 10 to 20% off the price tag. I could have gone really crazy with a few floor models and close out samples. I didn’t take pics of everything I saw, but there were a few things I would have loved to take home.

Looking at more panel beds, we saw plenty of them. We had seen some online and really wanted to see the finish on some of these in person.

This one comes in several different stain and paint finishes.

It’s so easy to get overwhelmed shopping for furniture and I felt it too. Looking at so many things and trying to decide on something.  Since we aren’t in the house yet, I knew we wouldn’t be buying yet, but at least got some ideas.

Another sofa that caught my eye.  I didn’t get price tags on all of these, but they were fun to look at.  Loved that ottoman too. I’ve got a round ottoman that has a leather top that needs upholstering, so this gives me an idea of what it would look like in a printed fabric and I like the look. My ottoman is wood on the bottom too.

Stanley outlet had some great looking pieces.

And one store has lots of Joanna Gaines line of furniture, Magnolia Home, so I took some pics to show y’all.

Grainsack sofa fabric.

Farmhouse style panel bed.

A small kitchen island.

China cabinet, all Magnolia Home.

More of her line.

A credenza or buffet.

Neutrals in sofa and chairs.

Maitland Smith is a high end brand and it was fun browsing through there. Again, I think you could find some really good floor sample pieces here that would be so fun to mix in a house that would be different than what you see everywhere else.  I would love to shop like this, adding in unique pieces here and there. If I get a chance to go back up there an shop, I would love to buy a few things to mix in with my current stuff.

I think we’ve found a bed we love!  This panel bed was in the Kincaid outlet store and it appeals to both of us, so I think this is the winner.  We will probably put this on order and get it shipped to us when we get caught up a little more on house projects getting moved in.

Kincaid make really nice furniture and I know their pieces are solid wood. This line is sort of distressed with a brown/gray finish and I think we will enjoy it.  We’ve also been looking at some bedside tables from Universal that we think will mix well with this.  Not going for the matchy look, but will probably mix things up.  We both like the sort of shutter appeal of this headboard.  I will also have to figure out new bedding and all for the master bedroom, so that will come later, haven’t gotten to that at all yet.

 

We are looking at these pieces for the master bedroom from Universal Furniture. We both really love the lines and finish on the night stands and chest of drawers, so right now this is in the lead on our wish list. I’ll  keep you posted on what we decide!

Another console table possibility, this one is by Bassett, I think.  This one was listed at $598 and I think was 20% off too.  We really like this one too.

We stopped in another outlet store that had Bernhardt and some other brands. I loved these chairs by Century Furniture, a higher-end line that’s just beautiful.

This price was for the pair of chairs, but $4K is out of my budget for chairs, they sure are pretty though aren’t they?

Another pretty sofa, I think it might have been Century too.  You really have to get familiar with the brands and what a good value would be.

Mark saw this Bernhardt chair and really like it, but we didn’t get it.  Not sure if we have room for it or not, but he was thinking for his man cave.

This was a really pretty herringbone fabric and a great color.  We would have gotten this for 20% off this price, not bad at all I think.

So, that’s a furniture browsing trip to Hickory, NC.  Have you shopped there before? Those of you in NC, do you shop Hickory for all your furniture needs?  Oh, if I was closer I know I’d be popping into these stores all the time to see what they had.  I do love nice furniture and it’s nice to get a pretty piece for a great price, so I would definitely like to shop wisely for any new pieces we add to our new home.  Hope you enjoyed going along with me!

Update on Dad:  Last weekend, Dad took another turn for the worst and the diarrhea started in again and of course we suspected the c diff isn’t gone.   We got the nurse and doctor involved quickly and on Monday he started another round of antibiotics to keep fighting the c diff. They did a test to see if it is that for sure and we found out Tuesday that yes, it is still the c diff at work.  They restarted the antibiotics (and probiotics) again to head this thing off.  We have heard this c diff is so nasty and brutal and that even though it seems to be going away, it can come right back again.  

He was doing so well last week and seemed to be gaining strength and doing well with his physical therapy too.   He’s lost over 20 lbs. since this all started.  But, mom said yesterday that he was feeling pretty good and got up and did his physical therapy yesterday and told her he was feeling pretty good, so this means it hasn’t knocked him out like the first round did, thank the Lord!  This is hard, y’all, the hardest thing our family has ever dealt with. We are trying to stay positive and keep praying for full recovery and healing for dad, but it’s so hard to not get discouraged.  His attitude is good, but he’s just tired of being sick and can’t wait to come home.  He brags on the people at the rehab center and how good they’ve been to him.  He’s so ready to get well!  Please keep the prayers coming, this is not going to be a short battle. 

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