Furnishing From Afar
 Amy Gunderson - NYTimes
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| (Illustration by Nancy Doniger)
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After buying a three-bedroom house on Baja Peninsula in Mexico near La Paz, Marjory Hawkins assumed that furnishing her vacation home would be a snap. She loaded up a trailer at her residence in Northern California with everything from pieces of living room furniture to dishes, hooked it up to her car and headed south to Mexico.
But en route, both her car and trailer were stolen off a street in front of a hotel in Ensenada, Mexico. “It was the most devastating thing,” she said. “And nothing was ever recovered.”
Instead, Ms. Hawkins, with the assistance of her Spanish speaking house caretaker, combed local furniture stores and roadside stands. “I bought at smaller furniture shops and worked with my caretaker who spoke the language, told me where to go and negotiated prices,” she said. “She knew where to go for mattresses and she knew great places for margarita glasses. It was a week-long major shopping blitz.”
Home decorating is by no means easy, but furnishing a second home can be especially trying from afar where time constraints compress shopping trips into week-long visits or weekends. And that doesn’t account for delivery snafus.
One option is to go with a design firm that can provide a complete package of furniture and appliances to owners. There are several such companies based in Britain that cater to second home buyers purchasing properties in Spain, Portugal, France and even Dubai. And in the United States there are several firms that cater their services to the second home market in Mexico and the Caribbean.
Chapman Enterprises (www.chapmanent.com) in Jupiter, Fla., is one such company. They furnish homes for home owners with properties in Mexico and the Caribbean, as well as those who have rural retreats in the United States.
“In the middle of Montana, there are those clients who would like to have more than a cowboy house,” said Sarah Chapman McDougall, owner of Chapman Enterprises, noting that her firm can outfit a house with everything from mattresses and linens to art work and barbeques, and of course, furniture. “We will do the entire house from soup spoons to ceiling fans.”
To start the design process, Ms. McDougall requests a floor plan with room dimensions and a budget. A good rule of thumb when estimating a budget, she said, is 5 to 10 percent of the purchase price of the residence. “A $300,000 condo might have a budget of $30,000,” she said. “That would be pretty typical of a two- or three-bedroom unit, while a million dollar house might go up to $85,000 or $95,000.”
Other companies focus on providing furnishings for second homes overseas. Oasis Interior Imports (www.oasisinteriorimports.com), based in Reno, Nev., offers three furniture packages for homes in Mazatlan, Mexico, ranging in price from $34,999 to $89,999. Each package comes with a set number of items for the bedrooms, living room and dining room, but buyers have choices in finishes and fabric colors.
A basic package, for instance, outfits the living room with a sofa, loveseat, coffee table, two end tables and a television stand. While a more expensive package adds two chairs, an area rug, wall art and window treatments to the mix. More expensive packages also include outdoor furniture and cooking ware for the kitchen. All of the items are handcrafted in India and Indonesia, and package prices include taxes, shipping costs and installation of the furniture.
After a frustrating experience furnishing her own vacation home on Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula, Karen Scott founded Gringo Furniture (www.gringofurniture.com). “It’s stressful. You can take a week to fly down, rent a car and start driving around looking for stores,” Ms. Scott said. “Or you end up going to road-side huts, but that means carrying around a large amount of cash.”
She partnered with a local Mexican furniture maker and started selling furniture online, including armoires, mattresses, bedroom suites, dining tables, 50-inch plasma televisions and wall mirrors. Items are delivered anywhere in Mexico, with delivery time usually taking four to six weeks. She said that many of her offerings are geared to buyers who plan on renting out their properties. They look for durable, but low-cost furniture. Her sectional sofas, for instance, start at less than $500.
Donna Clark used Gringo Furniture to fill out her partly-furnished beachfront condo in Akumal, on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, buying a coffee table, bench and bar stools that were custom painted blue, red and green. The items were even delivered to the condo in her absence.
“Everything was there when we arrived on our next trip,” said Ms. Clark, noting that buying the items online left her more time to enjoy the real purpose of the visit: relaxation. “I’m only there three or four times a year,” she said. “So it’s nice not to spend the whole time shopping.” |
Vallarta Weddings
Puerto Vallarta Real Estate | August 2007 
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