How do you get rid of your used bulky furniture?

I suspect the proofing used on those will produce a lot of toxic smoke.

By law, councils are allowed to charge for “non-household waste”. But this does not mean trade waste; it includes such things as bathroom and kitchen items, doors, windows pallets and….. fence panels £3.10 and fence posts £3.10 each. It is understandable as the council has to then pay for their disposal but, the downside, it encourages people to just burn these rather than cough up what could be quite a bit of money. Not good for the environment. Or worse, dispose of them through a dodgy waste collector.

As Ian has said, burning treated wood can produce toxic fumes. Our council says not to burn painted or treated wood and I understand that care is taken to avoid putting household waste into public bonfires.

We seem to get by disposing of big items whenever we have work done that involves having a skip. My other half came with a brown sofa he insisted was green and I took great delight in skipping it when it accidentally (honest) got damaged.

I agree, Steven. One problem nowadays is that many people’s first home tends to be very compact and they have no room for three-seater settees, dining tables and six chairs, or traditional wardrobes so even modern furniture in good condition is not wanted.

I had a couple of chairs that I kept when I was clearing my parents’ house. I remember using them as a child. The seat pads were becoming tatty but an old chap that I know through a charity he suggested a local restorer who did a good job of restoring them. The chairs are not worth anything, especially with just two, but are serviceable and part of my past.

That’s encouraging, Chirag. Anything that can reduce waste.

When I bought the new fridge/freezer I had to part with a very solid wood fold away kitchen table to make room for it.
I left it outside the garage together with an antique bookcase in perfect condition. Both had disappeared by the following day. Hopefully they went to someone that really needed them. It saved me paying the council to dispose of them.

We’ve done that a few times; unfortunately it doesn’t happen with mattresses. It cost £50 to have the council take away a king-size mattress and two other things. The other things had gone by the time the council lorry turned up. Nevertheless, it was worth it. The king-size bed frame went to a charity that helps the homeless but it will cost them a lot to put a mattress on it.

It would be good to see unwanted furniture going to distribution centres that would help those with very limited means setting up home.

If furniture cannot be disposed of to be reused then we could recover the timber. Much furniture, particularly older, can contain decent hardwoods that someone could reuse. Even softwood is useful. If anyone has bought new timber, particularly lately, they will know how expensive it is and, particularly with softwood, how quality can be pretty low.

The local authority provides a bulky item collection service of up to five items for £33. Where I used to live, the city council provided one free collection of five items each year, and still does.

I agree with Malcolm about recovering wood if furniture cannot be reused. Colin Veitch makes a good point about fire safety below.

A word of warning about reusing old furniture and/or old timber, beware of the dreaded woodworm! They’re only tiny but extremely destructive, I’ve seen them destroy a dirty great timber beam 3 inch by 9 inch, and they’ve ruined several floorboards in my attic. I’ve no idea how they got there but I now keep poison and a military standard gas mask and a poison sprayer ready for action. One thing I do know is they’re all too easily introduced into someone’s property and then they can go on an extremely destructive rampage. And another thing is dry rot fungus, I’ve had some of that in my place too. So reusing old timber can be a lot easier said than done, as it should be THOROUGHLY checked over for any kind of infestation and if it needs treating it’s a lot of work, and one treatment is not always enough, it can need three to kill the bugs and the poison is expensive at nearly £30 for a 5 litre can and of course it gives off deadly fumes until it’s dry which can take hours and hours as some woods take longer than others to dry after treatment. And you need the full strength stuff, not the watered down stuff they sell at some places. And of course they can and do also infest some old collectable electronic goods like old radios and TV’s, and old tape recorders and record players, and radiograms and old gramophones etc. which are often untreatable due to their coatings like varnish and stains and also old vintage plywood was often used for such old appliances which is also untreatable. And you can’t properly examine such things without a thorough strip down which needs skill and experience, and of course it needs doing in somewhere that’s safe against the wretched bugs which very few places are, like an all concrete garage, ideally such a place would need to be specially built. And of course the poison spray is not very environmentally friendly.

Crusader is clearly quite right to point out the precautions when recovering wood, including furniture. The glue in old ply seems particularly palatable to woodworm.

When on holiday, visiting Truro, my children decided to buy a didgeridoo from an ethnic shop, as you doo. Inevitably the novelty wore off and it lay undisturbed in the house for a year or two. In a clear up I discovered it to be full of holes with a lot of dust. Goodness knows what foreign beasts had been imported but, if any were left, they were cremated. Fortunately the house suffered no ill effects.

However, much older furniture does contain valuable wood that can be reused, and it can come from less likely places. I had some large drawing boards that turned out to be made of high quality oak. The timber recovered and used in some furniture would, at today’s prices, have cost me over £300 for each board, plus VAT.