dana, rodney...anyone else....

my buddy and his girlfriend have bought their first house out there and move in early next month. i want to get them a gift cert or something as a housewarming present. are there any cool, funky, local home furnishing type stores out there you'd reccomend? i'm trying to avoid going to home depot or something like that....

Maybe Portland Nursery - great stuff there for getting the landscaping going.

If you're looking for home furnishings, maybe Urbino Home? Can be a bit spendy though.

There's also Rejuvenation Hardware which sells old and new items.

French Quarter Linens.

And while you don't like the idea of Home Depot/chains, we have plenty to choose from out here:

Crate and Barrel
Pottery Barn
West Elm
Design within Reach
Kitchen Kaboodle
Sur la Table
Restoration Hardware

thanks guys....

rejuvenation hardware looks really cool. plus they make it easy to get and give gift certificates....

this might help too, Jason....

http://www.shopthepearl.com/

we bought a couple of lights there - that place is expensive but they have some nice stuff.

hmmm...they are a couple of broke ass hippies, so maybe that place won't be so good....

i'll check the other link you sent dana...thanks!

Yeah, a lot of the home-grown places tend to be a bit more expensive, that's why I threw the other "chain" names out there.

btw, lots of antique shops in Portland.

I was looking online and thought it'd be cool if you could get them a gift certificate to the Portland Farmer's Market, but it doesn't look like they sell them. But what about something like this?

http://organicstoyou.org/home/index.html

And of course, you couldn't go wrong with a Trader Joe's gift card!

i think this could be perfect!

Broke hippies can buy a house.

What am I doing wrong?

half the portland real estate market would collapse if they couldn't...

Not a damn thing... and even more amazing, they bought a house in PORTLAND. Housing prices are a little crazy here, but certainly not San Francisco-crazy.

Interesting note: we bought our house in 98 for less than $150k. It's now valued at over $300k. There is a corner in our neighborhood that had a double-lot, and one house. The man who owned it died, and the property was bought for around $200k. Since then, the lot has been divided into two lots, with two new houses built on it. One sold for $660k, the other is around $400k.

well, his dad passed away and left him some money, which he is using to buy the house.

but, yeah...once you look into it...it really is surprising how easy it is to buy a house.