Handmade Furniture in Costa Rica – Sarchi is a good place to go…

We were approaching the last stage of building our first vacation home (since sold) in a rural area of Costa Rica and had been visiting different places to finalize the furniture for the kitchen.

One of the best places to visit is an area called Sarchi which is about one hour from San José. Here you will find dozens and dozens of furniture stores, workshops and souvenir stores.

Some of the stores are more ‘touristy’ than others and most people would suggest that you’ll often get better quality and prices by doing business with ‘friends of friends’ rather than walking in ‘cold.’

To get to Sarchi from San José, you would take the main highway to the international airport and instead of taking the left exit to the airport, you simply continue straight ahead towards Grecia and veer off to the right to Sarchi. Unlike many areas, there are good signs on this route.

If you’re in San José, the trip to Sarchi makes for a great day out.

Cuyo Rodriguez:

We stopped first at the Cuyo Rodriguez store to see their furniture. Much of the best furniture made by these craftsmen is custom designed and one can never actually see it in the showroom because as soon as it’s finished, it’s delivered to the customer’s home.

In other parts of the world, the craftsmen would take hundreds of photographs of all their masterpieces for you to look at on the internet but, the majority of these places rarely seem to use emails never mind having digital cameras or a website.

If you would like a custom design for your home, just take a long your favorite interior design magazines or furniture brochures and show them what you want and they’ll give you a quote – You will probably be very pleasantly surprised at their quality and their prices.

In their showroom we were faced with a huge selection of very affordable, handmade furniture. Chairs of all kinds, bars, entertainment centres, cupboards, beds and chests of drawers.

The following items caught my eye:

• Hand made solid wood, Queen sized beds for $320
• Guanacaste wood, four drawer bedside cabinets for under $100.
• A solid, well made 2M (6 1/2 foot) long bar for only US$490
• A light, comfortable rocking chair with leather strapping for only $112.

Muebles Rusticos Torres: The slogan for this company is ‘Nuestros muebles son amigos del ambiente…” which means something along the lines of “our furniture(s) are friends of the environment” and they say that because they, like most reputable manufacturers in the area, only use certified, plantation grown wood.

As the company name suggests, the furniture here is more rustic and that’s exactly what we are looking for because the home we’re building is a Cypress wood home located in the middle of the mountains.

We liked the many photographs shown to us of their wall units, sideboards and practically everything else and were even more impressed with ‘tejida‘ (woven) style doors that they used on much of their furniture.

So we chose to work with Carlos Torres of Muebles Rusticos Torres who is assisted by his incredibly professional and efficient wife Patrica (their telephone number in Costa Rica is (506) 2454-3350) who made our wonderful, forest green kitchen cabinets for us.

We had planned on visiting a few stores and workshops, stopping for lunch and then taking a long walk up in the hills above Trojas but as usual we got carried away with looking around and after a large, very satisfying casado lunch for four people at Las Carretas Restaurant (for $5 each including tip) we had to head back home.

Note: Try to stay with well known, reputable firms who will insist on using aged and properly dried wood in their furniture. Some places may be cheaper but if they not using properly dried wood, you could have some serious cracking in your furniture within a short time.

Please also note that price will have changed since this article was first published…

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Andrew Makarik

to@welovecostarica.com

Andrew Makarik is the main editor of WeLoveCostaRica, a fan of this sunny country. He is also a loving husband and a has a lovely daughter. By being a devoted family man and the biggest Costa Rica fan, he wants to make more people feel at home there. WeLoveCostaRica unites people and helps them find new home or a new travel destination. This website is a friendly community where everyone can find not only information, but also new friends and travel pals. Andrew is also passionate about IT and programming, so he himself maintains a friendly atmosphere in this cozy environment of WeLoveCostaRica.com.