Companies Provide Furniture and Designs for All Needs

So you’ve finally got your Costa Rican dream house – too bad it’s empty. Fortunately, there are a number of companies in the country that will furnish any part of your home for you, whether you’re just looking for a bench for the porch or a whole new look for your bathroom.

Companies also specialize in looks for businesses, from the architecture of the office to the leather seats around the conference table. If they don’t have exactly what you’re looking for, odds are the companies can make something from scratch that fits your needs. All of the following companies offer custom-made products.

Euromobilia (296-3050, www.euromobilia.com) offers a wide selection of furniture and home designs, on display at its showroom in the western San José district of Pavas. The company can design closets, kitchens and bathrooms, and also sell a number of furniture pieces and appliances for climate control, cooking and refrigeration.

When it comes to furniture, Euromobilia specifically sells a wide variety of chairs for the home, office and even auditorium seats for movie theaters.

According to Vanessa Trejos, a price assessor for Euromobilia, a basic thermoform 60-centimeter-wide countertop for your bathroom with Formica cabinets can cost $350, but nicer designs with finer finishes can cost up to $5,000.

Trejos says prices are also affected by what color themes you want, whether you prefer marble or granite floors, and how many drawers you want. Getting steel drawers instead of wood will also increase the price.

The counter and drawers can be suspended or go down to the floor.

Alternativa Furniture, an associate company of American Furniture Designs (258-0001, www.afd.co.cr), specializes in business and office furnishings and architecture out of its store on Avenida 10, near western San José’s La Sabana Park. Its design team helps advise customers to come up with an ideal design for their business or office, including designs for climate control and sound insulation.

This is a store for the average businessman or the large company. Its specialty products include commodities from playgrounds for children to communications and control systems the caliber of which you’d find at an airport’s air traffic control.

Alejandro Salazar, a marketing representative for Alternativa Furniture, said that because of the large variety of custom options available for furnishing and architecture, prices can vary greatly from customer to customer. Salazar says it’s best to call Alternativa Furniture for the best pricing examples.

The furniture company En Maderas (283-6204) in the southeastern San José district of Zapote specializes in woodwork for furniture indoors and outdoors that provides sometimes modern but mostly oldfashioned looks. They have custom-made couches, chairs and tables for the living room and nightstands and beds for the bedroom.

Outdoor furniture includes benches and lawn chairs for relaxing in the sun.

A log love seat, 1.4 meters wide, 0.65 meters long and 0.4 meters tall, costs $130, according to Alexander Calderón, a sales executive for En Maderas. En Maderas also offers a special deal called Sala Completa, or complete room, which includes a wood sofa, two round-wood chairs, a centerpiece table and an auxiliary table, for $439 combined. A laurel nightstand with a fine finish, drawer and cabinet costs $134.

For the outdoors, a reclining lawn chair 2.3 meters long and 0.8 meters wide costs $165, according to Calderón. A 2.6-meterwide picnic table costs $155, and a bench with a backrest costs about $134.