Every first-time furniture buyer knows all the old haunts to go to for cheap furniture: thrift stores, flea markets, garage sales, estate sales, low-end antique stores, K-Mart, Wal-Mart, and your folks' basement. Trouble is, everyone else knows to go there, too. Here are a few offbeat places to look:

Employee Discounts - Most stores offer employee discounts, which can range from 10% off the store price to a tasty cost-plus-10%. You usually don't have to work there long to get the discount, either. If you have some spare time, drop off an application and spend a few hours a week working for the Man. When you have your nest feathered, quit. Sure, you're not going to be able to pull this at Domain, but Linens 'n' Things has some nice stuff.

Garbage Day - You'd be amazed at what people throw out. I found a couch, three kitchen chairs, and a bureau for my first apartment this way. Most of the stuff is going to need some work—the bureau was Pepto-Bismol pink and the couch had met a cat at some point in its past—but paint is cheap and throws aren't hard to improvise. Some neighborhoods have set days when people can put out furniture, and in college towns, the pickings are seasonal. Be warned that other people are going to be out looking, too; I snatched my bureau just minutes ahead of a vanful of professionals who were scouting the neighborhood.

Dump Swaps - A few dumps have swap shacks where people put their salvageable goods and take what they like—for free. You can get everything from furniture to appliances to clothing to books at these places. Some dumps require that you have a dump sticker in order to go swap.

Freecycling Lists - Once upon a time, a genius named Deron Beale said, "Instead of throwing things at secondhand stores and hoping that people who need them can find them, why don't we list everything in an online forum and swap them among ourselves for free?" And lo, did it come to pass. The freecycling movement is still picking up, and you might not have a list in your area, but if you do, you might be able to get some good stuff for the price of gas. Find out whether there's a list near you at www.Freecycle.org.

Barns - Barns are the venue of choice for caches of ancient furniture which no one wants. Long-settled families in particular are likely to have some amazing stuff—plain pieces from the 30's and 40's which got shoved away in the barn when they saved up enough to buy the monstrosity which is sitting in the parlor now. These pieces are made of solid wood and often have touches—bits of detailing, extra ironwork—which were standard then but are gone now.

Getting into barns isn't as much trouble as it may seem. In rural areas, barn sales are often the local equivalent of yard or garage sales—and sometimes when they say they're having a barn sale, they mean they're having a barn sale. Drive around the countryside on the weekend, or consult the local newspaper. Alternatively, if you've got the luck of knowing someone who's buying or selling a house with a barn, ask whether they'd like a little help in cleaning out and hauling away the contents. They may have plans for the best pieces, but you'd be surprised at what people write off as junk when they're the ones who need to deal with it.

Make It Yourself - Not quite as much of a duh as you'd expect, since some things—like furniture—are usually cheaper bought than made. (And sure, you can build a sofa out of two-by-fours, but when you're done you'll have a sofa which looks like it was made of two-by-fours.) It's a sad fact that in this consumer culture, companies sell finished goods for less than the store price of the raw materials. However, if you want something which is usually outrageously overpriced, like velvet curtains or ornate picture frames, it's cheaper to buy the raw materials and spend a little time learning how to use a sewing machine or a bottle of wood glue.

Cultivate Local Artists - Especially starving art students. Art students are an excellent source of all things bizarre and fabulous, besides knowing where all the cool bargains are, polishing off the leftover ramen, and carrying away all of the interesting and useless things which households tend to collect over time. (You'd be amazed at what you can do with a blowtorch and a tin can.) In addition, they all seem to be born knowing how to handle hot glue, dye, scissors, saws, and soldering irons, and a good many of them like to teach the uninitiated (this is you) how to use them. If you have a suitably fabulous house, you might even be able to convince a local art student to use your pad as a mini-gallery. This is how my friends came to live in a house decorated with portraits of femurs.

Don't ask.

Wait for the Local Bureaucracy to Get Lazy - Academia's laziness is eternal. When I was an undergrad in college-riddled Western Massachusetts, the local slackers spoke with wonder of treasure hoards of old desks, chairs, and filing cabinets sitting untouched beside the dumpsters, just waiting for a team of knights in shining denim to come rescue them from the garbage men. Apparently, the local university was forbidden to resell the furniture, since it was a state-funded school and the legalities boggled the imagination, and donating the furniture to Goodwill was just too much effort. Once you've cultivated the local artists, find out whether they know of anything like this happening near you.

Big businesses and local governments get just as lazy, so keep your eyes open. The best time to strike is shortly before an office remodels or moves to other quarters.