About Us

Reduce. Reuse. Refurbish by GJF Furnishings is a small family business ran by Hannah and Graeme with a focus upon reducing waste through upcycling furniture. We paint furniture to sell, as well as painting furniture specifically for customers. In addition to this, we stock a host of sustainable products for the home, ranging from home decor products to plastic free shampoo bars. We also offer a refillable cleaning product service that we supply at the Coxhoe Indoor Market on the first Saturday of each month at the Coxhoe Village Hall. 

In March 2024, we rebranded to our new name Reduce. Reuse Refurbish by GJF Furnishings, having formerly been known as GJF Furnishings. We are proud of our new name, and feel like it demonstrates the ethos and values of our business in a much clearer way. 

Why do we do what we do? 

By trade , Graeme was a Chartered Chemical  Engineer, working in food manufacturing for almost 10 years. However, 2017 brought about a lot of changes for us as a family. We became parents to a wonderful little chap, who had a tough ride during the first three months of his life. Combined with the lack of sleep, worry about his health, and an increasingly demanding and stressful working life, Graeme hit burnout point and found himself suffering with anxiety and depression, leading to having some time off work to seek help and recover.  

Graeme started seeing a counsellor, having recognised he wasn’t able to get better on my own and with her help he was able to reflect upon my lifestyle, values and life drivers. As a result, part of his recovery was to take his mind away from things and try new hobbies. This is how he discovered my new love for refurbishing and upcycling furniture. 

Graeme brought an old TV cabinet for 99p to paint, mostly just to see if he was any good at it and found himself not only enjoying the process of upcycling an old unit, but also making some money from doing so. Being a hands on and creative person this very quickly became a new passion of his. He loved heading out to the garage with some old furniture and seeing it transform into something new and modern. Having successfully sold his first few items and had some repeat business, I thought, why not make this more official? So he took the plunge and set up GJF Furnishings. 

Since setting up GJF Furnishings, we have developed it from a hobby in the garage, to renting trading spaces within other stores, to having our very own shop premises (for 3 years) and an online business. We are proud to be a small family business.  

In July 2022 we made the decision to close our shop and relocate to the North East of England to be closer to family. In doing so, we initially thought we would close our business completely. But we soon realised we didn't want to let go. The love for our business and reducing furniture waste was not lost, we just needed more time with our children. And so we kept going, in an online only capacity with Hannah at the helm.

We love being a small family business and work life balance is very important to us, especially with Graeme having his challenges around mental health due to stress. We work to live, not live to work. Our children are our priority, so Hannah works hard around their school hours to ensure there is always one of us there to collect them. Something we both felt was important in keeping their routine.

We aren't about earning millions and working 25 hours a day (we all need to sleep!). We want to work hard, and enjoy what we do whilst keeping furniture out of landfill and helping people create a beautiful home at reasonable prices. By buying from us, you are helping our small family business realise this dream.

We hope you enjoy taking the time to browse some of our items. We post regularly on Facebook and Instagram. Here you'll find regular updates about what we've been painting, new stock, and what we've been up to. 

Thanks for reading,

Graeme & Hannah xx