In the past year I've bought more housewares than in the past ten. I found two stores I particularly like shopping at.

For furniture I like Room and Board. Very clean and simple furniture and furnishings. It's a bit like Crate and Barrel only fresher style, higher quality goods, and without all the crockery. Lots of good furniture if you want something well made and relatively simple. They have a beautiful print catalog with a great use of small multiples to quickly show you all of the furniture options they offer. Their San Francisco store is a delight, open and spacious, friendly staff, and parking. My only regret is they trend more contemporary than our home so we ended up not ordering as much from them as I'd hoped. But I got some great desks; simple cherry planks with aluminum legs. Also a nice old leather reclining chair and a sofa bed.

For matching our house's 1930s details I'm totally in love with Rejuvenation Hardware. It's an amazing source of period light fixtures, door hardware, and other house furnishings. Need a crystal doorknob to replace the 1890s knob that somehow got lost? They've got it. Or maybe an art deco coat hook or an Edwardian outdoor light fixture. If you've got a pre-WWII house and want to replace / upgrade something, they've got matching parts newly manufactured. Mail-order hardware makes me nervous but they ship quickly and have a generous return policy. So far everything we've gotten from them has been great.