Why are most sofas so bad?(dwell.com) |
Why are most sofas so bad?(dwell.com) |
You also have to make a selfie so that you can see yourself construct it in the videos.
Just get a La-Z boy reclining sofa
I haven’t had to replace any of the relatively cheap stuff I’ve gotten from cost plus world market over a decade.
I might just be lucky or special, but I don’t think cheaper furniture is necessarily bad or throwaway. I’m not sure what the trick is. We’ve tended to buy robust looking furniture— solid wood dining table, welded metal dining chairs, a plush and thick sofa. Frankly, our stuff looked very pedestrian compared to some of our friends, but it has lasted.
Years later I spent $3500 on a sofa from Design Within Reach and it's terrific.
- is comfortable
- isn't full of fire retardant chemicals which turn out to be cancerous right after the warranty expires
- for less than $10k.
Pretty sure that means I'm going to have to learn how to sew.
Best furniture ever. Carted across the country twice. I still use both pieces every day. They've been reupholstered once.
In 1986 a Mustang GT was under $11k, now its about 3x that price.
1985 median home sale was $80k, 2023 median home sale was about $450k.
We only list brands that are A) plastic-free and B) use non-toxic materials.
The list of large-ish brands that fit those specifications can be counted on one hand.
The industry is rife with corner cutting, greenwashing, and lack of disclosure.
Sure, quality furniture is great but I'll wait until we settle down. For now, no regrets.
A little over a year ago the "leather" started developing holes in it from wear all over the place. The so called leather is literally paper thin and bonded to some low quality fabric.
I've never had this sort of problem with a couch before. It's very frustrating.
Got a custom from them and (partly because I asked) it's crazy sturdy. Cost a lot, and I got what I paid for :D
This isn't exactly a novel problem.
Higher-end sofas would have logically cost much more...
Whatever else goes on in my life, I've got that sofa problem handled.
Now people move every few years. And it’s hard to justify buying fancy furniture in a place you aren’t staying for long time.
My Rowe furniture sofa is 21 years old now and sits as if it was new. If I have a problem, I'll get it reupholstered or just order a new cushion from the manufacturer.
One contributing factor is the fabric you choose. But the biggest one is labor. The wooden construction uses only solid wood too but that is the least cost either way.
What I did when buying it is that I made a list of all design furniture shops in Berlin that sold Cor.
Then I drove to each of them and asked: this is my best price from your competitors. What is yours? In the end I actually paid 4,500€. I also learned the margin is ~45% of the list price for the shop.
Which gives you an idea about material and labor prices when you produce in Europe. I.e. Cor sells this to the shop for around 3k€. That already includes their margin. I would think producing this has costs of at least 50% of that attached. I.e. 1.5k€ for labor and materials.
I just started helping a friend re-produce an old design classic of his [2] as WFH has made requests for it spike. It's not a sofa, strictly speaking, but the changes in costs probably make it worth mentioning them in this context.
When we produced the first series, ca. 2004, we had material, CNC and labor costs of around 1,000€. Without upholstery. Upholstery varies greatly depending on finish. Different fabrics and leathers have very different prices and labor costs attached.
We are now looking at over 4k€ for labor and wood (it's made of Ceiba which is difficulty to source). I.e. we have a ~300% raise in production costs over 20 years in Europe (not counting upholstery!).
If we wanted to keep the previous price, we needed to switch to cheaper wood and move production outside of Europe. At the moment we are just considering targeting a wealthier clientele. Not everyone has this luxury though.
I guess I'm saying I dunno how much these factors play a role in the enshittification of sofas everywhere. But they probably do ... :]
I can’t read the site due to a massive “We value your privacy” pop up informing me about the 1532 data-harvesting “partners” they sell information to, and there’s only “Allow All” button accessible (which is illegal by GDPR).
They really value my privacy, for its resale value.
There is somebody who makes them but for the life of me I can't recall who.
They come with a built-in compressor.
But do they suck less than not having a sofa at all? I am a several-time-over beneficiary of cheap made-in-southeast-asia sofas. Shipped in a fridge-sized box right to my doorstep, assembled (by me) in ~15min, and perfectly serviceable. Is it up to the same quality level as a $5000 made-in-USA solid wood hand-woven twine-joinery (etc etc) masterpiece? No, but I couldn't have afforded that kind of sofa. And it didn't have to be hand-packed by a furniture transportation expert, and it didn't weigh 800 lbs.
I don't really see the "loser" here exactly - broke grad students, college kids, people in rural areas, and starving artists win; workers in developing countries win (the furniture factory sure beats the rice paddies); Instagram-sofa tech bros win. And gilded solid wood sofa makers can always market to the rich, who can afford to spend several months' worth of my rent cost on a piece of furniture.
Did anyone else find this weird / funny?
Like, just off the top of my head I'd put my bed at the top of my list, waaaay ahead of a sofa. Next might be the desk & chair I WFH at, and then it goes on from there.
I get that the article wants to build engagement by "raising the stakes", but c'mon. Sofas are not that important :)
Same situation with buying used cars. New cars suck. You can't work on them yourself and they have terrible UX. So people started only looking for used. Except the used prices skyrocketed to match supply & demand.
We can't keep this up. We can't all keep thrifting. Everyone knows it's better, everyone is on the prowl, and everyone has easier access to buyers, thanks to the internet.
The US largest generation is approaching life expectancy and we are below replacement numbers.
I've been pretty stunned during my travels to find that it's really only Americans who obsessively talk about or reference TV shows and movies in their small talk. No other culture seems nearly as interested, and some actively discourage it in favor of more real, personal topics. It's one of those things where once you start noticing it, it just gets cringier and cringier.
Not everyone lives in sitcoms or spends all their free time watching TV...
The only time I'm on my couch is when I have a few people over. And even then we're usually doing other things than just lazing about.
For one, it doesnt seem like americans are significant outliers in tv consumption[1] or smartphone usage[2]. For another, yeah if you're a foreign traveller people probably aren't going to make small talk with you about TV or other pop culture...
[1]https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/which-country-watches-th...
[2] https://explodingtopics.com/blog/smartphone-usage-stats#smar...
Americans constantly shove TV into the conversation even if they don't know that the other person or people are familiar with it. Though many are aware of American media output by virtue of the cultural colonialism enacted since brute force fell out of fashion. Even if they're not explicitly speaking about TV they're still doing the IRL version of posting reaction GIFs by quoting memes in response to earnest conversation.
I think you may be engaging in a bit of axe grinding here! I agree that the sofa is one of the post important pieces of furniture in my home [1], but for reasons that have nothing to do with television. There is no TV in the room! But it is still where I spend the most time sitting during downtime, reading books, talking to my family, etc. And when I have friends over, we're either there or at the dining room table.
[1] For the title of the most important, I might have picked my bed. But that's a quibble.
You make it sound like this is not merely a rare thing for you, but that it should be rare... I don't just passively sit and watch much television and yet I have spent an incredible amount of time in my life sitting on either my couch or the couch of a friend -- or even one of many couches at an office -- talking and laughing and having fun with other human beings. If I had to choose only one: a couch or a dining table, I'd go with a couch. Now... bed? That's harder for me, but I can totally see people deciding couch (as you can sleep on the couch but it is awkward as hell to invite people over and only have a bed to use).
For instance, people come by all the time to play pool. Does that mean I should advocate that pool tables are important things to have in the home?
My family doesn't watch TV. I purchased my sofa when I didn't even have a TV.
The most important aspect of my living room arrangement is how well it facilitates long, deep, conversations with friends who come over for visits.
I have 3 pieces of seating in my living room, a chair for reading placed next to a book case (large enough that a couple small kids can sit in the lap of an adult who is reading with them if so desired), a smaller 2 person sofa, and a larger 6ft long sofa.
I know plenty of other families who have similar arrangements with sofas so placed as to emphasize socialization with friends.
Now if we are talking about the 90s and early 2000s, yeah, it was all about amazing TV watching experiences.
> The only time I'm on my couch is when I have a few people over. And even then we're usually doing other things than just lazing about.
The couch is where you retire to after dinner has been finished and everything cleaned away. Board games may occur in other rooms (depending on one's coffee table situation) the of course a room that is laid out for conversation is going to see the most use when there are people over to have a conversation with.
FWIW now that I have a kid, I am hosting social events more often than ever before (watching children has a negative co-efficient for small values of n > 1, 3 kids are easier to watch than 1!), but even in my DINK life (at which point I didn't even own a TV), my couch got plenty of use.
If anything, TV has become dramatically less of a shared cultural experience for Americans since the post-network era began.
That's quite a leap. Did you consider that dwell.com might not have actually done a study on what Americans consider the "most important piece of furniture" but just used that phrase to justify the very existence of their article?
In any case, even though there is nothing on television I watch with any regularity currently, I would still rate my sofa as a fairly important piece of furniture. Not as important as my bed, but it is the largest piece of furniture and the centerpiece of my largest room. My kitchen/living room is open floor plan townhouse and I cook quite a bit, and I can't just stand all day, so that's where I rest, even though I'm just listening to music when I do so and not watching television. When I lay down to read a book, that's also usually where I do it. If I take a nap during the day, it's typically on the sofa. We usually eat dinner there, too, even though we're not watching television, just because it's more comfortable than any other place we have to sit. I even work from my sofa pretty frequently.
But I've got no complaints, personally. I paid $300 or so at the PX when I joined the Army almost 20 years ago and bought my first house and still have the same sofa. It certainly didn't fall apart on me. It's moved with me four times. My wife and I debate getting a nice one but always decide not to because our cats are going to tear it up and puke on it all the time anyway.
> I've been pretty stunned during my travels to find that it's really only Americans who obsessively talk about or reference TV shows and movies in their small talk.
It's a slight exaggeration, but yeah. I've really started noticing it on HN and some news-ish sites too, over the past couple of years: where a book would normally be used as a reference point, now a film is more commonly used instead.
Maybe it's hindsight bias on one of our parts.
Frankly, we'd probably use it a little less if our dining chairs were more comfortable, and I do think there's a very good case to be made that dining room chairs are more important than the sofa, but nonetheless, I really don't think a sofa is especially tied to TV culture in any way.
If we're going to be doing something rather than lazing around or eating, we're not going to be in the house at all.
You don't think there is a strong correlation between how people spend their time and what they talk about?
Yes. Write your own Dwell magazine and advocate for whatever you wish.
These were for the kid areas. They had reduced the previous (IKEA Ektorp) sofas to rubble over a couple of years. These new ones didn't last long at all. The suspension underneath the cushions is criss-crossed webbing in a softwood frame. Well you can imagine, a 90lb child jumping on that, the forces that develop. And then the frame breaks at the front. And there's nothing structural at the front of the sofa, just some 1/4" thick fiberboard, to anchor replacement frame material to so you can't really fix it.
Oh well. One of them now has solid plywood - very well fastened to what structural elements are available - so it's now very firm but the kids don't care. The other, I had the inspiration of mounting the plywood lower and putting another layer of cushioning in there (leftover seat cushions from the demolished Ektorp sofas). That's actually pretty good.
But without rambunctious kids, these sofas, which were already 10-15 years old, would have lasted quite a while longer. It's wizardly, the seating comfort they got out of such simple and cheap materials.
Pictures look good but it always disappoints. It’s the one online furniture store I will never buy from again.
It seems like the frame in the back has some sort of support that is made out of a material that is closer to cardboard than wood. When our kids run into it, the back of the chair deforms a bit and has to be bent back. I have no idea why the frame of a chair would be made out of something so weak. I expect we'll have to replace them in 5 years or so, and we'll aim for something more old-school.
Seems like Sofas are last to make the economical steel channel furniture jump, you can get tons of sturdy/durable bedframes for like $100 shipped on Amazon. Most cheap metal futon frames also last forever if it wasn't for the moving mechanical components. I'd like to see more steel + bolt sofas.
It's the best piece of furniture I've ever bought. It's made from "engineered wood", covered in quite good leather; I should have chosen a lower grade of leather, because hide isn't as easy to look after as some of the lower-grade leathers.
FTR, I've bought sofas and armchairs from artisan/craftsman makers, from junk shops, and I've also bought cheap disposable shit. After the Stressless, my best buys were all from junk shops. But this Stressless, I more-or-less live in it.
For cushions I already had some, but you can easily make them with more JOANN fabric and a big box of poly stuffing. Extremely basic sewing skills and a pair of scissors are all you need.
Give a man a fish...
In particular, it's comfortable, well built, but not bulky. I can take it apart move it in my regular sized SUV if needed. I move a lot, and eventually grew tired of bulky things that were difficult or impossible to move without professional help.
I also tried a Burrow sofa which has the same modular properties, but it was not comfortable at all and I had to return it
Also, never pay full price. They offer 25-35% off many times per year, usually around holidays.
I later wanted something matching for a different room - but the problem is, the Costco furniture changes seemingly every day and you never see the same thing again.
Easiest way to find happiness in material quality of life is to lower one's standards.
Many very good, long-lasting pieces of furniture come on the estate market for very cheap because a) no one wants to move the giant solid-wood china cabinet, or b) you can get a $15 sofa or table mailed to you, why would you want an ugly flower pattern on something that has already outlasted one owner?
Look for Thomasville, Drexel, or similar from the 1950s to the 1980s. Lots of midcentury modern, if you like that sort of thing, but plenty of other designs.
I'm writing this on a desk (currently missing the leather insert in the top) made of solid pecan. We got a 10' china cabinet, dining table that seats 12, and chairs for $300 a while back.
Unfortunately, I haven't seen stackable bookshelves from the 30s-60s lately and they were getting somewhat expensive, which puts a crimp on my obsession to decorate entirely with books.
Other than that, I wish this article went less into things that don't matter (properly sized brackets are no worse, and sometimes better, than joinery, etc.) and more into the ergonomics, types of foam and other materials that actually matter. Like, how do I tell how long a cushion filling or fabric will last, or tell if there are springs that will sag without taking it apart.
What truly baffles me is how, in my middle-class suburban hometown, all of these families were able to furnish their massive 3-5 bedroom homes. Many families, including my own, would have a living room that was mostly for show (because hanging out happened in the den/TV room) yet contained thousands or tens of thousands of dollars of furniture.
That's your explanation.
The modern professional "middle class" was once called the petit bougeuosie and characterizes itself by trying to replicate aristocratic aesthetics and lifestyles with earned wages, which is mostly a lost cause and just creates a endless treadmill of labor and consumption.
Good on you for being so thoroughly free of the compulsion that they're an alien bafflement to you!
Older, antique furniture was much easier to work with and most newer furniture was practically impossible to reupholster at all.
I was pretty easy to see the difference once the bones were exposed.
We picked them because they were one of very few UK suppliers who could supply a sofa that's not covered in toxic flame retardants (the UK has kept some very dubious legislation in place on this issue, I think mainly because the industry lobbies for it as a protectionist measure).
The sofa we bought was on the expensive side, but not ridiculous. It's also seems beautifully made in general, and was carefully delivered by the firm themselves, who spent about half an hour manouevring it in.
So it's actually kind of a two sided loss in quality: the designs are flimsier even while the engineering requirements have become more demanding.
I tried the same here in the US with some high end Scandinavian furniture ($5k), the quote was up to 1x what I originally paid. In the end it made sense to just buy new again.
The cost of labor of where you reside has a significant effect on whether you purchase another 'junk' piece of furniture.
When it comes to sofas there's a less common low, and that's "model home" furniture.
These upholstered representations look just like the real thing but they are not counterfeits, merely imitations of what it would look like if the model home were to be equipped with actual furniture where its usefulness was a consideration.
Occasionally appearing on the second-hand market so caveat emptor.
I think there's probably just quality:price tiers and mine happens to be in the economical but decent quality range.
Got this one in 2016 for $1,100, and it’s survived 2 kids with minimal pilling. It won’t impress anyone, but I have no problem using it.
https://www.ikeaddict.com/ikeapedia/en/Product/60276883/us-e...
I have no way of discerning furniture/fabric quality, and no one offers long warranties, so I don’t see a reason to spend more than IKEA prices.
[1] https://www.dwr.com/living-sofas-sectionals/quilton-chaise-s...
$2700 is what I got mine for. I think price might have been lowered to $2300 now.
It's built in Poland. Solid wood with steel reinforcement in the form of steel tubing in places, springs, and then a pillow system on top of that. The firm making it is the Swedish company SITS.
But I think one has to actually sit in a bunch of couches to see whether they're good.
The only problem I have with them is that they have almost no couch designs that have a more plush style. Almost all of them are firmer foams and just plain not appealing designs.
They're made from recycled materials and are vegan. So far they've been great, and they have a 15 year guarantee, but time will tell.
West Elm and the whole Pottery Barn set of brands are just worse versions of Crate and Barrel, with terrible customer service to go with it. They had some of the most mean and rude customer service agents I’ve ever talked to. They acted like the store was an entirely different company, then the store acted like I needed to call the national call line. Plus, they outsource deliveries in a very annoying blame-shifting way.
At least at RH you get a single human point of contact who can handle everything like a concierge experience.
The factory was a real place; the frames were made of solid wood and plywood, there was a sewing floor and even one (incredibly kooky) person whose sole job was to stuff the pillows. This guy was in a little room full of feathers all day, and they'd follow him around to the cantina and bathroom like a cartoon character.. but I digress.
My job there for a while was to make the sofa legs -- that was a sixteen step process, and they didn't even trust me to glue the boards together, just to do the cuts and shape the pieces. Sand and stain and wax and polish, yes sir!
They had a dedicated delivery crew, and what the article mentions about packaging is true -- things would be blanketed and wrapped up just the right way, then tetris-ed onto the truck. Sitting shotgun on that truck and hauling sofas up stairs and through various spaces was what I did after making the legs got too boring.
These sofas sold for $3000 ~ $4000 and up, and that was at the break of the millennium. I think the cheapest chair they had was around $2000. I should really swing by the showroom and see how much these are now -- and whether they're still made like they used to be.
The was a great company an old colleague of mine started called Interior Define that sourced custom furniture from China for a BluDot price but much higher quality, but they did not survive the pandemic and have since been sold in bankruptcy to a company that has reduced the quality to par
Having done a lot of DIY projects over the last decade, I've really shifted my view of OSB. Originally I would lump it in with particleboard, but I've since drastically changed my view of it. Particleboard is, truly, junk. OSB and plywood are both pretty good products, and for some uses superior to hardwoods (dimensional stability, for example). High quality plywoods are amazing products. OSB for structure or underlayments are really quite good.
It's made from solid wood and stuffed with real feather down. It's several years old now and has shown no signs of aging.
Where? I went around furniture stores and found it hard to discern any relationship between price and quality.
I have at least 20 various pieces of furniture from IKEA that have lasted more than 10 years, some even closing on 20, even after multiple moves to various college dorms. Dresser drawers, dining table, sofa, bed platform, sit stand desk, etc.
I do not think I have ever thrown something out for breaking. Maybe gets scuffed or scratched up or chipped, but you can mostly use one of those latex paint touch up markers and make the damage nearly invisible.
You can still get quality, you just have to pay for it.
I have long been thinking about the idea of saving up for a while and doing a big re-furnish trip down to North Carolina with a moving truck.
My wife and I have one of their sofas—it's quite nice, although our lives might've been easier with one of the Burrow-style sofas that are easily disassembled for moves.
Same sort of issue with cool remote controls. For example, la-z-boy has pretty good controls - remotes have better designs, have lots of adjustments, and motors seem to move faster. And they too fail the partner test - "that looks like old fart stuff"
I kind of like some stressless recliners.
oh, there is one class of furniture that has a lot of control - the massage chairs. Except they seem to be furniture you want to hide from everyone, they fail the "normal human being" test.
maybe I need to know pointers to other furniture/designs?
My furniture is all cheap particle board shit because I can't afford anything nicer because I'm spending all my money on a mortgage, food, gas, and student loans. I don't think it's a matter so much of nobody wanting to make good quality products so much as all the companies that did do that and priced their products accordingly are running out of customers, because we're all getting strip-mined by the rest of life's expenses going up all the goddamn time. I would love nothing more than a gorgeous, well made sofa that will last me a solid chunk of my remaining life, but where the fuck am I getting the money for it?
It's the boots theory of economics applied to everything. I'll spend $7,000 on sofas before I die and still have a sore ass.
People learn to be comfy over time. I dont need to live life like i dont know what I'm doing.
Getting old rocks, but maybe that says more about the terrible quality of life during my younger years then it does about current year.
Hahah
Pay for quality. It saves you money in the long run.
Unlikely. Our sofa is like $300. Let's say it only lasts 3 years before it shows wear or we get bored of it and get another $300 one... your $5k sofa would have to last for 50 years to 'save money'. Not to mention the opportunity cost of those funds.
Pay for quality if you want quality, not in an attempt to save money.
*tetris-ed and Sokoban-ed onto the truck
(Sorry, couldn't help myself)
A decade ago, I shopped for the first time at the most famous furniture store in this part of Texas: Gallery Furniture. Growing up anywhere within an hour or two of Houston in the 80s, Mattress Mack was more recognizable to a kid like me than any news anchor or any other television personality. Before the 80s was over, I'd probably seen him hop in the air hundreds of times with a fistful of dollars, talking about how Gallery Furniture will save you money, and he's still going strong today. He even toured big city and small town schools warning kids about drugs. Anyway, I had gotten by for years on hand-me-downs and IKEA furniture, but it was time to replace something ratty, and I walked in there with a vague impression that it might be more pricey than other stores. They told me it was all made in America (some places up north like Indiana?) and when I was asking about cheaper sofas that a guy over 6 feet tall could comfortably nap on, they pointed me to one they said was made locally in the Houston area. It was very long and had a very simple design and had firm foam that wouldn't sag (something I had asked for), and they let me have it for $500, and it felt like much better quality than a lot of the prettier stuff in other furniture stores.
A couple years later when I got married, we were looking for a nicer sofa, and I figured out that the local furniture maker that Gallery Furniture had been selling was called Living Designs Furniture and had a factory in the East End:
https://www.livingdesignsfurniture.com
Their factory's showroom was very bare, but it was full of pieces, including a colorful chair in the shape of a stiletto shoe! We found an elegantly shaped light gray sofa long enough for me to sleep on, and again with high quality foam, and they built one with some slight customizations we wanted for $1,081 total. Unreal, because we have a white sofa from IKEA that isn't much less, but the quality is on another level!
I'd really like to see a resurgence of products like this in the USA. I've heard of some custom sofas costing several thousand, but somehow this local company is managing to sell at a lower price point. 18 years ago, a buddy of mine was living in Charleston, South Carolina. He had talked to a local high end furniture maker about doing a 3-year apprenticeship to learn how to make fine furniture, but in the end he knew he'd make very little per year in wages (he estimated $35,000 or so). Instead he pursued another dream and went to Napa Valley for a one-year course at the only open-wheel racing mechanic school in the country and ended up working on an Indy Car team for a dozen years. Hopefully more guys like him can find the furniture maker route feasible in the future if American consumers can escape the throwaway mindset. The average household doesn't need expensive Amish Craftsman offerings. A lot of people could afford this local furniture maker we have available, but I understand it could be a risky business venture to try to compete with the stuff shipped over the ocean.
The whole thing is just stapled together OSB.
I ripped the dust cover off and added 3 new frame stretchers made from 2x8 construction lumber (and tied other loose joints back together) and its done pretty well since then: https://imgur.com/a/bqlLgW3 (wish I'd gotten a few more pictures, but I was tired by this point). Just shocking how terrible the construction is.
Quality can still be found, it just can’t be assumed. I think that’s the case for far too many things these days.
We bought very nice leather couches a few years back (we have dogs, leather is the only option) and paid dearly for them. And they're great. (We looked carefully at the construction details before buying.)
This summer, we had some rooms we cared a lot about and others we just needed to fill in some blanks in, and we camped Facebook Marketplace looking for stuff. Pretty soon, even the living room was getting stuff we found on Facebook, at comparable levels of quality to our old "new" furniture, and at pennies on the dollar. People are simply always getting rid of good stuff, and there isn't a meaningful secondary market for it; they're just thrilled you're getting it out of their house and getting a couple bucks in the process.
I submit that you would end up with a better-furnished room faster, more easily, and at a fraction of the cost of high-end furniture retailers simply with Facebook Marketplace and TaskRabbit (for near-instant delivery).
† Leastways, not if you live in a major North American metro.
And nowadays something expensive is no longer guaranteed to last.
This is why I value old things so much:
I have an old chair to work with, it's not a good chair, but it's better than anything new. I did a restoration instead of buying a new one because the new one might not last long.
I have a 10 year old car, I'm scared to buy a new one with the bizarre stories about new 3 cylinder engines breaking (throwaway engines?)
I try to use old things as much as possible. I stopped using an old Android when SSL stopped working. It's not a matter of lack of money, it's a lack of confidence in new things.
The last brand that I gave some value to was Sansumg. My last cell phone... THEY FORGOT to add a piece to fix the flat cable for the on/off button. And twice the on/off button stopped working, and twice I sent it to technical assistance. The third time I opened the phone and repaired the button myself. My two Sansumg TVs break a few days after the warranty ends.
My sofa broke in less than two years.
EDIT: Actually, in general I've found that my IKEA furniture has done pretty well (basically everything in the house is IKEA) with the sole exception of a "Lack" coffee table, whose surface is kinda disintegrating after 8 years (I think it's basically made of cardboard with a veneer...). The name should perhaps have been a warning.
Why are so many of them just plain uncomfortable? I'm looking for one I want right now, and I have to go around a furniture shop and try each out and I reckon, maybe 1/4 of them are suitable for a place you might enjoy sitting in.
The high end furniture shops seem to be the worst, i've seen 4 figure sofas that are the most uncomfortable thing I ever tried. Champions of form over function.
My last favourite sofa was around 2500 I guess, lasted 10 years, was excellently comfortable, but was unfortunately the wrong shape for my new place, I have not found anything anywhere near as good as that one.
It may be my height, much furniture seems a little off to me, and it is hard in general for me to find things I'm happy with.
One hack you can perform on most sofas is to add some height to the rear legs using castors or wooden blocks or something. This tilts it forward a bit. Sitting back or reclining is fine in a dentist's chair because there's head support but it's no good on a sofa! There our head and spines need to be balanced.
Anyhow -- quality of materials and design are both important but the fact is that average bodily awareness is poor and this is a fundamental reason why our furniture is worse than it needs to be!
Sofas have many different functions.
The plush sofa you sink deep into for TV at the end of the day has a different function than the firm sofa your dinner guests sit on the front of while sipping cocktails, etc
Many of the sofas you were looking at were probably designed for a different function than you were seeking.
I sourced high-quality foam and wool upholstery fabric from Maharam and took those to one of the best upholsterers/furniture restorers in Los Angeles. They did a wonderful job and now I have a super-comfortable couch with many good childhood memories, that should last me another 25 years before I need to replace the cushions again.
Point being, get a classic old piece and restore it. It will last a lifetime.
Parents bought a living room set, it was double what a similar set would be at the local furniture superstore, but the fabric/cushions were a new level of terrible. Basically fell apart in two years.
It's a great place to find wooden tables, beds, dressers, but it's all heavy (as you'd expect) and hard to move.
If I was buying a sofa today I would get something from Stressless.
This is inaccurate. Their schooling is complete after grade 8.
From their point of view, the modern society may be needlessly infantilizing people who are halfway to adulthood.
We even treat university students like kids, hence all the obsession with micromanaging their campus experience.
I used to have some expensive, but ultimately crap, book cases. Book cases are not designed by people who own a lot of books. 36" to 48" spans of fast growth pine will stretch and bow within a year or two. I designed my own book case. I went to a furniture making store. We went back and forth a few times. The biggest sticking point that took four attempts for the furniture maker to understand was where to put the fixed shelf. It does not go in the middle because that wastes space. We made it out of pine. 7' 8" tall, so that when standing it up, it will clear an 8ft ceiling in modern American homes. 22" wide shelves so they cannot flex. Fixed shelf to counteract gravity. Made specifically to carry paperback novels and similarly sized books. "Sand it three times, prime it, sand it, prime it, sand it, paint it, sand it, paint it, no I don't care that a single book case will cost $200." I bought 24 of them. Many hundreds of lineal feet of book cases. We still have them 24 years later and they are as good as new. And the paint job, because it is two layers of prime and two layers of paint, on a mirror surface, looks like you just took the item from the showroom floor.
I have a plywood bookcase I made to store cooking books. The cheapest plywood you can imagine from the big box store. But because of the structural design, 15 years later it still holds up without any bowing or flexing.
Modern furniture is absolute junk. Even the "good stuff."
I've purchased couches from West Elm, Restoration Hardware, and a few other well-known places, and they've all been disappointing. From now on I'll stick to Furnitureland and IKEA, but I don't know if I have the energy to go couch shopping at Furnitureland.
A good place to start in my opinion is with the well regarded office-furniture brands, Herman Miller, Steelcase, Hon, etc. They are well experienced in making furniture that can handle abuse, because commercial furniture takes a lot of abuse. And as far as durability goes, they make durable furniture in the highest volumes and have the most reasonable prices you're going to get.
You need 2.5 density foam or higher, or you need a "uncushioned" style couch.
(A little tip - the density you want for proper comfort varies by the thickness of the cushion, the weight of the intended users, and the whether it's the seat bottom or the back. The back needing a softer foam.)
This is completely illegal in Europe and I think it's illegal to serve this UI to an EU IP, even for non-EU websites.
Anyway, who cares, it's almost funny what lengths they go to to get you to accept cookies.
It's not "cheap imports" either, I don't think sofas here are imported. They are made to order in my country. They are just garbage.
I'm talking about midrange and even higher priced sofas. If you see the armature, it's mostly crap wood with "lots of staples" as mentioned. And a fancy cover, of course.
I will agree with the upholstery person in this article: it's not going to be worth it to pay someone to do it. I ended up reupholstering ours for around $500, but that's because I did all the labor myself. An amazing amount of work.
It was made with a lot of OSB, some of the most curved pine I've ever seen, and lots and lots of staples.
I fixed the frame by adding a variety of supports and glue and screws. The frame went from being barely sufficient to quite solid. I doubled the webbing and springs, and completely rebuilt the cushions. To an extent I used the existing fabric as the patterns for the new fabric, except: my wife wanted the cushions to have piping (that was a huge effort), and originally it had the back cushions built in and stuffed with polyfill, but I wanted to make them removable so I had to redesign the back and custom design the cushions.
The biggest mistakes I made were the foam I used for the cushions was way too firm. If I were to redo it I would do something like a 3 layer: firm, medium, maybe latex or low density memory foam. I'd also probably have used a leather considering all the effort I put in, largely to keep the cats at bay.
The real down side is that we're thinking of getting rid of it because it's really too big for our space, and unless I redo the cushions it's way too firm to use without additional pillows. But, despite all the work I put into it, I'd be willing to bet that we could't sell it, and probably couldn't give it away (selling furniture on craigslist is so frustrating).
End result: https://photos.app.goo.gl/Q8DMxQU7L9AggCBDA Starting reassembly: https://photos.app.goo.gl/rQRJfmYmSLew3rSN8
They've got an ingenious model from a profit perspective as well. Since you can't charge subscriptions for stuff like that, they can sell you pieces of a Sactional and then you can get more pieces as the space you live in gets bigger or your life style changes. They also sell additional covers so if you get bored of the previous ones, you can change the color without getting a new couch (though it is not easy to get them on and off).
My advice, wait until it's on sale. They regularly go for sale from 15-20%. If you aren't fussy about the type, Costco usually has them too.
- (though it is not easy to get them on and off)
no kidding. that was my second biggest gripe with this thing. I am in zero hury to use that feature.
The center section of my last sectional broke after about four months. Should any section break, I can quickly replace that piece instead of having to "deal with it" or replace the whole thing.
Sometimes they don't know what they have, I picked up a Herman Miller office chair for £30. It did have some paint specs on, which might have been why it was sold so cheaply. They came right off with a damp cloth though.
It's really depressing that we have gotten to this point, seemingly the logical conclusion of the so-called efficient capitalist market.
Thus, people get foam, OSB, and cardboard in a fake canvas bag.
Good upholsterers are hard to find, often eccentrics, and usually will not tolerate cheapskates. If you own something pricey like a boat or restaurant, than most are happy to get something that will last. Even a few yards of period correct fabrics or leather is more expensive than the typical Ikea living room set.
One needs to learn these things if you want to stay married. lol =)
A couple of months ago, we stayed in a newer Holiday Inn Express. The bed and cabinets were very nice and well built.
For example:
https://www.charterfurniture.com/products/hospitality/desk-t...
My friend had an Article couch and after a handful of months it was so uncomfortable it was as if the stuffing somehow just vanished.
And yet when I look around the net all I can see are glowing reviews of Article couches all over :\
High quality Scandinavian-style plywood probably would have lasted decades.
Nice materials + pretty design does not necessarily result in a good product.
Sine qua non is Latin.
To be fair, the quality did look pretty decent but marketing needs to try harder. Mind you that's not the daftest brand name or trademark ever! Who could forget the Rolls Royce Silver Mist? Mist in German means dung, manure or shit. Someone thankfully noticed before it was released (Frankfurt motor show) and it became the Silver Shadow. Then there was "Consignia" ...
We know more now (and could afford better) whenever we have to finally replace this, but $2000 is a not-insignificant investment that shouldn't be a complete piece of crap.
they seem to be slightly better made, but for SO MUCH more money. They have huge stores devoted to their products. Are people really spending money, and that much, on coolers?
That's always been the case though. There has always been junk marketing itself as "luxury" to milk the nouveau riche. It's not like real Coach bags utilize some magic leather that doesn't degrade just the same as the $200 leather purse you buy from a local artisan. It's not like the brick that Supreme sold was made of some sort of magical clay. The luxury purse companies don't burn their leftover product to protect some secret of Dr Who purses that are bigger or magically organized on the inside, but because the entire value of the brand is "I can afford this and you cannot"
Luxury has ALWAYS been about signalling and displaying status and power. It's always about rubbing the prole's faces in their supposed supremacy. Remember, they have money because they are better than you, definitely not because there are systems and structures in place that make it easier to get rich for the already wealthy and connected.
Unfortunately it seems so many people really struggle to understand that while quality often costs a lot, costing a lot does not imply quality in any way. If you can afford to spend oodles on marketing for your product, you probably aren't spending as much on quality as people assume you would.
Since then almost every other couch we got was from ikea, since if it ended up sucking at least we didn’t pay 2-3x the cost for it. Which is sad really, I want a nice couch. I just don’t that paying 10-20x the cost wind just be a piece of junk.
Here's a quick overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0nPPc2-jpE
It's almost like a "How to shop for nice stuff at IKEA 101" and covers:
00:22 Sofas
01:28 Morning Brew
02:29 Lounge Chairs
03:41 Dining Chairs
05:34 Tables
07:34 Lighting
09:02 OthersAt least with most IKEA products you assemble them yourself, so the level of quality is immediately apparent, and the pricing reflects it. I appreciate that straightforward approach.
Most everything I've bought there has outlasted my desire to keep using it. There are the occasional problems, like a blue table where the veneer shows a bright white mark wherever it gets nicked, but I feel like many criticisms are unfounded and often come across as elitist.
Id never buy one again from them though after having everything else fail on us.
About 3 years ago after moving into a new house, I needed a new couch and wanted something that would wear reasonably well without getting into the higher end ($3k+). I found one on Apt2B which they were touting was built around an robotically-welded steel frame, lending to consistent durability. After reading many sofa reviews mentioning buckling particleboard, that sounded pretty good. There weren’t a ton of options due to pandemic shortages so I went for it, which cost me $1500.
It’s held up well so far. Cushions are showing some wear but nothing out of the ordinary, and the steel frame is indeed solid. It might even be worth reulphostering at some point down the road.
Installing new is pretty cheap and easy - $10 roll and a staple gun. Or just leave it off
The buying up of precious housing as investments by non-residents should mostly be banned, starting with institutional and overseas investors.
AirBnb should also be banned. And the people who profited off that startup, who must've known they were creating illegal hotels and destroying rental markets, should be hit with devastating fines, maybe also imprisoned.
I was also very lucky though. I thought I could configure the sectional in a couple different ways. Turned out I rolled the dice the right way because I couldn't. And only discovered this after many months because I was on crutches at the time and couldn't do anything about the sofa sitting in my garage.
In furniture, you definitely get what you pay for...or not. I've found anything <$300 is going to be nothing but fake materials like manufactured woods (if not even just veneer covered cardboard) and horrible cushion/fabric.
Anything decent doesn't really start until ~$1k, and anything in the $3k range you mentioned starts to become heirloom quality. As with anything, these are YMMV, but serves as a fast basis for my experience
The problem here is, that expensive doesn't mean quality.
Buying a cheap ikea piece and replacing it in a few years might still be a better choice than overpaying for an expensive piece, that's the same quality as ikea, but with a different tag on it (both 'brand tag' and 'price tag').
During these 10 years I haven't sat on any sofa, be in office lobbies, hotels, showrooms, friends' home that made me feel like it could be a significant upgrade upon my 400 USD sofa.
Sure that might not be usual, and I actually wouldn't recommend any other Ikea sofa in general (many were crappy when we were choosing ours). But price and marketting ("made in XXXX") is still only one factor in the wether the product will be any good.
It's bloody hard to get rid of a lot of stuff. I had a great leather sofa, about 15-20 years old (inherited from my grandparents) still in great condition, but I couldn't get rid of it at any price and none of the charity shops took it because it was missing some fire hazard label (sigh...). Same with almost everything: I sold my 2-year old £1,200 mattress for £50 (and I had to practically beg to guy to take it, because it would have been a complete shame to chuck it). Washing machine, fridge, all the "little stuff" (cutlery, books, DVDs, what-have-you). I ended up putting a lot outside "free stuff" and that got rid of a lot.
Actually the only things I managed to sell was an IKEA sleeping sofa and an IKEA dinner table set.
That said, since then I found that actually finding good stuff isn't always easy.
What's more, actually selling stuff is often such a time consuming hassle (posting, dealing with replies, scheduling pick ups, dealing with flakes) that in a lot of cases you're better off just paying trash hauling service to just come pick it all up in a single go.
However, monitors seem to sell immediately every time.
It's actually illegal to sell a used mattress in the US - and there are very legitimate public health reasons for the being the case. You can't really clean one - that's especially true of foam, and they can be riddled with lice, bedbugs, and all kinds of creepy crawlies.
I suppose there’s an interesting survivorship thing going on here. A poorly-built couch probably won’t even last 10 years. And if it does, somehow, you’ll know as soon as you sit on it if it’s about to turn into dust based on the squeaking and general instability. If it still feels solid and you don’t sink into it so deep that you can’t stand up again there’s a decent chance it’ll last another 10 years.
Custom Macy's extra long couch from ~2000 is the best thing ever. You sink into it and it holds up. Bought used-new for $1k when a friend paid $4k but was delivered 2 by mistake.
Interesting, with cats it's exactly the opposite.
It's all too easy to see the past through rose tinted glasses. Also remember that the "built to last" stuff from the past is often an example of survivorship bias.
You know, like Apple does.
Did you use tube radios? They broke all the time.
The difference is that they weren't intentionally horrible, they were limitations of an era.
But at some point, devices start to last a long time. My parents' first refrigerator ran without problems for over 10 years. I've had far fewer problems with CDS and CD players than with cassette players.
And we used to have a lot of low quality items, but now it's much harder to find good quality items. And brand means almost nothing. Even Apple has been selling notebooks with horrible keyboards for years. I'm just using an Apple Notebook now, I've been waiting for years for them to change the keyboard.... The Nitendo Switch Joystick has a drift problem and Nintendo ignores it...
There is no reason for a new Samsung TV to break after a year of use. Or LEDs. Or power switches. It's not a technical limitation, it's a choice.
The quality of everything is trash. And if you want something that has the type of quality you used to get 30 years ago - you're going to pay close to 4-10x as much.
Everyone is selling trash for cheap. We live in a mall of garbage.
Only buy CRI 95+ (99 if you can find them). Not because of the color rendering quality (although that is a great benefit), but because they will tend to have appropriately derated other parts of the circuit, which are the elements that fail. They can do this for that product because at the more upmarket price, they can afford the additional 0.02 in COGS.
As to Nokia phones, well yeah. I understand there is a real market for them now, since they found they are very effective black box flight recorders.
Nokia phones weren't as durable as you remember. A Nokia phone would hardy last 2 years with limited use, either the battery or power connector would die quickly. iPhones get way more usage than Nokias and they easily last 3 years.
Also I've literally never had a LED bulb die on me.
I will have to upgrade soon to a 4G version because the 3G bands are getting repurposed in the UK over the next few years. Otherwise I would have kept going with it. Thankfully HMD still make the ones that run the S3 OS... which is immediately obvious when they actually bother quoting standby time in the specs; the KaiOS ones are basically just a worse android phone with all the same power drain issues and not enough compute or utility to justify it.
still are as so many see to be purchased and then running the ground for short term profits
When these conversations happens, I always wonder why people want some of these items to last forever.
Are you going to stick with that 10 year old plasma TV? Great. I want new tech, and this stuff moves fast. Furniture is a bit different, but my parents had all kinds of good, long-lasting stuff that no one wants because it's out of style.
Our cheap ikea couch keeps lasting, preventing us from buying a nice, new one. We can't throw it out of it's not broken.
It is long known that companies who sell good quality products go out of business after a couple decades at most, they saturate their market and because no one needs to renew, the company dies.
Ironically ikea HAS to sell quality (for price) because they are such a big brand. Their stuff is great quality for price, so people keep coming back for upgrades, when they can afford it.
My friend had a NEW Ford that went to the workshop more than 10 times in the first year of use. It's about trust that I will turn on the device and it will work.
> I want new tech
Buy it. I met people who sold their old iPhone and bought a new model every year, nothing against that. My problem is if the IPhone in this first year broke two or more times like my Sansumg.
Absolutely. It cost me the price of a power supply repair. The display is beautiful and the interface is crapware free.
> I want new tech, and this stuff moves fast.
True! Advertising tech is ever evolving.
That is very surprising. Mind explaining what the issues were?
I have bought many (6) smartphones and non has broken during my usage and also after I passed them to others.
We have 4th TV at home and each one was fully working when we replaced it after ~ 10 years. Current one (Sony), our first LCD is from 2012 and works perfectly (with just new set top box).
I have bought/got many laptops and any of them has broken. I have laptop from 1996 or 1998 which still works. There were software issues there, but they are fixable by update. (I have never bought Acer or Asus though)
Sure there is. I bought a case of Sylvania LEDs in 2019. They're used a few hours a week and I've tossed 5 of the 15 I've installed.
But, they cost £3 each and leaving them running 24/7 will cost you less than £20/year.
I Often hear people saying that IKEA furnitures don’t travel well or don’t last long. It’s like we’re not going to the same IKEA.
That said, I am one of those people who doesn't get a lot from them so I can speak to some of criticism. Part of it is just the aesthetic, and theirs doesn't match how I decorate my own space or what I usually feel good around. That's just the nature of aesthetics, though, and there's always going to be some difference in taste between any two people and any two regions.
As for quality, though, I think the critique you hear reflects the quality of their budget products. If you're eyeing modern or euro designs at a fancy furniture studio and then go to IKEA to find a cheap approximation, you discover that much of the cheapest stuff has the same flimsy glueboard, peeling laminate, and unstable joinery of the cheap stuff at Wal-mart.
That shouldn't rally be a surprise (cheap is cheap for a reason) and doesn't hold true for their mid-range and higher products. And heck, it's not even really fair when Walmart and Target furniture isn't any better, but it's enough to keep feeding the reputation.
Price is sometimes an indicator (I bought two Ikea dressers ~15 years ago; I kept the cheaper one for only a few years while the more expensive one is still going strong) but not always (my 18-year-old sofa was the entry-level option at the time).
I grew up in a nearly all Ikea household, and it’s only later in life I have discovered their reputation.
Am I missing something?
But depreciation on IKEA is huge because while it can last a long time within a household, it moves very poorly so if it has been moved or reassembled once or twice, it’s likely near end of life. But hard to evaluate that, it’s not like it has an odometer — hence value for used it very low.
It's probably a signaling thing too...
With the exception of the aforementioned table (which I think cost about 8 euro at the time, so, really, what did I expect) I’ve found all their stuff to be of very decent quality, certainly better than what you could get from ‘traditional’ furniture stores at the same price.
They have a line of pine furniture I like, as well as other things that are solid for the price (their kitchen cabinets) but you only have one chance to make a first impression as they say.
I had an engineered wood bed frame from them split in half, whereas an older IKEA pine (not hardwood but whatever) bed frame still lives on.
Also the style does get really old pretty fast for me.
I think good second hand furniture is where it's at: you get to not buy yet another new thing and get something solid and good.
I mean, if you are comparing with heirloom class furniture then that’s certainly true. After taking the cabinet or bed apart and sticking it together 4 or 5 times, you certainly start to notice some degradation. But then we’re talking about a factor 100 price difference.
Yes I hate them.
You'd spend $60 on a book case and spend the next 4 hours trying to understand what the instructions mean and how to build it. You also needed a partner to hold corners together.
Now today, the furniture instructions are better and instead 16 different weird fastener, there are 8.
Its a frustration thing. Ikea didn't really do anything but be low cost. We blame Ikea like we blame Walmart for having drug addicts.
Every time I've moved, I think this will be the time I replace it, but the joinery has stayed rock-solid, the wood has aged beautifully (though I admit this is likely owing to a lack of pets or children) and even the upholstery has never pilled or visibly worn (though I keep thinking about ordering a replacement slipcover set from Comfort Works, which makes aftermarket upgrades for long-since-discontinued Ikea products). And the minimalist, Danish-influenced style somehow never looks out of place no matter what else I put around it.
This article has me thinking I may yet keep the Lillberg for years to come.
I don't think "cheap" construction is necessarily a bad thing, honestly. There's ways to do cheap construction such that it works just fine.
So while the materials are cheap and the style not high end, from what I've seen they maximize the engineering to make it durable.
Though I'm also going to point out that a LACK side table ($13 now) for 8 years is a rather good deal.
The internals are revealed on the Ikea page too: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/lack-side-table-black-brown-801...
Okay those cheap ones make sense, but for coffee table it is robbery...
Also… I haven’t priced out Lack tables in a while but it looks like they’re still only $20?! I last bought one in probably 2006 and they were $20CAD at the time.
I still own some Billies made in 1995 or so by Ikea. Literally massive wood and damn good book shelves. The ones bought by me in 2008 or so very noticeably less well build but still ok. The ones we bought in 2018 or so are shit, especially the shelves are so thin that they begin to sag.
In 2008 or so a friend of mine bought a "kallax" (another name then) and it was awesome, it's still in his basement and looks good. We bought one in 2023 and it's basically only paint, some "wood" and air. It's ok to store stuff in, but it's impossible to drill a screw into the wood. It's like trying to screw paper.
You can drill the thin wood in IKEA furniture like this, but you have to reinforce it.
IKEA has always had a mix of wobbly instacrap and solid stuff. I remember they made a short-lived modular shelf called BRODER [1], which was solid steel and came in wall-mounted or freestanding configurations, the kind of solid thing you want in a garage or storage space. I was shocked at how high-end it was. It was discontinued to cost and low sales.
[1] https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3209/3641557199_eb0860e9eb.jpg
At some point in my twenties, I decided it was time to upgrade from my broke college student IKEA lifestyle which to me meant West Elm. Every thing I got from West Elm was absolute garbage and none of it lasted more than a handful of years.
Now I'm in the prime of my career and could move up to something actually nice if I really wanted to, like Design Within Reach (truly the most ironic business name in existence). But it's just so hard for me to justify a 5x or more price jump, when, honestly, the IKEA furniture I have has been so good.
I have a decade-old IKEA couch that is still in great shape despite surviving cats, dogs, young children, a snoring spouse who slept on it every night for about a year, and being mostly occupied throughout the entire pandemic. It's a tank, and still looks good to me.
I think I've committed myself to having a style that is basically "IKEA + some vintage stuff" which seems to work well quality wise and is about an order of magnitude cheaper than getting new quality non-IKEA furniture.
It's not as well made as quality pieces, but I worked from the assumption that any couch I bought would be trash. Some of the nice things about a buying into a system like the Finnala are that when an arm, cushion, cover, or whatever fails, I can just replace that piece; there are aftermarket covers and legs; if I move it can be disassembled; and if a new place is smaller, the whole thing doesn't have to be trashed.
I love quality furniture, but it doesn't always fit the bill for a society where people can't afford a single family house or put down roots. (Note: that still doesn't necessarily justify all the items being sold today that are destined for a landfill in a few years.)
My coffee table is still from IKEA, but it’s metal. I’ve had it for 11 years now. It’s on wheels and some of them look like they’ve seen some stress over the years… and it’s been moved to 8 homes in those 11 years, which could have been the cause. But it still works great and I don’t know the the average person visiting my home would notice that.
I have been thinking of getting something a little larger and more grown up, but I love the functionality of the wheels, how it can get out of the way, and that I don’t have to baby it. It doesn’t look like they sell it anymore, but it was $40 well spent.
IKEA has also however gone downhill compared to ~10 years ago, however. A Poang today, compared to 10 years ago: does not have beveled edges on the wood (which makes it look cheaper and feel less 'soft'), and is even slightly narrower, so that the old cushions dont really fit in the new one.
I think we are seing the effect of increasing prices and breakdown of global supply chains there
Same goes for old wooden windows etc. that can last a hundred years or more if properly taken care of.
"Heavy is good, heavy is reliable. If it doesn't work you can always hit them with it." — Boris 'The Blade' Yurinov
As for other pieces of furniture, e.g., cabinets and stuff, we bought them used from a place that combed estate sales in Denmark for furniture and sold it in the US. One attraction is that the old furniture is smaller, so it works in a smaller house.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a2/c9/50/a2c9506ff9f3d65541d5...
https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZrMM8Wa1DuU/UkRPE9INzeI/AAAAAAAAC...
I wrote my original post in haste - the cost was for doing the couch and a matching chair (same side-profile, just narrower.)
I wonder, is it even possible it's solidly made despite being very light?
The issue is that most modern households in the U.S. can not hack that kind of pricetag for a sofa / couch. Hell, I could never spend that kind of jack on a couch, even if I literally saved up for it (which would take years)... it is just far too much of a percentage of my income for one furniture item.
So, how do we solve that issue (e.g. its good, but if it is 10% of your gross annual income, how could you afford it)? Either people need to get paid more, or ???
> Eighteenth-century furniture was expensive. At a time when a journeyman joiner earned three livres a day, a good-quality armchair might cost as much as a hundred livres.
No matter how much money I make, I like to think there's price-tags I'd still balk at just because I don't want to be a sucker. Or get involved in status-signaling.. not sure which is worse.
So I started thinking about comparisons also. I like to go back to cups of coffee, and you could spend 6 bucks on coffee easily.. is a piece of furniture worth a thousand cups? Maybe. On the other hand, you could own like 3 cargo containers for this cash (think of the material involved), or a used car (think of the utility!).
So nah, this feels like way too much money, unless it's a mint condition antique that some king and queen used to sit on. A huge Belffin modular super sofa with 9 seats and 2 ottomans is less than $2k.
The old clay pipes used to be the best for those, look much better than cinder blocks, but whatever.
Let’s be real too: nobody’s going underneath the sofas at Crate and Barrel to see how they’re constructed. It doesn’t really matter that you can see and touch them.
I don’t even think the luxury brands are much better (e.g., RH). They’ll give you some solid woods and finer materials where you can see them. They are better but not by the amount I would like.
The cheapness isn’t something these manufacturers need to do, it’s just in their interest. Higher margins, more repeat purchases.
It’s not like salaries are high in big furniture production countries like Vietnam. They could do things in a more labor intense way and still make a profit. It’s just that they’ll make more money by making the construction cheap, and making a product that lasts decades is a good way to restrict future business.
I also don't really know what to look for. Most people don't.
In the past you could more or less rely on the store being somewhat reliable and somewhat trustworthy. I say "somewhat" because of course you wouldn't fully trust a salesman, but by and large: you could more or less trust that something was "quality" if it was advertised as such, and/or more expensive and the cheaper options, usually. You didn't need to have a Ph.D. in sofa construction to buy a decent sofa.
Now it's best to assume everything is a lie. Everyone is lying to your face, or just don't know what the they're talking about. Even expensive items marketed as "quality" cannot be relied on being quality at all.
Once upon a time a sofa was a product sold on the market because some people needed sofas, and some people and/or companies knew how to make them. "A fair product for a fair market-conform price". Classic capitalism and free-market economics where everyone wins.
But now it no longer matters if people need sofas, or whether anyone actually gets anything remote to a "fair deal", or any externalities like climate change, or if kids in Vietnam are being exploited. Burn the world, as long as I can sell my crummy sofa, because "free market allows it" is the only logical and moral argument that exists for some people. A sofa is no longer a product; it's just the means to making a profit. There's a subtle difference between to two.
All of this is part of "the financialisation of everything" and "toxic capitalism" that's been going on since the 80s.
It's a fun memory renting a box truck, driving to the industrial heart of LA while listening to Will Wheaton narrate "Masters of Doom" to pick it up.
How did I know? I didn't. But it related to my own story about buying the one really high-quality piece of furniture I own.
Solid hardwood with carvings all over, legs shaped as claws etc.
But frankly it looked horrible in a modern home, and wasn't all that comfortable to sit in.
So I sold it to a carpenter who was renovating an old wooden building in the remote north (Iceland) to have an interior that would fit the year of construction (I believe around the year 1905).
Kind of like the idea that it is now in a much better place.
We have a sofa, coffee table, bed, nightstands, and some wall sconces from Room and Board. I am very impressed with the materials and build quality; I can tell everything will wear well and age nicely. Worth the investment, highly recommended.
The down feather pillows didn’t do well—lots of feathers made their way out of the pillow.
The TV stand I bought from there shows no signs of warping a few years later and has had a 70 pound TV sitting on it the entire time.
The pricing was also pretty reasonable for solid walnut that was made in the USA.
It's not cheap, but easily much higher quality than anything else in the same price point.
replace your entire question with Apple and you'll see the answer as a pattern.
We quit repairing washers when we bought a 20yo Whirlpool. Same story for dryer except it's a 1988 Maytag.
I suspect most people simply forget how often highly-used incandescent bulbs had to be replaced.
Perhaps not. But I worked retail and some people could find a problem with anything
The key may be the "properly taken care of" part (or they didn't buy crap at the time part).
I live in a greater than 200 year old house and all the older windows dating to whenever are complete crap compared to newer Andersens I've had installed.
I keep a 15yo gateway laptop hooked up to mine. The battery failed but otherwise it performs better than new (ssd,ram).
I think the proliferation of subscriptions in modern life has contributed to quite a bit of anxiety.
Life is about being happy.
Premium is the word that means paying extra for an increase in quality. Consider a Toyota vs a Kia.
These things are often correlated but don’t have to be.
Okay, if we want to limit ourselves to economics jargon rather than vernacular.
>Practically this means luxury goods are purchased to convey status
No, practically it means poor people aren't buying them much. Only some luxury good purchasing is related to status signaling.
>Premium is the word that means paying extra for an increase in quality
I'm not aware of a context where that would be the standard definition, though in some contexts it may be the excess portion of the price.
And for that you CAN get good furniture; the trick is figuring out you're paying for the quality and not just overpaying for junk.
Here in France, the daftest I've seen is the Audi e-tron, with etron meaning turd... Though it's been out of common use, so Audi just left the name as is.
They later changed the name profusely apologizing to Italian users.
When I lived in Hong Kong, I once saw a boutique grocery store that had a wooden hanging-sign/plaque, and IIRC it was 1997 and the sign said "Since 1996."
Far more amusing were the businesses non-ironically translated as things like "1000 Golden Fortune"-something-or-other.
There's quite a lot of history involved too so that I suspect there are routine translations between the various Chinese languages eg Cantonese and Mandarin to English which might be a bit behind the times but they still work despite sounding a bit twee nowadays to the relevant ears.
I say: "viva la difference".
The brand actually existed.
Sadly this rings too true, rather closer to home. I own a smart new EV - an MG4. MG is a long standing British Marque. I know my car is largely Chinese.
I went to school in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, UK which is where the Morris Garage originated. My dad drove an MG Midgit in the '60s. My mum owned a Morris 1000 (Moggie). My granddad (Morris Oxford) ... well you get the idea.
In the end you have to decide for yourself exactly what you get when you buy a brand or even what a brand means in the first place.
I quite like my car but I do "firewall" it somewhat - I'm an IT consultant by trade.
I pay, very rarely, for good coffee outside of the home. I prefer the coffee I make at home. It costs me around 8c per cup, 12c if I steam some milk. Some really good beans that cost around $25 a pound. Admittedly the coffee is made on a Jura X8, or a WEGA espresso machine at the RV.
Nobody really comes in our house, so we're not status signalling to anyone other than this casual mention on social media about some stuff. Money is a tool, and deployed properly, can bring a lot of leverage to problems.
You're free to make a judgement, and would probably blow a gasket knowing what I dropped on three office chairs, but at the end of the day, I used the tools I have at my disposal.
That is classic capitalism. Econ 101 notions of efficient free markets rely on all participants being perfect rational actors with perfect information. Snake oil salesmen have always relied on the fact that those assumptions are inaccurate.
Lmao. There's some jobs like that. Always heard (less surprisingly maybe) the morse code operators on ships tend to be kooky as hell too.
That said, I wouldn't recommend the new 3310, because it's only 2G which isn't going to give you very good call quality or network coverage globally, better to go with any of the 4G S30+ based phones for longevity. Just avoid KaiOS because it defeats the purpose of a feature phone by trashing battery and giving you smartphone features, and apparently it's like the worst android preloaded dumpster fire you can imagine.
I'm probably going to replace mine with this one eventually: https://www.hmd.com/en_gb/nokia-225-4g/specs?sku=16QENB01A06
It isn't worth the hassle.
I want to be clear that I'm not saying everything on Facebook Marketplace is great. Most of it is crap! You still have to be discriminating. But everybody is always unloading high-quality furniture, and, at least for now, Facebook is full of excellent deals.
Ikea's goods usually come in different price ranges with the most expensive often not being 'cheap' but 'cheap given the quality'. That being said, often their cheapest stuff is the best value for money because it's so cheap that it lasting more than a year would be a miracle (but they usually do!).
Well, an electric motor
But they didn’t think very hard — see my other comment. I don’t think a single solid piece of hardwood would have performed a whole lot better. Either metal reinforcement or plywood or much more carefully considered joinery was needed.
The problem with knots is that they resist drilling and screwing. The problem with new growth is that the pith is the weakest part of the wood, and new growth has the most pith.
Still, it's not a weak and terrible pos wood-like material like 1990's MDF, it will probably be ok for most uses as long as the grain direction is respected in regards to shear direction (typically you want the grain direction to run perpendicular to the shear forces) and everything is properly braced.
So the grain needed to run horizontally in the horizontal part to support the bending load. It was probably best for the grain to be vertical in the vertical part, although that was maybe less critical: that section was mostly in compression. It probably also looked better that way.
In any case, the actual construction put a finger joint in the horizontal section just past the turn, so a tiny bit of vertical grain wood extended horizontally over the turn. And several of the legs cracked just along the side of the finger joint, and one failed completely after about a month of gentle use.
The design plausibly could have worked if the joint went diagonally through the turn or was below it. But plywood is strong along both in-plane axes, and the legs could likely have been cut in single pieces from sheets of plywood with strength to spare.
Attractive plywood, even from hardwood species, is readily available. The plies are visible along the cut edge, but this is actually a style people like, especially in Scandinavian furniture. Even IKEA sells some nice chairs with plywood elements, at entirely reasonably price points.
Teak especially is so good at dealing with water that it was harvested to near extinction in the 19th century just to build ship's decks and cabins out of it.
Having done a bit of woodworking as a hobby, I would say that hardwood could be inappropriate if it is used for an element that is purely structural, internal (and thus will be hidden by external features) and there are cheaper alternatives that are just as good, or stronger materials available and we are talking about a critical structural element.
That's a pretty abstract answer but it's always going to depend on the specific project. Sometimes a piece of furniture has no hidden internal structure, or the appeal of the furniture is that it is all bare wood and you want it made entirely out of a beautiful "furniture grade" hardwood. For certain upholstered furniture, such as many sofas, using expensive materials for inner framing could not only be superfluous and add unnecessary cost to the piece, but in certain circumstances there may be better materials available even if you could make a perfectly adequate structural support that will last a lifetime using expensive hardwood and the right joinery for critical stress points.
I read amulto's point as being "expensive material and fancy joinery doesn't matter if you have a weak design."
Especially when thin, wood is surprisingly easy to break, and it doesn't handle being pulled on very well at all.
You have to know enough to know who is actually building the good stuff, and who is building good-looking marketing.
The sofa I got had one in-store that was cut in half at all levels, so the construction and materials could all be seen. Any company doing that is probably going to be pretty solid, and if not, it should be obvious.
You can see that from the number of "small brand" insta-entrepreneurs. People will readily shell $80 for the latest trendy item they saw in a sponsored insta-ad, believing they're buying a branded product. In reality, it's the same $20-$30 item sold on TEMU, with a brand name slapped on it.
Edit: re-reading almost reads if I'm still at my parent's house couch surfing. I'm not a zillenial. I'm in my place with that furniture from back then.
There is no uniform standard of education in the US. Kids in the South are being taught that evolution is on par with intelligent design. Poor black kids in Baltimore have on average a 3rd grade reading level in high school, while rich kids a few counties away are taught when to use a backdoor roth ira. Don't even mention "no child left behind".
Maybe let's calm down a bit with the judgement.
Companies can always manufacture garbage if they don't care, but LED technology is fantastic.
Also it’s light, and makes moving much easier
I’m a huge fan of Lundia shelving. It seems to be strong enough to hold anything, it’s adjustable, comes in millions of sizes and looks good imho.
Hope they haven't been revived by a VC fund that lacks their vision of quality and long lasting furniture.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/difference-between-premium-lu...
https://medium.com/swlh/dont-confuse-luxury-with-premium-8-k...
https://imgmodelsblog.com/luxury-and-premium-comparison
Or, if you want to listen to techies talk about it, listen to this episode of Acquired: https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/lvmh
We found a lazy-boy type glider/recliner... it doesn't look as modern but boy is it so comfortable with a newborn.
(It probably invokes other stereotypes. I don't really know, but either way, you'll be too comfortable to care.)
Feels 60's to me.
ETA: Basically unchanged since 1956 is why!
It's also expensive as all hell. I grabbed a "man-cave" style two seat recliner with middle seat that transforms into a cup holder: that set me back over $4000. Worth it.
But I have no idea where to go for this. The overlap between junk and luxury is too large nowadays.
I've noticed a very prevalent "hail corporate" subculture on reddit that put me off believing anything anyone said.
For quality modern furniture, the only game in town around me is Room & Board. The last couch we bought there was ~$6k[0]. It's a lot, but we'd honestly been eyeing it for almost 20 years and it'll likely be something we have for another 20 years or more.
https://www.roomandboard.com/catalog/living/sofas-and-lovese...
I get it though: for 90% of the stuff I watch, I couldn’t care less about the quality. Much if it is on a small screen or in 1080p.
… but movie night with my wife/kids? Those are the nights I am grateful that the picture quality in my living room is untouchable by a theater. Those are the moments I, personally, live for.
I daily drive a 96 Toyota. My son's dd is a 63 Dart. Just picked up a 92 Buick with 35k.
I don't know about nice but the bench seats eliminate the back pain from buckets - especially modern ones. Lack of pain increases spatial awareness.
As for accidents they avoid the inherent risks that come with unremovable, attention-eating LCD display and headlights that blind all other drivers.
Edit: no, you are right! Seems I misremembered dank pods, sorry.
Honestly those cubes at least the 4x4 are perfectly fine. And cardboard is a hell of a lot more sustainable than solid wood and probably particle board
I had to cinched a band of webbing around the outside of the shelf during move to prevent it from falling apart. Gluing all the dowels/joints/connection also helps with strength a lot, but who has time for that.
Funnily, the most sturdy piece of furniture we own is from Ikea. Two massive desks build from solid steel frames and a plate made with wood furnishing. Totally indestructible, weighs a ton and was made by Ikea in the 99s or so. Funnily enough, we didn't even know that they where from Ikea. We inherited them from my father in law and were cursing their weight like "man I wish Ikea made this, than it would be easier to carry". After dismantling them for transport we discovered various Ikea stickers. Sadly we don't know the model, just that they where manufactured by Ikea.
The most endurable piece of furniture I know of is the kitchen of my mother in law. Made in the 70s or so it uses resopal finishing and the counters itself looks like new, despite years of heavy use and non stop smoking.
IMO, it's one of their most brilliantly engineered pieces of furniture. Sure, it's engineered to be cheap - but definitely not cheaply engineered. The whole geometry etc. is designed around what is possible with the materials.
They are really low-priced, versatile, easy to move, and TBH, for veneered cardboard it has no right to still be this sturdy, especially the 2x4 and smaller variants - and as another poster has said, even the large ones, as long as you don't try to move them around with heavy stuff inside. Just be dilligent when assembling and see that the screws are tightened really well.
Sure, if you move them around a lot or leave them in the sun they will degrade, but just using them as normal they seem to last way longer than you’d think.
Their expensive furniture is good mid-range stuff, the cheap stuff is cheap.
Such as Dwell.co.uk, coincidentally, completely unrelated afaict to OP. They make veneer-grade non-flat-pack furniture (and upholstered stuff) at a mid-high Ikea price. Made similar I think, or any number (including local showrooms) of suppliers of either drop shipped or wholesale manufactured oak+paint-grade, it seems quite common/popular. I have a couple of items from cotswoldco.com for example that have absolutely matching (but differently named) pieces available from an unrelated local independent shop, that I might otherwise assume had a small manufacturing operation too.
A photo fell off the wall and put a rather large hole in a Lack coffee table one time. We were pretty amazed that the photo frame won. It was a $25 table. I could buy many for the price of something nice.
Having small kids around, and seeing how they play, learn to use a fork, etc, I feel like we made the right choice buying cheaper. Plus what kid doesn't want to play at the table mom and dad let them sticker bomb?
The particleboard connections aren't very sturdy.
Also the assembly for ikea stuff is usually perfect.. everything aligns to the last millimeter... which again, I can't say for much more expensive furniture pieces.
It wasn't cheap. I believe the coffee table was close to $1,000.
Not long ago you could be a good brand an rely on it being good. Now most of them are just charging for the brand and not providing higher quality.
I am in the UK, I have also inherited Sri Lankan furniture from my parents and grandparents and I have lived there as well. The decline in quality is the same in both those countries. I guess it is global.
IKEA is actually awesome for this scenario.
One can value form over function, especially if there’s a specific style that the rest of your house uses. If your entire house is decorated in a contemporary style, then a traditional sofa is just going to stand out like a sore thumb.
I already said “One can value form over function”. Each person has different needs and wants out of their furniture. Just because you don’t value form doesn’t mean it’s some unbelievable or “indefensible” concept.
I don’t want my house to look like it came out of the 1920s. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
If you think otherwise, then more power to you, but don’t hoist your beliefs and preconceptions on others.
We used to think kids were like little adults, then we learned a bit about how the brain develops and how wildly wrong that mental model was.
Until recently you could work once you left school. Now you cannot do a full time job until you are 18, but can become an apprentice (so you get some training as well as working). There is nothing to stop you doing nothing.
The requirement to not work until you are 18 has not been particularly beneficial. Brought to you (IIRC) by the same government that massively expanded the higher education system (a huge increase in the proportion of people going to university) for no real benefit.
Maybe the fact that no one thinks this way anymore explains why everyone complains their six-figure income is constantly eaten up by replacing cheap shit.
And that would have knock on effects for huge societal issues like climate change. Imagine how much cheap shit wouldn't need to be made if so many people weren't deliberately kept on the edge of poverty so as to foster consumption practices that make stock prices go up?
We have so much stuff we don't need, and we barely scratch the surface of utility of the stuff we have before throwing it out.
But also - I think the 1950s-80s were a complete abberation in which working middle class people could afford a better lifestyle every year. Not "every generation before" ours could afford a house and two cars on a factory income with a pension. Really only one generation got that, and it was mostly due to winning a world war that left us the world's only major supplier of everything, able to project military power and gobble up all the cheap oil and raw materials. Previous generations had no such thing. My grandfather grew up without indoor plumbing. He also worked 12 hours a day. He couldn't afford a modest house until his late 30s, which was after the war. Go further back and look at the stock bubbles and robber barons of the 19th Century. The wealth and pay distribution we have now is closer to historical norms than anything in the 1960s was. The major difference is our baseline quality of life is higher in the sense that everyone can afford a cheap couch (if they want one). I have to think economically like my grandparents, not like my parents.
People like my grandparents built this country by saving and sacrificing their comforts. People like my parents, boomers, got an incredibly easy ride. Now their kids expect it to be that easy. But cheap money can't go on forever, and it's cheap money and a two-car suburban family lifestyle that did all the environmental damage of the mid 20th Century that we're still trying to slow down or reverse.
tl;dr saving and buying the better couch is a more effective means of changing the status quo than complaining that everything is harder for our generation.
I do and did, but I live alone. I'm guessing you're supporting a family?
of course, cost of living is also a huge factor. A $4000 couch is pretty much $4000 everywhere. But someone in SF vs. the Southwest (both making 6 figures) have very different rent and general life expenses.
They have a lot in common with old LEGO set instructions. Maybe people who hate them didn’t do a bunch of that as a child?
Instructions or no instructions, there’s only so many ways you can put a bunch of planks together.
Which is actually part of Ikea's brand identity. When you put it together yourself, you feel closer to the furniture than if someone just plonked it at your house. OTOH, if you hate that kind of thing, you'll never go back, but I guess they have an assembly service these days.
Unless there is a drop of moisture, then you throw it all away.
It’s so depressingly wasteful.
Unless there is a drop of moisture, then you throw it all away.
I went with IKEA's Sektion cabinets to replace some forty year old particleboard cabinets that warped after years of water damage from a burst pipe. They came with a twenty-five year warranty so there's clearly some expectation of longevity.
But as with all things, I'm certain some producers are using raw/virgin materials. Probably from wood that is dirt cheap.
If I'm building something I try really hard to avoid it, I can only assume the dust is really toxic to breath in and I don't have money or space for a fancy dust collection system.
Baltic birch would be stronger, no doubt, but that's 3 times the price and I am not exactly storing a geode collection up there.
You got in when the going was good. I think you can still buy decent enough stuff but having moved a few times myself and then friends and family a lot of the newer stuff is one time use, don’t pick it up, don’t look at it cross eyed, kinda stuff and it shows.
But I will say isn’t the last step in the assembly process the 10% probability that you’ll have to do some disassembly to reverse a piece that’s not quite put together correctly?
They may know X should go into Y but the task is so unfamiliar or counter to how they think that they hit their working memory limit before it makes sense to them.
Impatience just makes that worse.
IKEA’s instructions are extremely helpful in this case.
Same sort of thing applies to nearly all their products. Yes they sell cheap crap -- that still serves its purpose mind you -- but they also sell slightly more upscale furniture that'll actually survive a couple decades.
And it's not like going for a "normal" furniture store is any guarantee either. My previous couch was from a regular furniture store and it broke right in half at around the 5 year mark. Upon inspection one of the cross members was significantly tapered, still had bark on it and everything. On one end it was a solid 2x4, on the other it was barely a 0.2x0.4.
Agree, but still I just replaced a Billy bookcase that was over 15 years old and moved in 5 different places with me. It was really ugly looking in the end, and due a replacement. But even Ikea in more recent Billy they replaced metal parts for plastic ones and the "wood" seems even worse.
Although at the same time, I think I'm on my third MARKUS chair because of the gas spring leaking. Thankfully they do have long warranties, so you can exchange them if it doesn't last for 10 years.
https://www.mattressclarity.com/blog/bed-bugs-by-state-city-...
It seems to be related to population density, at least in America, and only somewhat ameliorated by climate.
Look familiar?
I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm saying that in lieu of additional information this is what I have to work with, so I will need a better source of data before I change my mind.
Ive done that when getting old wood furniture from facebook. We bake it for a day or 2 in a closed trailer. If there was anything living on or in it, it isn't after the bake.
And the temp doesnt damage what we do that to in any way.
should but yet online sales of furniture is not a small market
Unfortunately some very comfortable furniture turns out to not be long lasting, as I discovered, even when moderately pricey. Steel frame sofas can bend and break under repeated use because the steel is so thin - if you can bend it by hand, it will fail eventually.
Not sure why Coach was chosen for this example - I don't believe they are expensive; last I checked they were in the range of $200-500, which doesn't seem egregious as the actual luxury brands (ex. Hermes, where the entry level bags are $4,000).
That said, I feel there is a real difference in quality at various price points, and focusing on the material ("magic leather") is wrong. When I'm paying a premium I'm usually looking for in the dimensions of construction, and usually that means paying an actual professional who may charge $100/hr, vs 19 year old in Bangladesh. The two might be using the same material but the price difference comes from the person assembling the item.
The problem is you have a ton of companies (even "luxury" ones), that in an attempt to juice their stock price, have also focused on getting costs super low and are now using the same factories as junk brands but just slapping their logo on it. Even products of the same brand can vary wildly in quality depending even on the year it was made.
I have jackets from "luxury" brands that I bought 10 years ago that still look brand new for thousands of dollars (and probably saved money in the long run), but buying a similar item new or even trying to replace it is impossible.
Other brands are catching on. I hear Porsche (or at least some dealerships) have started gatekeeping 911s this way.
In general though I agree with your point that it's possible to get the same quality as a luxury brand for cheaper, and luxury brands are about signalling, but it's a continuum. There are also plenty of "luxury" bag brands in the $200-500 range that use crummy leather and you'd be way better off with Coach (or a local artisan like you mentioned.)
Where are there local artisans selling leather purses they made for $200? Are you sure you don't mean $4,000? Surely if you are buying a $200 hand made purse, it was made by hand in a low labor cost country and relabeled.
He isn't local to me, but I've met him and watched him stitch his bags together and chatted about his style (minimalist, sleek). I couldn't afford anything from him at the time (his smaller items were sold out), but kept his card handy. I'll provide a link, in case anyone is interested.
Like the other poster, I also have a couple of their wallets. They’re simple but obviously high quality. They don’t feel as slick as the Coach wallet I was given as a gift, but I have no doubt they will hold up longer.
Quality goods are well-designed, well-made, etc. And you can't be sure about quality based on price.
Plan on adding to the collection over time.
The amount of sawdust needed to create a sheet of this stuff is astronomical compared to the output, not to mention the manufacturing process being very resource intensive. You also cannot just take bags of sawdust from the wood mill - it must be macerated and ground to a very fine dust with roughly the consistency of flour.
The main advantage it has is that it is heavy (to weigh down furniture) and very easy to cut with bandsaws, mills, lasers, etc because of its uniform distribution of its constituent parts. It’s also good for applying vinyl wraps and edging which is one reason why arcade cabinets are often made from it.
All this for a product that is roughly the same price as A cabinet-grade ply:
MDF 3/4” x 4’ x 8’ for $52.98: https://www.homedepot.com/p/3-4-in-x-4-ft-x-8-ft-MDF-Panel-D...
Radiata Pine plywood 23/32” x 4’ x 8’ for $55.98: https://www.homedepot.com/p/23-32-in-x-4-ft-x-8-ft-Cabinet-G...
A 911, even something like a GTS or Turbo, is peasant-class compared to that.
But I was able to make some money by fixing computers or translating stuff from English to Czech anyway. There was no exploitation in those labor relations just because I was young.
I am not manually skilled, but I can definitely see someone at 15 making a nice chair or a table instead.
I don't think that 15 y.o.s should be treated as fully adult, some limitations on their work are perfectly OK (no ardous work, no work underground etc.). But barring them from working altogether will probably slow their development down. Not everything can be learnt from books or models, some real-world practice, including the most basic elements of interaction with customers/employers, is necessary.
I’ve met plenty of wickedly level-headed 15 year olds and a whole lot of irresponsible 30 year olds.
The variation is such to an extreme level too.
While teenagers are not fully adult in some ways, they are also very different from a 12 year old.
Durability of furniture is harder to measure even if you try it out.
It's a few extra dollars and will make the pieces survive a move and just generally feel sturdier. It's not a replacement for "good" furniture but will make the cheap stuff much better.
And most people can't differentiate between quality (nor should we expect them to!).
"Proper" furniture stores you find in malls and outlets are generally high margin crap. There's lots of soft scams out there.
There's a reason many people go back towards antiques and similar.
Probably because the ikea stuff you bought tend to be particleboard and the "expensive furniture pieces" are solid wood. Solid wood tend to wrap/deform more due to moisture than particleboard, which means even if they're drilled with millimeter precision at the factory they end up not aligning when it reaches your house. From personal experience the solid wood furniture I got ikea were definitely not aligned "to the last millimeter".
What? How?
I’ve moved a lot in the last 15 years and always defaulting to ikea for convenience. “Fits together well” isn’t what I’d use to describe their furniture.
GP said > I think the problem I've noticed is - the furniture that is built to last very frequently fails the partner test - "that looks like old fart stuff".
This is a problem of taste alignment, not of preference. A person having a taste for the generally poor quality well marketed bit of goods available.
So, like I said. If one develops a taste for a certain type of trendy furniture that is poorly made, it's a personal limitation.
Just because you don’t agree with someone’s preferences does not mean they’re wrong. I hope one day you’re able to understand that, because you clearly don’t.
Until then, we have nothing more to discuss.
I say it's wrong to buy expensive crap because it's flashy and well marketed, and equally wrong to dismiss things that don't fit the aesthetics peddled under this model. It's wasteful consumerism, one of the most wrong things with society right now. It's killing the planet. In a word, indefensible. There absolutely are fashionable, beautiful, durable options.
You say I am a bad person for having this opinion. "Hoisting" my opinion on others. You used underhanded tactics like false dichotomies. "I don't want my house to look like it came from 1920". Than, caught on a fallacy, you resorted to ad hominem, pretended to have a high moral ground and rode into the sunset in your high horse.
It's all written down for anyone to see.
I'm using it for my next workbench top.
I don't mind saving and sacrificing, that sounds awesome. The problem is that I'm not saving, sacrificing, working hard, etc. for any meaningful purpose, it's exclusively to subsidize some greedy CEOs/oligarchs luxurious lifestyles.
There's this funny notion now that work needs to be personally fulfilling or important to humanity or else it's not worth it. It's worth it if you can save money, afford a better life, educate your kids.
Getting fixated on the inherent unfairness of the world, where some people who have wealth and things you can't afford, seems to be a frequent cop out. If you want to be a union organizer and do things to change the inequality of the system, great. That doesn't mean that working to improve your own existence is a waste of time.
It’s the get-rich-quick types who decided to be professional Airbnb landlords. Short term leases make no sense at all to anyone actual invested in rental properties, without something like Airbnb to back it. A long term tenant who pays on time should be the dream of every landlord, but with all the Airbnbs, it’s not even considered.
I don’t know if this is the fault of the early investors, but I’m all for pulling the rug out from under the the people who own dozens of properties for the sole purpose of doing Airbnb. They are likely extremely leveraged, due to the low interest rates from years past, so they’d be screwed and be forced to sell fast.
I agree on the international investors as well. Priority should always go to people who will actual live in a place. All those multi-million dollar places in NYC that sit vacant are a horrible. What’s the point of housing if no one is there to live in it.
This would do next to nothing. The landlords buying up real estate are mom-and-pops with fewer than 10 properties. Which makes sense, because residential property is a pretty decent passive income that's only accessible to people with wealth but are not a good asset for large institutions.
Otherwise banks wouldn't sell foreclosed homes at a discount, they'd hold onto them if it was more profitable.
(1) https://www.housingwire.com/articles/no-wall-street-investor...
That might be true, but there are lots of companies that own more than 1000 homes. 1-3 should be the limit.
But it's pretty clear that the big time owners like institutional investors/REITs/etc own less than 2% of all units.
What's the issue with them buying houses as investments, as long as they're being rented out? If that's the case, their net effect on the housing supply is zero.
>maybe also imprisoned.
I find it extremely disturbing that people are effectively demanding for bill of attainders for jail sentences for what are basically zoning violations.
This realization has convinced me that it’s not a supply problem. I go on Zillow and there’s HUNDREDS of affordable condos and single family homes and 2 flats on offer. I can buy many of them cash. But they are in the ghetto. And ghettos are not some sort of act of god or timey-wimey opopsie-dasie. They are deliberate creations of a society.
Similarly, I look on Zillow at houses in second-tier cities an hour or two drive and everything is reasonable. My partner and I work in person five days a week, and yet millennials and Gen Zers working remotely except for once a month have no legitimate reason to be in high COLA markets except for their love of marg towers.
It’s not a supply problem. It’s an “I’m a racist white person and I’m okay with the carceral industrial complex” problem.
All the crime I see in these areas that frankly makes living in them a threat to my female partner’s survival is due to 60+ years of stupid welfare policy and 50+ years of the War on Drugs removing fathers from homes and incentivizing criminal culture.
It’s not showing rates at all, just raw case numbers.
NY has a lot. Alaska and Wyoming have almost none. Things happen where people live. News at 11.
That site is also obvious affiliate spam SEO bait.
That map would report 75x more cases in California than Wyoming, even if actual frequency was identically.
Because it prevents people from owning and now have to be permanent renters because of somebody's greedy rent seeking behavior.
There's no bill of attainder involved when you break a law that existed before you were even born.
There are whole highly developed countries (higher than US for example in terms of personal freedom, ie Switzerland) who simply don't have home ownership as something usual and folks focus on actual quality aspects of living. Populations are consistently among the happiest (and healthiest) in the world.
Correlation != causation but maybe not joining property rat race (which was always the case, just tools were few and apart for most) has some significant benefits. And if its just about safe investing then we moved topic completely elsewhere, back to good ol' universal greed.
The cost of houses in my area went up $100k less than 2 years after I bought my house. The cost of food where I doubled in less than 20 years. Rent went up $1000.
Sorry that people wanting "affordable housing" is an insult to you. I'm sure when the Neo-Maoists promise to massacre landlords, the masses of rentcells out there are surely going to take your sob story seriously and choose to live in good American style "practically slavery" and choose not to join them. Surely they think your comment comes across as empathetic and understanding, not callous and dismissive.
I do like leather wallets though I almost exclusively use small front pocket ones these days because of sciatica and minimal needs for carrying either cash or a lot of cards.
This is a very ironic comment to have made in a thread about how cheap things aren’t as good as they seem once you look a bit deeper.
A Toyota Corolla probably ticks more boxes for the average person than any Porsche if cars are not your thing.
Your model 3 can't handle a corner. The reason car enthusiasts like Porsches is that they handle particularly well.
Even their models that share platforms with “lesser” brands in the corporate stable go through a lot to differentiate them.
But if you don’t care about cars or enjoy driving, then all of it is a moot point and probably meaningless to you, and you might as well enjoy a Toyota Camry and call it a day.
Daily reminder that your "super cars" are worthless. Merging onto the highway is far more important than "winning in the corners".
And, also, if you like driving, and sometimes drive for fun, curves are way more fun than freeways. None of this has anything to do with supercars, either. My boring mom-car has more than enough power to merge safely. It's (surprisingly, to most people) faster (acceleration and top-speed) and (impressively - ICE tech advanced so much) more fuel-efficient than my almost thirty year old Miata. But, obviously, I enjoy the latter 1000x more than the former.
I guess this makes me a car geek. <shrug> That's fine. I do enjoy driving my super-basic, entry-level sportscar. I have less than zero interest in supercars.
I'm not going to argue too much with this, but I think this is underselling Ikea quite a bit.
Their cheap stuff is definitely made out of cheap materials. But I've found it to be well-engineered compared to walmart with reinforcements in critical places and general overall good quality control (doesn't come pre-scratched).
Walmart-level furniture on the other hand is often designed to look a certain way, with no consideration for how loads will be placed on it or long-term durability.
Much stronger, easier to remove and you can remove them without damaging the part like the back of PAX
Some of the simple desks the sell are nothing more than a tabletop and four screw in legs. With no bracing the desk is unpleasantly wobbly.
The very popular Ikea cube bookcases (https://www.ikea.com/us/en/cat/kallax-shelving-units-58285/) aren't sold with a backing sheet - thankfully they seem stiff enough without it.
I have IKEA furniture that's lasted for decades. It's value-optimized, but it's usually well designed; if you put it together properly, it will last.
On the other hand, I bought a dresser with a lot of particle board and, no, it's by no means well made. But it's in a bedroom and it works. I could have spent 4x (or more) for a nicely made hardwood dresser from a good New England brand. But even getting it into the bedroom upstairs might have been a bit of an adventure.
Neither of them has any (significant) rent control, definitely abolute 0 for young and able, and people have rental agreements which run easily decade(s).
Ie in France its the opposite - owners are properly scared of long term rentals, since rentees can trivially just stop paying and it will take you 6+ month of courts to have an attempt on evicion. They can trash the place and no real recourse. Not empty threat neither, everybody knows such a case personally. Thus everybody -> airbnbs. Blame the system if you grok the situation, french one is one of the worst in the west.
I was able to fix quite a few items of furniture and electronics recently, but if you add cost of parts and labour of a professional, it’s just cheaper to replace
It's very sad that they're not made anymore. I guessed it just was not imported here due to its prohibitive cost, but not being able to find it on the other side of the pond is saddening.
> Frame: Plywood, Polyurethane foam 30 kg/cu.m., Particleboard, Solid wood, Fibreboard
An example of something that looks well-built is the Skogsta dining table [1].
> Table top: Solid acacia, Clear acrylic lacquer, Clear lacquer
> Leg/ Rail: Solid acacia, Acrylic paint
(Though the oak version, which costs more, is oak-veneered particleboard.)
Many Ikea things aren't designed to last. That table has cross-beams, so it has a better chance surviving a party where someone leans heavily against one end of it. Something like Mörbylånga [2] looks like it would collapse.
I would give the furniture on display a good shove to see how sturdy it is.
[1] https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/p/skogsta-dining-table-acacia-704...
[2] https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/p/moerbylanga-table-oak-veneer-br...
* Furniturewise the bathroom furniture, especially GODMORGON are ok. I think because they have to survice contact with humidity.
* The HILVER bamboo legs are that good, that we kept them even after getting rid of the cardboard table tops.
no you can't, the outside shell of each shelf completely hides what's inside. I wanted to reconfigure a shelf (turn it on it's side, combine it with another) and turns out the "boards" are hollow. There is something inside at the corner pre-drilled-screw anchor points, but that's the only place you can attach something, the rest of it is potemkin shelf. You get to see this in more detail if you keep a shelf in a mildly humid place like a beachhouse, as the whoe thing delaminates and you see cardboard honeycombs inside a thin veneer of ...veneer
[0]https://www.ikea.com/us/en/cat/butcher-block-countertops-464...
Are you trying to buy 2M+ houses?
Our cost to close was under $100k with a 20% down payment, but still substantial. And yes, we were first time homebuyers. Obviously we did not buy anything approaching 2M.
With closing costs of $10k-15k, 100k doesn't even break a half million at 20% down. That's (sadly) not even table stakes in e.g. most parts of Boston.
Someone with good credit and currently renting would be nuts to "wait and save" for even 1 year because the total cost of PMI was like 6mo of our rent and accounting for paying it off over time with inflation it's probably even less than that in real dollars.
Maybe we got lucky with PMI but googling a bit it doesn't seem that out of line with the calculators.
This chair for example is way stronger than it has any right to be. I’ve seen it used in a ton of cafes so it clearly holds up to heavy usage https://www.ikea.com/au/en/p/taernoe-chair-outdoor-foldable-...
The look and price feels like it should be a flimsy piece of junk but in reality it’s incredibly solid.
I carry a travel folder when I travel but my actual wallet is pretty minimalist. (Though just a phone wallet/pocket doesn't work for me. The Apple magnetic wallet I bought which I was also uncomfortable with depending on was 3 cards--no more, no less.