Why new furniture doesn’t last long | Hacker News Reader

Why new furniture doesn’t last long

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80 pointswilliamsmj186 comments

My biggest issue is that, like so many markets, there is a "missing middle" created by this downward price pressure.

For the most part if you want a piece of furniture (ie a nightstand), there are two categories. Either you buy the Amazon/Wayfair version made of pressboard for $100-$200, or you can find a solid wood heirloom version for $2,000+. The domestic plywood or cheaper solid wood options are no longer mass produced at the scale that they used to be.

There's very little in between, even if I'm willing to pay a bit more for something a bit nicer.

I think one reason Ikea is so popular is that they ride the upper end of the cheap segment. Offering low-priced items but with reasonable instructions, a minimum expectation of quality, and at least there's a physical store to look at it before you buy and return it if it's damaged or doesn't work.

used furniture is a good compromise there, though it's harder to get a consistent style when going that route. Part of Ikea furniture's appeal is also that it looks like other Ikea furniture.

You can definitely find nice stuff made out of maple on Facebook marketplace if you're patient.

Dealing with bed bugs and other pests has made me apprehensive about purchasing used furniture. It's a shame because you can usually find great deals on FB Marketplace, Craigslist, Kijiji etc.

Solution to this is to leave it in a quarantine room for up to 5 months (if you have the space).

Though and I say this anecdotally, when I moved back to the States I ended up refurnishing most of my house using street finds. We're talking like 10 different furniture finds include a futon frame (we bought a new mattress). Only 1 of those was upolsteres but was in great condition.

No bed bugs, I got lucky.

Where is it a cost-saving solution to pay for a quarantine room that will be unused for other purposes for up to 5 months, all so you can save a few hundred dollars by buying used furniture?

It's not unless you've got the space, I have a shed I put stuff in and let anything on it starve to death. You have to plan on for it

Bed bugs can go for ages without feeding; the only real way to kill them en masse is extreme heat—e.g. the dryer. There are services that come and seal your house up and then essentially pump 125F heat into it, to kill the bedbugs (bugs @ 120F, eggs @ 125F). If suppose if your shed gets to ~125F in the summer, should be good. Point being: heat > time-since-last-meal for bedbugs. (unfortunately I am speaking from experience)

Edit/addendum: The bed-bug-sniffing-dog, while a very good boy, is a total scam.

Thank you for saying it. Bed bugs can go literally three years without eating. Using the mixed-toxin (different bedbug poison for each treatment, minimum 2 treatments) approach usually works, but the only way to definitely kill existing bugs and eggs is to get every part of an object to over 125f. AFAIK, 125f is the instant-death point. That is, any bug or egg the hits 125f at all is dead. Otoh, 113f requires 90 minutes of exposure before the bugs are killed, and the eggs require 118f for 90 minutes.

One of the things that undermines the used furniture market for higher-end furniture is storage. Larger pieces often get stored somewhere for a period before they're sold, but unlike veneered MDF, solid wood pieces are vulnerable to get warped by rapid changes in moisture, particularly if they get temporarily stored in non-climate-controlled storage facilities. I wonder if there's a business opportunity for some kind of efficient middleman that takes high end furniture off people's hands and stores it properly while facilitating resale.

There are all sorts of people who run small businesses like this, who often sell on craigslist and a shopify store. I bought one in his storage warehouse, nice guy.

This has been how I've largely addressed the missing middle issue for myself— I'm not up for $2000+ pieces, but when I want to do better than flat-pack trash, getting something for $300-500 second hand seems like a solid way to go.

I live on the west coast, and sometimes visit family in the Midwest. The quality and quantity of used furniture available over there is so much better.

I attribute this to much of California only becoming as densely populated as it is (which is to say, not) after around the 1950s. While there are families who have lived here for five or more generations, they’re by far the exception rather than the norm. The overwhelming majority of people who are here have comparatively shallow roots, didn’t bring furniture with them when they came here, and even if they have access to good furniture from elsewhere, it’s cheap and good enough to go to ikea.

So we purchased a couch three times: once from IKEA, again at a thrift shop, and once more from Rooms to Go (R2G).

R2G was, by far, the best option. I know that the sofa is "cheap" compared to what a "quality" couch would cost. (I paid $3200 for a three piece sectiona.) However, going into the showroom, having oodles of oodles of styles we could sit on, and giving the salesperson my card and having them take care of literally everything else (down to installation and placement) was amazing. The couch also looks great and is comfortable as hell.

The thrift shop couch was the second-best experience. Terrible selection, but we got lucky in finding a couch we liked. As it happens, the couch was an Ashley Furniture couch, which is kind of like R2G. We had to move it in ourselves, which was extremely annoying. But it is still standing and is still a great couch. (It's my office couch now!)

The IKEA couch was by far the worst. Buying the couch was easy, of course. Putting it together sucked, but whatever. The quality of the couch, though, was a disaster. Super lumpy seats within months of use, color stains discolored the couch permanently, even after cleaning, looseness, etc. I wouldn't buy couches from them again.

That said, we have tables from them that are still great. So maybe IKEA for small furniture you don't care about is the move.

I almost bought an IKEA couch without trying it,but I managed to buy one at a local store for not much more. A few weeks later I found my self at IKEA and tried out the couch. I was so glad I didn't buy it, all of them were so uncomfortable.

I got my sofabed from Ikea. It looks good to me and is an absolute joy to lie on. The few guests that have slept on it gave 5/5 reviews, firm feel and well slept.

Granted, it's just six months old so I don't know yet how it'll hold up. But I'm very happy this far.

And part of the problem is that it is so hard to tell if the middle priced goods are worth it. For example:

- is it real wood but cheaply finished so the wood wears quickly and needs refinishing quickly. Seen this problem so often at priced places like crate & barrel.

- how do you tell good quality veneer from bad?

- showcase pieces of higher quality than what's delivered to your house. Room & board with their real wood furniture can be like this - I got a piece that was more knots than wood.

Exactly. I've been looking for bookshelves and wanted something that wasn't just Ikea's Billy. The price jump to something from Pottery Barn is 3-4x the Ikea price, but from the quality you see at the showroom, it should be closer to 1.5-2x the price. I also feel a bit jaded from the mid-tier furniture showrooms, which offer Wayfair quality at 2x the price. I just want something that will survive a move while not having to look at payment plan!

Why care about furniture surviving a move, when you can buy and build the same shit at your destination for cheap? And 'gift' the old to your follow renters, or just discard it?

Because wasting stuff is bad?

Well, in this case its not like you have a choice.

Still bad.

I don't care that much about surviving moves, I care about it being nice quality. And the nice ones will cost enough that I want to keep them.

Ikea does have a higher end bookcase than Billy: Hemnes[0]. It's like 2x the price, and I think it's worth about that, given it's made from mostly solid wood (back is still fiberboard).

0:https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/hemnes-bookcase-black-brown-lig...

My cheeky answer is always the bad furniture _has_ veneer :) having said that I have build a lot of "temporary" furniture (eg benches and tables) from 2x4 softwood and they're doing just fine 30ish years later.

I've got some things which have a thick veneer over the top of some other solid wood. It's pretty good quality. Many times better than the stuff that's like 1mm of wood over the top of cardboard hexagons.

Generally true, but one of my most successful mid-price purchases is a dresser in real walnut veneers over solid wood that is aging fantastically. It's just hard IMHO to know how thin or thick the veneer is.

I live next to one of the largest furniture manufacturers in America and going to the showroom says everything - the furniture is routinely broken there and it's rotated out as fast as they can make new models. we own one of their sets of couches from the late 1990s and it's finally giving up but the new stuff is built absolutely for profit margin and to not hold up at all.

I was recently looking for a shelving unit for vinyl records. The Ikea solution was 100$. Next step up were 1000$ home-made units on Etsy. In the end, I went with Ikea. Something in the middle would have been nice.

Anyone in the US (without a physical disability) can DIY a shelving unit for vinyl records better than IKEA for well less than $1000 USD. Takes a little time, portable power tools and box level, a few fasteners from online/DIY stores and access to premium lumber. Easy and cheap access to quality lumber in North America is one of our strong points, might as well take advantage of it. Helps if the lumber supplier does cuts and planing, worth the drive to find one. Pride of accomplishment comes for free.

The know-how to do this is somewhat of a lost art with the newer generation of adults.

It really isn't. As long as you can watch YouTube and maintain the confidence to ruin some material while you're learning, it isn't difficult to pick up.

And once I tell that to whichever zoomers or younger person I'm talking to (this talk usually happens while we're at whichever Home Depot-analogous store is physically closest to their home, while I'm getting them set up with a Starter Toolbox), they usually take to it just fine.

Probably just a bias. The generation I speak of would not be found anywhere near a Home Depot or hardware store.

True, proper wood furniture have become more of a luxury as more and more utility is drawn from the likes of mass manufactured furniture like that of IKEA's.

I'm a weekend woodworker, and I have built a lot of things for my house like my kid's cradle, bed, our custom wardrobe, fancy looking shelves etc. However, even I think IKEA furniture has its place in my house. Our bed for example is IKEA MALM, our kitchen is made by IKEA. Some things are just not worth my time and effort and the cost of solid wood. IKEA quality is good enough and the price is right for them.

Recently, I have been bombarded with ads from some smallish furniture companies from Europe on Facebook. Dont know how the algorith decided on it, but it did. I see several companies that do few things and do them well, but not targeted at teh luxury buyer or vintage collector. They are targeted that a consumer looking for better than IKEA like you described. Perhaps, what you're looking for is coming already and you need to look deeper for now.

> There's very little in between, even if I'm willing to pay a bit more for something a bit nicer.

Same has happened in clothing. To get something other than cheap crap made out of synthetic fibers, you now have to go premium. Are people really less discerning than they used to be? Has the average purchasing power declined? Or is the problem that people don't want to commit to something that lasts for years, because they fear their taste may change?

People used to spend a lot more, per item, on clothing. The real culprit in this case is that we have become accustomed to things being cheap.

Well that also goes to diminished purchasing power

We have also come to accept wildly poor standards for clothing construction because of our disconnect between expense and quality. Can you imagine brushing off those little snags you get in your tshirts after one wash as "just how these things are"if you had paid the real modern (local labor) cost for them? As a sewist I would estimate that the labor and materials cost for one well-made, good material t-shirt would be at least $45 [0] before even accounting for profit margin, yet people grumble at paying $20 for slave labor cotton blended with plastic made at the hands of an overworked, underpaid sweatshop worker. Our ability to source clothing so cheaply coupled with our lack of direct interaction with the making and maintenance of them has lowered our expectations in a race to the bottom.

[0] back of napkin math - i might be able to find a decent knit cotton with some veneer of ethical sourcing at a rock-bottom price of $10-12 per yard (in practice F to doubt). Assuming a pittance for the thread (and ignoring the upstart costs for acquiring a sewing machine), I would peg my skillset at a value of $35-50 per hour given my experience based on the rates of similarly skilled artisans in the US.

The issue is that even if you pay well above $50 there's no guarantee that the t-shirt will actually be any good after 10 washes. I have two t-shirts from 15 years ago that are still going strong. Whatever I buy these days becomes 'home' t-shirt fairly quickly.

people pay more attention to the price than the quality or quantity, so when costs go up, manufacturers must keep the price the same and provide worse or less

shrinkflation is another result of this

The clothing market for the middle seems to have shrunk. Massdrop was pretty successful in offering the middle, until they pivoted. I bought of lot of good quality interesting stuff from massdrop back in the day.

Learning how to sew is really handy for this. You will pay more on materials than you would for the absolute cheapest clothes you can find, but the quality will be on par with much more expensive clothes.

Being able to sew means you can also repair a lot of your older clothing and you can tailor newly purchased clothes to fit better.

I know this is extreme and not available to everyone, but I'm just making my own furniture because of the reasons you cite.

Yes I have the room, money and a little time to build my own workshop, but really, it's 100% more satisfying, attractive and much much cheaper to DIY.

It's really turned into quite the passion for me. Once I pay off me house I'd think about investing more time into it.

Just buy used quality stuff, find local smaller woodworkers that are getting established, etc...

If you bought IKEA you are already part of the problem. Real furniture IS expensive and worth it considering you use it almost everyday.

Solid wood is an absolute nightmare to move. And I've found that most stuff from IKEA lasts quite a long time.

Solid wood furniture designed to be dismantled and reassembled easily is not a nightmare to move. In fact it is easier than moving cheaper furniture whose integrity is compromised with each dismantle/reassemble cycle, and thus is moved whole. It’s a design problem, not a materials problem.

And the well-designed easily-movable solid wood furniture will be fought over by your great-grandkids.

I've never seen this. It's always been glued and nailed together.

It absolutely exists.

> And the well-designed easily-movable solid wood furniture will be fought over by your great-grandkids.

It won't for the exact dame reason why we do not fight for grandmas furniture - the style just looks old.

How long is "quite" in this reference. I've got ikea crap which is falling apart and its only ever held towels and linen, not even 5 years.

I’ve got some of the malm draws that have been in use for 15 years now and they still look fine.

Most of my stuff is from ikea and nothing has failed yet, but I specifically select stuff that seems sturdy which most of it is.

That might be problem, I didnt choose these.

It's a cultural thing, beyond the merely "it will last longer", just like dressing good. You don't do it for others so much as for yourself and the respect you afford yourself. But yes, there is a baseline level of wealth implied in not moving all the time.

Also, for most people, the difference in appearance between an IKEA nightstand and, say, an Eames one (or a custom-made one) is minimal. Like, there's a difference, but not a difference worth paying $x,000's for. Moreover, if a pet or a child destroys the table, you're out much less money, which is comforting.

>Moreover, if a pet or a child destroys the table, you're out much less money, which is comforting.

This cuts deeper the gouge my 5 year old put in my room and board solid maple credenza.

Maybe you could enhance the gouge to make it part of the design? That is the idea behind the Japanese practice of Kintsugi.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kintsugi

Also, people are far more mobile these days. There's less of this sense of "building up a home" in this new generation - we aren't as attached to our things as our previous generations. There is also the culture of fast 'x' (not the movie, just a placeholder - like fast fashion, fast furniture, etc) and availability that people (millennials, gen z, gen alpha) desire these days.

IKEA tables are easier to disassemble and put back together (with varying degrees of success) for folks who move around. Alternatively, it's much cheaper to just buy a whole new set of IKEA furnitures than it is to replace furniture that costed 1k+.

I wonder if the missing middle comes from plywood / mdf just being more predictable than wooden boards so it's easier to automate / optimize manufacturing on.

So one step up from that becomes "real wood" and suddenly you need a human spending a ton of time paying attention to the grain, and idiosyncrasies of the wood etc. Labor costs shoot through the roof for even relatively simple furniture

Plywood furniture is garbage. Plywood cabinets, ok there is a good use for the material. It’s just a shortcut for not having to account for wood movement, but the veneer they put on modern plywood can be scraped through by looking at it wrong. It’s undersized (3/4” is not 3/4” thick) to save money, it’s only got a couple layers, and half the time the middle layer looks like pressed sawdust. Baltic Birch is the only decent stuff, but the cost of it is prohibitive.

The stores you mentioned, even when the furniture is $3000, is made a step up from IKEA in that it’s not pressboard, but it’s probably veneered or made to look “distressed” and dyed as a way to hide the wood it’s made from. You’ll see screws instead of mortise and tenon joints, you’ll see comically obvious grain mismatches, the stuff is just sloppy.

Find a local woodworker, pick timeless styles and get it made from a wood that isn’t that expensive but is beautiful and easy to work like cherry. It will cost something similar to what crate and barrel charges, and you’ll have it in 50 years.

This is a great suggestion. I found a woodworker locally and paid $500/end table and $3000 for a dining room table, all solid walnut. Absolutely heirloom quality, my kids will inherit these pieces if their aren’t careful.

There is a section in one of my furniture plan books that says this furniture will be so strong and well made, your kids will never be able to break it down to get it in the trash, so they’ll keep it for your grandkids that will actually appreciate it :)

As a (hobbyist) woodworker myself, I’ll spend 4 weeks of my spare time (couple hours every couple days) making a piece and then feel like I saved myself 2000$ at the end of it, only to see the same thing on Etsy for 400$. Raw wood was probably 100-200$ alone.

The middle is out there, it’s just not in mass market stores. Honestly some of these sellers must not value their time like I do.

If you know the right things to ask the seller, you can end up with a fantastic piece for short money that will outlast you. Learning that language is tough though, but some time on woodworker YouTube will bridge the gap.

If you’re a handtool woodworker you can add to that the thousands of dollars in specialty tools you’ll inevitably acquire. Woodworking is insidious :-)

I do both. I have gear thing anyway, but thankfully I’m about done with the hand tool acquisition. I bought a subset of the Lie-Nielsen catalog that I use (after trying out some other brands and not being impressed) and now I don’t really have any hand tools to buy. I’d love to have an antique jointer, a nice wide planer, a nice sawstop cabinet saw, and an antique bandsaw… but I’ve got the cheaper or modern analogs. The sawstop job site saw was a minimum requirement, I need my fingers.

Lie-Nielsen and Veritas are the two brands of hand tools that will ruin you for others. Lie-Nielsen being the absolute best in recreation / refinement in traditional design, and Veritas answering the question of “what if we rethought the design and made it really well?”

Sawstop saw is a good call. IMO kickback is scarier than amputation, but most saws have decent mitigations against kickback and nobody but Sawstop is in the business of saving fingers.

I actually like the Lie-Nielsen planes much more than the Veritas planes, I can’t stand the Norris adjuster. I want to be able to change the aggressiveness of the shaving without knocking the blade out of alignment and about half the time I knocked it. Not a problem with the LN planes. I also like the LN steel more, I bought a bunch of the PN-V11, and with the exception of keeping the low angle jack as a special plane for curly grain (I have a 50 deg blade in it, it’s almost a scraper) I have been selling the others after getting the 4,5,7 LN ones. I would like a Veritas large rabbet plane for fielding panels, LN doesn’t make one.

I have the Veritas plow plane and it’s great, my favorite plane they make.

I prefer the Veritas a little myself, but the few times I’ve had hands on LN… well, they’ll get no disrespect from me. Both fantastic premium options IMO.

I have a block plane, #4 smoother, and a jointer that I was going to list for sale, do you want any of them?

> even if I'm willing to pay a bit more for something a bit nicer.

I can easily find a brand new Amish-made dining room table in my area - with same-day delivery - for under $2000.

>My biggest issue is that, like so many markets, there is a "missing middle" created by this downward price pressure.

I would wager that this is a proxy for the housing market. It's correlated with renting (majority) v/s buying (minority). And renters don't want the middle. That's pretty much how I view everything I buy. It's ephemeral.

>I think one reason Ikea is so popular is that they ride the upper end of the cheap segment.

Also, Ikea gets the mechanical designs right. I have been quite impressed with all ikea furniture that has folding contraptions. Their nyhamn futon used to be quite a steal at the old price of ~$200. The finnala sofa bed is also well made. And ikea tends to use removable fabric covers, which is also great. So ikea gets a lot of design right. The only bummer is their 1.5x price inflation since covid.

>I would wager that this is a proxy for the housing market. It's correlated with renting (majority) v/s buying (minority). And renters don't want the middle. That's pretty much how I view everything I buy. It's ephemeral.

Interesting I've never thought of it that way, anyways here's a great podcast episode from 99 Percent Invisible on the "missing middle" in terms of housing.

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-missing-middle/

Per https://ipropertymanagement.com/research/renters-vs-homeowne... ~2/3rds of households own vs. ~1/3rd rent. Not intuitive to me tbh either.

I guess we would have to look at the slice of the population that is active as far as furniture purchases and churn go. Presumably, owners don't shop for furniture that much once it's done. I have no data though.

I generally agree with this. My wife and I recently (last year) decided to move to the UK from the US. We had a $10k Stickley sofa, a $7k custom-ordered rug, a lovely leather recliner the previous owners of the house left for us (they were going full van-life), Steelcase office chairs, etc.

We're now renting in London, and our furniture is almost exclusively Ikea, plus one mid-range sofa from John Lewis (£2000 or so). We view our furniture as mostly transient. All our expensive furniture is in storage in the US now, and will only come back out when we move home into a house we own and plan to stay in again.

I try to buy old stuff at thrift shops. You can get nice solid wood pieces pretty cheap.

But the quality of Ikea products is worse than was 10-15 years ago. I actually bought a few items last year to replace the same furniture I bought in 2010. The veneer is now so much thinner (it seems as thin as a cigarette paper) it breaks and rips after just a few months. Without wood glue everything is wobbly. Terrible - but still slightly better than other cheap furniture.

There are furniture stores that cater to that missing middle. Places that sell solid oak furniture. Places that sell quality Amish furniture. Sure, it's not IKEA cheap, but it's also not heirloom expensive.

You just have to know where to look. And what to look for.

I would expect to pay $40 at most for a nightstand, and a quick look at Amazon confirms my guess. I would also expect it to last decades, and if it failed, to fail in one of a few very predictable ways(Mostly fasteners stripping out of sawdustboard) which can be both repaired, and avoided at the design stage for not much extra money.

I've never really experienced this "bad furniture" phenomena. Maybe because I have more thrift store than new cheap furniture, but I also wonder if style doesn't have to do with it.

I mostly go for the fake rustic look, but I suspect more minimalist or Bauhaus stuff has more issues, since those styles are almost specifically meant to say "Look at the great material we use, this thing would totally fall apart if we took shortcuts".

I also tend to go for the really cheap stuff, which I suspect might be more reliable than what is sold as mid range now. I have some drawers in the front room that are literally nonwoven fabric drawers, in a metal frame. I'm not sure what the failure mode would be other than directly taking a hard hit, it doesn't really have any of the weak points I'm used to seeing.

We actually expected our West Elm sofa to be well built - it wasn't cheap and their reputation wasn't complete garbage yet when we purchased it. After about 18 months the whole thing collapsed, just out of warranty believe it or not.

When I started taking it apart to see if it was fixable I found that the entire damn thing was built out of stapled-together 1/2" OSB (oriented strand board...garbage "plywood") and all of the cuts had awful stress concentration corners which caused the frame to pretty much disintegrate. Wasn't a real screw or nail anywhere in the piece that I could find.

I spent a day rebuilding the frame with about $30 worth of construction lumber (some 2x4s & 2x8s) and hanger brackets. It's been perfect ever since.

Completely inexcusable that a $30 aftermarket fix is all it took to dramatically improve an $1800 sofa.

Edit: I found a few images of the damage and a couple of the replacement supports I added. There was a lot more, but at the end of the day I was tired and didn't take a ton of pictures https://imgur.com/a/bqlLgW3

That is pretty cheap for a sofa. Here is what spending a similar amount in 1970 would have gotten you:

https://christmas.musetechnical.com/ShowCatalogPage/1970-Sea...

That would have been regarded a a cheap sofa at the time, and would have set you back $379. Average salary now vs then is 5x so equivalent price would be $1895. Your sofa probably looks nicer but the Sears one has a proper hardwood frame.

Thanks for sharing. Never thought of doing this, but definitely will be doing it next time a sofa falls apart.

That's so much worse than what you'd get from IKEA where everything is held together with nuts and bolts and seems to be very carefully engineered to be as strong as possible given the cost constraints.

Usually. Their bedframes are notorious for having slats that don't go all the way across and aren't held together with much, so they fall in really easily. It's so bad that there are common fixes recommended online like velcro'ing them down or replacing them with something else. Idk what they were thinking.

That's awful. I've lived around a lot of cheap sofas, often literally from the curb, yet I've never heard of a sofa collapsing except in The Simpsons. Maybe the armrest breaks or the upholstery rips.

I feel like so many posts that look down on flat-packed/budget furniture overlook the fact that so many people are in a position where "buy it for life" isn't a desired feature.

We're seeing job markets where loyalty doesn't pay and the best way to get a pay bump is to switch employers. We're seeing people live check to check, and so many are renting as opposed to buying.

If I don't have a permanent home, why do I want permanent furniture? When I entered the workforce, my dad gave me a bunch of BIFL-type solid furniture he purchased with my mom before she passed. I ended up eventually selling it all off because it cost me extra to have it moved into and out of any appt that wasn't on ground floor. Often to the point where I could replace it with an IKEA piece for less than the heavy item surcharge.

Or times where I moved into a smaller appt for budget reasons and just didn't have space for some pieces. I once rented a storage locker for a year just to keep furniture I couldn't fit but didn't want to let go because it was solid wood and "had value".

I now use Ikea furniture for everything, and figure if I'm lucky I'll eventually be able to own property/a house and then it'd make sense to own something more durable.

Regarding Ikea and similar self-assemble furniture - even though the assembly instruction manual does not call for it - use wood glue when assembling. It will make it A LOT stronger and it will even survive moves.

One thing that didn’t make sense to me in the article is a claim that particle board or MDF is lighter than solid wood. I don’t think it’s necessarily true - I have wood furniture made of pine and cherry that is a lot lighter than Ikea pieces. MDF which is commonly used in Ikea is especially heavy, so much so that Ikea inserts a lot of hollow spaces concealed underneath laminate exterior to reduce weight.

Use wood glue where, though? Its advice that isn't "obvious". I'm not a big furniture person, and I'm inferring you mean to do things like add some additional bind to assembled spots, e.g. when I screw in the backing for the chair I could use wood glue on the seam to give it more strength, but its not always obvious how I'm suppose to apply these Ikea "hacks" as it were.

On any interlocking joints. On ikea stuff that's typically dowels, dados, and mortise and tenons.

I also like to glue those weird locking screw inserts.

Most of Ikea pieces I’ve assembled utilize wooden dowels in addition to their special locking bolts. Definitely use glue in all holes that are meant for wooden dowels. If you wish to go an extra mile - use a thin bead of wood glue anywhere two wood surfaces meet, tighten the screws and then wipe off the excess that gets squeezed out of the seam. Wood glue is water soluble so clean up is easy before it dries.

Yes, the dowels are usually the weak points in Ikea furniture. They'll slip out a little, then the leverage will tear apart the wood around it when you're carrying the furniture.

Isn’t the issue the screws tearing through the soft wood and/or engineered wood?

Furniture made of soft wood is certainly more susceptible to damage and denting than if made from hardwood, sure. Personally I find the trade off acceptable - I have a narrow six foot book shelf that I can lift with one arm and a much smaller Ikea one that needs two people to move, but preferences are subjective.

Regarding screws however, furniture made from wood using approaches traditional for wood-made furniture - don’t rely on screws all that much, but rather mortises, dados, and various other joints held by glue, dowels, and sometimes staples or furniture nails that assist holding joints together until glue dries. Once dried - glue is often stronger than the wood it holds together and attempting to separate the bonded pieces results in splitting the wood rather than breaking the bond.

Ikea furniture usually uses these funky cam lock nuts and bolts in particle board pieces, rather than screws:

https://www.furnitureparts.com/products/cam-lock-nuts-ikea-p...

These turn the force into compression over a larger diameter so it's less likely to cause a problem.

I've actually had pretty good experiences with Ikea stuff holding up over time, even across multiple moves.

I had one of those plastic locks snap during a move. And found out Ikea will mail or provide one at the store for free. Repaired my item and it's as good as new.

They used to just make them out of zinc so they wouldn't snap at the drop of a hat. Guess that $0.10 savings per unit was worth the shipping though

They still do for many of them, but it depends how much force is expected on the part. The one that broke on mine would normally see very little force, but it must have been hit on a weird angle while moving. Not a big deal since I just got a new one for free.

Yes, making wood glue even more valuable if you want it to last.

Almost everything from IKEA is particle board or MDF. If it's solid wood it will be priced higher - even pine. I have a couple of particle board items from them and they are definitely heavier compared to actual wood.

> If it's solid wood it will be priced higher - even pine.

The cheapest nightstand they sell is solid pine.

https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/rast-3-drawer-chest-pine-104847...

The cheapest full bed is solid pine, too.

https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/neiden-bed-frame-pine-80395248/

I could go on...

Likely because pine is lighter, more malleable, and probably simpler to create boards from than MDF.

The MDF is pretty weighty and has big concerns regarding VOCs. All that glue and binders can't be good for air quality/health

Then you'll have trouble taking it apart if you move.

You can get great furniture today that is made from stain grade hardwood and uses high quality fabrics. But it’s expensive. It always has been. Quality, heirloom furniture was never the domain of regular people. It’s through mass production and engineered materials everyone has couches, tables, chairs, shelves, dressers, etc.

You want nice counter height chairs made of five hardwood and leather and joint work instead of screws? You’re looking at $1000/chair at the bottom and can go way up from there. Most people aren’t spending $4k on chairs for a kitchen island. This is where the cheaper mid market comes in where you get 4 chairs for $1k and they’re fine. Just not jointed or if the better wood or nicer seat, etc.

But you can't get great furniture pre-assembled from plywood (which a lot of mid-century furniture was). I don't know if the furniture still around from them is just survivorship bias or what, but I've seen many such pieces today.

When my wife and I got married we went to a local unfinished furniture store for our bedroom set. We finished it and used it for years. It is now the guest bedroom set. Our bedroom set was inherited from my parents which they inherited from my grandparents. Just recently we received a shipment of my mothers bedroom set from her teenage years that my aunt took after my grandparents passed (this wi go to my daughter after college). We also received my grandparents dining table and a few other pieces. We have my parents 1940s bar, etc. For other pieces we spent years going to estate sales finding the right pieces. When we pass my daughter will receive it all. Some of these pieces are 80 years old and still as solid as the day they where made. I highly recommend investing in good furniture, and in most cases, if you are willing to take the time, you can find amazing pieces via estate sales. Google for listing. We have picked up end tables from the 50-60s that we have seen in antique shops 1/10 their asking price at estate sales. There are tons of sites. It is 100% worth your time.

It was the same thing for rugs. We started with the cheap amazon ones and replaced them with hand made ones via inheritance over time.

Emotionally sitting down in the chair at the dining table my grandfather always sat it was just amazing rush of happy memories. We went with our daughter and added to the family inheritance buy having her help pick out the handmade rug that went under the table. When we where young it was not something we could afford, but now we can we focus on memories for the next generation.

Pro tip for the many SF Bay Area people - if you want better than Ikea, go to the Alameda Flea Market (first Sunday of the month). It is HUUUGE and there is tidy business being done there by people who buy antique furniture on the cheap and reupholster it for modern living.

I live in a Victorian and it is much nicer to have furniture that fits the place. I've bought comfy chairs, dressers, nightstands, etc, for the same price (or cheaper!) than Ikea alternatives.

I just moved cross-country in the US and my mover specifically carved out particle board Ikea furniture as "best effort", i.e. they will do their best to make sure it arrives in one piece, but they are not responsible for damages, and we should manage expectations accordingly.

It's because we don't buy furniture, we buy style.

Its like paper towels. You are not buying a towell, you are buying dry. Something is now dry.

It's like clothing, we don't buy it for function anymore, it's function is style. Same with furniture in most people's lives, it's about how it looks in your home, not how well it performs or lasts. People want to be able to change the style of their rooms every so often and not have it break the bank. We're using these objects differently, they're serving a different purpose (entertainment).

Premise is incorrect. Furniture is great. You can pay whatever you want and get appropriate quality.

Low end ikea stuff works great if you put it together right and use some glue.

Mid tier furniture is still available — it’s just going to look very traditional.

High end is available to those with $$$ like it’s always been

The same goes for hiring built in furniture. I got some quotes for about 8ft of cabinets with some bookshelves (painted, not even nice wood, probably decent ply) and it came in at 10k. I knew it would cost more than buying something from the furniture store but that really threw me. I think it's why we see so many "ikea hacks" online.

I was told by a furniture store owner 20 years to use local cabinet makers to build bookshelves for you. He said never to have shelves installed in your house - a movable bookshelf costs the same as an installed one and you can take it with you when you move.

So if furniture used to be significantly better ages ago, but IKEA, the king of cheap particle board furniture and Swedish meatballs as a service, is one of the wealthiest companies on Earth, then wouldn't it stand to reason that high-quality furniture was _not_ something that the market valued?

I found a local company that made me a 96'' solid wood table from reclaimed wood planks (no veneer). Cost me like $1600, felt like a pretty good deal.

What are you guys doing with your Ikea furniture? I bought a bunch since 2008 and I still have some pieces that were with me thru about 10 moves, including 2 interstate moves and one international move, all involving a stint in a warehouse or Public Storage. The only things that ever broke were under-the-bed drawers that have a design flaw where slamming them causes the front to be levered against the bottom of the bed. From my limited experience with non-Ikea, non-office furniture, it's if anything more likely to be damaged when moving, because it cannot be disassembled and neatly stacked, and so is more liable to be banged against things when loading/unloading, or inside the truck.

Ikea has a range of quality options. Some of their budget offering are very poor quality and will eventually fail with even mild use. However, they do also sell some nicer quality furniture that will absolutely stand up to abuse.

I still have a Lack side table (the only Ikea name that makes sense in English too) and a 1-2 bottom-tier cheapest chairs that are at least 10 years old and maybe more... or e.g. Malm bed of similar age (I think that is the cheapest beds they have), we don't use it anymore cause we wanted to have a padded headboard. They are all totally fine and I've moved with them a few times.

Unsurprisingly, as someone once said, “It’s the economy, stupid.”

At ikeas price point you don’t even need to move the fueniture, just give it away and buy the exact same one in the new location.

I didn't spend $1000 on a couch set to just get rid of it if I move in a year or two though.

I realize some folks on HN have lots of disposable income, however even for higher earners its a waste of money at that point, I don't feel like it should be accepted practice to throw out furniture out with every move, particularly if you move a few times in a short time span.

I spent $1,100 on an IKEA couch and it has moved 3 places with me over the last ~9 years.

Assuming that you're able to sell it for something ($400?), it can make more sense to do that rather than deal with loading, unloading and the moving expense.

I bought the same Ikea coffee table three times in three countries (https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/lack-coffee-table-black-brown-0...).

For the real bottom-of-the-barrel, there are brands that are literally just cardboard held together by double-sided tape now. My wife accidentally ordered one of their vinyl record stands. To be fair, it actually did sortof ok until we made the mistake of moving it across the room (we took the records out first):

https://www.amazon.com/stores/WayBasics/page/792E6148-46C9-4...

TLDR: Plywood (and to some extent plastic) replaced solid wood. Got imported from overseas rather than made domestically. Shifted from an artisanal market to a low-cost mass market.

Honestly, I wish it were plywood, it's actually MDF or other kind of pressboard.

Mmm, chipboard. Could as well be called "cheapboard". Low quality at low cost so you can pay twice.

My biggest issue with them is they handle water very poorly. The affected piece of the board swells and warps, and never returns to original shape.

yes, they used this for kickboard in my kitchen and even occasional spills and drips will cause swelling. Then you can't do anything about it but tear it out or try to repair with wood putty or something like that.

Very true. A few times I forgot wet wipes after cleaning and next day it was like wtf happened to this table.

And then we get to cardboard. You know surfaces structure...

Very cheap, good enough if you never hit it properly with anything.

I wonder why you consider it a problem. Mdf and variations are much more stable, don't warp due to humidity. For non-premium furniture it's a perfect choice.

And those properties make it well suited for things like cabinet panels that don't take load.

MDF has poor structural strength, next to zero holding strength for fasteners (the first thing to go on ikea furniture is always the screw holes), and is very prone to water damage.

MDF bubbles when it gets damp, and completely crumbles away when it gets wet. The price difference between plywood and MDF is not significant; $45 -> $60 in my market, and OSB is even cheaper at $30 (all prices, 4'x8', 1/2" sheets)

Why MDF is used, I'll never understand.

So that, as I said in my neighbouring comment, "you could pay twice". Why make a piece of furniture that in the end will cost you, the manufacturer, the same but will decrease your sales by about three times because the end product would last three times as long? To recoup the losses, you'd have to charge to the point that you move into the high-end part of the market but at that point you could just as well use solid wood (in fact, you're expected to by the customers).

MDF warps and swells worse than any other furniture material I've ever seen. If it's not well sealed against moisture (and laminate alone is not sufficient), it will eventually develop severe flaws if exposed to water or kept in a humid environment.

Regular wood (and to a lesser extent plywood) will warp somewhat over time, though rarely enough to affect the function or appearance of the piece. It will swell with humidity, but it won't be permanently disfigured by it. Also, it won't become prone to catastrophic failure because people occasionally spill drinks on it.

MDF doesn't have to have these issues; it can be used correctly. It's just very rare to see that in a lot of cheaper furniture.

Yes, plywood is fantastic. I wish I could buy furniture made from plywood. I only ever see it in vintage pieces.

It's all MDF these days. MDF can be pretty good in some applications, but I mostly see it being used inappropriately: it is laminated poorly (so it peels eventually), it is not properly sealed against moisture (so it warps and discolors over time), and it is used to secure fasteners (so the furniture becomes wobbly and eventually fails). If these same pieces were made out of plywood, they would last 10X as long.

http://web.archive.org/web/20230905155847/https://www.washin...

https://archive.ph/X7ZLf

Hmm. I'm pretty sure as long as people are willing to give away vintage sofas on Facebook Marketplace because they don't know any better, I'm not going to buy a $11,000 new designer sleeper from DWR. It's not Ikea that's competing with the stuff designers want to make.

I have a room & board next to my office and decided to check it out since they were having a 50% off showroom pieces sale. I was shocked to find a decent looking couch for $8,000. $600 lamps. Cheapest end tables at $1500 and $1200 rugs. That said, a friend has told me their furniture is the sort of stuff you pay to re-cover when it wears out, that it should last for lifetimes. I have no way to actually verify the quality of these products though. So I sit the in the perpetual cycle, never purchasing anything because I don't want crap, but I also don't want to get ripped off. Note: Happy to pay 8k for a couch if I love it/never breaks with normal use/is made to be repaired.

Further, I read somewhere even solid wood available is no longer as good today as 50 years ago.

I have heard the same as commercial lumber today is harvested from fast growth trees.

Is this something that would cause a noticeable difference in quality, or more of an academic one?

There are two aspects of the "difference":

1) The timber that was once a locally (or nearby) grown tree might nowadays be - while the same or very similar species - originating from some other country (with different climate/humidity/etc.) and thus be different at a structural level.

2) The timber was once seasoned over several months or even years time (again locally), while most nowadays is artificially seasoned very quickly (usually in a kiln or autoclave for a few days)

While you cannot do much for #1, except of course choosing the best batch you can find, the #2 (which is actually what makes the larger differences in stability and also strength over time) can sometimes be avoided by buying the wood before it is seasoned and season it yourself naturally (of course you need the space and time needed, for furniture or making of windows/doors seasoning for a couple of years is not uncommon).

The difference between artificially seasoned wood and naturally seasoned is essentially that the latter is more "stable", i.e. it will tend to crack and/or bend/deform much less.

Awesome, thank you for the info!

Edit: not awesome that wood is lower quality of course, the awesome was for the explanation.

Indeed not. Going to the building supply store with my dad (former logger, from a family of loggers) was maddening as he flipped through the lumber bin to try to find relatively straight and knot-free boards, akin to those he was used to in 'the old days'.

Dimensional (construction grade) might not be, but it’s hard to say. Go to the lumberyard and pick out your own and you’re probably OK. I’ve sent boards back over the years, but it’s more an hit or miss issue of sloppy QA at the yard.

Solid wood includes what you find at an “exotic woods” store. There the quality hasn’t declined at all AFAIK. For interior work, it is worth a visit to your local exotics just to see what they have. It’s a fun field trip for the kids if nothing else. More expensive, but often no glue or staining required (sealing recommended) and lives on for many decades as the quality hardwood components can/should be resurfaced/repurposed.

Be aware of whether sustainable foresting practices are followed and if the species are endangered. There are many varieties of quality hardwood without those concerns.

Real wood furniture got bad / expensive.

Lots of decent mid level sheet steel and plastic furniture options now. Not to everyones taste, but they'll last decades + multiple moves.

Woods probably more sustainable, but access to nice / old quality wood isn't.

For midrange furniture (not as nice as vintage hardwood furniture that will last for generations, but not as crappy as cheap laminate furniture that is lucky to last a decade), pine is a great middle ground and very sustainable.

I had an argument with my therapist about this.

My wife just gave birth to my daughter, we moved a bookshelf my grandfather built for me when I was born into her nursery and now my office is a mess, my books and such scattered. The mess is stressing me out.

I am looking for a bookshelf to replace it, and told him I haven’t found anything I thought would last the rest of my life for a reasonable price. He insists I don’t need something that will last that long and I am just resistant to change. I just don’t want to waste my money on garbage pressboard I am going to need to replace.

It sounds like your therapist is letting their personal opinions into your session. I'm not an expert, but that sounds like a professional no-no.

... If there is no alternative, maybe the therapist is correct

Perhaps, but (again, not an expert), I think the therapist should be asking questions (Socratic Method) to get the patient to come to that conclusion themselves.

Agree. In my experience Furniture therapists are too opinionated nowadays.

Is it really worth stressing yourself out over buying a hold-over bookshelf until you can find yourself a better one?

If you've got money for a therapist for this type of issue - it probably isn't.

You can get a custom-made bookshelf from Amish country for the cost of less than 5 therapy sessions.

My health insurance covers my therapy except for a small copay. I would not be going were I paying out of pocket.

A large part of therapy can be pointing out cognitive distortions.

The idea that you need a bookshelf to last you for the rest of your life is actually a pretty reasonable thing for a therapist to question.

People come into therapy with a lot of strongly held ideas that wind up negatively impacting their relationships and lives. E.g. winding up in fights with your spouse because you insist on a bookshelf to last a lifetime, while they just want to get something reasonably priced and move on from the issue.

So trying to figure out where the desire comes from for an object that lasts a lifetime is actually a pretty reasonable therapeutic path of exploration. It's the old serenity prayer -- "the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference".

There might be a lot of wisdom here in deciding that reasonably-priced bookshelves don't last a lifetime anymore, that that's not something you can change or want to spend time and effort on changing, and deciding you can finally be OK with that. To just make the choice to either buy a cheap one that doesn't last or an "overly expensive one" that does, accept it, and move on.

To me it sounds like someone who wants internet strangers to agree with them in opposition to their therapist. Not knowing any of the other details that's as far as I'm willing to go with the assuming.

I wonder if commenters on Psych News question the professional judgement of IT workers based on second hand reports of their behavior.

Top level commenter here - for what it’s worth, as a someone who is perpetually indecisive, I enjoy getting my therapists opinions. He used to be a bicycle mechanic and has a very down to earth attitude towards therapy. Honestly one of my major life stressors is just general home maintenance and he’s offered some pretty great advice.

I have been furnishing with IKEA (and Target and Home Depot and Costco) furniture for 20+ years, and still use dressers and coffee tables and bunk beds from back then, including the use by 2 toddlers. I even moved it across the country.

Maybe the melamine surface chips or scratches, but a little touch up marker makes it pretty unnoticeable, plus I do not care. Plus it was $20 to $200, so I can just replace it if it was damaged.

I would much rather spend the money saved on vacations and whatnot, I get no utility from a heavier table (in casual household use).

Don't you care that your table could be found along with this[1]

1. https://www.10000yearclock.net/learnmore.html

My solution was to give up and DIY. I wouldn't dare attempt anything more complicated but a bookcase is among the simplest projects to take on.

The plan B which we used for some things in the house was a custom build. (Not meaning to shill or anything but they did a fantastic job and in your shoes I would explore their bookcases: https://www.dutchcrafters.com/Amish-Bookcases/cat/146). The prices are up there but I figure are about the same inflation-adjusted as what my grandpa would have paid 80 years ago.

> He insists I don’t need something that will last that long and I am just resistant to change

This is a bit of a red flag. Was this during a therapy session? They shouldn't be giving this type of advice, not to mention 'insisting' on it.

This is second hand commentary. We don't know what the therapist actually said, just how the poster is representing it, just that the poster interprets it as 'insisting'.

Even if you know that something is objectively better, if the majority of the market doesn’t agree, you’re going to find yourself spending lots of time and energy going against everyone else. At a certain point you just need to accept that that’s how things are and go with the flow, or take it upon yourself to really “fix” things, which will probably mean taking it on as a full time job or hobby.

So in this case, you can get a commercial bookcase that is probably good enough to last quite a while (and be able to spend a lot of time with your new child), or spend a lot of time on the garage learning woodworking so you can build a “real” one.

Or wait until the new child is older, and spend a lot of time building a new bookshelf with them.

I still use the ikea dresser and bookshelf I had in high school.

I would tell my therapist I find it odd that they're voicing their opinions rather than letting me arrive at conclusions on my own.

I'd bet you can get a local handyman to make a bookshelf out of boards and screws if you're concerned about quality. But of course, wood isn't going to cost today what it cost when you were born.

> The mess is stressing me out.

> I just don’t want to waste my money on garbage pressboard I am going to need to replace.

If I may propose an alternative, you could buy the cheapest bookshelf you can find just to have your office organized while you search for a quality one to last decades or centuries :)

Or if you have the time and interest you could even make a makeshift bookshelf instead. There are lots of tutorials on youtube for this.

There's the famous Adam Savage quip about "Buy cheap, then if you use it re-buy quality."

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=usB6jqa4Yt4&t=24s

Which I guess in your case boils down to...

Would you rather not have bookcases while you're searching for the perfect one?

Or would you rather have bookcases you aren't thrilled about, while you decide/look for more quality ones?

I'd hazard from the limited information, it might make sense to find the cheapest thing you can't push over, ASAP. Rip the band-aid off.

Bookshelves are pretty low-traffic, so I don’t see why an Ikea one wouldn’t last as long as you needed it to. I think you’ll probably get tired of the look of it before the structure fails in any meaningful way.

I bought quite a few of the Hemnes bookshelves[0] from Ikea. They aren't garbage pressboard, but also not terribly expensive. They actually replaced the garbage pressboard shelves I had that cost like $20 each, because I got tired of fixing up the back. The back panel is fiberboard, but it feels like HDF, not MDF.

0:https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/hemnes-bookcase-black-brown-lig...

All I can say is that I'm grateful for family who have given us antiques. When I've had to buy furniture, it's a sofa from Ikea (my husband is very hard on furniture and our two dogs are not much better), a solid wood headboard from a thrift shop, a something with veneer to be made into bathroom vanity, and a lovely antique sideboard for a kitchen island.

That said, I totally feel the pain of the gap in the market. Not sure how people manage.

There's a certain kind of wood from India (acacia I think) that a lot of new hardwood furniture is built with. I've seen it everywhere from Home Goods to West Elm to Crate and Barrel. If you seek it out, you'll get good, modern looking hardwood furniture at a good price. I find the way hardwood ages over time (it won't be pristine forever) to be preferable, and the ability to pay somebody to refinish it one day is a nice perk.

I blame downward price pressure and globalization.

When it comes to furniture, I only buy solid wood now. Ideally used. The best place to get antiques is from rust belt towns because the prices are actually affordable. The majority of my stuff too were either street finds (California was great for good free stuff) or hand me downs.

I might check out some consignment stores back east. Anything solid wood is held onto. I will never buy awful Ikea junk again.

I would recommend everyone buy used furniture. We (my partner and I) furnished our apartment for next to nothing with solid wood furniture. Our queen sized pineapple bed made in the 60s from solid wood cost us $35 and is easily the most solid/best bed we've ever owned.

As someone who has seen a lot of high quality furniture go to waste because they oulast their owners, I firmly believe the market has got this right. Furniture should not be made to last indefinetely. It has a lifecycle. It should not fill you with guilt to dispose of it.

Of all the problems in current day society, this isn't one of the worst. Consumers are talking with the money, and they're saying they prefer the cheap stuff. This isn't one of the worst problems, because no one but the consumer is affected.

I share this list of furniture makers anytime a post about modern furniture comes up. I usually get dinged for posting luxury goods, and am told I must be detached from reality. Here it is anyway:

If you're in the market for buy-it-for-life solid wood furniture:

https://www.thejoinery.com

https://vermontwoodsstudios.com/

https://hedgehousefurniture.com

https://57stdesign.com

https://www.57thstreetbookcase.com/ (all bookcases, some veneer and plywood)

https://www.spekeklein.com/home

https://www.pompy.com/

https://www.chiltons.com/

https://roomandboard.com (mix of solid and veneer, some MDF)

These makers are in a league of their own, very expensive, incredibly beautiful hand-made pieces:

https://www.sammaloofwoodworker.com

https://www.thosmoser.com (highly recommended)

https://nakashimawoodworkers.com (new commissions around $7K-$15K for a coffee table, $20K-40K for dining table, plus shipping; older Nakashima pieces are highly valued in the art world and sell anywhere between $15K-$300K)

https://www.wright20.com/search/nakashima/items#past

I used to own a lot of IKEA furniture and as I've gotten older, have slowly replaced those pieces with items from Knoll, with custom pieces from local woodworkers, with a few pieces from the studios listed above. Yes, they're expensive.

But if you like art and design and you care about quality, you save for what you want to buy. I wanted to be surrounded by great craftsmanship, so instead of buying "stuff" and instead of spending money on lots of subscriptions and services, or constantly upgrading phones and computers, I buy one piece of nice furniture every year. I believe the more you appreciate the things around you, the more they begin to influence your own work, and your sense of place.

I regularly see a lot of IKEA furniture on the side of the road and in dumpsters. I think this is the difference between buying "things" and having "possessions" but that's a discussion for another day.

PS: Find a local woodworker, they'll build what you want and it'll be better than anything you can buy at the store.

I'm sorry but I browsed the first two of these and they're 10x the price of Ikea while almost certainly not being 10x the quality. I randomly picked a modern-styled wooden dresser[0] comparable to the Ikea Malm 6 drawer dresser and it's 12x the price. There are clearly no shortage of companies willing to sell you very high margin wood furniture but I agree with the other commenters that there is a missing middle that's 2-3x the price of Ikea and that's maybe 50% better. Really I don't need some beautiful handmade wooden masterpiece (nor do 95% of other people), I'd just like something that isn't horribly flimsy and soft like MDF.

I am in this same position. I don't want to spend a fortune, but I also don't want my furniture to be wobbly or peeling laminate in a few years. Secondhand offers some good options here, but you can't necessarily find exactly what you're looking for. Apart from that, the market is surprisingly barren in this area.

I got into woodworking for this reason (using mostly secondhand tools and YouTube). I make myself midrange furniture out of pine and plywood. It's not as fancy as expensive hardwood furniture, but it still cleans up very nicely with some time spent painting or shellacking.

It looks (and feels!) so much nicer than Ikea's laminate offerings, and it should easily last me the rest of my life and then some. Plus, I get to make it exactly the way I want it.

Being from Portland, I have many pieces from The Joinery. They are absolutely beautiful, and for the ones with a live edge I actually got to pick out the cut of wood.

One more on the list that gets sold through 3rd parties is Wood Castle https://www.woodcastle.com/. They are a bit down market from The Joinery, but not by much.

I find the best furniture at antique shops, garage/estate sales, and charity stores.

One thing that's not mentioned anywhere in this article is that a lot of that super-solid, heirloom-quality furniture is still around -- and people are very willing to buy secondhand!

Facebook Marketplace/Craigslist/estate sales are a goldmine for stuff like this. This is only gonna be more true as the baby boomers continue to age. I wonder how much that impacts the market for the new stuff.

I like art deco and when I finally became a homeowner in 2008 I spent a couple years replacing the stuff I'd had since college. Craigslist got me an expandable dining table, a mahogany record cabinet with ancient player (made by Motorola!), a credenza, an armoire, a cedar blanket chest, and a china cabinet. Everything was $100-$350 each and a total of about $1350 for all. Solid wood, beautiful inlay work, and will outlast me.

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