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Comment by groby_b | Hacker News Reader

I'm happy he could have it made for $1,150 - in Mexico. If you talk to carpenters in the US, you'll find that making furniture is a tiny bit more expensive. A single couch can easily be $5K.

I've considered it, done the investigation, and decided I don't want to spend that kind of money. Turns out that "Scandinavian Furniture" is doing quite well :)

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Depending on the type of wood, 1k might barely cover materials. Walnut for instance might be pretty close to $1k for a table. I recently built a dining room table out of Red Oak, and it was close to 300. Red Oak being one of the cheaper hardwoods available in New England.

[because i'm shameless.. here's my table http://i.imgur.com/6RBAEkc.jpg]

That table is fantastic.

Agreed, nicely detailed!

I am an amateur woodworker and you are 100% correct on the price of wood. It's based largely on geography as well. I cannot tell what type of wood was used for the build but the frame of that table appears to be pine which is pretty cheap in most areas (and a decent wood too!).

I like a nice through mortise.

My gf is doing it now using a carpenter found on Etsy. It will be cheaper than comparable furniture from West Elm or Restoration Hardware. But this is for tables, not for a couch. Unfortunately, she started on the project before I could teach her SketchUp. She and the carpenter email sloppy drawings back and forth. We have no idea what we'll receive this month.

Has she blogged about her experience anywhere? Would love to hear more.

I have been doing experiments by getting stuff from shelves to frames built by etsy folks. It has been working out somewhat well. I do have to add a few modifications on my end. Haven't scaled up to a couch yet.

She found a local carpenter, or somebody will ship cross-country?

>> If you talk to carpenters in the US, you'll find that making furniture is a tiny bit more expensive.

Na, you just need to figure out who to go to. My buddy lives in SE Pennsylvania, and he had as some seriously nice furniture made by some of the local Amish. Total cost for his bedroom and kitchen furniture combined-> $1200

I think that's a fairly large exception. We don't all have friendly Amish around :)

It's a bigger exception than you think. The Amish are as good as anyone at figuring out how much their work is worth. It's not usually such a steal.

That's quite surprising - Amish furniture tends to go for a massive premium!

A note on nomenclature in the US: A $2,000 [or $5K] couch is "woodworking" or [furniture making] not "carpentry." The perceived value is based on a hugely different frame of reference. A carpenter can come to your house with a helper and a pickup truck full of tools and charge you $15,000 to remodel your bathroom with materials bought exclusively from home depot. sad.

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