Price range for retail seems to be $100-250 for IKEA stuff that will fall apart in 3 years, or $1,000+ for something better. Is there nothing in between? Would prefer to buy new with risk of bed bugs or other contaminants but open to other options if I’m missing something.
Thrift shops and used furniture stores. Buying a quality piece of furniture second-hand is the only way to get it for a good price.
Not sure why IKEA is getting knocked? It has a good reputation for quality design. They also have quality ranges with cheaper and more expensive versions of the same furniture types if you want to splurge on the best.
Flat pack is a good way to buy furniture; you just have to get it from good quality sources and IKEA is definitely one.
I’ve got IKEA furniture that’s moved with me from home to home up to 15 years old and it remains in good condition. Never known their furniture to “fall apart”?
My ikea dresser is 12 years old and is ok still.
To add to this, if you compare a dresser (or table or whatever) at ikea to a piece of the same price range from pretty much anywhere else, it’s almost absurd how much better quality the IKEA piece will be. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say it’s absurd how crappy the non-IKEA piece will be.
Seriously, go to a furniture store and look at the drawer construction and hardware on a $1000 dresser and compare that to a $400 IKEA dresser.
There is definitely some garbage at the bottom of their price ranges, but their mid range stuff is generally a solid value.
Ikea stuff, at least on the cheap end, is made of cardboard lattice coated in plastic. Maybe if you get more expensive stuff from particle board, or even plywood, you’d be better off, but that cheapest stuff is really cheap. Once the fasteners start to loosen, there’s nothing you can really do. With real wood, you could just put in a fastener in a different spot.
that’s what he’s saying. cheap stuff is going to be cheap, but Ikea offers better stuff for a little bit more
And is still cheaper than what you’ll find at most competing stores. Cheaper as in price, not quality. I need to drive about an hour and a half to the nearest IKEA, so I’ve looked at other options when I think of some new furniture that could improve my space use. I’m always disappointed in both the selection available and the price on the not quite what I have in mind but closest they’ve got.
Estate sales.
The problem you’ll run into is that good furniture is made out of solid hardwoods, and IKEA, et al. is made from particleboard. There are major differences in the ways you work with the two materials; there’s not really a great inexpensive way to make hardwood furniture that’s going to last for 50+ years, and there’s no reasonable way to make particleboard furniture last 50+ years at all. (Plywood lasts longer than particleboard, but I wouldn’t use it in making furniture that I intended to be around long after my death.) I am, for instance, a big fan of Gustav Stickley’s “Mission” style; I absolutely can not afford it, since a full bedroom set would cost about as much or more than a brand new BMW M3. OTOH, my grandfather made some craftsman style furniture (Stickley published a lot of the early plans) in the 20’s, and my parents–in their 80s–still have it, and it’s still in very good condition overall.
I just need to get a cabinet saw, thickness planer, replace the blades on my jointer, pick up a bandsaw, and find a good Powermatic mortising machine–and get my basement wired for 440v 3ph–and I can start making my own. And that would still be cheaper than buying it at full retail. :')
Most of the hardwood furniture I see is actually veneer.
Yeah, you have to get pretty spendy to get solid wood. Even “nice” furniture is often hardwood plywood with a veneer. The way to check is to see if the side and end grain matches with what you see on the face. If the growth rings don’t line up, it’s a veneer.
Ikea have plenty of solid wood furniture.
Not really. It’s very, very limited. Some of the shelving is solid wood (mostly their utility shelves, and those are pine), they used to have a bent wood chair that was laminated hardwood, they have the wooden countertops, and that covers most of it. Most other things are plywood with veneer, particle board, or even something close to cardboard with and MDF and veneer shell (the Malm bedframe is one that I remember being made like that).
https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/cat/wood-furniture-700203/
There’s 149 items currently covering most catergories. I would call that a wide range.
Try thrift stores. A surprising amount of solid wood furniture ends up being resold. You might need to do some fixing up if you’re handy - sanding down and refinishing - but usually not. Usually some pretty big pieces for really cheap.
Habitat for Humanity, estate sales, garage sales, or build your own.
There’s also cruising affluent neighborhoods around the time the trash company picks up large items. For the low low price of embarrassment, you can get quality stuff for free.
Also we’re getting close to garage sale time of year.
We got one from Grain Wood and liked it so much we got a second. One we have is pine wrapped in a veneer of walnut and the other is painted white. They’re not hardwoods, but they’re leagues better than particle board IKEA stuff and don’t cost a fortune.
Same here. I’ve got one of their dressers and night tables, and I love them! Thinking about getting a bed frame next. Their prices are awesome, and the quality is way better than it has any right to be.
Thanks! Ended up getting a dresser from them. Was about 6 hours to put it together, which was half the time it took me to do the Overstock piece of junk that it replaced. Happy with the look, quality and assembly process.
Plenty of thrift stores out there. You can spray for bugs yourself.
I would not risk getting bed bugs just to save a couple hundred dollars. Reading stories of people who’ve had infestations is quite frightening as it leaves long term psychological damage and leaves one feeling unsafe lying in their own bed even after you’ve spent thousands of dollars and thrown a bunch of your stuff in the garbage for treatment.
Bed bugs in wooden furniture? Can’t you just leave it outside for a couple of days?
Habitat for humanity if you have one near you. I got a lot of my furniture from there and made some shockingly good deals. A solid brass chandelier worth 4500$, for 45$, an acacia table worth 2500$, for 200$, etc. Obviously you have to have a keen eye for what’s good or bad but it’s a great place to start.
Also when buying used furniture I like to stick to stores as they will check and exterminate bed bugs.
Pro-tip on assembling flat pack furniture: use wood glue and it will last longer.
I’ve got plenty of flat pack furniture and never had to use wood glue.
If you buy quality flat pack you will get well designed and engineered furniture. The bad reputation comes from cheap tat, often mass produced in China.
Wood glue negates one of the big benefits of flat pack - to take the furniture apart and move it at any point in the future.
I’ve also come across shoddily built flat pack furniture when I was renting when younger and I always found the same problem - a failure to tighten screws. Wobbly bits of furniture became functional afterwards.
I remember my mum built a flat pack computer table when I was a kid and it wobbled all over. She lamented how poor flat pack furniture was. I got fed up of the wobble when I was a teenager and had a look - every single screw was not tightened. It took 10mins to sort and the thing never wobbled again.
I’ve fixed wobbly desks, wardrobes, shelving units - all with just a screwdriver.
Number one tip for flat pack furniture: tighten the screws. And number 2, get an electric screwdriver.
Wood glue negates one of the big benefits of flat pack - to take the furniture apart and move it at any point in the future.
Dud, I’ll figure out how to move it intact. The most i’m doing is tightening the cam locks.
Ikea makes garbage furniture, but I consider them adequate for a dresser for my needs. Not for anything that touches your body during use (such as a sofa). Only items for storage. Well, we have a two-person table and pair of chairs for the kitchen, so I guess I broke my one rule. How about this: not for comfort or relaxing.
Be careful with used furniture to inspect for bedbugs! I don’t think secondhand wooden furniture is a good idea myself.
