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It’s Not Just Wayfair: Why Does ALL Of Your Furniture Fall Apart?
Interesting commentary on what happened to the furniture industry in the United States.
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if you want something GOOD you can still find it for a price.
if you want something NOW it’s going to be cheap mdf flat pack garbage.
Where do I find it though?
Good and relatively mass produced? Good start searching for terms like “solid wood dresser”. You still have to do some vetting but it cuts down on the absolute junk.
Good and cheap? Check your local Goodwill and Habitat for Humanity ReStore regularly - their stock is highly variable, but they will have some of the best items for the best price out there.
Money is no object? Make friends with the folks at your local hardwood store and pry them for recommendations for local woodworkers, and attend local craft fairs.
Same reason everything sucks these days. Capitalism.
As a person who grew up in a socialist country, I say be careful what you wish for.
You have to be more precise than that.
Furniture was a “luxury” item. We had very a few and ugly options, produced by socialist / plan economy manufacturing industry. Quality wise these were meh… Even then one needed to jump through the hoops to buy the ugly and not very affordable furniture. Rumours about new batch coming to a local store and you have a long queue waiting for hours, sometimes days. Anything better imported from abroad, was super difficult to get hold of. Unless you’re a member of the socialist gov and have connections.
A little rough around the details (pine is not a hardwood, and MDF and chipboard are just as heavy as wood), but yeah, generally this is spot on.
I will say that just at a design level, a single-pillar end table is never going to handle the sledgehammer test very well compared to a four-legged design, but once you’re through the initial clickbait moment, that old Ethan Allen piece is very much better made.
It’s not hard to find, it’s just expensive.
Because it was replaced by cheap garbage.
Saved you a click. The video was pretty informative though.
Everything is cheap garbage in the U.S. Except our healthcare, which is expensive, but also cheap garbage.
Cheap garbage is cheap garbage, no matter the price they expect you to pay for it.
Good ANYTHING is hard to come by these days. It’s all fucking garbage.
I actually have a mini workshop for making little shit. I made matching desks for my son and me 7 years ago. Even though my son beat the crap out of his and mine lost a load support, they are still standing better than any IKEA desk I have seen.
I had an IKEA desk for three years before some movers damaged it in a cross country move. When they dropped it off the left hand side had snapped and they were like “that was like that when we picked it up.”
So, I went out and got a new IKEA desk with the money from that and I’ve had that desk for eight or nine years now. It’s been moved between houses four times and has not had an issue.
I was more referring to the abuse they have taken. I’m quite comfortable standing on them if needed.
I made a black pipe and 2 x 6 coffee table that could withstand a nuclear blast for around $100.
The United States still has a furniture industry?
Yes, but it’s expensive.
It’s odd because from what I can gather from things like youtube it seems like woodworking is huge there (and they say wood is cheap there too), so I’d imagine there should be a considerable amount of people doing furniture.
Contrasting to the situation here where people doing hand-maded furniture is lowering their prices so much trying to keep up with the ikea-type of shit (and of course doing things with superior quality).
Labor is still expensive.
Lots of labor needed if it’s not mass produced on an assembly line.
My FiL made my dining room table. It’s ~600lbs and was $2K in material alone, that didn’t include any labor he didn’t charge us. It’s just about indestructible but it certainly would’ve been $4k-$5k if he was selling it. Would you buy that? I thought not. I certainly wouldn’t have.
I made my sons’ crib. Solid cherry, nothing crazy fancy but I like it. I wouldn’t make another to sell unless I get at least $5k for it. I doubt anyone would buy it for much more than $1k. Just not worth it.
Sounds like your FIL made my dining table 😄
There are still workshops putting out high quality pieces for custom orders.
South Carolina, Pennsylvania and Ohio are the centers of US furniture making.
Yeah. Only thing is, the “affordable” American made stuff largely consists of crap quality. I made the mistake of insisting on American made stuff when I also didn’t have the budget for premium furniture. I ended up with crappy seating that started breaking in less than a year. The stitching started coming apart in the second year. And by the third year the “genuine” leather was separating and flaking.
Furniture is a good reason to check thrift stores. They usually have older, well-made shit that costs less than the brand new garbage that’s poorly made.
Habitat for Humanity restores are gold. Most of my furniture is from there. They have pretty high standards for the stuff they take.
Where I live I can pick up amazing stuff for free from recycling stations all over the city. Incredible old items keep popping up there more or less every day as people get rid of their old solid wood furniture in order to replace it with something more fashionable from IKEA.
Almost all my furniture is from thrift stores. It’s all old stuff that is made better and looks better.
Tables are the only thing cheap out here, I just buy the top and feet separately. That way I get decent quality.
