I’ve only been to an IKEA once, and I’ve never bought their furniture, but my best guess is the meatballs.
On a semi-related note, if you haven’t read the book Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix, you really should.
Their big bags are really good for hauling stuff
I can spend a good deal of time criticizing Ikea but on one thing I can’t: their furniture is incredibly easy to copy and upgrade into a better version with minimal effort.
I took the time to break down, piece by piece, in a crazy exercise of reverse engineering, a love seat, to understand how they had designed and put together the thing.
After that, I sat to run the “numbers” and realised I could make it cheaper, sturdier and add storage room to it, with minimal modifications to the basic plan.
It was very interesting to discover.
I mean sure but then it sounds like you’re already a woodworker with the proper tools. Most people aren’t that.
I’m not. Far from that.
In fact, I live in a country where being a carpenter is not even a hobby and traditional, small scale carpentry shops are very uncommon.
We had a very strong push to shift the country towards services and white collar professions during the 80s and 90s.
For myself, whatever little “carpentry” I know comes from personal curiosity. What I do is use the services of a carpenter to do what I can’t, which is usually the cutting and rough fitting of parts, and I do the finishing, like sanding, stain, varnish, etc, which is also the most expensive and labor intense but requires less tools.
You don’t have to pay for R&D, warehousing, shipping, marketing, etc.
The only thing you don’t get is bulk rates on the parts. But the parts themselves are cheap.
Correct
All IKEA furniture I’ve bought has lasted a long time, but the meme is wrong, the reason it even exists is you can’t buy better quality furniture for the same price, at least not by very much, it will cost a lot more if you want amazing quality.
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Not sure why you’re being downvoted, maybe it’s because you keep replying second-hand without giving more information on that? Where are you looking? How are you finding it?
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If you’re adamant about that, then I guess this largely depends on where you live. Outside of one lucky find in a furniture charity shop I haven’t had that luxury, not to mention that you don’t get to choose what furniture you’re getting there.
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I mean facebook marketplace and craigslist you’re just as likely to find furniture that’s already from IKEA or some similar retailer, anything better will likely cost way more unless someone really wants to get rid of it.
Also it should be no surprise that used IKEA furniture will also be way cheaper.
America is huge and you might have to drive very far to get that second hand item. Also not everyone has a pickup truck to go get bulky heavy furniture you can’t take apart to easily transport to your place. And bedbugs are an issue in some places, especially major cities. It’s possible for some but not everyone.
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I agree with most of your complaints, but if transport is an issue, go to Home Depot or Lowes. You can rent a truck or van for $20 a day.
You absolutely cannot rent the truck at Home Depot for $20/day. It’s $20 for the first 75 minutes. Then you gotta pay for gas.
I agree mostly, but that adds to the cost and it means taking time out of your day to go get the truck, go get the furniture, drop furniture off at your place, then take the truck back. It’s an added inconvenience most people don’t want to deal with.
I see you are in Germany, like myself, I tried other options momax, XXLutz and some others with very bad results. Yes, there are other more local brands but they are considerably expensive in comparison. Ikea has provided reliable and compact furniture, easy to move when changing apartments. Most of the second hand furniture I find is actually Ikea stuff in decent condition. I’m open to trying again with other brands and will do but my experience with Ikea has not been bad as described by the meme
But that is just my opinion.
Yeah… about that.
This is representative of what I find when I look for anything second hand: https://lansing.craigslist.org/fuo/d/alma-beautiful-barn-wood-accent-table/7646902627.html
Note that this is about an hour drive each way.
Yeah and you can find second-hand IKEA furniture for even cheaper.
Keyword there is “find”
If your hobby is trawling second hand and antique stores, yard sales, estate sales and online classifieds looking for just the perfect high quality but affordable end tables that match your decor. Then go on with your bad self, I bet your house looks sweet.
I can go onto the Ikea website, find some cabinets that will do the job, I can check the measurements, pick my color, click a few buttons and they arrive at my house in a few days.
Yep. I’ve found high quality old furniture at estate sales, but it’s never matched my decor.
I’m not gonna complain about paying $50 for a couch made back in the 1960s that still feels brand new, though. Even if it’s dark purple.
Thats when you go to the hardware store, get a 1L tin mixed up in the same purple and paint some other shit in your place so it looks like its by design.
I bought most of my furniture used and got some really good pieces at great prices.
After a certain point though, I’m fed up of spending ages searching online and having to instantly jump on good deals. And if you’re not careful, you also end up with a load of random furniture that doesn’t fit together.
Depending on the item, it’s quite literally not worth my time searching for a good used piece. As in, if I was charging an hourly wage for searching/collecting, overall I’d be net negative.
And thats assuming you also have a vehicle to move it and the seller doesnt dick you around at all.
Yeah, getting fucked about by sellers was also one of the worst parts. I’ve arranged to collect stuff before, then gotten a message saying they’ve sold it to someone else.
Having sold stuff on marketplaces myself, if you agree to something then stick with it, even if you get a better offer.
You could always rent a truck for a few hours. Though that does raise the effective coat you paid for it, but not by much.
Wait till you rent the truck, turn up at their house to collect the item and they tell you they just sold it. But you can have your deposit back…
If you can find 2nd hand stuff that you like for cheap then go nuts.
I’ve got a garage full of 2nd hand stuff that I can’t even give away on FB marketplace because nobody likes the look of it.
IKEA has never been poor quality. It serves its purpose in the market and people seem to like the designs.
I’ve found that this is the problem. The good quality stuff is great and yes it will last multiple generations. However the styling will be long out of date before even the end of the first generation. My parents had old extremely well made furniture that they spent a lot of money in when they first got married. 30 years later the styling was out of date, my mom wanted a change, and they practically couldn’t even give the furniture away because nobody wanted the old style. So now my dad has a guest room in the basement using that furniture.
Because that would be an apples to oranges comparison, even if it had any basis in reality.
I have a Billy bookcase that’s like 20 years old, if not more. It’s been there all my life, as far as I can recall.
Agreed, yet to find any ikea (or any non-ikea being fair) fail to hold whatever items i put into them… Sounds like you (OP, not person i am replying to), might ve storing something strange in them to fail often enough to complain about ALL ikea furniture…
Flat pack furniture traditionally had the relationship for being crap, in particular for missing pieces like a screw here or there, but when Ikea came along they did things properly. That was the reason they got so popular, they were so much better than the competition, and they forced others to up their game. I think they were the first to actually include extra screws, to cover the occassions when they weren’t there, but these days their quality assurance is so good they just include the exact right amount every time.
They also have a little depot that you can go to to get extra screws and bits of wooden dowel and stuff.
You can go in tell them you need a type 4 screw from set 10.34.82.14 and they go oh yes that’s a Peürïng, and give you it.
Flat pack stuff has been around much longer then IKEA. The real wood stuff was great, but heavy and inconvenient to transport. That’s why the flat pack stuff caught on so fast.
Particle board is heavier than un-processed wood. Ikea does sell some stuff made from actual wood if you look for it. I bought an unfinished pine table from them for $60 a few years ago.
No it isn’t. Particle board is not one product, first of all. It comes in all kinds of material compositions, densities, and coatings.
Yes, 3/4” sheet of MDF is heavier than plywood. Heavier than a panel made from construction wood species. Not necessarily heavier than hardwood.
But IKEA furniture is not made from MDF. The particle board they use is something far lighter and full of tiny voids where MDF has none.
That’s just false. Particle board is without a doubt less dense than actual wood.
It really depends on the variety and the wood. MDF or medium density fiberboard is quite dense and heavier than say, pine wood. But not all particleboard is the same. There are many kinds and they vary greatly in density and composition.
I’m not sure what being heavier is supposed to mean though. Heavier doesn’t mean stronger.
I didn’t say heavier. I said dense. I wasn’t making a comment about the strength.
I also said dense. Particle board comes in many densities (as does wood). The range of both of them overlaps, so there is no way to make a sweeping comment that one is more dense than the other.
Come on man…
You’re being pedantic. Yes if you choose the least dense wood you can, and the most dense particle board, sure. 👍.
Well you made a very strong statement to someone: “that’s just false.” And you were not correct. Correcting that with actual nuanced information is not being pedantic.
How did they do it??
Oh that’s simple. Ikea founder sold his soul to the devil. He didn’t included the assembly manual though and thus Ikea still functions.
Real wood furniture is heavy, hard to sell, and expensive to buy. It requires a guarantee of long term housing or a disregard for the long term nature of the furniture.
Ikea is(somewhat) cheap, functional, can be broken down and moved in a car, and when your lease is up, so is your particleboard coffee table.
I have an antique entertainment cabinet that I nicknamed “the burden” that was given to me for my first apartment. It’s heavy as all fuck, has tried to kill me everytime I’ve moved, doesn’t fit a TV larger than like 32", and nobody wants to buy it. It makes a great piece for an aquarium setup, but has now been relegated to storing junk since I had to give up the aquarium
I’m moving at the end of the month for the first time in a decade, and it sure as hell ain’t coming with me. I’ll try to sell it, I’ll give it away, or I’ll trash it; but it will no longer be my burden. Hopefully someone wants to come get it, because it really might last forever and I’d hate to see it just trashed. But I refuse to be it’s keeper any longer
I’ve acquired far too much furniture I’d like to keep in my current apartment and I’m terrified of having to move. I’m terrified to hire movers which will trash everything, terrified of the stress of loading my own truck and dealing with the post move out nonsense. I moved like 9 times in a 5 year span during college and it never got easier. I hate it more every time.
No one wants to buy the furniture in a timely manner, you cant buy anything cheaper to replace it.
Going through it right now, after renting the same place for literally 10 years. I was out of state for work when my landlords told me they were selling it. They gave me extra time, because for one month of the notice I would be out of state… but it suuucks. Had to come home after my contract ended and immediately scramble.
Just signed a new lease (the market is fucking rough) and am now trying to condense a decade of of my life. It’ll be nice to have everything sorted and condensed and my dogs will have a bigger yard now… but fuck me, it wasn’t something I was ready to just jump into. But c’est la vie I guess
Why’d you give up your aquarium?
Traveling for work most of the year and couldn’t maintain it properly. I’ll inevitably go back to the hobby when I have the time though
The problem is any of the stuff like shelving or say a load bearing surface like a desk. Those flat surfaces are almost always MDF or whatever cheap engineered wood products IKEA uses. The furniture looks nice initially, especially for the price, but the horizontal surfaces always sag after 2-3 years even under low weight. I have a dresser, a desk, and shelving that all developed this problem and some of the shelves barely have anything on them.
Weird, I’ve had some IKEA dressers and bookshelves for a decade that have been completely fine.
Same here, most of my flat is ikea stuff and they’ve been going strong for 10 years. I don’t buy the cheapest options at ikea but still, a kallax will easily last you that much if you don’t jump on it. Only thing I don’t recommend is mattress.
If you put it together properly it tends to last a while. Unlike Jysk furniture which will collapse due to the stress of assembling it.
I’ve had my Billy bookshelf for 20 years, always stocked full with books and never did any of the shelves sag. Same for my ikea desk that’s used every day.
In my experience, it’s a choice between decent Ikea shelves that don’t sag after a few years of use and super shitty Walmart furniture that falls apart in about 6 months.
Aside from the price of good quality wooden furniture, it’s heavy as hell which is rough when you’re a renter and moving every few years. There’s also a lot of wooden furniture, old or new, is just as poorly constructed with peeling veneer and failing staples. Not everyone has the time, money, or space to fix that up.
And all that being said, Ikea isn’t really that expensive for what it is. Their soft furnishings and decorative items seem overpriced, but their storage products (mostly what I get from them) are pretty decently priced. Yeah I’ve had my issues with missing parts and shitty customer service, but all in all my experience has been positive enough to keep going back.
I still want to get a couple really nice, high quality items, but I’m not going to break the bank every time I need a bookshelf.
Not to mention, they do sell actual nice solid furniture for decent prices. For example, my current dining table from Ikea is solid wood, not veneered particle board, and was less than $200 dollars. I’ll gladly take the 5 minutes it took to screw the legs on for a decent piece of furniture at that price.
I also have a few of those adjustable metal shelves from Ikea, which have been sitting on my balcony for two years now, exposed to the elements, with not a single spot of rust on them. Those were about half the price of comparable shelves from a big box store, which rusted out in less than a year.
Sure Ikea sells some cheap crap that disintegrates if you look at it wrong, and that sucks, but if you’re just a little more selective about what you buy there, you can get stuff that’ll last at a very reasonable price.
IKEA did it by branding. I mean, I love their designs, but I wouldn’t buy anything larger than a nightstand from them.
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Almost everything in my apartment is from ikea, the only thing that isn’t holding very well is the sofa and that was my fault, we changed orientation 4 times and some of the screw holes got to big.
And even then the sofa is still good, is just kinda crooked if you now where to look
Let me guess, her drawer was too full and as she opened/closed it, the clothes broke a crossbeam in half?
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I think that’s every Malm set of drawers in existence. Mine has the same issue.
But in my case it’s because I sat in the draw as a kid.
I have two MALM dressers with probably 2 cracked beams each. That’s after I was able to get that part replaced on both, so technically it has happened 6 times.
Bought 2 billy bookcases for £20 each in 1991, and moved them a couple of dozen times, including moving country twice. Last month I disassembled them and used the pieces to make wall shelves in the pantry of the house I bought 2 years ago. That’s some longevity.
I bought an IKEA desk that caved in when I attached my monitor mount to it. That said, the legs were good enough and made of metal so I just bought a piece of timber to be the desk top and attached the IKEA legs
In the UK before Ikea, it was MFI (colloquially known as ‘Made For Idiots’) that was even lower quality chipboard horrible furniture.
Yes, Ikea isnt some handcrafted solid wood furniture but until most people can afford that stuff, it will do.
Yeah what’s with this idea that solid wood furniture costs the same as IKEA’s equivalent. That’s just not true. If it was no one would buy IKEA furniture so it’s obviously not true.
Mr green text is a lying git.
I bought one piece of real furniture and the only reason we could afford it was because it was made by a dude as his hobby and he was selling practically for cost. And even then I had to really commit that I wanted that walnut dresser. Internals are still MDF btw.
Yeah the prices here are all out of wack. I’d love to buy nice, long lasting furniture. Please tell me where I can get a couch that will last generations for $500? I have some hand me down furniture that’s good quality and even in it’s day it was.a significant investment. My dining room table cost ~$1200 when it was brand new. If I didn’t have that I’d be using some $150 pressboard garbage from target or Ikea because that’s all I can reasonably afford
Is this why IKEA isn’t that popular here? Because I can get IKEA quality at Wal-Mart?
IKEA is a lot better quality than Walmarts build-your-own furniture. I have both. The IKEA stuff is a lot more dense, the connections are more precise and stronger, and overall the IKEA stuff is just better quality.
I found my long lost brother
