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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.
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.
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
Their big bags are really good for hauling stuff
The meatballs man. It’s all in the meatballs.
Ikea is actually a kötbullar store with a furniture side hustle.
Counterpoint, the meatballs aren’t better than grocery store brand frozen meatballs.
You’ve been meatballed!
They just taste better because they are the one damn thing you don’t have to assemble yourself.
Because that 2 lifetimes table doesnt cost $800 thats what grandma paid for it in the 50s when buying a 4 bedroom house for $30,000 and working at the mill for 50 years was normal.
It also weighs 3 tons and given that you live in a shitty 1 bedroom apartment and have to move every 6 months to an even smaller shoebox that costs an increasing % of your income every damn time, Its probably for the best that your shit is disposable.
Yep Anon never went furnishing shopping. $800 will get you a large wardrobe at IKEA. Anything equivalent will be far more than double the cost if you want it made from real wood and new.
I moved out of our house and if I wanted some furniture and beds for the kids do I spend $450 total for all 3 of us to have a bed or do I spend $2k when I’m trying to get shit settled down?
And yes, to your point, I’ve moved twice since then and that would have been a nightmare. And 5 years later the bed still is fine
Everyone should get into woodworking, because then you can just make your own and it’ll be twice as expensive and shittier than IKEA’s version.
I feel personally attacked.
You had me in the first half…
Have you seen the price of finished wood these days. It’ll probably be cheaper (although possibly more fatal) to buy a forest, cut your own trees down and build your own sawmill.
In time of climate change you don’t want to own a forest, unless you own a fire department, an insekt repellent company and a water plant to water them when there’s a drought. Pump and dump is the way to go. Buy two table, store one on top of each other and sell it when inflation doubled it’s price, so basically 6 months.
Seize the means, comrade!
Never mind the space, tools and time required anyway
Most of which aren’t really compatible with living in a city, even if you’re in a house and not an apartment. We needed an entire garage stall for my husband’s tools, which significantly affected what houses we could buy and how close to the city center we could live. It’s a lifestyle choice, not something you just pick up on a whim.
I built a shoe rack during the pandemic. It actually turned out great, it’s way better than something from IKEA. It was indeed 2-3x the cost of an equivalent thing from IKEA if you consider all the tools and stuff I had to buy though.
No idea what that guy’s talking about. I bought a bunch of furniture from Ikea 15 years ago and all of it is still standing. Even the flimsy-looking chairs.
Yea, there are a couple tiers of ikea quality, and it’s clearly reflected in the price.
I spent $600 on a king size tufted headboard and box spring set and it’s been a tank for 10 years. I bought a $400 tv console and it’s similarly been a tank for 12 years.
I bought a cheap table for my dorm room and it didn’t survive the year.
I bought a £30 coffee table from IKEA and it lasted me 6 years and 6 house moves. Only reason I got rid of it is because the flat I moved into had the exact same one already
You expect to coherent points from 4chan? Everyone’s an idiot on that platform. Case and point they are arguing for a completely disprovable point.
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
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.
buying furniture
literally all of my furniture is either something I got for free except for my mattress and computer chair (posture check btw).
Clothing and furniture is overproduced as hell; evidence: Festivals, urban pavements, informal dumping grounds, wood waste power plants, clothing markets in South Western Africa.
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.
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
I like their designs but their materials for desks are crap
mine is steel and some sort of plastic/polymer for the top, its by far the best desk ive ever owned.
Yeah mine the surface started getting seamed and bulging within a year.
I have one of their cheapest desktops with like third from the bottom tier legs and it’s been going strong for about 8 years because it’s in a low traffic area and only used for a laptop and a few desktop items. Is it made of cardboard and tin and good intentions? Yes. Will it crumble like a stale cookie if I ever damage it in any way whatsoever? Also yes. But so far so good, and for $40, it’s already lasted like 5 years longer thsn i thought it would when i bought it.
On the other end of the spectrum, I used to have their ALEX desk and it was sturdy as hell, and my old JERKER was a fucking tank. Only reason I don’t still have them is I needed to downsize.
You spend bottom dollar, you get junk. But, Ikea’s “junk” will still outlast damn near anything else you can find at the same price point. Like shit, I have some of those cheapass LACK side tables I got in college that are nearly through their teens now and still hanging in there. Not everything has fared as well, and I’m much more discriminating and scrutinous in my purchases because of that, but overall I’d say I’ve been generally satisfied with the longevity:price ratio, and often pleasantly surprised. There are very few stores about which I would say that.
Not Ikea specific, but proper wood furniture only really makes sense if you’re staying somewhere long term, have your own house, etc. If you have to move every couple of years for work, because rent is getting too expensive, etc etc, solid wood furniture is really inconvenient and expensive to transport.
I’ve got an Ikea couch I bought fifteen years ago that’s made a move across the US three times. I have two kids in their teens. The couch is still in good shape. I also have an entertainment center/TV stand that I bought from them 10 years ago from Ikea that’s in great shape.
The couch cost me $250, the TV stand cost me $50.
The myth of crappy Ikea furniture is overblown.
That’s cheap! I paid $800 for a sectional sofa from a scratch and dent markdown furniture store. It was among the cheapest furniture they had. And it had slight cosmetic damage.
Ikea is good at standardized parts and dimensions, you can often swap pieces around and do more stuff with modularity. Also they’re pretty easy to fix when broken. A reinforcing bracket here, an extra screw there, attach it to the studs, there are options.
