Furniture buying

The markup is as much as diamonds.

Friend,

The majority of furniture sold in America today is cheaply made junk that is made to last between two and ten years. We live in a disposable culture and in response companies like IKEA, Rooms2Go, and Ashley have brought us refuse that is soon destined for a landfill near you. The retail prices are humorous. MSRP $1500 for a plywood based polyester upholstered couch on sale for $599 during one of their constant sales (now it’s a back to school sale) fools only the fool.

Even moderate quality places like Ethan Allen do not have the quality they had a few decades ago. As a result, if we were interested in getting furniture, which we are not, we would go either the route of the auction or good estate sales. There is high quality furniture that will last generations sold at both, and usually for the same price or less than the new trash sold at cheap furniture stores listed above here.

Sam’s Club has the best deals on mattresses. The mattress racket at your corner stores feels like going to a used car lot. I know nothing about Tempurpedic or split mattresses.

Yours,
TulaneLSU

Wow. I am not sure my original post warranted a response from TD royalty but am thankful for the insight.

I see all of the points that have been made and have normally purchased/acquired all of my furniture in the ways you have pointed out. However, I am interested in getting a full set of matching pieces that fit our room. This influences our selection at auctions and estate sales. To be fair, I have never purchased from an auction. If there are auction site you recommend, could you share the link please?

And finally, we will not be purchasing from any of the stores mentioned. I am very aware of the quality at these places and will not subject myself to the disposable nature of these items. We are only interested in hand crafted, solid wood construction with a traditional timeless stained finish.

As for the mattress, I have purchased at Sam’s and will consider them again, but will also compare at Costco before deciding if another store is warranted.

Thank you again for the comments.

We are in Baton Rouge and the quotes we have are from Doerr and a place in BR. The Doerr pricing is better and they have a better selection of what we are considering.

North Carolina outlets have been impacted by foreign manufacturing and are a shell of what they used to be. I have family in the area and was prepared to make the trip.

Handcrafted Amish hand made/finished is what we are currently looking at from Durham or Mavin.

Mattresses have to be a money laundering scheme. There is a store on every corner.

Idk what your budget is, but a very solid midrange option is Joybird.. I have a few pieces from them, including this sectional ). I have been overall very satisfied with the build quality, fabric quality, softness yet durable, etc. Overall would recommend if within price range and if you can stomach buying furniture sight unseen.

I didn't realize how shittily furniture is made until I started woodworking. Then I realized just how expensive quality wood is. The realized how much you'd have to pay me to make a table, chest of drawers, etc.. Ive built simple tables and beds for family that were well over $1000 in materials alone. I get the price of higher end furniture now and will have it in mind when I buy in the future.

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What wood are you using?

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Walnut, White Oak, Mahogany, etc.. If I'm going to put in a lot of effort, I want it to be nice. Not going to finish and wish I didn't cheap out on materials.

Below is stuff I've built. You'd have to pay me $5k+ to even think about building the bed and table. Coffee table wasn't too bad, but it'd be several hundred plus materials to do it for someone random.

Nice work man. Did you build the chairs also? I tried my hand at chairs, and that's one thing I will NOT be attempting again for awhile.

I haven't gotten too in depth with wood working so I mostly stick with linear projects.

Walnut and Mahogany are fun to work with. I've done some small stuff with them. But not any larger projects. I may decide to do something with it some day. And I also like the idea of just putting polyurethane on wood, but when I got into it, I didn't have the budget I have now so I wanted cheap wood and didn't mind staining it.

Here are some of my projects I've done over the last few years.