Why's everybody baggin' on IKEA?

[Chris Kennedy]

A month or so ago I saw a Cragslist add, Ikea...Furniture assembler.

50 bucks a hour. Two hour minimum.

Hey, that's great. I mean whats your overhead? A screwdriver?

Tough times.

Per

Cheaper than that -- allen key.

[John Carlo]

I'm building a bunch of laundry room cabinets out of red oak plywood with solid oak face frames and raised panel doors. Why? Ego! Most of our friends come in through the garage and right through the laundry room and then they see what I do with all those tools out in the shop.
Now, get past ego and the fun of working with wood and tools and I have to admit, the IKEA stuff is very tempting. My daughter is a very successful designer and she would probably appreciate the clean modern lines and finishes of the IKEA cabinets. But then, I have the laundry room all trimmed out in red oak with the same for 6 panel doors so you see a certain "richness" to the house when you walk in. Still, instead of being out in the shop I could be in the house drinking beer, eating chips, and watching the idiot box.

[Dave Sabo]

The 1 series is faster and handles much better - what else would you want in a car?

Dave a 1 series is not faster, not really close. And, you'd have to define the parameters of handling before I'd be willing to concede that point.

[Dave Avery]

Dave a 1 series is not faster, not really close. And, you'd have to define the parameters of handling before I'd be willing to concede that point.

Depending on sources, the 135i automatic is 4.7 seconds 0-60 with the automatic. BMW quotes 5.2 for the 750. If you're talking about top speed, who cares..... no sane person explores top speeds on public roads.

Going back to the spirit of the original post, not all Ikea stuff is junk. Yes, you usually get what you pay for, but paying for kitchen cabinets that will last 100 years when they'll be thrown away in a remodel 10, 20, or 30 years later is wasteful.

Your implication that the 1 series is of lower quality than the 7 series, particularly given the 7 series VERY spotty early quality performance, is not supported by the facts. Paying a high price does not guarantee quality. Ask my pal who owns an Escalade.

[John Sanford]

I am only gonna dicker with you a little bit, John.

2 hour min assumes the guy, just to show up, gets a hundred bucks.

Folks furnish whole apartments in NJ with Ikea.

Do you think some entrepreneurial kid on Craigs list is concerned

with WK Comp, Tax's, the gubbimint in general?

Cash is king. You know, like the kids that shovel driveways.

Me? I may agree with you, but I give the kid credit for putting down the bong and cell phone.

Per

Hey, I give him lotsa credit! I've done that sort of work, hence I know what's involved and such. Lacking an IKEA here, I can't really imagine anybody getting that much RTA in one shot, except maybe a business.

If the dude can get folks to pay him that much, more power to him. All I can say is "them newfangled subcompact drivers are your friend!!"

[Kelly C. Hanna]

They are cheapening our country and making it OK for those who know no better to love crap. Imagine being impressed with particleboard and you get the picture.

I can only imagine how many woodworkers have lost out to the antichrist of good taste. I know I have lost two small projects to them myself and I am not even a full time furniture builder.

Personally I will never set foot in one and the wife is banned as well.

[Pat Germain]

They are cheapening our country and making it OK for those who know no better to love crap. Imagine being impressed with particleboard and you get the picture.

I can only imagine how many woodworkers have lost out to the antichrist of good taste. I know I have lost two small projects to them myself and I am not even a full time furniture builder.

Personally I will never set foot in one and the wife is banned as well.

I'm sure auto manufacturers who hand-crafted their cars one at a time and sold them at a very high price felt the same way about Henry Ford's crappy, mass produced cars. It is the way of the world, my friend. And it's nothing new.

Bad taste goes back to early man who displayed tapestries of dogs playing poker in their caves.

[Stephen Edwards]

They are cheapening our country and making it OK for those who know no better to love crap. Imagine being impressed with particleboard and you get the picture.

I can only imagine how many woodworkers have lost out to the antichrist of good taste. I know I have lost two small projects to them myself and I am not even a full time furniture builder.

If people are happy with particle board and paper that looks like wood grain, that's their choice and their business. We can't dictate what is "good taste".

If people care enough about and can afford custom built furniture or cabinets, good for them and good for us who are woodworkers! If they don't care or can't afford it, we didn't lose out because some company has a system and a product line that people are satisfied with. If we don't get a job for a particular piece it's because the customer isn't willing to pay our price and are satisfied with what they can get within their budget. That's the free market.

[Kelly C. Hanna]

Yessir you are correct about that. Sad but true. But I won't be contributing to their success. I like technology as much as the next person, but I draw the line at the lack of quality.

I needed to convert my pool room into an office recently. Instead of buying a cheap set of glass and metal desks I bought two older solid Oak desks and converted one into a drafting table. I guess I just think like that. Probably the same reason I don't drop off a crew of unskilled workers to build decks at people's houses like 99.9% of the rest of the deckbuilders in our area.

We all draw the line at certain things in life....someday you will probably do the same.

[Pat Germain]

I admire your high standards, Kelly. Alas, such dedication to quality does seem rare these days.

I'm a big fan of science fiction author Phillip K. Dick. Many of his stories take place in a world where everything is run down and falling apart and nobody knows how to fix or build anything. The older I get, the more reality I see in those stories.

[Stephen Edwards]

Yessir you are correct about that. Sad but true. But I won't be contributing to their success. I like technology as much as the next person, but I draw the line at the lack of quality.

I needed to convert my pool room into an office recently. Instead of buying a cheap set of glass and metal desks I bought two older solid Oak desks and converted one into a drafting table. I guess I just think like that. Probably the same reason I don't drop off a crew of unskilled workers to build decks at people's houses like 99.9% of the rest of the deckbuilders in our area.

We all draw the line at certain things in life....someday you will probably do the same.

Kelly, I agree with your concept of style and taste. Like you, I'd much rather have the old oak desk for a drafting table than some shiny new glass and metal "thing" that has no character.

My "lines" have been drawn for decades. My point is that there's nothing that we can do to convince others to have the same sense of taste that we have, whatever that may be. Nor should we. People who build as you and do have our customers. The PB manufacturers have theirs. We can draw OUR line but we can't draw the line for other people. It's impossible to do and frustrating to even attempt. That's my point.

[Dave Sabo]

Depending on sources, the 135i automatic is 4.7 seconds 0-60 with the automatic. BMW quotes 5.2 for the 750. If you're talking about top speed, who cares..... no sane person explores top speeds on public roads.

And we all know that rational folks would be interested in the 0-60 times for those drag races at the track or in front of the mall. Montana has no speed limit and few people on the roads, parts of West Texas and Nevada have straight flat roads that can easily and safely handle 100+ mph if yuo choose not to obey the statutes.

Anyway - what I am saying is the component quality in the lower series cars is not as good as the top range ones. Is it good enough????

[Per Swenson]

And if I throw Ikea furniture off the roof at 32 feet per second per second......
will it compensate and will I feel better in the morning?
Just askin.

Per

[John Callahan]

............. depends on if you have to clean it up afterward.

[David Keller NC]

"I always try to stress that point. As a matter of fact, the finer furniture built today is far superior in quality to almost anything built a few hundred years ago, mainly due to new techniques and new technology. Most people never get to see this stuff unless you look in Architectural Digest or similar magazines. I can assure you that an $8000 dining table will be an heirloom.
Who has $8K to spend on a dining table? The same kind of people that bought the equivelant pieces 200 years ago that you see in museums."

Hmm - I'm clearly behind on this thread, but I thought I should comment here, because the above statement is misleading. One could easily draw the conclusion that furniture made today is of superior quality to furniture built 50 years ago because of technology, but not several hundred years ago.

It's incorrect to assume that very little of the "ordinary man's" furniture from colonial times hasn't survived because it wasn't of high quality. In fact, a great deal of it survives to this day, perhaps more so than the pieces that are seen in Sotheby's catalogs and museums. It's just that it doesn't bring stratospheric prices the way Newport secretaries do, and the design of much of it stood the test of time and since it wasn't labeled, it's not possible to tell the difference between a tavern table made in 1753 from one made in 1895.

Moreover, almost all of this furniture, though intended to be cheap and utilitarian, is constructed to extraordinarily high standards. It's just that our mentality as a society has changed radically from even our grandparent's day, much less our great,great,great,great,great grandparents. Very, very little of what was produced several hundred years ago was intended to be disposable, but almost everything today is.