Does Building Your Own Furniture Save Money?

[glenn bradley]

Great example of an older thread that still has value and can stimulate new conversation. As to saving money on making your own, this will vary with skill level, the value you place on the enjoyment of making things and other factors.

The general consensus seems to be that you should do a kitchen remodel once.... and then pay a professional to do it the second time

Amen to that. I know what I do poorly and I know what I can get by doing. Kitchen cabinetry is an art form when done by those who do it well. I am not one of those people. The incredible mark-up on kitchens makes this very tempting but, my few forays into plywood cabinetry have taught me where my weaknesses reside.

I build things with little details, exaggerated joinery, hand made pulls and weird bits of detail for interest or to satisfy my own whims. None of those skills translate well to sheet-good cabinetry for me. I may just be a klutz.

I have a friend who does this sort of work. He is nothing short of an artist. If a client wants a dresser or a buffet, he send them to me. If someone wants their bathroom or giant walk-in closet pimped out, I send them to him.

[Jim Dwight]

I think the key is to have either an awful lot of skill immediately or to have patience enough to start with simple things and move up to more complicated. I built furniture of construction lumber and shelving boards when we were first married. Joints were glues and screws - plugged when they showed. We used some of that furniture several decades. My first dresser required drawers with tapered sides because I built the shell crooked. But we still used it. The next one was a lot better. Gradually I have added skills and tools. After about 4 decades building furniture and cabinets I am still a lot less skilled than a lot of you but my cabinets are pretty consistently straight and my drawers are usually half blind dovetails. I do mortise and tenon pretty well too. I have a 1 car garage pretty full of tools - but still less than probably most of you. But I have what I need to do what I do.

I've also repaired purchased furniture many times and am not at all impressed. Even some fairly expensive pieces were not well made.

If you are patient enough and don't count on everything going right the first time as you start, then I think you can make your own furniture. But if you think you can go out and spend several thousand dollars on tools and they will make you instantly capable of making any furniture you or your wife like, I think you will probably be disappointed. Good workers can make great furniture with crude tools. Poor workers can destroy good wood with expensive tools. In other words, don't concentrate on tools, concentrate on what needs done and how you can get it done. If you don't have the money for the expensive tools, don't quit, find a way to do it with less expensive tools. That sort of thinking will make it possible to save money doing it yourself.

[Jon Endres]

Some threads, like this one, still have value when dug up from years past.

I have been a hobbyist woodworker since age 12, in junior high school. Probably even before that, I caught the bug. Because I am a hobbyist and not a professional, I consider my time to have no monetary value. It's a hobby no different than working on cars, fishing, playing golf, etc. If it's enjoyable than there's no point in assigning a dollar value to it. For that reason I built my own house, my own trim and flooring, and built all my own kitchen and bathroom cabinets. I looked at the cabinets as a straight-up material cost, which was of course a huge savings over buying custom plywood and cherry cabinets. I consider a kitchen just another workshop, with different materials. So behind the nice cherry faces, they're all just plywood, utility drawer slides, and held together with glue and pocket screws.

I also plan on building a lot more finer furniture pieces once I have my new shop built. Again it's not about the money because it would be a lot cheaper to just buy a houseful of custom furniture than to build a shop and buy lumber and spend years of my life building things. However, then I'd have to find something else to fill up my time and I don't want to do that. I love my hobby and intend to continue it until I'm not able to do so anymore.

[Rod Sheridan]

It depends.

About 15 years ago I built a pair of Morris chairs and foot-stools.

It cost $2,000 in materials for $7,000 dollars in furniture, so yes I saved money.

It's been the same on everything I've built, substantially less than half price to build traditional Arts and Crafts furniture than to buy. I only own one piece of furniture that I haven't built (aside from 3 IKEA bookcases), and it's a Stickley so it wasn't exactly inexpensive.

Of course it helps that Diann does the upholstery and stained glass for the furniture.

If you're trying to build low end furniture in the $600 dollar range I doubt if it's worth it aside from the personal satisfaction aspect, which can be the over-riding parameter.

Regards, Rod.

[Pat Barry]

The real answer is no, unless you are talking some sort of log / rustic / cheap and dirty something or other. In all other cases it will be more expensive to build a one-off piece. Either you don't care that you are not getting paid to make your own and /or you aren't counting the 'real' cost of tools and equipment, etc. Even in the example given above, I doubt that you could sell those Morris chairs (as nice as they might be) for the retail cost of the equivalent item purchased from Stickley.

[Rod Sheridan]

The real answer is no, unless you are talking some sort of log / rustic / cheap and dirty something or other. In all other cases it will be more expensive to build a one-off piece. Either you don't care that you are not getting paid to make your own and /or you aren't counting the 'real' cost of tools and equipment, etc. Even in the example given above, I doubt that you could sell those Morris chairs (as nice as they might be) for the retail cost of the equivalent item purchased from Stickley.

Pat, I doubt I could sell them for the retail cost of a Stickley, however they saved me from purchasing four pieces from Stickley, so yes the cost savings was there.

I don't need to account for the tool cost on four items, I have a household of furniture I've made over the years............Regards, Rod.

[Glenn de Souza]

I'd say the answer is both yes and no, depending on a few big factors. The biggest in my opinion is a question of how much enjoyment and satisfaction do you get out of woodworking. If you're doing it as a hobbyist, it's one thing to say your time has no value, but I tend to think time is a non-renewable resource and there's an opportunity cost to how you spend it. If you really enjoy woodworking and could think of few other things you'd rather be doing, then the opportunity cost is low, but if the woodworking becomes a chore, then invariably there are a lot of things you'd rather be spending the time doing, and therein lies the cost.

However, if you do indeed get a lot of enjoyment and fulfillment out of the craft, then it's hard to put a value on the sense of satisfaction you get (over and over) from something you've built, if you're wired that way.

On a less esoteric note, your proficiency and experience are a factor in the direct cost too. For all but the most experienced it's easy to make a second left hand side or a Z shaped dovetailed drawer or any other mistake in the blink of an eye and guess what, your material cost (and time) just went up.

It's a good question and topic

[paul cottingham]

I think you save money over the long term if you think like me.
for example:

I build almost everything out of white oak, although I am beginning to use more maple an cherry. So I use strong, solid wood that will last forever. I also use good, sound joinery, mortise and tenon, (usually pegged) dovetails, and I look forward to trying some staked furniture in my next project. Of late, I have been fooling around with chair joints that rely on moisture content, and the nature cross-grain joinery to hold furniture together when glue fails as well. My point is, I build stuff to last.

I figure if I was working at my last job (my business) and I wanted to buy a 850 dollar piece of furniture I had to work 10 hours to buy it. And likely I would be buying another one in 10 years, and I think that's being generous.
I would much rather have spent $600 on wood, and built a piece of furniture that is actually well made, and fits my strangely (and generously!) proportioned body and that my daughter could hand down to her kids. Even if I had to buy a specialty tool for it, I'm still ahead of the game. I hate the fact that my $850 is watered down so much that some poor schlep in the end was probably paid minimum wage to make a substandard piece of junk, when I could have spent that cash on some wood and maybe a new tool made by a boutique Canadian (or American) tool maker.

before folks can get all huffy, I think Schwarz takes himself far too seriously as well, and I was thinking along these lines a long time before I had ever heard of him or Aesthetic Anarchism, although I suspect that is pretty close to what I am.

Long and short of it. It's ultimately cheaper to make. Especially if you use fairly generic forms that don't go out of style, and are well made. You will only have to make one.

[Jon Endres]

Here's another thought - whether or not it saves you money - what are you ultimately trying to accomplish? My wife likes what I call American Country furniture - more or less rustic pine with milk paint, punched tin, wrought iron hardware etc. Not sure if it has a formal "style". I can bang out crap like that in a weekend for half the price of buying the same thing from one of the local shops, and it's not held together with staples and drywall screws. Rustic does not have to mean poorly constructed. So I have an advantage there in being able to build the style she likes and still build quality into it.

I, on the other hand, an a big fan of Shaker and Colonial styles. To buy a large piece, such as a hutch, sideboard or dining table from a quality maker (because you will not find it in the average furniture store) will run thousands of dollars. Cherry and occasionally maple are typical of the Shaker style. But what if I want a chimney cupboard made out of ash? Maybe with walnut panels? Something different yet with the right lines and style? Good luck unless you are willing to double your costs and actually find a maker who can produce it. What's it cost for a guy like Christian Becksvoort to build a 6' wide china hutch out of solid cherry anyway? Ten grand? While I am a genuine admirer of his work, there is no way I can afford to buy any of it. So the other advantage is being able to make furniture (or cabinets) that are exactly what you want. For example, knowing the price of a certain piece was $800, but instead you spend $300 on lumber and $500 on a new tool for your shop, and in the end you still get the same piece of furniture (and the satisfaction of building it yourself), I call that a win.

[Andrew Gibson]

For me it comes down to quality and design. I can buy furniture for less than I can make it. But if I wanted to buy the furniture I make, I would not be able to afford it.
Also I have no idea where I would find the stuff I make for sale.
Here is a quick pic of my latest project, A live edge slab coffee table for my living room. The slab is locally salvaged Red Eucalyptus and I am involved with the company that cut it so I was able to get it for a good price.
the base is walnut with eucalyptus wedges. I am sure If it were a commissioned piece I would not make it for less than a few thousand dollars.

One day I will live in a house with only furniture of my own making.
coffeetable2.JPGcoffeetable1.JPG

[Keith Outten]

Andrew,

That's a beautiful table. Thanks for sharing the pics.