Some of you might enjoy this
https://www.washingtonpost.com/home/...y-doesnt-last/
[OP]
Contributor
Some of you might enjoy this
https://www.washingtonpost.com/home/...y-doesnt-last/
Contributor
Worth reading- thanks.
"micro-aesthetic of the moment"
It's not just furniture. Whole houses regularly get rebuilt and remodeled on the whim of the (usually) new owner, including tile bathrooms & whole kitchens just to get a different look from the one that is ten years old. Too much money sloshing around.
Member
I agree, I sometimes see entire sets of kitchen cabinets on craigslist that are being given away for free, even though they are in good condition, simply because the new owners want a different look.Originally Posted by Cameron Wood
Last edited by Mike Mason; 09-06-2023 at 9:32 AM.
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That's how I got my kitchen cabinets (not free, but inexpensive). It wasn't quite as bad- the house was fixed up for sale, and the buyers realized that a wall blocked the million dollar view from the kitchen, which led to major work including taking out the cabinets that weren't even fully installed yet. That house was steel framed, not sheet metal, but structural steel- you don't see that too often. I was able to use almost every piece, and had to order maybe two additional cabinets.
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There is another aspect to consider as well as cheaper materials: how design has evolved, and why ...
https://toolsforworkingwood.com/stor...le/Silhouettes
https://toolsforworkingwood.com/stor...;s%20Personal)
Regards from Perth
Derek
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Interesting thoughts in the articles you shared Derek.
I do think that industry sets (both through advertising and social media) what consumers "want" based on what is profitable to manufacture. Similar to the fashion industry.
And just like social media's need to constantly generate the next trend, consumers have been trained to follow the latest. The home décor version of fast fashion.
I have always thought that part of the enduring influence of mid century modern furniture is how easy cheap, high margin copies are to manufacture.
So in my view, its less about what consumers want and more about what manufacturers want to sell. It's more profitable to sell a $500 dining table at 50% margin every 2 years than it is to sell a $5,000 table at 20% margin every 10 years. Much better for cash flow also.
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I think that's another way of saying the free market decides what products sell.
The market for $5000 tables is small and shrinking. Not everyone has the ability to make such a choice. My kids dont want any of our furniture, they already have their own. I see the good stuff at estate sales for pennies on the dollar.
< insert spurious quote here >
Member
Very interesting read, thanks for the links. I personally much prefer the minimalistic, less cluttered look, but my wife doesn't. I do find myself "less than relaxed" when there is too much stuff around.
Last edited by Mike Mason; 09-06-2023 at 5:48 PM.
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I'm glad the article talked about the waste implications of the disposable furniture trend. Human beings collectively create a staggering amount of waste that ends up in landfills, oceans or worse yet, burned up.
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There are many factors beyond trends. When I was a young parent, I was well aware most furniture I bought at a local store was garbage. But I simply couldn't afford actual hardwood furniture. I lived in Virginia at the time and antique stores scarfed up anything old and high quality so they could sell it with an extreme markup. That's one of the reasons I wanted to get into woodworking. I like working with my hands and I wanted to build furniture. But the challenges of being a parent simply didn't allow for the space, tools and time. I did manage to build some nice bookcases and a bed for my daughter, but not the whole house of furniture I dreamed about. (Now that I'm an empty-nester, I hoping to at least somewhat achieve that dream.)
People like to argue the point, but it's a sad fact that things are much more expensive now than they were in the 1950s. No more cheap used cars. No more lower-cost housing in lower-cost parts of town. No more cheap gasoline. And college? Good golly, how does anyone save for their kids' college these days? Furniture? People just need something cheap to sit on.
Almost always, people buy crappy furniture because that's all they can afford. As a rare exception, I do know a couple who can afford to buy good furniture, but they simply didn't know any better. They both came from very humble backgrounds in families that had mostly used furniture. They furnished their home with stuff from the local American Furniture Warehouse. After a few years my friend shared, "All that stuff fell apart". Lesson learned. She can now buy higher quality furniture, but most people can't.
Last edited by Pat Germain; 09-06-2023 at 11:11 AM.
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I appreciated the linked articles, especially because they went beyond the immediate criticism of cheap crap from evil manufacturers.
As mentioned in the articles, there can be very deliberate design choices for simple and minimalistic looks. Simple doesn't have to mean cheap and disposable. As a hobbyist, I enjoy designing furniture that has clean and very basic forms. I also prefer solid lumber and the look of natural wood, so it's typically some type of "brown furniture". But to my aesthetics, simple shapes just look more appealing than some of the ornate historic furniture. Just subjective taste.
There are also very practical reasons why the Ikea type is so popular. I read a comment that stuck with me: Many more people live in crowded cities now. Especially young people, who don't have much income (yet?), smaller apartments for rent, and lack of transportation options for big, heavy furniture. (And I'm not even sure the heirloom-piece is more cost-effective in the long-run, compared to multiple iterations of cheap, disposable furniture.) And with the prospect of lugging said piece through stairways / small elevators, Ikea-type flat boxes sound like a godsend if I put myself in that situation.
And, obviously, the low cost of budget furniture is insane to compete with. I enjoy making my own pieces as a hobby, the pride of seeing it and because I get exactly what I dreamt up. (However flawed...) But I've also done this long enough to give up any notions of cost-effectiveness. It's a hobby for me, but in most cases I can't even source comparable materials at a lower rate than budget furniture costs as a finished piece (forget about any labor or margins). I built out closets for my kids and realized that using and modifying Ikea components was cheaper than building components from scratch. Not fancy plywood, but white veneer-particle board from box stores. When I added up the material / hardware I would need, it was pretty sobering to compare (not that I was excited to work with particle-board to begin with).
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That is a good point. My son lives in Denver proper. Someone offered him a very nice couch and dropped it off in front of my son's apartment. Turned out there was just no way that couch would fit through the door to my son's tiny, basement apartment. He contacted all his friends who advised the couch was also too big for their apartments or they had no way to transport it. The next day it rained. The couch was destroyed and eventually hauled to the dump. It no surprise my son has multiple IKEA pieces.
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I didn't read the links, but over decades of selling houses, I saw a steady decline in people appreciating quality. One reason I quit was that the color of rooms became more important than how all the doors operated. Every decade saw a decrease in knowledge by homebuyers, and that was all high income class.
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one of the germans I knew had very nice furniture. He built it all plus floors windows mouldings and all. His wife is still in the home. she told me they used cardboard boxes for furniture till their mortgage was paid off. He had his machines and shop attached to his home. When he retired he was in the shop every day building furniture for family till he passed.
Contributor
Great articles, very interesting reads and I appreciate Edward and Derek sharing.
The people that frequent this forum are going to be biased, myself included. I'd guess most of us on this thread are more than capable of building their own heirloom furniture pieces using quality woods, techniques AND TOOLS. Furthermore, I'd guess most of you could actually tell the difference between cheap and quality, even if you didn't like the style.
I grew up with hard working parents but besides shelter, food and the basics, we didn't have a lot of money. My dad and I fixed everything, we bought used, built our own, etc. I went to school, worked hard and I'm at the point where money isn't an issue. That said, I've never lost sight or perspective about where I came from. Tools are expensive, damn expensive. I have more tools in my shop than my parents made in a year combined, never mind what it cost to actually build my shop or purchase the land it sits on. Quality wood is expensive. In brass, rough walnut and hard maple, I dropped 1100 to build a modern turntable cabinet. At $1100 that's already a ton, count my labor, which is the most expensive part, and it's unaffordable to most.
I paid someone to build me a 9'x40" walnut table and custom metal legs. Let's just say it was "over" $5,000 at the end of the day. Why? Because they have incredible skill, do amazing work and I can appreciate and afford what it takes, in labor, to get there. Not everyone is going to be of the same mindset or have the same opportunity.
I won't turn my nose at an Ikea piece, or Ikea hack to make something look like more than it is, but I am glad the first article hit on the environmental cost. It's the one thing that keeps me up at night and the one thing that frustrates me and I let my kids know it, so the next generation is aware of it. This "disposable" mindset of throw away instead of repair/renew/recycle or built without considerations to methods/plastics/chemicals that go into the land instead of your living room need constraints. I hope we can, in the near future, find a middle ground somewhere.
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