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I'm buying a house. I'm excited. I talked to my wife and we're agreed on what to use the different rooms for. Shopping list: Master bedroom - Drawers - Bed frame Craft room - No idea this poo poo is my wife's Home office - Enough room for like 4-6 people to set up computers if needed Guest Bedroom - Queen bed Dining Room - Table, chairs Den/Living room - Bigass couch thing, TV stand, daybed I consider myself to be a bit of an Ikea expert when it comes to storage items, but some of the options for desks and poo poo is just too expensive if I want wall to wall galant/bekant desks. So I'm looking for alternate solutions. Problem is I know just about fuckall about dining room tables, chairs, couches, desks, etc.. The expensive stuff. What are some cheaper but still high quality options? What kind of stuff should I consider about furniture when I'm not just buying shelving units?
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May 25, 2015 21:04
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| # ? May 3, 2024 10:40 |
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The cheaper options would be buying used furniture off of Craigslist or thrift stores.
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May 25, 2015 21:18
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If you're thinking Ikea is too expensive, high quality is not an option. There's not much cheaper than Ikea and it's all garbage.
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May 25, 2015 21:45
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signalnoise posted:What are some cheaper but still high quality options? If you do the above: Don't get caught up in bidding bullshit.
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May 25, 2015 22:14
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Look for trading/barter groups on facebook in your area. I got a microfiber couch, display table, lamps and a nice credenza for either nothing or trading items I no longer wanted.
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May 25, 2015 23:37
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signalnoise posted:
You want high quality but cheap? The only option is to buy used, at estate sales or on craigslist. Often people are just looking to get rid of things and aren't trying to get the best price. Or, forget about high quality and go to Walmart.
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May 26, 2015 08:00
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Craigslist it is!
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May 26, 2015 12:03
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try searching for freecyle + your town. Sometimes you can get some decent stuff for free from people who are moving or changing furniture.
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May 26, 2015 17:47
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Same as buying anything, really. Talk to your wife and look at stuff online and in ads--what's your price range? What style appeals most to you? Are you okay with mixing and matching colors and patterns ("Early Marriageacana"), or do you want uniform sets? Are either of you into restoring banged up pieces from garage sales? There are tons of borderline-sketchy furniture stores with great prices if you're willing to hunt around. Those places can be haggled down a fair deal if you know the competition's offerings, and moreso if you're willing to pay a lump sum and not financing. I got a bed frame from Costco pretty cheaply and mounted it to a $200 padded headboard from American Mattress. The fancy all-in-ones from Ashley Furniture are ridiculously expensive, and footboards take up precious room space and are a magnet for toes. Non-solid headboards are pretty, but lack functionality if you want to lean against them and read.
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May 27, 2015 07:31
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How can you tell if furniture actually is high quality? I've seen stuff that seemed solidly built with a huge price tag from a high end store -- but started to go after a year; and I've had some cheap stuff from Costco last almost a decade and was still as comfortable as it was new.
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May 27, 2015 08:59
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Chuu posted:How can you tell if furniture actually is high quality? I've seen stuff that seemed solidly built with a huge price tag from a high end store -- but started to go after a year; and I've had some cheap stuff from Costco last almost a decade and was still as comfortable as it was new. This. Just buy Ikea, for now, because high-quality furniture is expensive as poo poo these days and has zero guarantee it will last any longer than Ikea. Especially don't buy expensive furniture because you want it to become an heirloom you pass on to your kids/grandkids. Times have changed, and no one wants your old-rear end furniture anymore. A woman getting a "hope chest" would probably punch you in the taint these days. When you're settled and have more money, you can slowly start to piece together a set of better quality furniture. Your tastes will likely have changed and matured a bit as well, so there's no point in blowing a wad on high-quality stuff now that you may hate in five years.
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May 27, 2015 11:31
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Bloody Hedgehog posted:Especially don't buy expensive furniture because you want it to become an heirloom you pass on to your kids/grandkids. Times have changed, and no one wants your old-rear end furniture anymore. A woman getting a "hope chest" would probably punch you in the taint these days. My parents called me one day when I was newly married to tell me that their friends had offered us a matching oak dining room/living room set. They were replacing it with something more modern, and it was free to me if I picked it up. I picked it up, and it was hideous. An affront to all tastes. It was a 70's dining room set in a Southwest/Santa Fe style with rounded edges, concho design inlay, and all done in pink and beige. I sold it all to some dude on craigslist for $100 and put that towards a table that belonged in this century. The idea that all Ikea stuff is crappy, laminated cardboard is simply not true. The $80 dining set with 4 chairs probably is. The more expensive stuff there is of similar quality to regular furniture store stuff at about half the price (and you don't have to participate in the furniture store haggling ritual). If you get into the really trendy modern stuff, it's like 10% of the cost of something similar from design within reach. Example: Ikea has a solid unfinished beech crib for under $100. I defy you to find an all-wood crib at that price. We bought some solid pine unfinished kids bunkbeds at Ikea for $150. You can paint/stain/wax or do whatever to either of those. Costco has great furniture too. Selection is limited, and their return policy is famously good. Why do you need 4-6 people set up on computers? Are you running a WoW gold farm, or is this an occasional LAN party thing? If it's the latter, pick up a folding banquet table or two. Those are also really handy in a craft room to pull out if needed (if the wife sews, you cannot have too much table space. For the embroidery machine, serger, the one sewing machine that does really great running stitches, the one that does denim and upholstery, a cutting mat....)
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May 27, 2015 18:40
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canyoneer posted:Why do you need 4-6 people set up on computers? Are you running a WoW gold farm, or is this an occasional LAN party thing? Occasional lan party thing. I dunno I'm coming around to just furnishing it all with Ikea but with some non-Ikea accents that make it not look like an Ikea showroom. I don't get your obsession with pine though. Pine is soft as hell in my experience and splits.
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May 27, 2015 20:02
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Go with IKEA. Its the cheapest way to get a coherent look to your place and you don't have to worry about bed bugs or mysterious stains like you would with used furniture. Another option to IKEA is finding a place that sells old showhome furniture. I'd pay attention to the quality as YMMV, my parents used to do that all the time and I've seen stuff fall apart after 6 months while other stuff lasted quite a while.
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May 27, 2015 20:37
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Chuu posted:How can you tell if furniture actually is high quality? I've seen stuff that seemed solidly built with a huge price tag from a high end store -- but started to go after a year; and I've had some cheap stuff from Costco last almost a decade and was still as comfortable as it was new. Pay attention to the quality of the material and the quality of the jointing, overall structural solidness and level of craftsmanship. A lot of the fancy-looking furniture you see at high-end stores (replica or contemporary) is secretly not that well-made and might not even be real wood (or it's lovely wood/ply with veneer on it). At least with Ikea, they tell you when it's made out of particleboard and price it accordingly. So basically, look for solid wood construction (if you're buying wood furniture), good jointing (i.e. dovetail jointing of the drawers), and good quality wood throughout (oak, maple, cherry, and walnut are good bets - pine is much softer and shows scratches and dents more easily, in my experience). Upholstered stuff like couches is kind of a mixed bag because you can't see how it's built, but if it has a good frame and a form factor you like, you can always just reupholster when it starts looking worn out. I nabbed my great grandfather's wing back chairs from my grandma's house - no one else wanted them because they were "gross", even though they were absolutely exquisite. Only gross thing about them was the worn out, faded old lady upholstery that smelled like cigarettes. A new upholstery job fixed them right up. Your loss, aunts. So yeah, at the end of the day, if you want nice furniture, go vintage/antique (it's not all froufrou Victorian - lots of early-mid 20th century furniture styles are surprisingly modern-looking). Otherwise, Ikea is actually pretty great for the price. Bloody Hedgehog posted:Especially don't buy expensive furniture because you want it to become an heirloom you pass on to your kids/grandkids. Times have changed, and no one wants your old-rear end furniture anymore. A woman getting a "hope chest" would probably punch you in the taint these days. Excuse me.  My parents' old-rear end furniture is awesome and I can't wait to inherit it. Some of it's been in the family for a super long time, too (I guess I'm lucky that my great/great great grandparents had good taste).However, I agree that it's a terrible idea to buy furniture for the express purpose of having it be an heirloom. Just buy good furniture for you/your house and if your kids like it, free furniture for them. Having poo poo you don't like foisted off on you because it's "heirloom" is the worst. And hope chests can gently caress right off.
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May 27, 2015 21:49
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If you go to a big furniture store bring cash and offer them about %40 of the sticker price. *this does not apply to IKEA
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May 28, 2015 02:46
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Thanks for the reply AuthenticYou. I'm about an 1.5 hours away from a lot of Amish marketplaces in Indiana. People have told me that it's worth a roadtrip to get really good quality stuff at a fair price -- but I don't know anyone who has actually done it. Anyone know the truth of this?
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May 28, 2015 03:40
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For a home office for 4-5 people, one option is to buy shelving/cabinets from Ikea and just folding tables from Walmart for the actual desks. It isn't fancy by any means, but it's cheap, easy, and simple to replace when your budget allows for it. I work from home and my "desk" is a 6 foot folding table from walmart with some filing cabinets - I never have clients here so how it looks is irrelevant to me.
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May 28, 2015 03:53
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Chuu posted:Thanks for the reply AuthenticYou. Amish stuff is amazing quality, but they're not dumb. They're stuff is some of the most expensive furniture you can buy.
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May 28, 2015 03:54
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Bloody Hedgehog posted:Amish stuff is amazing quality, but they're not dumb. They're stuff is some of the most expensive furniture you can buy. Was doing a little more research based on this response. The prices don't seem that unreasonable to me -- a solid wood task desk for $600 after reseller's markup is about what I would expect from someone like Herman Millar for a similar desk. The next time I'm driving through I'll have to check it out and see what the prices are like without the reseller's markup.
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May 28, 2015 07:40
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I have an aversion to IKEA - mostly because, as I've recently found out, it seems almost impossible to sell anything but IKEA to other students/postdocs when you move on because it's the "default" cheap/temporary furniture option in everyone's minds. Where I am though, IKEA was barely less, or occasionally more, than the higher quality alternatives. For example, my sofa I got for my apartment is a very nice and comfortable modular sofa, and I got it for just around 1000 CHF including delivery. There is a range of course, but just picking an example at ikea, a sofa of similar size was roughly 800, but was made of that scratchy foam-filled nylon stuff on metal pegs that looked like it'd scratch up my floor and just wasn't comfortable, and you had to pay for delivery. Same deal for my bed - the equivalent at ikea was roughly the same price when you add in delivery costs, but not made of real wood and looked a bit flimsy. I think if it's for a house rather than an apartment it's worth the investment to get something more permanent. I think you could avoid the "more expensive but falls apart just as fast as ikea" traps through just a little research. I'd just set a budget for each item you need and find the best one available for that price - maybe it'll end up being something on craigslist, maybe ikea, maybe some amish made thing, who knows, I guess it'll depend on how much you have/want to spend.
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May 28, 2015 09:27
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My wife and I are looking for new living room furniture, and we're really torn on the whole quality thing. While most of our house is vintage wood stuff, our living room is pretty mix and match from our younger days. We've checked out Ethan Allen and all those types of stores, but it just seems like too much money for what they're offering. Ikea would be fine but we really want quality. Most of all, we don't want to go finding new chairs and a sofa on Craigslist etc. right now. So, is all the Ikea stuff really poo poo? Is there anywhere that has high durability for relatively low cost? Why do furniture stores suck so bad?
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Jul 29, 2015 04:47
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I like room and board but it's $$$$$. All solid materials and made in the USA.
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Jul 29, 2015 08:15
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If budget is an issue, get of Craigslist and do up yourself with a little varnish etc. But don't buy cheap. It's not worth it in the long run.
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Jul 29, 2015 08:29
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I just decorated an entire house (I moved from divorce with almost no furniture) with 90% IKEA furniture and lighting, and I couldn't be happier. They have almost everything you need in a home, and it's so well put together and thought through. Stuff matches both aesthetically and functionally. You get what you pay for, and still the prices are extremely low compared to fancy designer furniture stores. I also bought towels, curtains, kitchen utensils, carpets, glassware, you name it. Just steer clear of certain things, such as their cheap kitchen knives for example, and I personally also wouldn't buy their white goods.
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Jul 29, 2015 11:00
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A lot of Ikea stuff is actually pretty good. Their sitting furniture isn't comfortable in my experience though, nor is it really all that cheap. Like a recliner/couch from a regular furniture store is way more comfortable than the stuff they have for the same price.
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Jul 29, 2015 11:53
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Another vote for "Ikea is great if you're poor". I had a gorgeous and expensive partial white wicker furniture set, but couldn't find a decent matching white computer table for the life of me. Either they were Walmart-tier garbage (made the mistake of buying a Sauder Home piece at first that literally fell apart days after I bought it) or expensive stuff. IKEA had a corner table for 70 bucks. The surprising part is that for its price range, its quality stuff. The particle board is surprisingly solid, without the slightest wobble no matter how much I bang into/abuse it, and despite being white it hasn't picked up a single stain from drinks spilled on it. Really impressed. Also seconding old estate auctions. Me and my friend raided a house owned by someone who used to work at NASA and came away with two gorgeous antique headboards worth at least $2k. Mine isn't white to match the rest of my bedroom, but for $100 bucks I'm not complaining. The secret is to go to auctions or yard sales in middle to upper-class communities filled with old people. Seniors take great care of their stuff. Often they pass on, their kids don't want it, and they auction off their often valuable and well-kept belongings for a fraction of their actual worth.
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Jul 29, 2015 18:57
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I just make things.
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Jul 29, 2015 21:39
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