Furnishing new apartment

This is true, I just find it amusing that the assumption from most people is that the famous one 'looks like' the Ikea.

Hans Wegner


Ikea



mafoofan said:

Just looked up the Ektorp. I hate it.

More importantly, the aesthetic is completely outside what the OP is aiming for. The Karlstad or Soderhamn look like they'd fit the bill better. However, Ikea sofas tend to look pretty awful in person, and the prices really aren't that great. We had one when I was in law school. Ugliest and most uncomfortable couch ever.

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mafoofan said:

Just looked up the Ektorp. I hate it.

More importantly, the aesthetic is completely outside what the OP is aiming for. The Karlstad or Soderhamn look like they'd fit the bill better. However, Ikea sofas tend to look pretty awful in person, and the prices really aren't that great. We had one when I was in law school. Ugliest and most uncomfortable couch ever.

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The Karlstad is a good couch and looks great so long as you make the $20 upgrade to the metal legs (those square wood pegs are so fricking ugly). Gotta pick a good upholstery option too...the default white that makes up the lowest price point is no good, but they used to have a great mid-gray fabric.

Ikea furniture is totally crap. Without saying too much I´d never buy Ikea after what I experienced.

I agree that most of ikea is crap, but they do have a couple things that aren't made with particle board. If you are going to buy cheap furniture until you can afford better I would buy it all on craigslist.

I think you guys miss the point. Ikea stuff is "crap" only insofar as you ignore the pricing. It's not supposed to be quality furniture.

Wrong. The point is that ikea has two types of buyer. First are those who would like to buy proper furniture with quality and soul but cannot afford it so they buy a cheap ikea knock off. Secondly are those that can afford good furniture but couldn't be bothered so they kit out a property with ikea rubbish. Landlords of furnished apartments for example. Ikea furniture has a very poor resale value and the quality is crap. I had an insurance case where ikea claimed their shipping company had leaky containers. Turned out that the wet furniture came from non aged/ ie wet wood, that had been used in the manufacture. Ikea were too stingy to pay for rice sacks in the container which would have dryed out the air. The didn't and it effectively rained in the container, rain caused from expelled moisture from the flat packs themselves.



mafoofan said:

$100k, without anything saved up, in a city like San Francisco, is not nearly as much money as you might think. One bedrooms in the Bay Area look to be around $3,000/month. Then, he's got to pay for a car and a parking space, so there goes another $500-1,000/month. His after tax salary is going to be about $65k, which means his monthly take-home income is going to be around $5,500. So, after paying for his home and transportation, he's only going to have $1,500-2,000 a month to spend on food, utilities, healthcare/insurance, clothing, entertainment (i.e. dating, since he's single), savings, etc.

A single Barcelona chair, without the ottoman, in a basic leather, is $5,000. So, outfitting a whole living room with similar quality pieces is clearly an impossibility.

My advice is to buy one or two nice pieces, and get the rest from Ikea and the like. Start with a Barcelona chair and ottoman, if you like. Every year, you can replace some of the disposable stuff with real, high quality items. Better this way than buying a bunch of middle-of-the-road stuff from Room & Board and BluDot that is too expensive to throw out, yet not nice enough to want to keep forever.

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the foo has it exactly right. ikea furniture is cleanly designed, fairly well made and priced to be disposable. take your time acquiring good pieces until you figure out what your taste is (basing it on american psycho tells me it may evolve at some point). the folks who point you to all-collectible right from the start are the same who say build your wardrobe with all bespoke. the advice is aesthetically ideal, but not terribly realistic. :foo:



twistoffat said:

Wrong. The point is that ikea has two types of buyer. First are those who would like to buy proper furniture with quality and soul but cannot afford it so they buy a cheap ikea knock off. Secondly are those that can afford good furniture but couldn't be bothered so they kit out a property with ikea rubbish. Landlords of furnished apartments for example. Ikea furniture has a very poor resale value and the quality is crap. I had an insurance case where ikea claimed their shipping company had leaky containers. Turned out that the wet furniture came from non aged/ ie wet wood, that had been used in the manufacture. Ikea were too stingy to pay for rice sacks in the container which would have dryed out the air. The didn't and it effectively rained in the container, rain caused from expelled moisture from the flat packs themselves.

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What part of this impeaches my assertion? Neither of the two sorts of buyer you identify expect "quality" from Ikea. It's supposed to be budget-friendly, disposable furniture, and that's how both buyers you describe treat it.

Complaining about Ikea quality like bitching about the meat quality at McDonald's. I love Big Macs, but not because the beef is any good.

ah-hem. maybe a more appropriate comparison would be buying shirts at lands end while saving for a few nice jackets. foodguy likes that better.



SkinnyGoomba said:

This is true, I just find it amusing that the assumption from most people is that the famous one 'looks like' the Ikea.

Hans Wegner

Ikea

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these don't look much alike to me beyond thin cushions and higher back compared to the sides.



foodguy said:

ah-hem. maybe a more appropriate comparison would be buying shirts at lands end while saving for a few nice jackets. foodguy likes that better.

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I disagree. the difference between a cheap shirt and a 'good' shirt is what, $75? if you're buying smart. the difference between ikea furniture and nice stuff can be $3,000 - $10,000. it's a much bigger jump.

i'm happy with the ikea stuff i own.



Teger said:

I disagree. the difference between a cheap shirt and a 'good' shirt is what, $75? if you're buying smart. the difference between ikea furniture and nice stuff can be $3,000 - $10,000. it's a much bigger jump.

i'm happy with the ikea stuff i own.

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if you read carefully, you'll see that's exactly what i was saying. and, in fact, my home office is still mainly ikea (desk and one bookcase, the rest built in) and some of the cabinets in my kitchen are ikea -- truly one of the great deals around. the rest i've gotten rid of and replaced with nicer things, but i'm old and have had time and money to do that.

Anyways...

Apartment Therapy is a pretty good site for designing on a budget: http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/

Craigslist in the bay area should produce some decent results. Consignment stores are another option.

Just be patient. The notion you need to furnish it all at once, or even a full room at a time, is silly. Start with the most important things, namely bed first, and expand accordingly.

every once in a while, something nice will come up on apartment therapy. The rest of the time it's just about stupid trinkets, because a blank space apparently means something must fill it.

Ikea furniture is great for the cost. It compares favorably to pretty much anything in the same price range (most of which has much much worse design...ikea at least spends a lot of time thinking about design).

There are always a few items at ikea that are absolute ****--the cheapest version of anything is going to suck. The cheapest coffee table is crap (most of it is not even MDF, its a torsion box with cardboard and laminate). The cheapest dining chair is going to get wobbly fast as the small metal fasteners start to dig their way through the soft wood.

But their mid and upper-level models are really a good deal. A lot of veneered MDF (not that a lot of far more expensive furniture isn't also just veneer on MDF), but the pieces are pretty solid and can be made more so if you use wood glue during assembly and/or periodically tighten any fasteners.

I have the much-loved Jerker desk (and side shelving/drawer/file unit) and it is still rock solid after ~10 years and 3-4 moves with complete disassembly and reassembly. They don't make it anymore but there's an internet shrine to its greatness, and facebook groups begging IKEA to bring it back. Its actually too big for me (was purchased back when I had a big CRT monitor so I needed several feet of depth) and I am looking for replacements...there tends to be enough demand for Jerker parts and accessories that I could probably sell it for 75%+ of its original value.

I also have a couch that I bought from somewhere else thinking "I don't want to buy some ikea junk". Turns out I would have been better off saving a couple hundred bucks and getting the Karlstad in one of the +$100/+$200 fabric options (plus buying new legs instead of those god-awful wooden blocks). My friend got one around the same time and it has aged way better and seen much heavier use than mine. Basically the only benefit I got was that my couch was delivered and in one piece...they had to bolt on some legs and drive it home themselves.