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Why Are Antiques So Cheap? Because Everyone Lives in the Kitchen
- Waterluvian 8y agoI inherited this beautiful oak dining set from the 1800s. It has immense sentimental value and I badly want to use it. But houses I can afford don't come with dining rooms that fit it. And it's not suitable as an everyday kitchen set. It came out of a 4000sqft home I grew up in built in 1989 for about 300k CAD. That house is worth about 4x now so despite being more financially successful than my parents, I don't come close to affording it. I'm left with the heartbreaking reality that there's no room for the dining room set in my future.
- eloff 8y agoI find myself in the same situation in Canada. Also more financially successful than my parents at this age, but unable to afford a home here in Vancouver. Either I'm going to be renting for a very long time, or I'll leave this country again. It's kind of sad that Canadians are getting priced out of their own country!
- Waterluvian 8y agoI've been asking myself, "what Ontario city is currently where Waterloo was 30 years ago?" I'd move there.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- martythemaniak 8y agoKW is still a place where things make sense - a variety of housing with reasonable income multiples.
- theluketaylor 8y agoIt's an interesting question, one I have been thinking about too. I'm not sure there is a place that combines a strong university town with easy access to (but separation from) Toronto and room for growth in quite the same way. Maybe St Catherines if they make Brock a huge priority? The former industrial sections are much like Kitchener was, just waiting for the right companies to need cheap space. Ottawa is always going to be a government town first even though it has it's own tech scene, anything in the GTA gets swallowed by Toronto, Barrie and Brantford don't have universities, Windsor is too far from Toronto, but they might be able to piggyback on Detroit's revival if they play their cards right, London is stagnant and has been for decades, Kingston is on the wrong side of Toronto to really take advantage of Pearson, Guelph has already benefitted from Waterloo's explosion and the north is too harsh for many people. I came to Waterloo for university about 15 years ago and never left. Despite real estate prices really jumping up, the investment in transit and transport through the region might mean south Kitchener and Cambridge are the next Waterloo.
- masklinn 8y agoIt's not specific to Canada, you'll get the exact same issue abroad: aside from a few exceptions (e.g. Japan) real estate prices in popular locations keeps climbing ever upwards, significantly faster than income does. I'm guessing real estate is cheaper in YT than it is in Vancouver.
- eloff 8y agoTrue, Vancouver features pretty highly internationally as a desirable city to live in. But there are lots of desirable cities abroad that aren't nearly as crazy expensive. There are no affordable and really desirable cities in Canada - Halifax is perhaps the closest, but that still falls pretty short of the mark (apologies to people from Halifax, but that's my opinion.)
- mrnobody_67 8y agoMontreal.
- Mikeb85 8y agoMontreal, Ottawa, Calgary and Edmonton. All pretty nice cities, all are decent sized, fairly affordable and have jobs.
- eloff 8y agoI don't think of Calgary as affordable. And the weather is bloody awful. I spent 13 years there.
- xvf22 8y agoThe lovely Vancouver model [0] isn't helping things I'm sure. Toronto isn't as bad but it seems to be getting steadily worse. [0] https://globalnews.ca/news/4149818/vancouver-cautionary-tale-money-laundering-drugs/ https://globalnews.ca/news/4149818/vancouver-cautionary-tale...
- sandworm101 8y agoSame here. I dropped out of the vancouver tech/law ratrace. Now im working for a government agency on the island. Slightly less pay but greater takehome.
- segmondy 8y agoCut it and make it smaller?
- Waterluvian 8y agoIt's a set of six chairs and a rounded table that slides apart to fit 14. Part of the sentiment is that my extended family would have Christmas dinner at it every year. Now that I have kids I wanted to continue my generation of that tradition. It's not so much about making the table smaller. It's that the table and the tradition doesn't exactly fit in the kinds of houses in my city these days.
- jarfil 8y agoAre you really "more financially successful" if you can't afford the same things, though? Unless you have different priorities, which is fine. Like I could afford some stuff, but "can't" cause that wouldn't let me afford other stuff my parents never had.
- masklinn 8y agoI'm guessing they can afford better in general, just not for real estate, because real estate is generally speaking completely fucked.
- Waterluvian 8y agoCorrect. Everything else is trivially cheap. Except houses. As I said, the house I grew up in quadrupled in value.
- ZhuanXia 8y agoToo bad it’s too cold in Canada to live in a van.
- jarfil 8y agoIs it, though? Nowadays we keep asking for higher standards, better infrastructures, better access to utilities, communications, commute, etc. Me parents could easily afford a house just after getting married... a house I'm weary of setting foot in, not even remotely built to code, with infrastructures cobbled together over the years. Maybe a 4x price increase is indeed excessive, but building a house like it was possible 50+ years ago, would be just illegal.
- Waterluvian 8y agoThat's mixing realities though. Building a house from 30 years ago is pretty much up to code today. It was a modern house in all the ways you'd expect. You are right if we go older. But we don't have to go far to prove the point.
- 8y ago
- ghaff 8y agoEven if you have the space, a lot of antique furniture just doesn't fit with modern lifestyles. Even if I had a big formal dining room, as in the house I grew up it, I'd use it once in a blue moon. The article also notes furniture like rolltop desks. My dad has a beautiful one that mostly serves as a display cabinet in his living room. I'm honestly not sure what I would do with it. I have my own shelving to display things and it would be pretty useless for any actual work I do. (As I kid I really loved sitting at that desk and doing kid-like scribbling at it.)
- masklinn 8y agoLarge dining tables are cool for tabletop gaming.
- ghaff 8y agoFair enough. If you have enough extra space to have a large formal dining room, you can find something to do with it even if you don't have a lot of big dinner parties. (At one point I wanted to have a billiard room but my (then separated from the kitchen) dining room just wasn't big enough. A big table is at least fairly multipurpose if you have the space. A lot of other furniture is a lot less so.
- SomeHacker44 8y agoUntil your wife gets tired of them. Now I have two beautiful well kept GeekChic tables for sale and have a fancy natural wood dining room table with two halves and glass between them. Very pretty but no gaming capability beyond a large mostly flat surface.
- itronitron 8y agoFurniture of the future >> 1) cabled for power and internet access, 2) holes between seat cushions so that food crumbs fall through, and 3) off the floor by 4 to 6 inches to allow for unimpeded roomba access
- noonespecial 8y ago
- itronitron 8y agoWould you still use it more than once a week if you had a room for it? The trend towards open kitchens has seriously reduced the need for a formal dining room (except when listing a house for sale.)
- analog31 8y agoI hate to ask, but could a creative woodworker cut it down to size? I suppose one could do some business on the side, of buying attractive but huge pieces and figuring out how to repurpose them, since the beautiful old wood doesn't exist any more.
- jp555 8y agoInteresting that the Canadian economy is also almost 4x bigger than it was in 1989.
- graeme 8y agoIt's not. We had a housing bubble that's still working itself out.
- jp555 8y agoCredit has been nearly free for a long time. Cheap money increases buyer leverage, which translates into higher prices. Plus large numbers of immigrants in big cities a big factor. Buying a home is generally #1 focus of new Canadians, They’re a big enough block of market participants to move prices. Lots of other factors of course. I imagine since R/E market is hyper local, country-wide stats won’t really give an accurate picture postal code to postal code.
- PopeDotNinja 8y agoIf you need to find it a good home, let me know. I have a good place for it in my... oh wait, I'm thinking of the 3000 ft^2 home I grew up in. My 250 ft^2 apartment doesn't have space, or a kitchen, and the rent is 200% what my parents paid on the 1982 mortgage for the 3000 ft^2 :P
- Waterluvian 8y agoI almost want to see it in your apartment for the comedic factor. :)
- PopeDotNinja 8y agoHere's positive thinking for you... I laugh every time I think about how comically small my apartment is compared to any place I've previously lived, then I sigh. After the sigh, I make myself laugh again because it is quite hilarious. Sigh... Ha!
- 2muchcoffeeman 8y agoNo kitchen? What?
- PopeDotNinja 8y agoUnless you count the small fridge w/ a microwave on top :) . It's all good though, because I live across the street from a pizza place.
- ModernMech 8y agoMy grandmother had this rug in the living room. No one could ever set foot on that rug, because she wanted to sell it one day for what she imagined would be a great sum of money. She never did sell it, but after she died, my father and his brothers imagined it would be worth as much as she had imagined it to be at auction. Long story short, it sold for about $100. 40 years of consternation for $100. The lesson I learned from all of this is that stuff is just stuff, and the less of it you have when you die the better.
- j79 8y agoI'm curious, any idea what your relatives expected to receive for the rug?
- itronitron 8y agoit's interesting that different things have value now, your father and brothers would have made out if she had accumulated Lego sets and not let anyone unbox them.
- Radim 8y agoYes, apparently collector's value arrives in generational waves. The first wave hits in 20-30 years, when kids grow into productive age, and sentimentally overvalue things from their childhood. A grandma's rug or ex-libris, is your Lego set or another man's C64… What will today's kids feel sentimental about in 30 years? Better start collecting now. Only the waves that speak to our craving for beauty and immortality are a safe bet at any time. Beautiful beginnings are where it's at!
- zanny 8y agoWhats interesting is that there is not much to collect anymore. From a third party vantage point it seems childrens entertainment has been devoured whole by mobile addictive skinner boxes. Between social media and that garbage a lot of kids are spending their parents money on virtual coins rather than plastic bricks.
- pavlov 8y ago”After all, who hangs a Picasso in the kitchen?” Some years ago I visited the home of an upscale New England family. They had a million-dollar Alexander Calder sculpture on a corner table in the kitchen. At the time this struck me as an odd placement for such a valuable object — I guess this article explains why.
- gallerdude 8y agoOld furniture not being compatible with laptops and charging cables really shows how utility is always the first priority. I'm reminded of a YouTube series which walks around malls on the brink of bankruptcy. Malls put forward a psuedo-utopian view of society, a place where people can come together (for commerce), but all of that matters 0% if there's less utility than Amazon.
- Dreami 8y agoDo you have a link to that YouTube series? Could be interesting for when I've nothing else to do.
- mr337 8y agoBright Sun Films has a few abandoned malls https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLejUkwZ-XJX_BKt3prjesGlioWuf_IOFE https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLejUkwZ-XJX_BKt3prjes...
- seem_2211 8y agoPossibly Retail Archaeology? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3UMWK4vutQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3UMWK4vutQ
- einr 8y agoVery likely it is the Dead Mall Series by Dan Bell: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNz4Un92pGNxQ9vNgmnCx7dwchPJGJ3IQ https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNz4Un92pGNxQ9vNgmnCx...
- gallerdude 8y agoyeah this is the one I was thinking of
- Rumudiez 8y agoI think OP is referring to the Dead Mall Series by Dan Bell: https://youtu.be/mOlffr73fuM https://youtu.be/mOlffr73fuM
- meddlepal 8y agoMy mother has a beautiful Steinway grand piano she inherited from her father. Anyone familiar with the size of a grand piano knows they more or less require a mid-sized room to themselves or a good chunk of a large room. They're also not worth that much anymore because the market for used grand's is tiny. So mot of the value is sentimental. We are most likely going to have to get rid of it when she downsizes. My brother and I are unsure where we would ever put it and neither of us play the piano (probably one of my bigger regrets is not learning...). Neither of us want a 4,000SF house especially in New England where 4,000SF probably means older house and lots of maintenance from weather over many years. Similar problem with the antique dining room and the billiard table (though I may try and save that one if I can).
- scottlamb 8y ago> My brother and I are unsure where we would ever put it and neither of us play the piano (probably one of my bigger regrets is not learning...). It's never too late! (But the grand piano still won't be practical even if you learn how to play it.)
- jacquesm 8y ago> They're also not worth that much anymore because the market for used grand's is tiny. To the right buyer that instrument will be worth a small fortune. The reason the market value is not that high is mostly because the few big names gobble up all the instruments they can to reduce the size of the secondary market so they can sell their instruments at the highest price they'll fetch. That's also why there are hardly ever prices on the websites of the various sellers, they would give a hint about what the instruments value is which would make it harder for them to purchase instruments for a small fraction of their true value.
- lostlogin 8y ago>The reason the market value is not that high is mostly because the few big names gobble up all the instruments they can to reduce the size of the secondary market so they can sell their instruments at the highest price they'll fetch. Is that really a thing? Seems like a great way to lose money.
- paulpauper 8y agoIt may not be worth as much nowadays but antique furniture sure looks nicer than plastic furniture and bar stools if you have the right type of home for it.
- chime 8y agoYou are spot on. We bought a large pre-foreclosure house in Florida that was once owned by a pretty famous old-Hollywood celebrity. When we bought it, it was utterly dilapidated. Over the years we have slowly fixed and polished everything and furnished it with extremely cheap but sturdy wooden antiques. Instead of modern/Ikea bookcases, we bought antique chests and cabinets for third of the price. Honestly most of the pieces cost more in moving/shipping than material. For a solid year my wife and I went to estate sales or pre-retirement-home-move garage sales every weekend and bought 20+ paintings depicting local Florida nature to line up our hallways. We barely spent $2000 on paintings and furniture combined to furnish living room, family room, dining room, hallways, bathrooms, and 5 bedrooms (ignoring beds). Our guests often remark how gorgeous our house looks because of the antiques. We got lucky that the house we bought goes well with antiques. Otherwise we would have easily spent $10k+ on comparable furnishing.
- HillaryBriss 8y agothe article uses a 10 year old study conducted in California to explain why antique auctions near London command lower than expected prices today. i can't figure out if this is insightful brilliance or nonsense.
- lostlogin 8y agoIn big old houses many of the formal rooms were hardly used - or that’s what I’ve been led to believe. Formal dining and sitting rooms were for special occasions and the kitchen was where people ate otherwise. Even the front door was rarely used. Villa/bungalow design (these count as old where I am) clearly delineate formal and informal areas, with the back of the house for day to day living. It would be interesting to compare the study to historic usage as it may be less of a change than first glance would show.
- SwellJoe 8y agoMy mom is an antique dealer of ~35 years. Her experience is consistent with the article's assertions. The market for antique furniture (and antiques, in general) has fallen off considerably.
- sgt101 8y agoI think it's just misapprehended, a lot of the crash of value is just aesthetics. People are keen on modernist shiny stuff. They don't much like fussy dark big heavy things. Dining tables are an exception; home entertaining has fallen from fashion as women are not at home all day to do the work required, people aren't doing dinner parties and they tend to have smaller families than in the past as well.
- amanaplanacanal 8y agoI'm torn. I love my modern minimalist look, but really I wouldn't mind having a houseful of all that baroque Victorian look either.
- sgt101 8y ago
- paulpauper 8y agoI don't really buy this argument. By that logic, collectible cars should not be worth much because new ones are just at good for driving, and collectible cars are seldom driven anyway. Homes outside of the cramped Bay Area and central New York are pretty big.
- twblalock 8y ago> Homes outside of the cramped Bay Area and central New York are pretty big. Homes in the Bay Area are pretty big. Those narrow row houses in San Francisco are not really the norm in the rest of the area.
- metaphor 8y agoHow do you define pretty big? This report[1] suggests less that 2,000 sq-ft on average for most of the Bay Area sold in the past 12 months. Based on median lot size for detached home sales (0.25 acre in Diablo Valley being the largest by a huge margin; 2,500 sq-ft lots in SF), most are certainly multi-story units. In summary: less than 2,000 sq-ft, appreciably less than 0.25 acre lot, multi-story. [1] https://www.bayareamarketreports.com/trend/bay-area-market-survey https://www.bayareamarketreports.com/trend/bay-area-market-s...
- djrogers 8y agoApples and oranges - many people have ‘room’ for an extra car or two, but most people don’t have an actual room for an antique dining table or space for a mahogany bureau in their home office. Even if they had the space, it likely wouldn’t match any of the usable furniture, and that furniture is necessary. Cars don’t need to match...
- village-idiot 8y agoWhile it would be an insane choice, I actually have a spare garage spot (mandated by LA county law), but a very small apartment. I could afford the space for a classic car, but not a piece of furniture the exact same size. I think part of its scale too. We’ve been making desks for a long time, and they’re pretty durable. Cars are newer, and frankly most of them got cubed anyways. There’s not a lot of desirable cars around, fewer each day as they break and crash, which is why the prices rise.
- ojhughes 8y agoSadly we live in a culture where a lot of people care more about fashion than quality and craftsmanship. Our house is filled with beautiful French furniture, not because it will increase in value - simply that it every piece has wonderful character, lasts forever and tells a story.
- lostlogin 8y agoParticle board fails so gracelessly it’s awful. A worn, old wooden <anything> doesn’t necessarily look bad.
- SwellJoe 8y agoThe last time I went into an Ethan Allen (with a girlfriend that wanted nice new furniture), I noted that a lot of their furniture is at least partially made of particle board. I was astounded...they aren't super expensive, as furniture goes, but they aren't cheap either. My mom is an antique dealer, so I grew up around good furniture, and the notion that anyone would pay money (any money at all) for furniture that's made to be disposable is difficult to comprehend for me. The reasons for buying new furniture are even fewer now that the market for antiques has tanked. My mom still has a couple of booths in antique malls and she makes money at it, but nothing like she used to, and she's mostly pivoted from a focus on furniture to glassware and smaller collectibles. The shift is partly because she's older and can't handled bigger items, anymore, especially without my dad to help, but also because the market for antique furniture isn't what it used to be. People are a lot more likely to have space for a nice piece of glassware than for an armoire or buffet table. You can buy great old or antique furniture for less than new, and it'll be better made, it'll age better, and it'll hold its value better (it probably won't really go up in value, like antiques once did, but it likely won't drop too much either, whereas new particle board furniture is absolutely going in the trash or by the road in ten years).
- tvanantwerp 8y agoFor someone tired of crap furniture, do you have advice on how to find these quality antiques?
- Theodores 8y agoThe UK antiques market crashed around 1990. Recent downturns due to a multitude of reasons are relative rounding errors. There was a time when antiques went for crazy money and you did envy people who had got phenomenally rich during the craze that predated that huge crash. Antique dealers had their 'stock' at home and they lived a charmed existence going off to auction houses, getting better rates at the bank, fiddling taxes, learning about history, living in houses full of things you could not touch, driving big Volvo estate cars and not having to work 9 to 5. It all went wrong because it was a speculative bubble and the wheeler-dealer antique dealers ended up the bag holders, with all of the debt and nobody wanting to buy from them. On the surface it appeared as if it had been a classic market of arbitrage, this was before the Internet and before TV shows (Antiques Road Show, Lovejoy) that popularised what the antique dealers had been doing. But then when it crashed it became a bit more obvious what had really been going on, the antique dealers had been buying and selling amongst themselves, the price going up each time with no genuine customers buying this stuff. So the grand house of the antique dealer with all of that priceless stuff you dared not to touch really was useless cruft. The letter writing bureau scoffed at in the article had some utility, during peak antiques hype such a bureau wouldn't have someone writing letters at it, it might have the land-line phone on it and keep private papers inside, but it wouldn't be strictly useless, it would be valuable 'stock'. There were antiques that were vastly more useless than a writing bureau, with no utility whatsoever. Pricing was also special information, only a reputable antiques dealer could tell you the true price of something unless it went up to London to go to auction. Local auctions in places like Tetbury (Gloucestershire, famous for antiques) were only attended by people in the trade, if you did go there as a layperson then you just wouldn't understand it, plus laypeople had proper day jobs that precluded such shenanigans. The tax scam aspect was because the antiques really were unlicensed securities, you could have an antiques dealer buy that letter writing bureau and fiddle the VAT on the purchase in a multitude of ways. Plus interest rates were significant then so you only got rates beyond what normal people had access to if you borrowed a whole lot of money on a business rather than person basis. This was where the regular money was being made, this masked the bag-holding eventuality of the trade back then. The TV shows came along to glamorise the game and the TV shows came along to give everything a price. Obviously there was eBay, changing demographics, changing travel patterns, the death of the High Street, straightforward fashion, IKEA, AirBnB and everything else. This may have wiped out the scraps that were left after the big crash of the early 1990's, but really the original game and the lifestyle that went with it was something quite gravity defying, driven by greed. Everyone so busy being greedy that the antique dealers didn't realise until too late that they were only trading amongst themselves and that they were to be the ultimate bag holders.
- Animats 8y agoThe glut of silverware and fine china is even worse. Nobody uses that stuff, and it's high-maintenance. If you want some cheap, look on eBay. "Antiques", as an industry, is a product of the 1960s. Before that, antiques were items over a century old, which was the US Customs definition. Anything less was just old. Selling stuff less than a century old as "antique" was a marketing move. Looks like that idea, from the era of the hula hoop, is over.
- ghaff 8y agoYou see this all over New England and I assume elsewhere. All sorts of antique stores and malls. Some of the stuff they sell is genuinely old quality. An awful lot is just random crap of one sort or another. It’s not a well-defined distinction to be sure.
- technofiend 8y agoSome of it is genuinely useful: a 50 year old Sunbeam Mixmaster is going to need some maintenance but will last another few decades if taken care of vs the crap built with plastic gears these days. I think these antique malls spring up as much as anything from people who valuing these items collecting them. At some point you wake up and realize unless you're going to open a museum you don't actually need 10 examples of whatever.
- ghaff 8y agoYou either get into buying and selling or you open up a B&B :-) I'm convinced a lot of B&B owners got into it so that they could cover every last surface with cutesy "antiques."
- technofiend 8y agoHah. And with any luck some of your light fingered guests help you reduce your collection. But seriously I think the appeal of these things also reflects a completely different lifestyle. These days if you really think you'll have unexpected overnight guests you'll have a sleeper sofa instead of a Murphy Bed. My wife collects Singer Featherweight portable electric sewing machines. With the low cost of new and used clothes plus so few learning to sew I can't think of anything more absurdly useless. Although in her defense she's made use of it herself I don't think anyone under 40 would have any use for it unless they're trying to start a retro YouTube channel.
- lordnacho 8y agoIs this why a lot of people including myself prefer places with an open plan kitchen? You might as well have all the living area as one big room is you're always gonna be in the food preparation area. I work full time remote from my laptop and somehow I'm always just sitting on the kitchen island. Or within View of it.
- syntaxing 8y agoI think that a lot of people renting can attribute to this too. No ones wants to move around these dense hard oak wood furniture. I rather move around something light from IKEA until I can buy a house. But then by the time I afford a house, I wouldn't be able to fit these furniture anyway in my abysmally small house.
- amanaplanacanal 8y agoI have some Ikea stuff, but I'm assuming it will self-destruct if I ever attempt to move.
- lisper 8y agoThis. My wife's particle-board computer desk has survived two moves -- barely. It will almost certainly not survive another, so getting rid of it is a real problem.
- mkl 8y agoI got rid of an entire large sofa buy dismantling/cutting it up into small pieces and disposing of them with my household rubbish. A circular saw would make light work of a desk like that, but a handsaw would work fine too.
- djrogers 8y agoI’ve had plenty of Ikea furniture survive multiple moves across state and manhandled by buddies paid in beer. If you assemble it correctly, most of it is incredibly durable. Unless you’re talking about the cheapest of value furniture from Ikea, or your desk is from some other company, I really can’t fathom it not surviving something as simple as moving it.
- lisper 8y agoI think it was made by Bush. It's very similar to this one: https://www.amazon.com/Vantage-Corner-Desk-in-Maple/dp/B00GICEI8Y/ https://www.amazon.com/Vantage-Corner-Desk-in-Maple/dp/B00GI... The problem is not just that it's made of particle board that is held together with a small number of fasteners and nothing else, but it's also a very awkward shape. It's very hard to move without putting a lot of stress on joints that were not designed to take it.
- SwellJoe 8y agoMy mom's been an antique dealer for most of my life, and she's noticed this trend as well. Her customer base has aged along with her, and younger folks are not, generally, as interested in antiques as the previous few generations. She has several theories about the shift, one of them is that the things my generation and younger are sentimental or nostalgic about are just different than prior generations: Big dinners with family in a formal dining room (with all the accoutrement that entails, like a buffet table, nice China, silverware, crystal glasses, etc.) were common up until the 80s, even among the middle class, but houses for the middle class don't even have dining rooms anymore and haven't since about the late 80s. Or, having a desk where mom and dad did taxes, wrote letters and cards, etc., maybe it'd be passed down, or maybe when you grew into adulthood, you'd get a desk for your own correspondence and the general business of running a household. Sewing machines used to be a thing passed from mother to daughter...nobody sews, anymore. My younger friends don't have memories of their moms sewing costumes for them at Halloween (in general), whereas I do, and it's a pretty cherished memory (and I own a sewing machine, and have owned big oak desks like the one my dad had in his office). Houses have large closets now, no need for an armoire. Kitchens have walk-in pantries or deep cabinets with racks on drawer runners, making pantry cabinets obsolete and a waste of space. And, of course, stuff like fine China has always been aspirational for a specific kind of buyer...and it requires a lot of space for display, which without a dining room, most people don't have. And, mass-produced goods can be "fancy" in ways that cost a lot of money in previous centuries. It no longer means anything to have a plate with fancy designs on it, because manufacturers can churn out a few million of them every year and profitably sell them for a few bucks. In some regards antiques were a manufactured aspirational industry, like diamonds or luxury cars or bags or whatever. In other regards, though, they're a recognition that things used to be better made than they have been in our lifetimes. Furniture up until the mid-1800s was entirely hand-made, and it didn't start being made to be disposable until the mid-1900s. Even long after furniture making was at least partially automated, it was still made of real hard woods that would last centuries. New furniture is effectively garbage waiting to happen; you buy it today and in ten years it's on the side of the road with the rest of the trash. Several factors have converged to make antiques a shrinking market. It also means antique furniture is a real bargain, especially compared to the garbage that even expensive furniture brands are shoveling out these days.
- matthewmcg 8y agoThe softening demand for antiques may also be partly due to changing style preferences. Look at the production design in movies and catalog shoots or the way homes are staged for listings—you’ll see more farmhouse tables or mid century modern and less traditional furniture. It would be interesting to see how the price of modern vintage items has fared compared to traditional antiques.
- BenFrantzDale 8y agoThere’s also general trends. Modern (mid-century and more-recent) furniture is more trendy. I wouldn’t want much pre-modern furniture even if it is beautifully made and fits my life functionally.
- crooked-v 8y agoThe very idea of a distinction between "living room" and "family room" is a foreign one to me, before you even get to the idea of a clear distinction between kitchen and dining room.
- smudgymcscmudge 8y agoThe living room is reflects how you want guests to think you live. The family room reflects how you really live.
- crooked-v 8y agoI have literally never lived in a house big enough for that distinction to be possible.
- jldugger 8y agoMan that heatmap of space usage. Painfully accurate. We had a dining room we never used except on special occasions, instead cramming around a tiny table in the kitchen. We had and furnished a living room, but without a TV it was dead to us. So much wasted space.
- justicezyx 8y agoI live these stuff, but I actually do not know where to for them in the range of 1-2k$ a piece range. Any tutorial for looking for this type of items selling in store or online? Is Ebay trustable for these?
- odethrow 8y agoI really like that UCLA graph. Does somebody know where to read up more on it?
- njarboe 8y agoI heard there is a trend of big houses now having two kitchens because everyone lives in the kitchen. One kitchen is for cooking in and getting messy (the smaller one) and the other is a display kitchen where people hang out but only used on special occasions or when you want to get your Martha Stewart on.
- tracker1 8y agoI think part of it is bulk, weight and moving around. So many people in recent generations will flip out of a house in 5-10 years. So few will invest and stay long enough to pay off a mortgage. Hardwood furniture is heavy, and a pain to move. And while I even appreciate it, it's not fun moving it. I do think there's a lot to be said for repurposing what you can. I think of all the old, big, heavy stereo and television cabinets and what they could be turned into today. Even if modern equivalents, etc. Most often I've seen older china cabinets used as modern display or liquor cabinets.
- 1111111111z12 8y agoI see 7 dots over the toilet and only 1 at the sink. I choose to believe that someone was taking a >1 hour long shit and washing their hands for over 10 minutes (understandable tbh)