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Just want to chime in that I, too, am mystified by the Ikea hate. I've spent all of my 30+ years living with Ikea furniture. I'm writing this from an Ikea kitch

Just want to chime in that I, too, am mystified by the Ikea hate. I've spent all of my 30+ years living with Ikea furniture. I'm writing this from an Ikea kitchen cart that has become my primary workspace. I remodeled my kitchen last fall with Ikea cabinets -- and was able to do almost the entire installation myself. I've never had a serious problem with anything from them. The same cannot be said most of the furniture we've gotten from other places. The expensive, fancy-shmancy reclaimed wood dresser and nightstand my wife bought from some other chic retailer has been repaired about 4000 times.

II2II 6y ago
I recently visited an Ikea store, and most of the furniture they had on display did not resemble the type of furniture that I associate with Ikea (which is cheap, wood, self-assembled kits or modules that are easy to repair or disassemble for moving). Their offerings have changed a lot over the years, perhaps their show rooms vary according to location, and maybe people are choosing what to buy based upon different criteria these days.
- asdff 6y ago
  They sell quite a lot of solid wood furniture.
leetcrew 6y ago
I think a lot of people only experience ikea through the absolute cheapest tier of their products. I actually like this stuff because it tends to be super light, making it ideal for the phase of life where you move to a different apartment every year or two. stuff inevitably gets damaged during a move anyway, so I mostly have cheap furniture that I don't care about. even with the cheapest stuff, I find a little care goes a long way. my cheap ikea bed frame has been moved and reassembled twice now and it still holds a mattress off the floor just fine.
tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
I don't get it either. In my eyes, they are an example of how good engineering combined with scale makes our lives better. Their stuff is exactly as good as it needs to be. If you were to cut it up and look inside, you'd be shocked how cheap the materials are (big parts of the LACK are literally made of cardboard), but in my experience, you don't notice this in everyday use, and that's the really important part. That's good engineering vs. the medieval approach of just throwing a lot of wood at it until it's definitely enough. Combine it with scale, and the result is me being able to furnish my entire apartment for the price that I'd pay for a single piece of "quality" furniture. My desk (where I shelled out for the slightly more expensive "higher quality" version with a 25? year warranty) and kitchen countertop look like new despite heavy use. Will everything survive a move? Maybe not. That's why I plan to sell to the next tenant what they want to keep, from the rest dump (recycling or waste-to-energy, not landfill) whatever breaks, is not practical to dis- and reassemble, or doesn't fit the new apartment, and then buy new IKEA furniture that actually fits (and have it delivered and assembled by IKEA for probably not much more than the cost of moving "good" furniture).

II2II 6y ago

I recently visited an Ikea store, and most of the furniture they had on display did not resemble the type of furniture that I associate with Ikea (which is cheap, wood, self-assembled kits or modules that are easy to repair or disassemble for moving). Their offerings have changed a lot over the years, perhaps their show rooms vary according to location, and maybe people are choosing what to buy based upon different criteria these days.

asdff 6y ago
They sell quite a lot of solid wood furniture.

leetcrew 6y ago

I think a lot of people only experience ikea through the absolute cheapest tier of their products. I actually like this stuff because it tends to be super light, making it ideal for the phase of life where you move to a different apartment every year or two. stuff inevitably gets damaged during a move anyway, so I mostly have cheap furniture that I don't care about. even with the cheapest stuff, I find a little care goes a long way. my cheap ikea bed frame has been moved and reassembled twice now and it still holds a mattress off the floor just fine.

tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago

I don't get it either. In my eyes, they are an example of how good engineering combined with scale makes our lives better. Their stuff is exactly as good as it needs to be. If you were to cut it up and look inside, you'd be shocked how cheap the materials are (big parts of the LACK are literally made of cardboard), but in my experience, you don't notice this in everyday use, and that's the really important part. That's good engineering vs. the medieval approach of just throwing a lot of wood at it until it's definitely enough. Combine it with scale, and the result is me being able to furnish my entire apartment for the price that I'd pay for a single piece of "quality" furniture. My desk (where I shelled out for the slightly more expensive "higher quality" version with a 25? year warranty) and kitchen countertop look like new despite heavy use. Will everything survive a move? Maybe not. That's why I plan to sell to the next tenant what they want to keep, from the rest dump (recycling or waste-to-energy, not landfill) whatever breaks, is not practical to dis- and reassemble, or doesn't fit the new apartment, and then buy new IKEA furniture that actually fits (and have it delivered and assembled by IKEA for probably not much more than the cost of moving "good" furniture).