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> You can _still_ find furniture like those bought in the 1800s that stand the test of time. You mostly can't. I always wanted quality wood furniture and once

by jjav 5y ago

> You can _still_ find furniture like those bought in the 1800s that stand the test of time. You mostly can't. I always wanted quality wood furniture and once I had enough income I went shopping. Nothing. It can't be bought anywhere that I can find. Eventually gave up and bought the nicest office furniture I could find but it is still a very nice veneer over junk plywood. And even that was many thousands of dollars because it is a nice veneer instead of a cheap junk veneer. > Make no mistake, furniture in the past was quite expensive as well. Not really. Both my grandparent families were dirt poor small farmers and the furniture they had was orders of magnitude better quality than anything I can find or buy on a 2020s silicon valley tech salary.

Karrot_Kream 5y ago
I'll be honest I have no idea where you're looking. If you're looking at retail furniture stores in the US, then no you're not going to find it, unless you go far upmarket. But hop onto any woodworking forum/subreddit (well not r/woodworking as that's mostly beginners) and you'll find cabinetmakers willing to work with you for pieces. Few retail furniture outlets have a customer base willing to pay the prices needed for cabinetry, though I presume on a Silicon Valley tech salary you should be fine. Alternatively, reach out to an interior designer in your area who probably has contacts with many small cabinetry shops in the area. I'd link a few cabinetmakers I know of but I'd rather not call them out in a public forum. Patreon is going to have some also. Reddit's r/finishing has some experienced cabinetmakers. Another strategy is to go to a used furniture store, pick up an old piece made of solid wood/plywood, and ask a cabinetmaker to restore it, the same as furniture used to be passed down. If you're in the Bay Area I'll recommend Urban Ore as a good, cheap place to find used furniture. There are antique stores galore which restore old furniture and sell them for large amounts of money. In the past, the capability to build cheap furniture just wasn't there so everything you bought was made from solid wood and was hand-joined which is why your grandparents' family's furniture seems so much stronger. The market also had a floor on how cheap it could get before mechanization and the invention of composite materials so it was "easy" to find expensive furniture and "hard" to find cheap furniture. FYI plywood can make furniture that outlasts individuals and has been in use in furniture since the early 1900s. When you're thinking of crappy veneered engineered wood, you're probably thinking of MDF and OSB furniture. Most furniture at retail furniture stores are majority MDF and OSB because of cost and largely weight as both plywood and solid wood tend to be very heavy for their load bearing capabilities.
- jjav 5y ago
  > I'll be honest I have no idea where you're looking. Silicon Valley area. At the very top of the market, yes, one can get fully custom furnitue to any spec you like, for a very high price. I know a few people who have done remodels with such custom furniture and the cost has been over 100K on the low end to closer to a million on the high end. Even with a senior silicon valley salary, that's as good as impossible. That's why I mention that in my grandparents generation, even low-income families could afford solid quality furniture. Today it is a privilege limited to those who hit major IPOs.
  - Karrot_Kream 5y ago
    > That's why I mention that in my grandparents generation, even low-income families could afford solid quality furniture. Today it is a privilege limited to those who hit major IPOs. Then go to an antique store. They restore old, expensive pieces, the same way people in the past would pass down heirloom furniture and the same way most poorer folks would buy their furniture. You're just not going to be able to get new, solid wooden furniture as cheap as you did even 80 years ago and this has nothing to do with the "good old days before progress for the sake of progress". There's exponentially more people in the world now, correspondingly less wood, and greater awareness about how to sustainably forest. Modern cabinetry is done with PPE to keep the woodworker safe and shops are ventilated and vacuumed to keep the area clean. None of this has to do with the "good old days before progress for the sake of progress". The ideology itself is tautological; instead of exploring what the problem is, it purports itself to be the solution to all problems. Good cabinetry is still available in the market at expensive prices but there are reasons why solid wooden furniture has become more expensive. These reasons are immaterial in the face of "good old days before progress for the sake of progress", even though PPE and occupational safety has been some of the gains made through this "progress for the sake of progress."
    - Clubber 5y ago
      >None of this has to do with the "good old days before progress for the sake of progress". It wasn't for the sake of progress, it was for the sake of profits. Making something almost as good that costs half the price is what the US has been doing for the last 30 years. After 30 years of "almost as good," turned in to absolute shit when compared to the older stuff. Technology of course isn't bad for the sake of being bad. Electric tools is what allowed the old furniture to be so good at a reasonable price. Wood glue and sawdust being pressed into something that looks like wood but falls apart fairly easily, is an example of when technology makes things much worse and is used strictly for maximizing profit at the expense of quality. There's a lot of that today.
rnd0 5y ago
>Both my grandparent families were dirt poor small farmers and the furniture they had I believe you, which makes me curious when they would have gotten it, and from where. 1940's? 1970's? EDIT: I was poor in the 70's and the best you were likely to come across (as a poor person) was fingerhut crap so I'm guessing it was earlier than that.
- jjav 5y ago
  > >Both my grandparent families were dirt poor small farmers and the furniture they had > I believe you, which makes me curious when they would have gotten it, and from where. 1940's? 1970's? That would've been early 1900s, pre-WW1.

by jjav 5y ago

Karrot_Kream 5y ago

I'll be honest I have no idea where you're looking. If you're looking at retail furniture stores in the US, then no you're not going to find it, unless you go far upmarket. But hop onto any woodworking forum/subreddit (well not r/woodworking as that's mostly beginners) and you'll find cabinetmakers willing to work with you for pieces. Few retail furniture outlets have a customer base willing to pay the prices needed for cabinetry, though I presume on a Silicon Valley tech salary you should be fine. Alternatively, reach out to an interior designer in your area who probably has contacts with many small cabinetry shops in the area. I'd link a few cabinetmakers I know of but I'd rather not call them out in a public forum. Patreon is going to have some also. Reddit's r/finishing has some experienced cabinetmakers. Another strategy is to go to a used furniture store, pick up an old piece made of solid wood/plywood, and ask a cabinetmaker to restore it, the same as furniture used to be passed down. If you're in the Bay Area I'll recommend Urban Ore as a good, cheap place to find used furniture. There are antique stores galore which restore old furniture and sell them for large amounts of money. In the past, the capability to build cheap furniture just wasn't there so everything you bought was made from solid wood and was hand-joined which is why your grandparents' family's furniture seems so much stronger. The market also had a floor on how cheap it could get before mechanization and the invention of composite materials so it was "easy" to find expensive furniture and "hard" to find cheap furniture. FYI plywood can make furniture that outlasts individuals and has been in use in furniture since the early 1900s. When you're thinking of crappy veneered engineered wood, you're probably thinking of MDF and OSB furniture. Most furniture at retail furniture stores are majority MDF and OSB because of cost and largely weight as both plywood and solid wood tend to be very heavy for their load bearing capabilities.

jjav 5y ago
> I'll be honest I have no idea where you're looking. Silicon Valley area. At the very top of the market, yes, one can get fully custom furnitue to any spec you like, for a very high price. I know a few people who have done remodels with such custom furniture and the cost has been over 100K on the low end to closer to a million on the high end. Even with a senior silicon valley salary, that's as good as impossible. That's why I mention that in my grandparents generation, even low-income families could afford solid quality furniture. Today it is a privilege limited to those who hit major IPOs.
- Karrot_Kream 5y ago
  > That's why I mention that in my grandparents generation, even low-income families could afford solid quality furniture. Today it is a privilege limited to those who hit major IPOs. Then go to an antique store. They restore old, expensive pieces, the same way people in the past would pass down heirloom furniture and the same way most poorer folks would buy their furniture. You're just not going to be able to get new, solid wooden furniture as cheap as you did even 80 years ago and this has nothing to do with the "good old days before progress for the sake of progress". There's exponentially more people in the world now, correspondingly less wood, and greater awareness about how to sustainably forest. Modern cabinetry is done with PPE to keep the woodworker safe and shops are ventilated and vacuumed to keep the area clean. None of this has to do with the "good old days before progress for the sake of progress". The ideology itself is tautological; instead of exploring what the problem is, it purports itself to be the solution to all problems. Good cabinetry is still available in the market at expensive prices but there are reasons why solid wooden furniture has become more expensive. These reasons are immaterial in the face of "good old days before progress for the sake of progress", even though PPE and occupational safety has been some of the gains made through this "progress for the sake of progress."
  - Clubber 5y ago
    >None of this has to do with the "good old days before progress for the sake of progress". It wasn't for the sake of progress, it was for the sake of profits. Making something almost as good that costs half the price is what the US has been doing for the last 30 years. After 30 years of "almost as good," turned in to absolute shit when compared to the older stuff. Technology of course isn't bad for the sake of being bad. Electric tools is what allowed the old furniture to be so good at a reasonable price. Wood glue and sawdust being pressed into something that looks like wood but falls apart fairly easily, is an example of when technology makes things much worse and is used strictly for maximizing profit at the expense of quality. There's a lot of that today.

rnd0 5y ago

>Both my grandparent families were dirt poor small farmers and the furniture they had I believe you, which makes me curious when they would have gotten it, and from where. 1940's? 1970's? EDIT: I was poor in the 70's and the best you were likely to come across (as a poor person) was fingerhut crap so I'm guessing it was earlier than that.

jjav 5y ago
> >Both my grandparent families were dirt poor small farmers and the furniture they had > I believe you, which makes me curious when they would have gotten it, and from where. 1940's? 1970's? That would've been early 1900s, pre-WW1.