4 ms·

Last time I bought a couch, a new one, it set me back $6,000. It took me the better part of eight months to find it. Solid wood. Proper joinery. Thick padding.

Last time I bought a couch, a new one, it set me back $6,000. It took me the better part of eight months to find it. Solid wood. Proper joinery. Thick padding. Pig skin leather. We kept it for 20 years before giving it to some friends who had it reupholstered where I expect it will last another 20 years. I used to have some expensive, but ultimately crap, book cases. Book cases are not designed by people who own a lot of books. 36" to 48" spans of fast growth pine will stretch and bow within a year or two. I designed my own book case. I went to a furniture making store. We went back and forth a few times. The biggest sticking point that took four attempts for the furniture maker to understand was where to put the fixed shelf. It does not go in the middle because that wastes space. We made it out of pine. 7' 8" tall, so that when standing it up, it will clear an 8ft ceiling in modern American homes. 22" wide shelves so they cannot flex. Fixed shelf to counteract gravity. Made specifically to carry paperback novels and similarly sized books. "Sand it three times, prime it, sand it, prime it, sand it, paint it, sand it, paint it, no I don't care that a single book case will cost $200." I bought 24 of them. Many hundreds of lineal feet of book cases. We still have them 24 years later and they are as good as new. And the paint job, because it is two layers of prime and two layers of paint, on a mirror surface, looks like you just took the item from the showroom floor. I have a plywood bookcase I made to store cooking books. The cheapest plywood you can imagine from the big box store. But because of the structural design, 15 years later it still holds up without any bowing or flexing. Modern furniture is absolute junk. Even the "good stuff."

readingnews 3y ago
>> it set me back $6,000. The issue is that most modern households in the U.S. can not hack that kind of pricetag for a sofa / couch. Hell, I could never spend that kind of jack on a couch, even if I literally saved up for it (which would take years)... it is just far too much of a percentage of my income for one furniture item. So, how do we solve that issue (e.g. its good, but if it is 10% of your gross annual income, how could you afford it)? Either people need to get paid more, or ???
- mycologos 3y ago
  I read a book about chairs a few months ago, and one bit from it is > Eighteenth-century furniture was expensive. At a time when a journeyman joiner earned three livres a day, a good-quality armchair might cost as much as a hundred livres.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    That's only 30 days work, which is in the $3-10k range. And for that you CAN get good furniture; the trick is figuring out you're paying for the quality and not just overpaying for junk.
  - drchickensalad 3y ago
    Yeah wow that's like $8k+ for an armchair in today's wages (including the historically inaccurate assumption they only work 8 hours too)
- photonthug 3y ago
  > percentage of my income for one furniture item No matter how much money I make, I like to think there's price-tags I'd still balk at just because I don't want to be a sucker. Or get involved in status-signaling.. not sure which is worse. So I started thinking about comparisons also. I like to go back to cups of coffee, and you could spend 6 bucks on coffee easily.. is a piece of furniture worth a thousand cups? Maybe. On the other hand, you could own like 3 cargo containers for this cash (think of the material involved), or a used car (think of the utility!). So nah, this feels like way too much money, unless it's a mint condition antique that some king and queen used to sit on. A huge Belffin modular super sofa with 9 seats and 2 ottomans is less than $2k.
  - justinlloyd 3y ago
    We drive a second-hand Toyota that we paid cash for. The previous car we racked up 200,000 miles before deciding to "upgrade." I wear worn out Skechers sneakers that have seen better days. The leather belt that holds up my pants is getting on for 20 years old. The red sweatshirt I am currently wearing is stained with paint and varnish and food, and has at least three holes in it. I pay, very rarely, for good coffee outside of the home. I prefer the coffee I make at home. It costs me around 8c per cup, 12c if I steam some milk. Some really good beans that cost around $25 a pound. Admittedly the coffee is made on a Jura X8, or a WEGA espresso machine at the RV. Nobody really comes in our house, so we're not status signalling to anyone other than this casual mention on social media about some stuff. Money is a tool, and deployed properly, can bring a lot of leverage to problems. You're free to make a judgement, and would probably blow a gasket knowing what I dropped on three office chairs, but at the end of the day, I used the tools I have at my disposal.
AtlasBarfed 3y ago
Ye old cinder block bookcase is probably the best, and the internet has a lot of good ideas. The old clay pipes used to be the best for those, look much better than cinder blocks, but whatever.
p1nkpineapple 3y ago
Holy moly, 24 bookcases - that's more than my local library. What are your reading habits?
- justinlloyd 3y ago
  My media consumption habits went off a cliff since the pandemic due to life circumstances. I am slowly picking up the pace again. I have read around 3,500 books, not all of which I keep on the shelves. A nearly complete list with reviews of many of them are on one of my personal blogs.

readingnews 3y ago

>> it set me back $6,000. The issue is that most modern households in the U.S. can not hack that kind of pricetag for a sofa / couch. Hell, I could never spend that kind of jack on a couch, even if I literally saved up for it (which would take years)... it is just far too much of a percentage of my income for one furniture item. So, how do we solve that issue (e.g. its good, but if it is 10% of your gross annual income, how could you afford it)? Either people need to get paid more, or ???

mycologos 3y ago
I read a book about chairs a few months ago, and one bit from it is > Eighteenth-century furniture was expensive. At a time when a journeyman joiner earned three livres a day, a good-quality armchair might cost as much as a hundred livres.
- bombcar 3y ago
  That's only 30 days work, which is in the $3-10k range. And for that you CAN get good furniture; the trick is figuring out you're paying for the quality and not just overpaying for junk.
- drchickensalad 3y ago
  Yeah wow that's like $8k+ for an armchair in today's wages (including the historically inaccurate assumption they only work 8 hours too)
photonthug 3y ago
> percentage of my income for one furniture item No matter how much money I make, I like to think there's price-tags I'd still balk at just because I don't want to be a sucker. Or get involved in status-signaling.. not sure which is worse. So I started thinking about comparisons also. I like to go back to cups of coffee, and you could spend 6 bucks on coffee easily.. is a piece of furniture worth a thousand cups? Maybe. On the other hand, you could own like 3 cargo containers for this cash (think of the material involved), or a used car (think of the utility!). So nah, this feels like way too much money, unless it's a mint condition antique that some king and queen used to sit on. A huge Belffin modular super sofa with 9 seats and 2 ottomans is less than $2k.
- justinlloyd 3y ago
  We drive a second-hand Toyota that we paid cash for. The previous car we racked up 200,000 miles before deciding to "upgrade." I wear worn out Skechers sneakers that have seen better days. The leather belt that holds up my pants is getting on for 20 years old. The red sweatshirt I am currently wearing is stained with paint and varnish and food, and has at least three holes in it. I pay, very rarely, for good coffee outside of the home. I prefer the coffee I make at home. It costs me around 8c per cup, 12c if I steam some milk. Some really good beans that cost around $25 a pound. Admittedly the coffee is made on a Jura X8, or a WEGA espresso machine at the RV. Nobody really comes in our house, so we're not status signalling to anyone other than this casual mention on social media about some stuff. Money is a tool, and deployed properly, can bring a lot of leverage to problems. You're free to make a judgement, and would probably blow a gasket knowing what I dropped on three office chairs, but at the end of the day, I used the tools I have at my disposal.

AtlasBarfed 3y ago

Ye old cinder block bookcase is probably the best, and the internet has a lot of good ideas. The old clay pipes used to be the best for those, look much better than cinder blocks, but whatever.

p1nkpineapple 3y ago

Holy moly, 24 bookcases - that's more than my local library. What are your reading habits?

justinlloyd 3y ago
My media consumption habits went off a cliff since the pandemic due to life circumstances. I am slowly picking up the pace again. I have read around 3,500 books, not all of which I keep on the shelves. A nearly complete list with reviews of many of them are on one of my personal blogs.