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Anything like Ikea, but, you know...better?

Triumph

Triumph

Lifer
I love the styling of Ikea furniture, but man, it's mostly just made of compressed paper and laminates. I know the price reflects that, but is there a more expensive furniture store/brand that has similar styling but uses, I don't know, wood to make their products? I've been to all of the furniture stores around here and they're mostly fairly traditional looking.
 
i love ikea stuff, but it gets dinged and the paint comes off easily. i would totally love to find something with similar style too that is more durable.
 
Amazon.

There are some budget brands and 3rd party retailers on Amazon marketplace, used one to get a cheap but adequate bookcase.
 
loki8481 said:
iirc, Ikea does have some pieces of "real" furniture amidst all the pressboard stuff.
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Yea, you just have to look a bit. I've been pleased with the quality of the Ikea furniture I've gotten. I'm generally not a fan of glued sawdust, but they have the best execution of it I've seen.
 
Some of the Ikea stuff is real wood. The clothes dressers I purchased are. However it is all still assembled in the same manner as the pressboard crap.
 
I don't know what you're looking for, but you can usually find Ready To Assembly products made of real wood on the web.
 
loki8481 said:
iirc, Ikea does have some pieces of "real" furniture amidst all the pressboard stuff.
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Correct. You can find some decent stuff in there, but it costs more and you have to sift through the garbage.

I like IKEA for what it is, though. My basement is all stuff from there, and if it floods, I'll go back to the store and start over!
 
lxskllr said:
Yea, you just have to look a bit. I've been pleased with the quality of the Ikea furniture I've gotten. I'm generally not a fan of glued sawdust, but they have the best execution of it I've seen.
Click to expand...

I've gotten some decent real wood stuff from Ikea too. Most of it appears to be pine so I'm expecting it to ding easier than hard wood but it's much better than their particle board stuff. Typically it seems they have at least 3 options in every category:

1. Really flimsy stuff that feels like its made out of cardboard, got some of this stuff when I was in college. It does the job but it shows its age FAST.
2. More sturdy but still particle board. A huge amount of their stuff falls into this category. It looks decent and works well but I've found that it gets easily damaged when you're moving
3. Real wood stuff. Still less sturdy then something made with a good hardwood but it is better than particle board. The cost of their real wood stuff isn't too terrible.

We got this kitchen island while ago and it works great. My wife loves it and compared to the other kind of kitchen islands that we were able to find it was pretty darn cheap for a larger and more useful working space.
 
Most of the quality modern furniture is expensive. Estate sales can do well with quality mid-century stuff for cheap, but often I just wind up building my own:

ID2.jpg

ID3.jpg


DWR will have the really popular stuff, also check out:

http://www.ladiff.com/
http://www.skramfurniture.com/
http://www.modernlink.com/
 
Dubb said:
Most of the quality modern furniture is expensive. Estate sales can do well with quality mid-century stuff for cheap, but often I just wind up building my own:
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Looks great. So you didn't use any fancy joints and just screwed tops into sides? I like how you left the end grain alone, it gives a classy look to the piece. I usually obsess over the edging to the point my projects fail to be completed because I can't figure out how to finish that part. I'm going to have to try your method.
 
dbk said:
pottery barn?
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Trash. Instead of soft woods or MDF front and back, they just use them in the back and slap a veneer on them. Then they jack up the price to 4x as much as Ikea.

There's only one thing that I have liked that my wife bought (or got) from PB and that was our silverwear for our wedding. Great stuff.

Otherwise, the plates we got, trash. The glasses, trash. The furniture, trash.

In order to get your money's worth you need to skip PB, Crate and Barrel, and every big box furniture store (R2G, Flanigans...etc) and go right to Ethan Allen or find yourself a local place. Amish people make awesome furniture.
 
LegendKiller said:
Trash. Instead of soft woods or MDF front and back, they just use them in the back and slap a veneer on them. Then they jack up the price to 4x as much as Ikea.

There's only one thing that I have liked that my wife bought (or got) from PB and that was our silverwear for our wedding. Great stuff.

Otherwise, the plates we got, trash. The glasses, trash. The furniture, trash.

In order to get your money's worth you need to skip PB, Crate and Barrel, and every big box furniture store (R2G, Flanigans...etc) and go right to Ethan Allen or find yourself a local place. Amish people make awesome furniture.
Click to expand...

My wife loves the stuff you can get from Stickley but that is pricey. We're considering getting one nice piece of furniture (ie the kind that will last longer than we will) per year and slowly filling our house with quality stuff. Craftsman and mission furniture both are a style we really like and it seems like the style won't look terrible 10+ years from now. We absolutely hate the ridiculous furniture you find in most stores. It's overly ornate and gaudy.
 
Bush and Sauder are two RTA brands that use various types and thicknesses of particle/"engineered" board, and some of their more premium offerings are fairly sturdy.

I actually just purchased such a desk and hutch from Bush (staples online), one of their new Office lines of furniture, and it's extremely sturdy. Still definitely going to get banged up fairly easy if it has to be moved frequently through tight spaces (at least the desktop is melamine treated all around, though I wish all the faces on the front were treated too, but alas, I didn't want to spend upwards of $800 for solid veneer desks).
I was looking all over the place,and couldn't find a good affordable desk setup, one that also fit my needs, which were fairly picky I might add: Needed ample storage room, and that ruled out all the good affordable solid wood desks, and also had specific maximum dimensions that ruled out most of the desks I kind of drooled over.
 
paperfist said:
Looks great. So you didn't use any fancy joints and just screwed tops into sides? I like how you left the end grain alone, it gives a classy look to the piece. I usually obsess over the edging to the point my projects fail to be completed because I can't figure out how to finish that part. I'm going to have to try your method.
Click to expand...

I wanted it to be slick but industrial, using phenolic faced plywood and highlighting the screw positions with figured wood caps worked pretty well. The drawers are rabbeted and screwed.

The phenolic ply is a little harder to work with simply because you can't just sand out any imperfections in facing. But it's very heavy, very strong, and very even.
 
just look for any kind of local Scandanavian style furniture place. Maybe not as easy as it sounds, but there are shit tons around here. kinda fits with the local architecture, I guess. :\

It's going to be expensive, of course, b/c they use real materials. also 2nd the pottery barn/ C&B. We actually have a C&B outlet store here. pretty nice, I guess.

...World Market also has a collection of more contemporary-looking modern furniture, that does look nicer/more solid that Ikea, and is a bit cheaper than what you'll find at a serious furniture outlet.
 
If you've got a Crate and Barrel nearby you may want to check it out soon. We swung by today on a whim because my wife has decided one of the chairs from my bachelor days had to go. They had a few things from their "custom upholstery" promotion where they show off all the things they can do to change the look of their furniture with custom fabrics. Apparently, after the promotion ends (ended some time in October) they take all the examples that they had out front in the window and liquidate them. We got a chair that normally cost $899 with the normal fabric (a crazy $1400 with the custom fabric that's on) for $400.
 
Dubb said:
I wanted it to be slick but industrial, using phenolic faced plywood and highlighting the screw positions with figured wood caps worked pretty well. The drawers are rabbeted and screwed.

The phenolic ply is a little harder to work with simply because you can't just sand out any imperfections in facing. But it's very heavy, very strong, and very even.
Click to expand...

That coffee table is amazing. 😱:thumbsup:
 
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