this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2024
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[–] [email protected] 187 points 2 months ago (5 children)

Confirmation bias: all the shite furniture from 1800s has rotted to dust already

Edit for full disclosure: I've exclusively bought antique furniture. I'm basically a shill for big-auction

[–] [email protected] 117 points 2 months ago

I think it's survivorship bias, but yes

[–] [email protected] 35 points 2 months ago (8 children)

Sure. A lot has rotted away, but much modern furniture is designed with so much MDF and other manufactured wood products that aren't resilient in the least. Moisture will destroy them, they take gashes super easy, and are soft wood.

I'd think the furniture our grandparents had would be more likely to have been solid wood.

That's not to say there aren't solid hardwood pieces being made today. But they are extremely expensive and are competing in a space with poor regulation of descriptions and all the flat pack Chinese imported stuff thats literally 10% of the price of good furniture that will last.

Solid hardwood furniture is a luxury.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 months ago (7 children)
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[–] [email protected] 89 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Here's a picture of the furniture my grandparents left me:

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 months ago

Nice floor tho

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago (4 children)

My grandparents didn't even update their will when my sister and I were born.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 2 months ago

Neither did my grandparents. Likewise, my parents didn't update their will when my children and nieces were born.

The attitude among all generations has been: your own kids inherit, and they distribute to their kids as they see fit.

I wasn't in my grandparents wills, but I ended up with some of their furniture.

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[–] [email protected] 87 points 2 months ago (2 children)

One thing for sure, is way easier to carry

[–] [email protected] 47 points 2 months ago
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[–] [email protected] 86 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (4 children)

If cheap furniture made by compressing glue and sawdust together existed 100 years ago, I bet it would have sold well.

Same goes for shoes. Everyone's wearing terrible plastic stuff nowadays.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago (1 children)

My grandparents deliberately saved up for the expensive oak furniture. It was meant to last the rest of their lives (which it did). They had a different mindset than me and you who want something nice looking that doesn't burden the bank account too much

[–] [email protected] 39 points 2 months ago

That and I didn't want to buy solid oak furniture when I lived in apartments and had to move on a dime because the landlord wanted to jack up rent or pull something... Again.

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[–] [email protected] 83 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Im leaving my grandkids a very cleanly optimized starter base in Factorio.

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[–] [email protected] 73 points 2 months ago (1 children)

“This is yours now, son. A little bit of water spilled on it 3 weeks ago, so it will fall apart if you use it.”

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[–] [email protected] 64 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Too exhausted to grab images but...

  • The amount I spent on college versus the amount that they spent on college

  • their pension versus my pension

  • cost of their home versus cost of my home

  • amount of adults in their household that had to work to support a family versus amount of adults in my household that have to work to support a family

  • Their CEO pay gap versus my CEO pay gap

  • number of summers where they took a week-long family vacation versus number of summers that I took a week-long family vacation

  • cost of a family trip to Disney for them versus no fucking way I could even consider affording that shit, let alone paying an overall subscription for quicker lines and somehow also individual extra charges per ride to get on those rides in less than three hours.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago

Re:costs, costs always go up. But relative costs are still crazy worse.

[–] [email protected] 63 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 months ago (4 children)

I mean, not anytime soon, but hopefully eventually.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Then you have until eventually to acquire a giant hand carved wardrobe to leave them.

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 2 months ago (2 children)

You mean one portal to hell vs one support call line to Sweden.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The Lion, the Witch, and the SMÅGÖRA

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I've actually never found a name of an IKEA product to be fake. They can be obscure, odd, and some would normally be split. But never truly fake. Though, FEJKA does mean "to fake". Which is an honest name for a series of fake plants.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 months ago (6 children)

Yeah, don't know what that "fake" is all about. It's a Swedish company that gives Swedish names to their product lines and actually seems to care about maintaining their reputation for good design instead of enshitification so they can gouge their loyal customers until they realize they shouldn't be loyal anymore.

Though I do wonder why I don't mind IKEA's Swedish product names but find Starbucks' use of Italian words for cup sizes to be insufferable...

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 months ago

Starbucks isn't Italian, for one.

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 2 months ago

The only thing my kids will inherit from me is ADHD.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 2 months ago (1 children)

That totally leads to Narnia

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago (7 children)

Where does the IKEA one lead?

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 months ago

The Wall-E world

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago

A Target in Modesto

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 2 months ago (11 children)

My father has reached an age where money means very little to him and his interest in "proper" furniture has skyrocketed. He will go out and buy a simple table for $3k-5k and tell me how the same model was bought for the American embassy in year x, or send me links to matching chairs by designer y.

I've yet to see a piece of furniture that's worth twice the price of what you can find on IKEA. A table needs to be water/stain resistant and that's about that. /rant

[–] [email protected] 32 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I'm more interested in avoiding plastic as much as I can. Having plastic infused pressed sawdust wrapped in plastic veneer is very unappealing to me.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

My grandfather was a high-end carpenter and furniture maker. He made some really nice cabinets and tables. He taught my dad all about both how to determine good quality furniture and how to make it. But my dad was not a carpenter, so quite a lot of the latter information was lost on him. What he did remember he (my dad) relayed to me. But I have only retained parts of what he relayed. Determining good vs bad quality furniture though? I remember most of that.

So now when I am looking at a new piece of furniture I can see whether it's well or badly made. And let me tell you, the furniture made today is absolute shite quality unless you want to pay a lot for it. If you just want something for the next few years that's fine. But if you want something to last (especially something that lasts the onslaught of abuse kids put it through), that's a problem. But can I made such furniture? Hell no! All I can do is see the poor quality of most modern furniture and lament it. It's a bit of a shit situation to be in, honestly.

That said, there's still some really older good stuff available at second hand and thrift stores, and at estate sales. And it's usually available for a good price.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The one on the left took 5 months to make by monks in Tibet slave camps brought to you by China. The one on the right was made in 437.23 seconds by a Tormak 7000 series CNC discombobulizer 2000.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 months ago

Reminds me of one of my favourite lines from Lock Stock:

These people don't have any money, they can't even afford new furniture!

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 months ago

Enjoy your affordable Swedish crap!

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 months ago (10 children)

I'm going to take a different view of this for people to consider:

My dad collected a lot of stuff. He wasn't a hoarder because most of the stuff had value, but he had so many collections: Coins, stamps, cigarette cards, movie posters, movie memorabilia, LPs, CDs, DVDs, so many other things.

When he died, I had to deal with it. All of it. And I am not a material goods sort of person overall, so I didn't want most of it. It took me years to sell off what I could. We couldn't even sell off most of the DVDs, LPs and CDs. They ended up either given to friends or to thrift stores. I'm still dealing with it even though he died in 2016. Who wants a life-sized ceramic bust of Charlie Chaplin (dog for scale)?

Did I make money from selling it off? Absolutely. It even helped when we needed some money. But it really wasn't worth the near-decade of stress I've had to go through to deal with this stuff and there really is no end in sight.

And now my mom is in her 80s and she has a house full of antique furniture like this which, again, I have no interest in (and no room for at this point).

Do not make your kids deal with this stuff unless they really want to. I said I would deal with it because my mom is just not good at this stuff and my brother lives too far away, but if I would do it again, I would either hire someone to deal with it all for a percentage and wash my hands of the whole thing or tell my dad that he needs to sell it off before he dies.

Instead of having a few items from my dad to really treasure, I ended up with a bunch of shit I didn't want to deal with and it makes the stuff I do want to keep, most of which wouldn't be worth a huge amount anyway, have much less sentimental value to me.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 months ago

They left you the closet to Narnia?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yeah but does the one on the left fit a rack server? I think not!

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago

one is significantly 1) more useful and 2) does not cost $4000 to move next time the shitty apartment you’re renting gets sold to be “renovated” into luxury (cardboard) condos.

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