Because that 2 lifetimes table doesnt cost $800 thats what grandma paid for it in the 50s when buying a 4 bedroom house for $30,000 and working at the mill for 50 years was normal.
It also weighs 3 tons and given that you live in a shitty 1 bedroom apartment and have to move every 6 months to an even smaller shoebox that costs an increasing % of your income every damn time, Its probably for the best that your shit is disposable.
Everyone should get into woodworking, because then you can just make your own and it'll be twice as expensive and shittier than IKEA's version.
You had me in the first half...
Have you seen the price of finished wood these days. It'll probably be cheaper (although possibly more fatal) to buy a forest, cut your own trees down and build your own sawmill.
Seize the means, comrade!
I built a shoe rack during the pandemic. It actually turned out great, it's way better than something from IKEA. It was indeed 2-3x the cost of an equivalent thing from IKEA if you consider all the tools and stuff I had to buy though.
Never mind the space, tools and time required anyway
Most of which aren't really compatible with living in a city, even if you're in a house and not an apartment. We needed an entire garage stall for my husband's tools, which significantly affected what houses we could buy and how close to the city center we could live. It's a lifestyle choice, not something you just pick up on a whim.
Yep Anon never went furnishing shopping. $800 will get you a large wardrobe at IKEA. Anything equivalent will be far more than double the cost if you want it made from real wood and new.
All IKEA furniture I've bought has lasted a long time, but the meme is wrong, the reason it even exists is you can't buy better quality furniture for the same price, at least not by very much, it will cost a lot more if you want amazing quality.
Agreed, yet to find any ikea (or any non-ikea being fair) fail to hold whatever items i put into them... Sounds like you (OP, not person i am replying to), might ve storing something strange in them to fail often enough to complain about ALL ikea furniture...
Flat pack furniture traditionally had the relationship for being crap, in particular for missing pieces like a screw here or there, but when Ikea came along they did things properly. That was the reason they got so popular, they were so much better than the competition, and they forced others to up their game. I think they were the first to actually include extra screws, to cover the occassions when they weren't there, but these days their quality assurance is so good they just include the exact right amount every time.
They also have a little depot that you can go to to get extra screws and bits of wooden dowel and stuff.
You can go in tell them you need a type 4 screw from set 10.34.82.14 and they go oh yes that's a Peürïng, and give you it.
It absolutely does not cost the same price as the properly made alternative. Noooo way.
Flat pack stuff like that is way, way cheaper, thus why people buy it.
Also, you can bring home a full armoire in a hatchback. Real wood furniture is large and heavy, and requires specialized equipment to get it up to an apartment.
Having antique furniture is like owning an upright piano. It probably has sentimental value, and will outlive humanity with minimal maintenance, but not everyone has the space for it, and when it comes time to relocate it, you realize why furniture went flatpack.
I make and restore wood furniture. I have taken plenty of “all wood” furniture apart, repaired it, or just salvaged whatever actual wood scraps I could find.
Whatever idiot wrote this has no idea how expensive true wood furniture is. There is hardly ANY actual wood furniture in the market, PERIOD. You think it’s wood, but it’s veneered ply or fiberboard. That is the state of the entire industry, not just IKEA. This is a simple fact of life in a world that has already been heavily deforested even before all 8 BILLION PEOPLE currently living were born. Wood is precious. You also don’t need solid wood for your fucking nightstand. So maybe you should buy a nightstand made out of the particleboard that is waste product from milling lumber for other uses, like construction. That’s called using everything, wasting nothing. It’s sustainable.
There is nothing wrong with IKEA furniture for most people’s everyday needs. And you are not going to get a 150-year all wood piece for the same price. LOL fuck no. When you are in your 40s and have made it big time you can go to a craft furniture maker and get a solid oak bedroom set. It will cost more than your first car did.
IKEA furniture does not fall apart in 3 years, either. I’m about to go get my pajamas out of the IKEA dresser I’ve had since 2001. It won’t last centuries like a real craftsman made wood dresser. But it’s not 3 year garbage either, and looks and works like the day I bought it, despite me using it daily for 22 years and moving it between at least 4 houses in that time.
IKEA furniture is good for what it is and very cheap. One of the reasons it’s cheap is that it is flat packed for efficient shipping. Assembly by the customer also saves cost. And seriously, if you can’t figure out the IKEA instructions, you must not be trying very hard.
For the same price
Lol
OP has clearly never purchased furniture
OP has clearly never priced out solid wood furniture. A single mission-style sofa--by which I mean something made using Gustav Stickley's plans--will typically retail for well over $3000 US. ...Such as this version--from the original Stickley company--that has an MSRP of >$9000
OPs whole shit is wrong, honestly. I have a house furnished on quite a lot of Ikea shit that's been going strong for 10ish years through multiple moves? Though I don't disagree that I'd rather have better materials like real wood that can be refinished and really can last a century, that is not happening for anywhere near Ikea prices.
Speak for yourself, I have multiple IKEA furniture that’s lasted me for 10 years. You just have to be careful and take care of your stuff.
The massive wood furniture that lasts two lifetimes is only as cheap as the IKEA counterpart if you do it all by yourself, in your own little woodshop, and only need to pay for glue, nails, hinges, and electricity. And still only of you Include felling and milling the trees on your own.
Some years ago, I wanted one wall of the living room done with a custom-made, wall filling book shelf. Estimated cost by the carpenter: 7000. I paid about 3000 for IKEA furniture and other materials and did two walls of shelves instead of just one, suspended the ceiling, ran a ton of wires and redid the whole living room electrical and communication infrastructure. Yes, all that for half the price quoted by the carpenter. Guess what? None of the furniture has broken down so far. And I don't expect it to.
I actually like putting the flat packs together. It's like Lego for adults.
Sue me.
They don’t use text in the instructions, just pictures. This lets them print the same instructions book for all the hundred countries they sell in. But it can make assembly just a little bit more tricky. This is the only even moderately challenging part, but like you say it’s usually fun.
In my experience, it's a choice between decent Ikea shelves that don't sag after a few years of use and super shitty Walmart furniture that falls apart in about 6 months.
Aside from the price of good quality wooden furniture, it's heavy as hell which is rough when you're a renter and moving every few years. There's also a lot of wooden furniture, old or new, is just as poorly constructed with peeling veneer and failing staples. Not everyone has the time, money, or space to fix that up.
And all that being said, Ikea isn't really that expensive for what it is. Their soft furnishings and decorative items seem overpriced, but their storage products (mostly what I get from them) are pretty decently priced. Yeah I've had my issues with missing parts and shitty customer service, but all in all my experience has been positive enough to keep going back.
I still want to get a couple really nice, high quality items, but I'm not going to break the bank every time I need a bookshelf.
My IKEA wardrobe survived 3 moves and 10 years so far and it's almost a good as new
In the UK before Ikea, it was MFI (colloquially known as 'Made For Idiots') that was even lower quality chipboard horrible furniture.
Yes, Ikea isnt some handcrafted solid wood furniture but until most people can afford that stuff, it will do.
Yeah what's with this idea that solid wood furniture costs the same as IKEA's equivalent. That's just not true. If it was no one would buy IKEA furniture so it's obviously not true.
Mr green text is a lying git.
... What? I have Ikea furniture that's lasted 10+ years, through 5+ moves including disassembly and reassembly every time. Nothing took more than 20 minutes to assemble, and I definitely believe this furniture can outlive me.
Man I dunno about that. IKEA furniture lasts forever. I still have furniture that I bought from them decades ago.
Flat pack stuff has been around much longer then IKEA. The real wood stuff was great, but heavy and inconvenient to transport. That's why the flat pack stuff caught on so fast.
I can spend a good deal of time criticizing Ikea but on one thing I can't: their furniture is incredibly easy to copy and upgrade into a better version with minimal effort.
I took the time to break down, piece by piece, in a crazy exercise of reverse engineering, a love seat, to understand how they had designed and put together the thing.
After that, I sat to run the "numbers" and realised I could make it cheaper, sturdier and add storage room to it, with minimal modifications to the basic plan.
It was very interesting to discover.
I mean sure but then it sounds like you’re already a woodworker with the proper tools. Most people aren’t that.
You don't have to pay for R&D, warehousing, shipping, marketing, etc.
The only thing you don't get is bulk rates on the parts. But the parts themselves are cheap.
I’ve got an Ikea couch I bought fifteen years ago that’s made a move across the US three times. I have two kids in their teens. The couch is still in good shape. I also have an entertainment center/TV stand that I bought from them 10 years ago from Ikea that’s in great shape.
The couch cost me $250, the TV stand cost me $50.
The myth of crappy Ikea furniture is overblown.
It, like most things, wasn’t expensive. You used to have to pay a shit ton for anything that wasn’t custom made. Then Ikea came along and created massive competition and variety for the furniture market. Yes, now other brands are better, but that’s because they had to compete with Ikea
As someone that worked in a cabinet shop for years, all mass produced furniture is going to be basically the same quality as what you buy from IKEA. It just feels cheap when you do it yourself.
Ikea is good at standardized parts and dimensions, you can often swap pieces around and do more stuff with modularity. Also they're pretty easy to fix when broken. A reinforcing bracket here, an extra screw there, attach it to the studs, there are options.
Not Ikea specific, but proper wood furniture only really makes sense if you're staying somewhere long term, have your own house, etc. If you have to move every couple of years for work, because rent is getting too expensive, etc etc, solid wood furniture is really inconvenient and expensive to transport.
You'll notice most responses in this thread are saying "5+ years ago, 10+ years ago, 15+ years ago" but if you check out IKEA prices and quality post-Romanian wood poaching bust, and post-Ukraine/Russia war, it's like night and day.
A couch in 2021 was $799 USD for a 3 piece sectional, now it's $1599 USD, and their entire "Solid Wood" search category has been replaced by "Wood + Particle Board + Veneer / Wood-like finish", as their solid wood category was removed. Now you have to discern every piece by eye and material quality.
Most of the furniture in my home is from IKEA, but imo it's gone dramatically downhill and will probably continue to do so.