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How Ikea's Billy bookcase took over the world

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Re: How Ikea's Billy bookcase took over the world

#201

Post by bigtex »

I just wanted to chime in and say I hate buying furniture from Ikea. I think they have have a few decent items, and the real wood bookcases looks sturdy but most of their stuff is laminated MDF. I have a real wood changing table that they unfortunately discontinued years ago that has held up well over the years, except for the drawer rails. Ikea doesn't sell replacement parts for it and it is a custom size, so can't go to Home Depot to find a replacement. Thankfully I was able to find a site that seems to specialize in Ikea replacement parts and it was almost an exact fit. I only plan on buying used furniture or making my own in the future.

I was in the market for a large dining room table and looked at their offerings, and with the table and benches was over $600. I went to Craigslist and there were several wood workers who could make you a farmhouse table out of quality, furniture grade hardwod for that price. Ended up fixing the antique dining room table I broke during the big move and using that instead.

Re: How Ikea's Billy bookcase took over the world

#202

Post by masklinn »

gdulli wrote: post #199
johncoltrane wrote: post #104

- Anecdote - A while ago, a coworker was excited to move to another flat but there was a little something that was going to be complicated: books. He and his girlfriend were both avid readers and their two already impressive collections fused years ago into a massive beast. As we were discussing the "problem", I asked him for a ballpark estimation of the number of books to move, expecting something like "1000 books",…

He might have to provide more info. When I looked up Billy to find out what it is I found over a dozen variants/sizes: http://www.ikea.com/us/en/search/?query=BILLY+Bookcase I don't understand if the article is talking about a specific one or the whole product line, and what makes one or the other special. I don't see anything notable, other than the impressive simplicity and packing innovation that applies to Ikea p…

> He might have to provide more info. When I looked up Billy to find out what it is I found over a dozen variants/sizes: http://www.ikea.com/us/en/search/?query=BILLY+Bookcase

http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/00263850/ is the one most people mean when they talk about "a billy": a neutral person-tall thin enough to be flexible bookcase.

> Personally, I love these and have a few: http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/30275861/#/102758....

I also like Kallax, not the 4x4 or 5x5 though (too inflexible imo) but I've got multiple 2x4, 1x4 and 2x2.

Re: How Ikea's Billy bookcase took over the world

#204

Post by alanfalcon »

spaceisballer wrote: post #160
DannyBee wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. Let's look at some of the major pieces of furniture people have: Tables, cabinets, chairs. It's the same story with all of them. Let's start with cabinets. A bit of cheating since most people don't consider it furniture, but worth talking about. Most people want white or colored cabinets. The "natural wood" look is mostly out of style these days, due to mass over-production of red-oak cabinets (and thank god. t…

Thanks for your writeup, I'm really getting sick of the cheap stuff that is out there. IKEA has served it's purpose for me, and to be honest a bunch of pieces have survived multiple moves but they are now usually stuck in closets or in my kid's rooms. Anyway I'm rambling on because I'm curious if there are any decent places to buy furniture nowadays, a good table for instance? I feel like when I got dragged around lo…

The question is, who is the Gomer Bolstrood[1] of our world?

[1] Of Cryptonomicon/System of the World Fame

Re: How Ikea's Billy bookcase took over the world

#205

Post by porx »

giarc wrote: post #33
pinewurst wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a significant part of that interval, Swedish taxes were in excess of 100% for very high earners. Can one blame him?

How is that possible? EDIT - This site shows that it peaked at 61%. http://www.tradingeconomics.com/sweden/personal-income-tax-r...

It's possible if the government plays around with the tax system too much while being composed of idiots who don't understand basic math or don't understand why tax rates over 100% are bad.

As an example, former Croatian prime minister Jadranka Kosor introduced a new tax according to which if your after-tax income was above a certain limit, you had to pay an additional 4% of that income as tax. Of course this resulted in >100% marginal tax rates.

I assume Sweden had a similar situation, where it wasn't actually a 102% tax rate, but a combination of multiple different taxes that resulted in an effective tax rate over 100%. The people who created those taxes either didn't care or were simply too stupid to notice the problem.

Re: How Ikea's Billy bookcase took over the world

#206

Post by smcl »

vidanay wrote: post #181
yoz-y wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun factoid. Staff of Slovak and Slovenian embassies meet each month to exchange wrongly addressed mail. http://www.slovak-republic.org/slovenia/#politicians

I have heard something similar about Austria and Australia

There's a lot of t-shirts sold in Vienna tourist shops with kangaroos on it - they seem to have embraced it :)

Re: How Ikea's Billy bookcase took over the world

#207

Post by garethsprice »

spaceisballer wrote: post #160
DannyBee wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. Let's look at some of the major pieces of furniture people have: Tables, cabinets, chairs. It's the same story with all of them. Let's start with cabinets. A bit of cheating since most people don't consider it furniture, but worth talking about. Most people want white or colored cabinets. The "natural wood" look is mostly out of style these days, due to mass over-production of red-oak cabinets (and thank god. t…

Thanks for your writeup, I'm really getting sick of the cheap stuff that is out there. IKEA has served it's purpose for me, and to be honest a bunch of pieces have survived multiple moves but they are now usually stuck in closets or in my kid's rooms. Anyway I'm rambling on because I'm curious if there are any decent places to buy furniture nowadays, a good table for instance? I feel like when I got dragged around lo…

Buy vintage from Craigslist, AptDeco, estate sales, etc. The stuff that's lasted is usually of good quality, and even high-end/designer vintage that will last a lifetime can cost less than buying new cheaply made furniture from chain stores.

The only exceptions for me are couches (nobody figured out how to make a comfortable couch until c.1980) and mattresses.

Re: How Ikea's Billy bookcase took over the world

#208

Post by lnanek2 »

Strange, I don't even known anyone who likes Billy. My wife and all her late 20s age friends all prefer kallax: http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/S99017186/

If you want to use it as a bookshelf, it works fine. If you want to buy the little cloth cube drawers it works good as a dresser or for storage. If you want a bed side stand you get 2 cubes tall, if you want a shelf you get 4.

Billy just seems kind of weird and irregular with the varying widths. I wouldn't want one either.

Re: How Ikea's Billy bookcase took over the world

#209

Post by Gravityloss »

bane wrote: post #150

I don't buy much IKEA furniture, very little of it survives even a single move, and for the price you can find plenty of furniture that does. So it ends up not being a great investment, except for a few very specific, highly optimized pieces. I have 6 Billys and my parents have something like 10. When I worked at a small startup and needed to fit out some field offices, I bought two things from the store, a Galant de…

The Galant desks are not sturdy. I would not dare to stand on one. First of all, if you use the telescoping legs, the locking mechanism is plastic IIRC and can't take a lot of load. But even just the actual desk surface: I think it's a sandwich of paper honeycomb with a very thin veneer and bends a lot even when someone's just sitting on it. It would probably just break in half if you stood on it.

It is light so that's a plus.

Re: How Ikea's Billy bookcase took over the world

#210

Post by mortenjorck »

ashark wrote: post #178
Symbiote wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have too much Ikea furniture because, after moving to Denmark, it was the easiest way to buy everything I needed in just a couple of trips. My table seems to be good quality, but the sofa and bed are disappointing. I didn't like any of the coffee tables (sofaborde) so I have the 299kr "Lack" until I find something better. It was difficult to find a shop selling better furniture than Ikea, except for the designer fu…

> It was difficult to find a shop selling better furniture than Ikea, except for the designer furniture stores in the centre of Copenhagen -- and I'm not ready to spend over 5000kr on a concrete-topped table. Same in the US. The options are: Ikea, Ikea knockoffs that're worse but somehow more expensive, tacky, bulky furniture that's poorly made and ~2x Ikea's prices, and then the high end that starts around 5x the pr…

A perceptive assessment. You've got Ikea, which is generally quite tasteful, and then you have the likes of Target furniture, which is also tasteful yet somehow makes even the lowest-tier Ikea pieces seem rock-solid in comparison. You can step up to Art Van and get agonizingly milquetoast design for about 1.5x Ikea prices, or fiddly, baroque Arhaus for 2x.

Then you jump up to the likes of Restoration Hardware, in that 4-5x Ikea range, with the real vintage aesthetics Arhaus is hamfistedly aping, and after that, the ironically-named Design Within Reach which matches Ikea's minimalism with maximum durability at what seems like 10x Ikea prices.

I would say the one thing you've missed is Crate & Barrel, which is in maybe a 2-3x Ikea range and tends to have very tasteful design along with across-the-board durability.

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