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Why are most sofas so bad?

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Re: Why are most sofas so bad?

#171

Post by quartesixte »

baby wrote: post #46
rsynnott wrote: post #34

I hear this a lot, but my fairly inexpensive IKEA sofa is about eight years old with no problems at all so far. EDIT: Actually, in general I've found that my IKEA furniture has done pretty well (basically everything in the house is IKEA) with the sole exception of a "Lack" coffee table, whose surface is kinda disintegrating after 8 years (I think it's basically made of cardboard with a veneer...). The name should per…

For some reason people hate IKEA in the US. Was trying to sell a standing desk I bought there for 750$ and nobody wanted it. Ended up selling it for 150$. I also had a Jarvis and it was gone in an instant, even though the IKEA one was much much better. I Often hear people saying that IKEA furnitures don’t travel well or don’t last long. It’s like we’re not going to the same IKEA.

Same here — I have an Ikea bedframe that’s nearly a 2 decades old at this point and has moved four times. An office chair lasted me 7 years. Bookcases over a decade old.

I grew up in a nearly all Ikea household, and it’s only later in life I have discovered their reputation.

Am I missing something?

Re: Why are most sofas so bad?

#172

Post by gumby »

vundercind wrote: post #27
gumby wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure this is really sofa-related, but... > I've been pretty stunned during my travels to find that it's really only Americans who obsessively talk about or reference TV shows and movies in their small talk. It's a slight exaggeration, but yeah. I've really started noticing it on HN and some news-ish sites too, over the past couple of years: where a book would normally be used as a reference point, now a film…

Adult Americans read so few books per year, on average, that it’s barely an exaggeration to assert that we don’t read books at all. And most of what we do read is romance novels or juvenile fiction. Been like that for a while.

I tried to look this up but the numbers on different sites were all over the place.

Re: Why are most sofas so bad?

#173

Post by askvictor »

koyote wrote: post #132
nytesky wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$750 for an IKEA desk is crazy money. Does it have hydraulics to raise and lower the desk? But depreciation on IKEA is huge because while it can last a long time within a household, it moves very poorly so if it has been moved or reassembled once or twice, it’s likely near end of life. But hard to evaluate that, it’s not like it has an odometer — hence value for used it very low.

Those desks do have hydraulics: https://www.ikea.com/au/en/p/bekant-desk-sit-stand-white-s09... Ikea's goods usually come in different price ranges with the most expensive often not being 'cheap' but 'cheap given the quality'. That being said, often their cheapest stuff is the best value for money because it's so cheap that it lasting more than a year would be a miracle (but they usually do!).

> Those desks do have hydraulics:

Well, an electric motor

Re: Why are most sofas so bad?

#174

Post by paholg »

_xerces_ wrote: post #152
tptacek wrote: post #149

This article echoes something I've learned since we moved into a larger house this past summer: don't buy new furniture.† We bought very nice leather couches a few years back (we have dogs, leather is the only option) and paid dearly for them. And they're great. (We looked carefully at the construction details before buying.) This summer, we had some rooms we cared a lot about and others we just needed to fill in som…

Are you not worried about bedbugs buying furniture off Facebook?

I think bedbugs are a regional problem.

Re: Why are most sofas so bad?

#175

Post by ghaff »

scoofy wrote: post #163
al_borland wrote: post #158

When I moved to an area for work I wasn’t planning to live long-term I ended up buying the cheapest sofa in the store. I think it was around $270. After a prolonged illness I grew more and more displeased with it, to the point that I went and bought a better one after I was better. I bought from a place that advertised the inside of the sofa more than the outside. It was all about the build quality and how long it wo…

I've been wanting to buy nice furniture for a very long time... unfortunately the housing crisis has prevented my from ever having a sense of permanence. If I had known I'd live in my last place for nearly a decade I would have purchased nice things, but as it stands, until I have a mortgage of my own, I refuse to spend good money on something I may need to replace next year.

Sofas, perhaps especially, are pretty hard to fit for non built-in furniture. I bought a used sofa off my brother. (Ironically, their replacements ended up being terrible because they lasted about a year with their dogs.)

I was also very lucky though. I thought I could configure the sectional in a couple different ways. Turned out I rolled the dice the right way because I couldn't. And only discovered this after many months because I was on crutches at the time and couldn't do anything about the sofa sitting in my garage.

Re: Why are most sofas so bad?

#176

Post by askvictor »

adaml_623 wrote: post #151
resource_waste wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in 2012 I furnished a home with Ikea furniture. Yes I hate them. You'd spend $60 on a book case and spend the next 4 hours trying to understand what the instructions mean and how to build it. You also needed a partner to hold corners together. Now today, the furniture instructions are better and instead 16 different weird fastener, there are 8. Its a frustration thing. Ikea didn't really do anything but be low c…

I love IKEA instructions and construction. I honestly get a buzz from the puzzle. If I have to construct more than one of an item then I'll compete with myself on speed and efficiency.

It's basically Lego for adults (which was more exciting until Lego pushed its market into the adult demographic).

Which is actually part of Ikea's brand identity. When you put it together yourself, you feel closer to the furniture than if someone just plonked it at your house. OTOH, if you hate that kind of thing, you'll never go back, but I guess they have an assembly service these days.

Re: Why are most sofas so bad?

#177

Post by echelon »

verticalscaler wrote: post #164
_xerces_ wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you not worried about bedbugs buying furniture off Facebook?

Or ghosts? I mean if the house it comes from is haunted maybe an evil spirit will migrate with it. You never know.

I got pesky moths from getting something used once.

It isn't worth the hassle.

Re: Why are most sofas so bad?

#178

Post by askvictor »

illiac786 wrote: post #101

The cookie popup of this site is some dark design to behold, I have to say. You need to disable every single "goal" one by one - once you have figured out this is the least worst option. You can otherwise disable the 1400 partners one by one. This is completely illegal in Europe and I think it's illegal to serve this UI to an EU IP, even for non-EU websites. Anyway, who cares, it's almost funny what lengths they go t…

Didn't notice a thing (using ublock origin with easylist->cookie notices)

Re: Why are most sofas so bad?

#179

Post by levocardia »

>There are absolutely sturdy, beautifully made sofas constructed in the United States. There are custom designer pieces made here or in France or Italy or Scandinavia, which tend to be prohibitively expensive for the masses. But low- and mid-priced sofas are a relatively new phenomenon, and, frankly, they often suck.

But do they suck less than not having a sofa at all? I am a several-time-over beneficiary of cheap made-in-southeast-asia sofas. Shipped in a fridge-sized box right to my doorstep, assembled (by me) in ~15min, and perfectly serviceable. Is it up to the same quality level as a $5000 made-in-USA solid wood hand-woven twine-joinery (etc etc) masterpiece? No, but I couldn't have afforded that kind of sofa. And it didn't have to be hand-packed by a furniture transportation expert, and it didn't weigh 800 lbs.

I don't really see the "loser" here exactly - broke grad students, college kids, people in rural areas, and starving artists win; workers in developing countries win (the furniture factory sure beats the rice paddies); Instagram-sofa tech bros win. And gilded solid wood sofa makers can always market to the rich, who can afford to spend several months' worth of my rent cost on a piece of furniture.

Re: Why are most sofas so bad?

#180

Post by swader999 »

baby wrote: post #46
rsynnott wrote: post #34

I hear this a lot, but my fairly inexpensive IKEA sofa is about eight years old with no problems at all so far. EDIT: Actually, in general I've found that my IKEA furniture has done pretty well (basically everything in the house is IKEA) with the sole exception of a "Lack" coffee table, whose surface is kinda disintegrating after 8 years (I think it's basically made of cardboard with a veneer...). The name should per…

For some reason people hate IKEA in the US. Was trying to sell a standing desk I bought there for 750$ and nobody wanted it. Ended up selling it for 150$. I also had a Jarvis and it was gone in an instant, even though the IKEA one was much much better. I Often hear people saying that IKEA furnitures don’t travel well or don’t last long. It’s like we’re not going to the same IKEA.

I just don't like walking through their ENTIRE store.
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