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Why are most sofas so bad?

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Re: Why are most sofas so bad?

#471

Post by nerdjon »

hammock wrote: post #221
btbuildem wrote: post #181

Twenty some years ago I used to work at a business that made and delivered sofas. They've got showrooms in key large cities in North America, fancy schmancy top end stuff. The factory was a real place; the frames were made of solid wood and plywood, there was a sewing floor and even one (incredibly kooky) person whose sole job was to stuff the pillows. This guy was in a little room full of feathers all day, and they'…

You can still get made in the USA sofas with real hardwood, not rubber wood, which is fine, or worse, soft pine or particleboard or OSB) North Carolina was and is the center of solid wood furniture), and they still cost several to many thousands of dollars, and they will still last 100+ years with a couple reupholsterings or so, but most furniture comes from Asia now and is sold for 10x less, and is not worth reuphol…

I used to live in North Carolina, and some of the outlet stores for furniture are insane. Still expensive but compared to what I would get anywhere else for the same price quite good. Hickory in particular with all of those chair statues everywhere.

I have long been thinking about the idea of saving up for a while and doing a big re-furnish trip down to North Carolina with a moving truck.

Re: Why are most sofas so bad?

#472

Post by malka »

gerdesj wrote: post #155
nerdponx wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As if it wasn't bad enough that most consumer goods have completely bifurcated into "junk" and "luxury", now it's hard to even tell which products fall into which category, because there is so much junk now being sold as luxury.

I recently visited Hong Kong. In a mall I spotted a shop called Sinéquanone (sic). It was flogging "French fashion", quite pricy "French fashion". Who knows, it might be French inspired. You can tell its authentic French thanks to the e acute and the trailing e! Sine qua non is Latin. To be fair, the quality did look pretty decent but marketing needs to try harder. Mind you that's not the daftest brand name or tradem…

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sin%C3%A9quanone

The brand actually existed.

Re: Why are most sofas so bad?

#473

Post by iamtheworstdev »

linsomniac wrote: post #325
hammock wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can still get made in the USA sofas with real hardwood, not rubber wood, which is fine, or worse, soft pine or particleboard or OSB) North Carolina was and is the center of solid wood furniture), and they still cost several to many thousands of dollars, and they will still last 100+ years with a couple reupholsterings or so, but most furniture comes from Asia now and is sold for 10x less, and is not worth reuphol…

>or worse, soft pine or particleboard or OSB Having done a lot of DIY projects over the last decade, I've really shifted my view of OSB. Originally I would lump it in with particleboard, but I've since drastically changed my view of it. Particleboard is, truly, junk. OSB and plywood are both pretty good products, and for some uses superior to hardwoods (dimensional stability, for example). High quality plywoods are a…

Agreed. The range on plywood is pretty drastic and most of us only use the bad stuff. I wonder how many of us with homes made in the last 20-30 years realize that most of our joists are engineered joists made of plywood (basically wooden I-beams).

Re: Why are most sofas so bad?

#474

Post by KptMarchewa »

al_borland wrote: post #168
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…

I avoided the LACK after seeing someone spill drink and watching it bubble up like paper. My coffee table is still from IKEA, but it’s metal. I’ve had it for 11 years now. It’s on wheels and some of them look like they’ve seen some stress over the years… and it’s been moved to 8 homes in those 11 years, which could have been the cause. But it still works great and I don’t know the the average person visiting my home…

Well, it is literally paper laid in a honeycomb pattern.

Re: Why are most sofas so bad?

#475

Post by coopierez »

caligula1989 wrote: post #452
arp242 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Few years ago I moved to another country and had to get rid of everything I had minus ~25kg. It's bloody hard to get rid of a lot of stuff. I had a great leather sofa, about 15-20 years old (inherited from my grandparents) still in great condition, but I couldn't get rid of it at any price and none of the charity shops took it because it was missing some fire hazard label (sigh...). Same with almost everything: I sol…

Once upon a time when moving countries people would pay for a shipping container... another unfortunate side effect of everything becoming shit - it's not even worth taking stuff with you.

I found it very freeing when I moved country to leave almost everything behind. It really helps put into perspective what is valuable and what you know you would miss, and to reduce dependence and attachment on possessions. I think it has helped me become generally more minimalist in my life too.

Re: Why are most sofas so bad?

#476

Post by tonyarkles »

api_or_ipa wrote: post #379
tonyarkles wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People are simply always getting rid of good stuff I suppose there’s an interesting survivorship thing going on here. A poorly-built couch probably won’t even last 10 years. And if it does, somehow, you’ll know as soon as you sit on it if it’s about to turn into dust based on the squeaking and general instability. If it still feels solid and you don’t sink into it so deep that you can’t stand up again there’s a dec…

I suppose furniture also follows the [Lindy Effect]( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect )

Thanks! I couldn’t remember the name of that!

Re: Why are most sofas so bad?

#477

Post by dahauns »

atombender wrote: post #113
HdS84 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in Germany quality has gone downhill. I still own some Billies made in 1995 or so by Ikea. Literally massive wood and damn good book shelves. The ones bought by me in 2008 or so very noticeably less well build but still ok. The ones we bought in 2018 or so are shit, especially the shelves are so thin that they begin to sag. In 2008 or so a friend of mine bought a "kallax" (another name then) and it was aweso…

KALLAX used to be EXPEDIT. Both were made from honeycombed cardboard (mostly air, as you say) covered with very thin sheets of painted MDF. Maybe there was a time EXPEDIT was more solid, but I had one in the 1990s, and it was just like this. You can drill the thin wood in IKEA furniture like this, but you have to reinforce it. IKEA has always had a mix of wobbly instacrap and solid stuff. I remember they made a short…

I have a lot to complain about their decline in quality (at least with IVAR they realized they've gone too far and reintroduced metal rails) - but don't diss my boy EXPEDIT/KALLAX. :)

IMO, it's one of their most brilliantly engineered pieces of furniture. Sure, it's engineered to be cheap - but definitely not cheaply engineered. The whole geometry etc. is designed around what is possible with the materials.

They are really low-priced, versatile, easy to move, and TBH, for veneered cardboard it has no right to still be this sturdy, especially the 2x4 and smaller variants - and as another poster has said, even the large ones, as long as you don't try to move them around with heavy stuff inside. Just be dilligent when assembling and see that the screws are tightened really well.

Re: Why are most sofas so bad?

#478

Post by KptMarchewa »

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…

>(we have dogs, leather is the only option)

Interesting, with cats it's exactly the opposite.

Re: Why are most sofas so bad?

#479

Post by maximus-decimus »

paholg wrote: post #174
_xerces_ wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you not worried about bedbugs buying furniture off Facebook?

I think bedbugs are a regional problem.

Just put the sofa in the dryer. But seriously, I wonder if there's some heat treatment possible. surely it should be possible and put the sofa in a giant plastic bag and heat the air inside or something.

Re: Why are most sofas so bad?

#480

Post by _heimdall »

linsomniac wrote: post #325
hammock wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can still get made in the USA sofas with real hardwood, not rubber wood, which is fine, or worse, soft pine or particleboard or OSB) North Carolina was and is the center of solid wood furniture), and they still cost several to many thousands of dollars, and they will still last 100+ years with a couple reupholsterings or so, but most furniture comes from Asia now and is sold for 10x less, and is not worth reuphol…

>or worse, soft pine or particleboard or OSB Having done a lot of DIY projects over the last decade, I've really shifted my view of OSB. Originally I would lump it in with particleboard, but I've since drastically changed my view of it. Particleboard is, truly, junk. OSB and plywood are both pretty good products, and for some uses superior to hardwoods (dimensional stability, for example). High quality plywoods are a…

The sheer amount of glue used in OSB and other manufactured sheet wood is pretty gross unfortunately. They are functionally useful for certain use cases, I just can't get myself to reach for it over real lumber and joinery.
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