Well, it has been several years and while our furniture is old, it is leather and still in decent shape.

My wife drags me to one store this evening and we will hit two more tomorrow.

Really? I would rather chew on light bulbs, take a skillet to the head, or just take a beatin'.

It just is not that important to me.

Rant off.

Timely rant! I have an older bed that was good quality but now needs replaced. I went to the local Ashley Furniture. Lots of sales people wandering around that ignored me. I looked at the beds. When I moved off the pretty (and distracting) display linen to look at the actual bed, I found they were all cheap foreign made crap with exorbitant prices.
Bad experience.
Then two days later, Ashley delivered a brand new sofa to my neighbor. And left it sitting on the sidewalk outside his door and drove off.
Guess I will figure out how to fix my old bed!

^^^^^ My king size bed looks super nice. Unfortunately it is made of cheap assed flimsy wood. I'm sure it was made to be sold at a particular price point by the importer. It looks really nice but the wood is just soft and crappy.

Cheap assed wood broke on one of the corners. Cheap assed wood is too weak, not strong, to repair.

It was just the right height to shove some ammo cans under that corner. The ammo cans are far more sturdy that that POS bed.
.

quote:

Originally posted by OKCGene:


It was just the right height to shove some ammo cans under that corner
.

Don't make fun of ammo csn's, or old books. Together they can be used to shim up almost anything. And they're strong.

Years ago my wife wanted a new sofa. After number of stops I started counting.
Fifty-seven (57) stops. Some stores got visited multiple times. Yes, she found a sofa she liked. At the first store we visited.
To this day I’ll say “Sofa store” and our kids will scream. Now I send her out and then I’ll come for the final choice.

It's like being the ham sandwich in the middle of a group of hobos. You are the blood and they are the blood sucking mosquitos.


Painful no matter who the buyer is.

This chore is way up there on the “yep, the divorce was worth it” scale.
And re-painting rooms every 3 years.

May be hard to have the spouse agree, but lot’s of furniture fairly cheap on fakebook marketplace.

I hear grousing at times, then it subsides. I bought our kitchen table used in 1987. I agree, don’t care to look at high priced, cheaply made furniture.

I was once asked by the staff (and NOT politely, I might add...) to leave a furniture store after looking at a piece of furniture (I don't recall what, exactly) and commenting that I wouldn't build a dog house out of that crap.

This was NOT a bargain-priced piece and yet it was made out of vinyl veneer over particle board.

I think I'd tackle it differently:
1: Find out which furniture makers are US-based with US manufacturing.
2: Find out which furniture stores near me carry those brands.
3: Then start shopping.

I've got quite a mix of good old stuff, good really old stuff, cheap crappy stuff, and (more recently) good, solid, American-built stuff.

I'll offer Vaughan Basset for a starting point.

We got a very solid entertainment center from Ashley years ago. I was surprised to get real wood at that price. Every time I’ve been dragged out furniture shopping I get snippy after the third store. I’ve also gotten to the point that when the wife looks at cheap crap I tell her we may as well buy the cheapest thing possible since most of it is made with the same low grade bullshit particle board.

Mrs. Flash is rare among women in that she doesn't make furniture shopping or any other shopping her life's work.

When she wanted a new couch and recliner a couple of years ago, she looked around at stuff on the net, then told me she wanted La-Z-Boy for both. We went to the store, tried out a number of different ones, made our selection and paid and were on our way inside an hour or so. That's how she always buys furniture.

We just had an estate sale. Our very good 13yo furniture ($15K LR set) was overlooked and nearly didn't sell. The customers just wanted nicnaks. Facebook marketplace is where the estate sales are listed. A Mexican family finally bought most of our furniture for less than a grand.

That might be worse than car shopping. I was shocked at how expensive furniture has become the last time we bought about a year ago.

$10k for a Leather sectional and two recliners, WTF.

I love my wife, especially since shes not a "shopper" like the first one...

Although put her in an art supply store (think Michaels or Hobby Lobby) and hope theres a bar next door for you to kill a couple hours

But she did just let me wander around an LGS (first time visit to this one) yesterday!

One thing I miss about Houston (in addition to an LGS and range on every corner virtually) is they had no end of affordable furniture stores of various levels of quality and price. My favorite was a place called Bi-Rite. They had some really cheap stuff but also some well made modern looking stuff (nice solid wood 7-piece queen sleigh bed set for $1100) I bought for the guest room in my house in TX.

Just ordered one of these after getting to check out a coworker’s. It was very well built and well designed- lots of options and flexibility.

https://www.lovesac.com/sactionals-learn-scroll

I can recall 4 rooms so far on this.

Found my home office desk online after looking briefly. IKEA of all places. All metal, multi-configurable. Due to little wood and mostly metal, 20 year purchase. Went to check it out in person, yes. Still in my office today and it’s probably 10 years old. Still looks ultra modern. IKEA actually produces some quality shit but it’s very hit and miss. And good pieces they sell, won’t sell for long.

Dining table, saw at West Elm, after looking online for a few hours. Stainless steel top on wood legs. Drove to see in person, bought on spot and loaded it up. Easily a 25 year or longer piece.

Living room sectional. Same deal. Looked online off an on for a few weeks. Finally located what I wanted at rooms to go. Went down there, checked it out for 5 minutes. Signed up for 0%. Done.

If you’re dragging around the city to a bunch of stores in 2021, you don’t know what in the fuck you are doing. It’s an online nation.