this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2024
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Sure. A lot has rotted away, but much modern furniture is designed with so much MDF and other manufactured wood products that aren't resilient in the least. Moisture will destroy them, they take gashes super easy, and are soft wood.
I'd think the furniture our grandparents had would be more likely to have been solid wood.
That's not to say there aren't solid hardwood pieces being made today. But they are extremely expensive and are competing in a space with poor regulation of descriptions and all the flat pack Chinese imported stuff thats literally 10% of the price of good furniture that will last.
Solid hardwood furniture is a luxury.
I saw a headline that Ikea was considering a rental program because there's a cultural understanding that flat packed* furniture especially that made of veneered chipboard is disposable.
And yeah at least Ikea puts in some effort to make their furniture decent. Much of what you find at retailers is just chip board shit, bookcases that'll collapse under the weight of actual books, etc.
My strategy is, I'm a woodworker. I'm slowly replacing anything cheap and crap in my life with oak, cherry and walnut.
*had to correct myself from saying flatpak there, Linux has me trained.
I just moved into a house a couple years ago. While I'm mostly getting used furniture, I'm slowly looking into making my own and learning to repair what's out there.
I'm really bad at staining or painting. I never feel like what I do comes out even.
Stain can be really difficult, and the real shit of it is cheap woods like pine, poplar and birch that you'd likely want to stain are the worst at it, they tend to come out blotchy. My recommendation is maybe add some tint to the top coat to steer the color in a direction you want but generally pick a wood that is the color you want already.
Ikea has a lot of chip board furniture but they also have some decent solid wood furniture for a good price.
It's usually pine but still for the price it's a decent quality furniture that could last for a good time in good condition.
I would agree that using solid wood is a step up from veneered particle board in terms of longevity and durability. But they still use the same joinery system, those pin-and-latch things plus unglued dowels as alignment pins. These do offer the ability to disassemble the furniture in the future but every time you lean on, bump into, or otherwise apply a racking load to the piece, all that force is going to get transferred to the tiny amount of wood fiber surrounding those screw threads holding those latch pins in place, and eventually they'll start to loosen. They're still not as solid as a good old fashioned glued mortise and tenon, dado or dovetail joint.
I bought a modern well made dresser from some exotic wood, cost me roughly €900 amd it got damaged after moving but i haven't taken the time to repair it as it's only visual.
That thing is solid af, it has more hidden supports than it needs. I could probably park a car on top and it would withstand the weight. (Obv. i haven't tested that lol)
We went shopping for a tv cabinet and 99% turned out to be particle board but they still had the audacity to charge between €1200 and €1800 euro's.
Yea. It's really bad looking for something online. They may be under the "solid wood" category for material, but they still are 90% particle board.
I prefer spending extra knowing that I'll have something for decades and not have to replace it in a year or two. Fortunately for me, about 80% of my homes furniture is from Habitat for Humanity. They are fantastic for having a good selection of quality stuff for cheap. Some might need a little repair, but they tend to only accept decent stuff in the first place.
Balsa is hardwood Yew is softwood
Yew is 16x stronger