Furnishings

[billroper]

It is at moments like this that I miss the late heyday of unfinished pine furniture.

Katie has been promised that she can move into the guest bedroom. As part of this, we will be buying her a small chest of drawers and a small desk.

These items seem to come in two varieties: cheap junk and ungodly expensive.

I keep hoping to Google my way to a happy medium, but no luck so far.

I'm also missing Classic Oak Designs right now too...

Comments

[jennlk]

We've bought a reasonable selection of furniture from Home Decorators.com. They've gone a bit Martha Stewart-y in the last few years, but they do have basic wood furniture. It's flat-pack, but solid wood for the most part (sometimes the back panel is hardboard, but that's often a good thing -- lighter and more stable in changing environments than luaun, and a step up from cardboard). I will say that we haven't bought any dressers from them, so I have no idea how good those are.

The most recent furniture I've bought has been from Overstock.com. There's an over-abundance of choices there, but the search function is pretty good.

If you don't mind used, try a consignment shop or ReStore -- the problem with those is that you never know what they'll have, or how long it'll be there.

Just about anything new (unless it's MDF) will smell like container ship and/or chinese oil finish for a few months.

SR's college desk and dresser came from IKEA. The dresser drawer bottoms bowed after a couple of summers in the humidity of mid-Michigan, but we flipped the bottoms and lined them and it's still working fine in the guest nook.

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

I haven't shopped for furniture in a long time, but when I did the discount places had cheap junk and the regular brand name places had expensive junk. But some of the stuff mixed in with the cheap junk was actually decent (and still cheap). Then there was a boutique place, that was not cheap but pretty good, where I got a few things because I needed them, they were nice, and I could afford it.

If you have time, I would look around in the scary super discount places and see if they have any gems hidden in the junk.

[jhayman.livejournal.com]

Ikea??

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Find a big antique flea market. Way better made than today's stuff, and not actually collectable antique prices.

K.