Im leaving my grandkids a very cleanly optimized starter base in Factorio.
That’s very thoughtful.
That’s an amazing gift
Confirmation bias: all the shite furniture from 1800s has rotted to dust already
Edit for full disclosure: I’ve exclusively bought antique furniture. I’m basically a shill for big-auction
I think it’s survivorship bias, but yes
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.
Balsa is hardwood Yew is softwood
Yew is 16x stronger
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.
Also the one from their grandma cost 3 months wage at the time and they probably got it as their wedding gift. Totally comparable to 25$ worth of composite 👍
Same with old appliances.
And old cars…
And old people
And old toys
Even sex toys?
I have a prehistoric dildo, it still works perfectly.
What do you mean, “just a rock”?
Too exhausted to grab images but…
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The amount I spent on college versus the amount that they spent on college
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their pension versus my pension
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cost of their home versus cost of my home
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amount of adults in their household that had to work to support a family versus amount of adults in my household that have to work to support a family
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Their CEO pay gap versus my CEO pay gap
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number of summers where they took a week-long family vacation versus number of summers that I took a week-long family vacation
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cost of a family trip to Disney for them versus no fucking way I could even consider affording that shit, let alone paying an overall subscription for quicker lines and somehow also individual extra charges per ride to get on those rides in less than three hours.
Re:costs, costs always go up. But relative costs are still crazy worse.
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I mean, not anytime soon, but hopefully eventually.
Then you have until eventually to acquire a giant hand carved wardrobe to leave them.
I have some work to do…
You mean one portal to hell vs one support call line to Sweden.
The Lion, the Witch, and the SMÅGÖRA
The Blåhaj, the Witch, and the Smågöra
What’s the difference?
The only thing my kids will inherit from me is ADHD.
Here’s a picture of the furniture my grandparents left me:
Nice floor tho
A whole a house or just this room?
Anyway: Amazing.
All I got was the IKEA family card. Free coffee. Yeah.
The one on the left took 5 months to make by monks in Tibet slave camps brought to you by China. The one on the right was made in 437.23 seconds by a Tormak 7000 series CNC discombobulizer 2000.
Sounds like an appliance from The Sims.
If cheap furniture made by compressing glue and sawdust together existed 100 years ago, I bet it would have sold well.
Same goes for shoes. Everyone’s wearing terrible plastic stuff nowadays.
People used to just not wear any shoes. The poorest were barefoot or wrapped their feet in rags.
I wonder why simple shoes (like a piece of wood and some cord) picked up in the East but not in the West.
They were picked up in the West as well, but not as well known probably because they weren’t viewed as fashionable. They’re called Pattens FYI
Patten (shoe) - Wikipedia - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patten_(shoe)
Dutch are known for their wooden clogs, no?
Yes, but both that and the style linked in the other comment are more complex than the Japanese style sandals. They are just boards with some holes drilled and knotted cord put through the holes. Some have two other pieces of wood underneath them to raise them off the ground a bit (maybe they work better in mud?).
They look like something you could take an afternoon and make enough new ones for your whole family, if you’ve got some wooden planks and cord.
Clogs look like they’d each take a while to carve and would require more skill to craft.
Though I don’t know how common either of those were among the poorest of each region.
My grandparents deliberately saved up for the expensive oak furniture. It was meant to last the rest of their lives (which it did). They had a different mindset than me and you who want something nice looking that doesn’t burden the bank account too much
That and I didn’t want to buy solid oak furniture when I lived in apartments and had to move on a dime because the landlord wanted to jack up rent or pull something… Again.
People bought mail order houses, which I think confirms the popularity of lightweight and portable big purchase items.
Chipboard was one of those things invented twice simultaneously during WWII, as the Germans and Americans looked around for resources to exploit and noticed the massive amounts of sawdust they had piling up. Chipboard cabinetry and furniture starts to emerge in the 1950’s. Ikea was founded in 1943 and started selling furniture in 1948. So cheap particle board furniture existed ~80 years ago, and did indeed sell well.
Yeah but does the one on the left fit a rack server? I think not!
The one on the left can probably fit the very first rack server.
One thing for sure, is way easier to carry
And dust
easier to use too
Enjoy your affordable Swedish crap!
one is significantly 1) more useful and 2) does not cost $4000 to move next time the shitty apartment you’re renting gets sold to be “renovated” into luxury (cardboard) condos.
My father has reached an age where money means very little to him and his interest in “proper” furniture has skyrocketed. He will go out and buy a simple table for $3k-5k and tell me how the same model was bought for the American embassy in year x, or send me links to matching chairs by designer y.
I’ve yet to see a piece of furniture that’s worth twice the price of what you can find on IKEA. A table needs to be water/stain resistant and that’s about that. /rant
My grandfather was a high-end carpenter and furniture maker. He made some really nice cabinets and tables. He taught my dad all about both how to determine good quality furniture and how to make it. But my dad was not a carpenter, so quite a lot of the latter information was lost on him. What he did remember he (my dad) relayed to me. But I have only retained parts of what he relayed. Determining good vs bad quality furniture though? I remember most of that.
So now when I am looking at a new piece of furniture I can see whether it’s well or badly made. And let me tell you, the furniture made today is absolute shite quality unless you want to pay a lot for it. If you just want something for the next few years that’s fine. But if you want something to last (especially something that lasts the onslaught of abuse kids put it through), that’s a problem. But can I made such furniture? Hell no! All I can do is see the poor quality of most modern furniture and lament it. It’s a bit of a shit situation to be in, honestly.
That said, there’s still some really older good stuff available at second hand and thrift stores, and at estate sales. And it’s usually available for a good price.
It’s frustrating trying to find a good mid-range furniture store. It seems like you’re either buying stuff dirt cheap or spending a fortune, with little in between.
I’m more interested in avoiding plastic as much as I can. Having plastic infused pressed sawdust wrapped in plastic veneer is very unappealing to me.
Ya this is true. Ikea desks/tabletops are pretty garbo.
Ikea does have some nice solid wood furniture, but it’s not cheap. If you’re not okay with spending 5 times as much, you’re getting MDF garbage.
I have had a table from K-Mart for at least 10 years. Every 3 years I sand the top and restain it and it keeps on doing table things like a champ.
My kitchen table is a hand me down from my parents, is at least 30 years old, never been maintained, and even has a nice big scar in it from a science experiment gone wrong (my dad sanctioned it so it’s mostly his fault. He underestimated the potency of what he helped me make). It still works like a champ.
I’ve been wanted to sand and restain it for a while though. If nothing else so I can actually make the surface level again. Even bought the supplies. But I’m lazy and other things have taken priority. Like commenting on Lemmy.
D-A-CH only, but Pfister makes solid wood, high quality furniture. Costs twice as much tho.
I got a table and some chairs from Torbjørn Afdal, Darby series that’s designed in the 1960s with Brazilian Rosewood. It’s not too expensive at ~2000€ and it’s a nice, well built table, and extendable for when you host an event, but having to worry about damaging the table vs some IKEA table you don’t really care about makes me prefer cheap furniture just for the ease of mind.
They left you the closet to Narnia?
