Furniture Question

[Trivium Academy]

Do you go for quality and pay more or settle for something that looks nice but is cheaper? In the long run, is it better to buy the better quality or do you feel furniture has a time limitation? Meaning, it no matter what you purchase it will still wear down and need to be replaced so cheaper is better?

 

As someone who owns very little furniture personally (I live in a parsonage where it's all provided) I walked through Rooms to Go and La-z-boy Furniture stores today on a whim and noticed a huge quality difference as well as price.

 

I'm just curious. :bigear:

[abbeyej]

Well, when we were younger and had no money, we just went with what we could afford, and "paid for it" in that things really did disintegrate after a fairly short time. So yes, quality isn't directly related to price, but we've experienced a huge difference in well-made items using good materials and cheap items that clearly show it. We did luck into a few items that were well-made but affordable early on, and those things have stayed with us. Most of the cheaply made items fell apart after 3-5 years.

 

Now that we can afford a little better, we are careful to purchase well-made items. It's absolutely worth it in the long run. ... But I don't regret buying cheap c**p when that's all we could afford. ;) But if it's a matter of one *could* wait a little longer and save and have something better, then yes, it's worth it.

[dawn of ns]

We'll be moving soon to a much bigger house and much of our furniture isn't in good enough condition to keep so the options we're thinking of are a) a local Mennonite community that builds furniture, b) very good quality used stuff and some new stuff from places like Gallery One. I'c also like to look at local woodworkers and such.

[always cookin']

I bought some really nice bedroom furniture (Ethan Allen) out of the newspaper classifieds. I love it, but it wasn't something I would have splurged on new. There are great deals on used furniture, but it does take more time to find it.

[Zelda]

I love really beautiful furniture and my grandparents and parents collected furniture like this over the course of their marriages and those pieces will last forever.

 

I just can't seem to bring myself to lay out that kind of money for investment quality furniture. Maybe b/c I still have little, sticky children and have reached max capacity on stuff I have to yell at them about. I don't know. Time will tell I guess.

Edited January 4, 2009 by Zelda

[Happy]

I've done both and my vote is quality hands down.

 

After living several years of our married life with 'Early American Leftover' decor, we were able to buy some very well made furniture at a discount. The locally owned furniture store lost their warehouse lease and had to dump some inventory quickly. I bought a couch that I had lusted over for several months, a rattan chair, and a dining table without chairs. That was in 1982. We owned that couch until 1999 and it was still in fine shape, even after two babies had grown up on it. For what it's worth, it was a Charles Scheider (sp???) design. The frame on it was terrific. We left it for the family moving into our house when we moved overseas. I regret letting it slip away from me.

 

The rattan chair is still here. At the New Year's Eve party this week, a teen sat in it and remarked at how comfortable it was. The fabric is not pristine any more, but it is not bad either.

 

We still have the dining table and it is showing wear and tear. I hope to replace it next year.

 

In that time since we bought that furniture, we've also bought random pieces here and there...recliners, chests of drawers, shelves, that have fallen apart rather quickly. When we spend a bit more or find something well loved in the used store, we do better than when we buy cheap, but new.

 

I will tell you that it is so hard to find really good furniture these days. Even expensive doesn't seem well made.

[snickelfritz]

investment quality pieces aren't worth it.

 

Same thing with better quality carpet. Doesn't do you any good to last 15 years, if it's got grape juice on it.

 

Permanent marker.

 

Nail polish.

 

etc....

 

We have bought quality in areas that aren't as affected by the kids, such as our entertainment center or our bedroom furniture.

 

 

We've decided that when the kids get older, we will start to buy the best quality that we can afford in the hopes that it will last forever and still be in good condition.

[Stacy in NJ]

I definately buy the best quality furniture I can afford. I buy from Thos. Moser when I can. I also buy antiques or near-antique.

[RebeccaS]

investment quality pieces aren't worth it.

 

Same thing with better quality carpet. Doesn't do you any good to last 15 years, if it's got grape juice on it.

 

Permanent marker.

 

Nail polish.

 

etc....

 

We have bought quality in areas that aren't as affected by the kids, such as our entertainment center or our bedroom furniture.

 

 

We've decided that when the kids get older, we will start to buy the best quality that we can afford in the hopes that it will last forever and still be in good condition.

 

Amen!

[Melissa B]

Quality furniture - purchased used.

 

We are willing to pay approximately 10-20% of new price, so I have to keep an eye out for anything we are looking for.

 

Craigslist has been our best source for quality used furniture.

Purchasing used from relatives is a close second.

 

We don't go with quality bookshelves. We have cinder blocks and unfinished boards all over the house. :)

[Snickerdoodle]

For as many times as we have moved, it doesn't makes sense to buy expensive good quality own-it-forever furniture. The stuff just takes a beating with all the moves. Until we get to our forever home, it's IKEA and the like for us.

[Tarheel Heather]

I will say that we will never. ever. buy from RTG again!

[profmom]

Knowing how long we keep anything -- until there is a really, really good reason to replace it, we plan to buy quality from now on. I'm sitting on a couch (with laptop on lap) that I think is really ugly. (It's a fabric issue.) I've thought this for years, and yet we still have it! :001_rolleyes: We looked a year or so ago and I was very surprised at how much more comfortable the nice couches and chairs were than the cheaper ones. Then, we had an expensive van repair that took that money instead. Anyway...I think we'll be able to replace it with something nice this year! At least that's the plan: save for better quality.

 

We recently had this decision to make on a piano. We ended up going with the best quality used piano we could find instead of buying a new, lower quality one for the same $ or less.

[Sharon in SC]

Do you go for quality and pay more or settle for something that looks nice but is cheaper? In the long run, is it better to buy the better quality or do you feel furniture has a time limitation? Meaning, it no matter what you purchase it will still wear down and need to be replaced so cheaper is better?

 

As someone who owns very little furniture personally (I live in a parsonage where it's all provided) I walked through Rooms to Go and La-z-boy Furniture stores today on a whim and noticed a huge quality difference as well as price.

 

I'm just curious. :bigear:

 

Quality, here.

[Chris in VA]

ITA with going for a few good quality pieces, but trying to find them used.

I will never buy a used mattress, but the bedstead? Oh yeah.

Pieces that will get a lot of use, like kitchen/dining tables and chairs--I'd go pretty good quality, but a well-made table is easy to find cheap at places like Ikea. The cost of a new Ikea table is under $100, and you don't have to worry too much about crayon marks and the like. But for pieces that are upholstered, I would spend a little more. Buy a few pieces you really like; a good couch, a couple of living room chairs, and that excellent mattress. The rest of the stuff (bookshelves, tables, lamps, desks,etc.) can be found for a song at a resale shop. Oh, and a good rug underfoot is nice, but you don't want to be upset if the kids stain it, so go for medium quality, or try to find a place with wood floors that you can just buy a cheaper rug for.

[FriedClams]

We have an outlet in our town for a nice brand, so if I were buying I would stalk the outlet. I also know that A LOT of furniture stores will sell cheaper than advertised if you carry cash and are willing to walk out. It's a lot like buying a car.

[abbeyej]

For as many times as we have moved, it doesn't makes sense to buy expensive good quality own-it-forever furniture. The stuff just takes a beating with all the moves. Until we get to our forever home, it's IKEA and the like for us.

 

See, and my experience is that Ikea stuff falls apart within 1-2 moves. (I mean the wood/mdf stuff -- our upholstered pieces have actually held up okay.) Our good furniture has survived 4+ moves without any sign of wear.

[Snickerdoodle]

Well, we did have some very nice antique, real wood, quality pieces that my family gifted us and they did not survive the multiple moves. It's such a shame too, everything always arrives pretty banged up. These last two moves we didn't even bother to ship any furniture.

[RoughCollie]

We buy the best quality furniture we can afford. I buy wood pieces used, if I can find something I like that is in great condition. My favorite piece is a large Shaker china cabinet, made to order by a cabinet maker from cherry wood about 80 years ago. It looks new and I bought it from the granddaughter of the original owner for $200. She sold it because her new t.v. did not fit inside it!

 

I also bought our Shaker dining room set, and our Pottery Barn den tables used. Now Pottery Barn is not known to have the highest quality furniture, but the used price, drawers, and color were what I needed. They do have great designs, IMO. The drawback is that buying used furniture is not an instant-on type of situation. I look for years, sometimes, before I find something I like, and sometimes I never do.

 

I buy cheap, new mattresses, because that is what we can afford. When they go downhill 10 years later, I put an inexpensive 3"-4" memory foam pad from Overstock on top of them, and they are good to go for a few more years.

 

I like Pottery Barn's lamps and area rugs, and I buy them, as needed, when they go on sale. For the kids' rooms, I buy 8 x 10 or 9 x 12 remnants from the carpet store and have them bound -- this is a lot cheaper than buying an area rug and I don't have heart failure if something happens to these $100 rugs. I don't buy used rugs because I am worried about fleas, bacteria, and other yucky things, and I'm not in the market for extremely expensive, valuable area rugs.

 

I buy draperies from Country Curtains when I need them, and after I fall in love with a particular fabric and can afford them. This is a lot less expensive than having draperies made, I figure, even though I couldn't afford to do that anyway. Before that, I sewed my draperies, but I hate doing that, so I stopped.

 

I do not buy used beds because the older, well-made ones have headboards that disappear behind today's much thicker mattresses and box springs. I bought a $60 bookcase headboard at Big Lots for DS2, and the rest of the kids don't have headboards.

 

Our bookcases run the gamut from made-to-order to Ikea. In the past couple of years, I've bought them from Ikea because they are cheap and the shelves hold 60-something pounds without warping.

 

I am very concerned about the quality of the fabric on upholstered pieces. The last new couch I bought was leather, and I bought it on eBay, delivered from North Carolina, for $1000. I chose chocolate brown leather because the quality of the microfiber I wanted was too expensive ($60 a yard) and I figured spills would not stain it.

 

It looks good, it is comfortable, and so far it has outlasted the dog's efforts to destroy it and kids' efforts to stain it. Mind you, I have a dog who removes the cushions and takes them outside from time to time. He also has chewed the back corners of two cushions, which cannot be seen when the couch is put back together. (This is not a leather issue, my dog is an equal opportunity chewer of many kinds of fabric.)

 

I find that my tastes change over time, and I do not want to pay a huge amount of money for something I may not like at all in 10 or 20 years. When the kids leave home, and DH and I move to a smaller house, that is when I will replace some of what we have, if we can afford it. I can't wait to get rid of the high quality bedroom set DH bought 35 years ago -- way before he met me -- it will never die and it is *ugly*.

 

I also take into consideration that any furniture I buy will have wear and tear from four kids and a large dog. Even if we could afford expensive furniture, I would not want to constantly worry about it being damaged or stained by kids or the dog. (If we still had cats, I would make sure the fabric did not attract cat hair. The world's ugliest couch, which we had when we had cats, did not hold onto cat hair at all, so I know that some fabric does not.)

 

In essence, I buy the best quality I can afford, whether new or used, taking into consideration the effects of my family upon the lifespan of the furniture. I don't buy anything ugly, no matter how good a bargain it is, any more. Serviceable and beautiful is my motto. I also research everything fully. All leather is not the same, all microfiber is not the same, and some of the formerly high quality furniture manufacturers sell products that are no longer so well-made, for the same high prices.

 

RC

Edited January 4, 2009 by RoughCollie

[Denisemomof4]

unfortunately I have a TON of experience with this. In our almost 20 years of marriage we've gone through 4 living room sets and are now on our fifth. I will definitely say: BUY QUALITY. But even then you need to figure out what it is that you REALLY want.

 

We went through three leather sets before I realized that I absolutely HATE leather, and leather in and of itself is the main reasons our sets broke down fast. We have 4 kids but we aren't hard on our furniture. When we had leather we didn't allow our animals (two small dogs, two cats at the time) on our sets. But what I discovered is that price isn't a factor always with leather quality. My first leather set was quality leather in that it was thicker leather, but most leather is painted on. I HATE PAINTED ON LEATHER, the paint breaks down! We chose off white, and the oils in our body stained the leather and with regular cleaning of the leather, the paint wore off. This set was bought at a high end, quality leather dealer and we didn't get 5 years out of it.

 

We bought another leather set, thick leather, and it was much cheaper but looked nice. BUT, the WAY it was built ended up being cheesy and we didn't get many years out of this set. Every time we sat on the couch the cushions slid around and we were constantly positioning them. It was such an annoyance that we couldn't wait to get rid of the set.

 

Our third, and final, leather set was absolutely beautiful, very, very well constructed and quality through and through. But what I didn't realize when we bought this set was that the leather was very, very thin and it was only in our home two years before it got a tear in it, one that couldn't be repaired. The more the person tried to sew the leather back together, the more the leather crumbled. So this couch was by far the most quality constructed, but they used a crappy leather.

 

I personally am a HUGE fan of microfiber. Animal fur won't penetrate, so I simply vacuum off flying fur. :) It's also so easy to clean! I miss the fact that I didn't care about spills or greasy foods (POPCORN!) on the leather, but supposedly the microfiber can we washed easily. I have a sectional that's color is "salsa" and we love it but I was upset to see the arms of the sofa actually turn black and shiny! I told my husband that the couch wouldn't last long, but was amazed at how easily the stains lifted with a mild dish soap and water! It looks brand new again! Now I keep up on the spot cleaning. Only issue with this is that after 3 years it's getting creaky. And our Lazy Boy recliners, which were $850 each, are absolute CRAP after 3 years. I'm going to go look for a couple of cheap replacements because I assume our couch will give out in a couple of years and then we'll get everything new.

 

I will tell you that with living room sets, I've been told by several companies not to expect more than 5 years. That has definitely proven to be true.

 

Now with wood furniture, we definitely chose quality. Dove tailing, and hand made was our set and although it looks Amish, it was made by a company in NH. It was expensive but it's a set that can be handed down through generations. I don't expect to ever have problems with the set. I want to say we've had it for around 10 - 11 years now and it has absolutely no changes in it. The handles are still tight (although they can be screwed back on when loose) and it functions and looks like it was just delivered.

 

We bought a bedroom set for one of my daughter's at Bob's Furniture, and I would never go back to them. The set is still in good condition, but it's very cheap quality and very thin wood. She's 9 now and I don't expect it to last until she's 18.

 

I want to second looking for used wood furniture! I bought a china hutch that cost me $1000 but it was all hand made. It is fancier looking than Amish but excellent quality. The company makes these in VT and I looked around and discovered that if I bought the hutch brand new, I'd pay no less than $5000, but likely more. I think $5500 or $6000 is more realistic. I don't know how old it was when I got it, but it still looks brand new. I've also bought new, unfinished wood furniture and stained it myself. I was surprised that even I could do something like that.

 

Sorry so long!

Denise

Edited January 4, 2009 by Denisemomof4

[MrsMe]

It depends. Depends on number of kids, what it's use is and how often it's used.

 

Couches depending on kids, potty training, cheap. They have wet pants, etc. When I was single, I bought cheap. It lasted me forever, because it was just me. For my dd's area I tend to buy a cheap or even used sofa and a good used coffee or end table.Wait to get the good stuff later when they're older.

 

Bookshelves, I'll pay a decent price. I don't want them to sag, break or fall over.

 

I also buy cheap when I know I like to rearrange and change. I don't want to be "out" money.

[mama2girls]

We try to buy quality whenever possible.:001_smile:

[Tap]

Do you go for quality and pay more or settle for something that looks nice but is cheaper? In the long run, is it better to buy the better quality or do you feel furniture has a time limitation? Meaning, it no matter what you purchase it will still wear down and need to be replaced so cheaper is better?

 

As someone who owns very little furniture personally (I live in a parsonage where it's all provided) I walked through Rooms to Go and La-z-boy Furniture stores today on a whim and noticed a huge quality difference as well as price.

 

I'm just curious. :bigear:

 

I really prefer nice quality to laminate but with kids, in some areas of the house, I have given in to lower quality and hope to one day be able to upgrade (but then there will be grand kids so who knows). We have very nice pieces like our couches and chairs, entertainment stand is from Costco (looks better quality than it is), our bedroom furniture, and a few other pieces throughout the house.

 

The library, where the kids hang out the most, playing games and messing around, is IKEA. I like that if something gets damaged, then I can easily and cheaply replace it. The kids desks and bedroom furniture is IKEA, and my desk is in between, not solid wood but the faces are wood, so it looks higher quality.

 

I tend to put less quality in the rooms where the kids are more likely to be hanging out and being, well... kids. But kids also need to learn to respect any and all furniture, so I don't hesitate to have nicer pieces also.

 

The funny thing about this theory is that the quality furniture would withstand their use more than the cheap, so I guess this theory is flawed at best. I guess I like to know I can easily replace anything in the kids rooms.

[Desert Rat]

We buy the best we can afford. Couches we tend to buy midrange because I don't want to be constantly yelling at my boys about keeping them pristine. Wood furniture I try to by higher end. But nothing compares to the beautiful pieces I've gotten from family or the wonderful new side table in the front room we picked up in a second hand shop for $20. Those pieces are wonderfully crafted and will last forever!