Lol, yeah, that’s who I meant, Design Within Reach.
Basically coming in starting from scratch.
Costco is good, but selection is limited. You have to be lucky to want whatever it is they happen to have.
If you have a Dania Furniture near you, I think they have some stuff that meets your criteria.
Read this first for a quick primer. By the end you should know the basics of the following:
Frame materials and construction
Suspension types: 8-way hand-tie coil springs, sinuous springs, Pirelli webbing
Cushion materials
Upholstery quality and durability
Since I have an unusual fascination with furniture construction, I’ll show the difference between bad and good quality. First, the bad. This is a recent Flexsteel chair that retailed for around $800. Price paid: $150 on closeout at big box retailer. Flexsteel is a major name brand that is often touted as “quality” American-made furniture. Let’s have a look under the hood. Trigger warning!!!
Somehow the particular awfulness of this plywood–check out the knots and splintering–is outdone by the shoddy workmanship. Obvious “slap it together as quickly as possible” operation. The weird suspension is their namesake <rainbow> FLEX STEEL </rainbow> which appears to be some kind of flat spring alternative to sinuous springs.
For $150 I think it’s value, but you wouldn’t stake your life on it holding up forever, and know that furniture of this quality often sells for many multiples of the price paid. What I’m saying is that price is not a signal of quality at this level. The big box stores with huge overhead will gladly sell you a trendy piece for thousands that is just as poorly made as this chair, so you really need to know what you’re paying for.
Tip: If you buy anything from Big Furniture, go straight to the clearance / closeout items and avoid everything else. Don’t be afraid to haggle. I really only recommend buying this stuff if budget is tight or you need something quick or temporary.
Now I feel dirty and need to redeem this post. Let’s look inside an iconic classic, the Charles Pfister lounger for Knoll (stock photo):
The current direct prices on these are high ($6,000 for leather) but I’m not sure if they reflect actual prices paid. I found a pair in poor cosmetic condition several years ago and acquired them for next to nothing. The bottom cover was ripped on one so of course I had to look:
That’s 5/4 poplar. Boards are positioned for perpendicular grain orientation, bolted (green), and doweled (red). The cuts and joinery are perfect. Suspension is Pirelli webbing that’s stitched across the back. I’m not certain but I believe these chairs are older and may be slightly higher quality than you can expect from current production. This is what quality construction looks like on the inside though, but by no means is it the best you can possibly buy.
The exteriors were hideous which is how I was able to get them so cheaply. Acquiring quality-built furniture for pennies and having it reupholstered is good advice that you’ll frequently find if you research furniture long enough. It is absolutely what my upholsterer recommends. Of course, it helps to have some experience doing this to estimate costs and a working relationship with an upholsterer you trust.
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So back the question of where you should look. If you want the iconic stuff, the design houses almost have a monopoly on it, i.e., the kind of stuff available at DWR from high-profile designers. I feel like you pay a large premium for the branding / design because comparable construction and materials probably sell for half (?) the price they’re asking. Consider buying used?
A mid-tier option that gets rave reviews for quality is Room & Board:
They use furniture-grade plywoods in their frames which is fine for the price point. Plywoods typically get a bad rap due to the low-quality ones I showed in the above post, but there are some higher quality plywoods on the market. I have encountered R&B pieces in person at local furniture stores and can say that they did look and feel like high-quality pieces. I have a friend who furnished his home with R&B and says it’s holding up well.
I also looked at JT’s rec,
and it seems to spec out at good quality for the price point as well. The key at this point is you’re educated and know what you’re buying, so the spec sheet on any sofa you’re considering will list the components we’ve talked about. If it doesn’t then you should be skeptical.
If you decide that you must have solid hardwood construction then I’ll need to dig a little bit for current options. One thing you haven’t indicated is preferred styling, although the fact that you listed RH and DWR tells me you probably wouldn’t be interested pillowy grandmother furniture regardless of how well it’s built.
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This is why I love UP. The random knowledge bombs of detailed information in a huge variety of topics are unparalleled on any other forum. Great post.
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You should see this forum. It’s operated by an independent furniture store owner that only sells the best of the best, and oh boy if he’s not highly critical of furniture build quality. When the forum started, he carried a wider selection of brands. The last time I checked, he was down to selling only a few like Hancock & Moore.
Here’s one of my favorite threads:
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Thanks so much for these posts. This is really helpful information. Regarding styling, I tend to prefer things that have clean lines and things that would probably be considered minimalist. I like bright, warm spaces, too. I think I like mid-century modern stuff, but I really don’t know enough about it to say for sure. But you’re right, big puffy stuff and things that look like they came out of a Renaissance painting do not appeal to me.
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Have you considered finding a good diy designer and paying a freelance carpenter to build it for you?
Yeah as a photographer I assumed you would be sensitive to design. One aspect I’d consider is that MCM is super trendy right now among late 30s / early 40s people with disposable income, so the natural result of that is tons of modern clones, knockoffs, and similarly inspired designs. Be careful about overpaying for a trendy knockoff/inspired piece because that stuff is going to be worthless when the modern craze dies off.
I find that the same demographic I described above tends to use minimalism and modernism interchangeably when they aren’t really the same thing at all. I would call myself a modernist but anti-minimalist. The types of designs I see being praised as minimalist are ones that I almost universally find to be tasteless and lacking personality. For example, I find current Apple product design to be minimalist in the most unflattering way, whereas the original iMac was a beautiful piece of iconic modern art.
This is what I’d call some really uninspiring minimalist furniture that I cannot get on board with:
Australian architect and designer Ameé Allsop has launched a minimalist furniture collection made from bleached American ash and travertine.
Called Pure Minimalist the collection features simple tables and chairs made from flat planes of American ash and an angular bookshelf made from travertine.
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There’s a Room & Board outlet store in Minneapolis that has lines out the door every Saturday morning before they open. It’s only open for a few hours Sat/Sun. I’ve never been but people describe it as a mad rush to buy stuff as soon as the doors open, like a Black Friday run on the cheapest tvs or video game console.
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I’ve been a few times its nothing special and you won’t get any real huge deals on anything good, I’d assume its them dumping stuff that doesn’t sell in their normal stores.
Just mail your apartment to me and I’ll furnish it.
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Been using this for years
https://www.amazon.com/Anker-Wireless-Vertical-Ergonomic-Optical/dp/B00BIFNTMC
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No one:
Me:
This cleans better than any shampooer I’ve rented or use and is pretty damn awesome. Been shampooing the carpet and rearranging my whole place this week. I vacuum the area with a supposedly good Shark vacuum and this spins up a lot more dog hair embedded in the carpet and it’s clean as fuck after.
https://www.bissell.com/proheat-2x-revolution-pet-pro-carpet-cleaner-22837.html
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I have same one. It’s gets lent to friends and family all the time.
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Glad to hear. I was mostly worried about it lasting for awhile after using it this week because it’s great so far. I use an electric coffee water heater thing to get it to 140 degrees (the max it suggests) and it has been much better than the red things they rent at grocery stores around here and I don’t have to pay more if it takes longer than renting it for a day.
I guess maybe this is the right thread for this? Looking for thoughts on cell phone carriers.
We’re on Verizon right now. Three lines - me, wife, daughter. Going to add a fourth (dlk9s jr) soon and need three phones (he doesn’t have one, my battery is swollen, and daughter’s phone is old as balls). We do shared data, but will likely upgrade to unlimited.
Thinking about leaving Verizon and trying an MVNO. The two I’m looking at are Mint (T-Mobile) and Visible (Verizon). My question, for those with experience, is how bad does speed throttling get in periods of “heavy traffic?” We’re not heavy data users - my wife and I work at home (well, she does for now) and my kids just go to and from school. But if we’re out and about and I need to look something up, I don’t want it to take a million years or time out like it does now when we run out of data (Verizon just slows it down, doesn’t charge us extra).
Is the throttling an issue or is it not noticeable/infrequent? I’ll hang up and listen.
EDIT: I guess the technical term is data “deprioritization” and not “throttling.”
I have cricket and they seem to have the best plan of the lower tier providers and I haven’t had any issues with coverage. We had 4 lines for $110/mo with 5G of data per phone and the network was completely useless after 5G was used up. Upgraded to unlimited data with hotspot for $130/mo and haven’t noticed anything crappy other than some texts that get delayed by a few minutes. Customer service is nonexistent, but phone deals seem pretty good for new customers. They were recently giving iPhone SE 64mb phones away to new customers. $249 for existing customers plus $25 activation fee.
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