The factory was a real place; the frames were made of solid wood and plywood, there was a sewing floor and even one (incredibly kooky) person whose sole job was to stuff the pillows. This guy was in a little room full of feathers all day, and they'd follow him around to the cantina and bathroom like a cartoon character.. but I digress.
My job there for a while was to make the sofa legs -- that was a sixteen step process, and they didn't even trust me to glue the boards together, just to do the cuts and shape the pieces. Sand and stain and wax and polish, yes sir!
They had a dedicated delivery crew, and what the article mentions about packaging is true -- things would be blanketed and wrapped up just the right way, then tetris-ed onto the truck. Sitting shotgun on that truck and hauling sofas up stairs and through various spaces was what I did after making the legs got too boring.
These sofas sold for $3000 ~ $4000 and up, and that was at the break of the millennium. I think the cheapest chair they had was around $2000. I should really swing by the showroom and see how much these are now -- and whether they're still made like they used to be.
The was a great company an old colleague of mine started called Interior Define that sourced custom furniture from China for a BluDot price but much higher quality, but they did not survive the pandemic and have since been sold in bankruptcy to a company that has reduced the quality to par
Having done a lot of DIY projects over the last decade, I've really shifted my view of OSB. Originally I would lump it in with particleboard, but I've since drastically changed my view of it. Particleboard is, truly, junk. OSB and plywood are both pretty good products, and for some uses superior to hardwoods (dimensional stability, for example). High quality plywoods are amazing products. OSB for structure or underlayments are really quite good.
It's made from solid wood and stuffed with real feather down. It's several years old now and has shown no signs of aging.
Where? I went around furniture stores and found it hard to discern any relationship between price and quality.
I have at least 20 various pieces of furniture from IKEA that have lasted more than 10 years, some even closing on 20, even after multiple moves to various college dorms. Dresser drawers, dining table, sofa, bed platform, sit stand desk, etc.
I do not think I have ever thrown something out for breaking. Maybe gets scuffed or scratched up or chipped, but you can mostly use one of those latex paint touch up markers and make the damage nearly invisible.
You can still get quality, you just have to pay for it.
I have long been thinking about the idea of saving up for a while and doing a big re-furnish trip down to North Carolina with a moving truck.
My wife and I have one of their sofas—it's quite nice, although our lives might've been easier with one of the Burrow-style sofas that are easily disassembled for moves.
Same sort of issue with cool remote controls. For example, la-z-boy has pretty good controls - remotes have better designs, have lots of adjustments, and motors seem to move faster. And they too fail the partner test - "that looks like old fart stuff"
I kind of like some stressless recliners.
oh, there is one class of furniture that has a lot of control - the massage chairs. Except they seem to be furniture you want to hide from everyone, they fail the "normal human being" test.
maybe I need to know pointers to other furniture/designs?
My furniture is all cheap particle board shit because I can't afford anything nicer because I'm spending all my money on a mortgage, food, gas, and student loans. I don't think it's a matter so much of nobody wanting to make good quality products so much as all the companies that did do that and priced their products accordingly are running out of customers, because we're all getting strip-mined by the rest of life's expenses going up all the goddamn time. I would love nothing more than a gorgeous, well made sofa that will last me a solid chunk of my remaining life, but where the fuck am I getting the money for it?
It's the boots theory of economics applied to everything. I'll spend $7,000 on sofas before I die and still have a sore ass.
People learn to be comfy over time. I dont need to live life like i dont know what I'm doing.
Getting old rocks, but maybe that says more about the terrible quality of life during my younger years then it does about current year.
Hahah
Pay for quality. It saves you money in the long run.
*tetris-ed and Sokoban-ed onto the truck
(Sorry, couldn't help myself)
A decade ago, I shopped for the first time at the most famous furniture store in this part of Texas: Gallery Furniture. Growing up anywhere within an hour or two of Houston in the 80s, Mattress Mack was more recognizable to a kid like me than any news anchor or any other television personality. Before the 80s was over, I'd probably seen him hop in the air hundreds of times with a fistful of dollars, talking about how Gallery Furniture will save you money, and he's still going strong today. He even toured big city and small town schools warning kids about drugs. Anyway, I had gotten by for years on hand-me-downs and IKEA furniture, but it was time to replace something ratty, and I walked in there with a vague impression that it might be more pricey than other stores. They told me it was all made in America (some places up north like Indiana?) and when I was asking about cheaper sofas that a guy over 6 feet tall could comfortably nap on, they pointed me to one they said was made locally in the Houston area. It was very long and had a very simple design and had firm foam that wouldn't sag (something I had asked for), and they let me have it for $500, and it felt like much better quality than a lot of the prettier stuff in other furniture stores.
A couple years later when I got married, we were looking for a nicer sofa, and I figured out that the local furniture maker that Gallery Furniture had been selling was called Living Designs Furniture and had a factory in the East End:
https://www.livingdesignsfurniture.com
Their factory's showroom was very bare, but it was full of pieces, including a colorful chair in the shape of a stiletto shoe! We found an elegantly shaped light gray sofa long enough for me to sleep on, and again with high quality foam, and they built one with some slight customizations we wanted for $1,081 total. Unreal, because we have a white sofa from IKEA that isn't much less, but the quality is on another level!
I'd really like to see a resurgence of products like this in the USA. I've heard of some custom sofas costing several thousand, but somehow this local company is managing to sell at a lower price point. 18 years ago, a buddy of mine was living in Charleston, South Carolina. He had talked to a local high end furniture maker about doing a 3-year apprenticeship to learn how to make fine furniture, but in the end he knew he'd make very little per year in wages (he estimated $35,000 or so). Instead he pursued another dream and went to Napa Valley for a one-year course at the only open-wheel racing mechanic school in the country and ended up working on an Indy Car team for a dozen years. Hopefully more guys like him can find the furniture maker route feasible in the future if American consumers can escape the throwaway mindset. The average household doesn't need expensive Amish Craftsman offerings. A lot of people could afford this local furniture maker we have available, but I understand it could be a risky business venture to try to compete with the stuff shipped over the ocean.
The whole thing is just stapled together OSB.
I ripped the dust cover off and added 3 new frame stretchers made from 2x8 construction lumber (and tied other loose joints back together) and its done pretty well since then: https://imgur.com/a/bqlLgW3 (wish I'd gotten a few more pictures, but I was tired by this point). Just shocking how terrible the construction is.
High quality Scandinavian-style plywood probably would have lasted decades.
Nice materials + pretty design does not necessarily result in a good product.
Sine qua non is Latin.
To be fair, the quality did look pretty decent but marketing needs to try harder. Mind you that's not the daftest brand name or trademark ever! Who could forget the Rolls Royce Silver Mist? Mist in German means dung, manure or shit. Someone thankfully noticed before it was released (Frankfurt motor show) and it became the Silver Shadow. Then there was "Consignia" ...
We know more now (and could afford better) whenever we have to finally replace this, but $2000 is a not-insignificant investment that shouldn't be a complete piece of crap.
they seem to be slightly better made, but for SO MUCH more money. They have huge stores devoted to their products. Are people really spending money, and that much, on coolers?
That's always been the case though. There has always been junk marketing itself as "luxury" to milk the nouveau riche. It's not like real Coach bags utilize some magic leather that doesn't degrade just the same as the $200 leather purse you buy from a local artisan. It's not like the brick that Supreme sold was made of some sort of magical clay. The luxury purse companies don't burn their leftover product to protect some secret of Dr Who purses that are bigger or magically organized on the inside, but because the entire value of the brand is "I can afford this and you cannot"
Luxury has ALWAYS been about signalling and displaying status and power. It's always about rubbing the prole's faces in their supposed supremacy. Remember, they have money because they are better than you, definitely not because there are systems and structures in place that make it easier to get rich for the already wealthy and connected.
Unfortunately it seems so many people really struggle to understand that while quality often costs a lot, costing a lot does not imply quality in any way. If you can afford to spend oodles on marketing for your product, you probably aren't spending as much on quality as people assume you would.
Since then almost every other couch we got was from ikea, since if it ended up sucking at least we didn’t pay 2-3x the cost for it. Which is sad really, I want a nice couch. I just don’t that paying 10-20x the cost wind just be a piece of junk.
Here's a quick overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0nPPc2-jpE
It's almost like a "How to shop for nice stuff at IKEA 101" and covers:
00:22 Sofas
01:28 Morning Brew
02:29 Lounge Chairs
03:41 Dining Chairs
05:34 Tables
07:34 Lighting
09:02 OthersAt least with most IKEA products you assemble them yourself, so the level of quality is immediately apparent, and the pricing reflects it. I appreciate that straightforward approach.
Most everything I've bought there has outlasted my desire to keep using it. There are the occasional problems, like a blue table where the veneer shows a bright white mark wherever it gets nicked, but I feel like many criticisms are unfounded and often come across as elitist.
Id never buy one again from them though after having everything else fail on us.
About 3 years ago after moving into a new house, I needed a new couch and wanted something that would wear reasonably well without getting into the higher end ($3k+). I found one on Apt2B which they were touting was built around an robotically-welded steel frame, lending to consistent durability. After reading many sofa reviews mentioning buckling particleboard, that sounded pretty good. There weren’t a ton of options due to pandemic shortages so I went for it, which cost me $1500.
It’s held up well so far. Cushions are showing some wear but nothing out of the ordinary, and the steel frame is indeed solid. It might even be worth reulphostering at some point down the road.
Installing new is pretty cheap and easy - $10 roll and a staple gun. Or just leave it off
Quality can still be found, it just can’t be assumed. I think that’s the case for far too many things these days.
The buying up of precious housing as investments by non-residents should mostly be banned, starting with institutional and overseas investors.
AirBnb should also be banned. And the people who profited off that startup, who must've known they were creating illegal hotels and destroying rental markets, should be hit with devastating fines, maybe also imprisoned.
I was also very lucky though. I thought I could configure the sectional in a couple different ways. Turned out I rolled the dice the right way because I couldn't. And only discovered this after many months because I was on crutches at the time and couldn't do anything about the sofa sitting in my garage.
In furniture, you definitely get what you pay for...or not. I've found anything <$300 is going to be nothing but fake materials like manufactured woods (if not even just veneer covered cardboard) and horrible cushion/fabric.
Anything decent doesn't really start until ~$1k, and anything in the $3k range you mentioned starts to become heirloom quality. As with anything, these are YMMV, but serves as a fast basis for my experience
The problem here is, that expensive doesn't mean quality.
Buying a cheap ikea piece and replacing it in a few years might still be a better choice than overpaying for an expensive piece, that's the same quality as ikea, but with a different tag on it (both 'brand tag' and 'price tag').
During these 10 years I haven't sat on any sofa, be in office lobbies, hotels, showrooms, friends' home that made me feel like it could be a significant upgrade upon my 400 USD sofa.
Sure that might not be usual, and I actually wouldn't recommend any other Ikea sofa in general (many were crappy when we were choosing ours). But price and marketting ("made in XXXX") is still only one factor in the wether the product will be any good.
We bought very nice leather couches a few years back (we have dogs, leather is the only option) and paid dearly for them. And they're great. (We looked carefully at the construction details before buying.)
This summer, we had some rooms we cared a lot about and others we just needed to fill in some blanks in, and we camped Facebook Marketplace looking for stuff. Pretty soon, even the living room was getting stuff we found on Facebook, at comparable levels of quality to our old "new" furniture, and at pennies on the dollar. People are simply always getting rid of good stuff, and there isn't a meaningful secondary market for it; they're just thrilled you're getting it out of their house and getting a couple bucks in the process.
I submit that you would end up with a better-furnished room faster, more easily, and at a fraction of the cost of high-end furniture retailers simply with Facebook Marketplace and TaskRabbit (for near-instant delivery).
† Leastways, not if you live in a major North American metro.
It's bloody hard to get rid of a lot of stuff. I had a great leather sofa, about 15-20 years old (inherited from my grandparents) still in great condition, but I couldn't get rid of it at any price and none of the charity shops took it because it was missing some fire hazard label (sigh...). Same with almost everything: I sold my 2-year old £1,200 mattress for £50 (and I had to practically beg to guy to take it, because it would have been a complete shame to chuck it). Washing machine, fridge, all the "little stuff" (cutlery, books, DVDs, what-have-you). I ended up putting a lot outside "free stuff" and that got rid of a lot.
Actually the only things I managed to sell was an IKEA sleeping sofa and an IKEA dinner table set.
That said, since then I found that actually finding good stuff isn't always easy.
What's more, actually selling stuff is often such a time consuming hassle (posting, dealing with replies, scheduling pick ups, dealing with flakes) that in a lot of cases you're better off just paying trash hauling service to just come pick it all up in a single go.
However, monitors seem to sell immediately every time.
It's actually illegal to sell a used mattress in the US - and there are very legitimate public health reasons for the being the case. You can't really clean one - that's especially true of foam, and they can be riddled with lice, bedbugs, and all kinds of creepy crawlies.
I suppose there’s an interesting survivorship thing going on here. A poorly-built couch probably won’t even last 10 years. And if it does, somehow, you’ll know as soon as you sit on it if it’s about to turn into dust based on the squeaking and general instability. If it still feels solid and you don’t sink into it so deep that you can’t stand up again there’s a decent chance it’ll last another 10 years.
Custom Macy's extra long couch from ~2000 is the best thing ever. You sink into it and it holds up. Bought used-new for $1k when a friend paid $4k but was delivered 2 by mistake.
Interesting, with cats it's exactly the opposite.
And nowadays something expensive is no longer guaranteed to last.
This is why I value old things so much:
I have an old chair to work with, it's not a good chair, but it's better than anything new. I did a restoration instead of buying a new one because the new one might not last long.
I have a 10 year old car, I'm scared to buy a new one with the bizarre stories about new 3 cylinder engines breaking (throwaway engines?)
I try to use old things as much as possible. I stopped using an old Android when SSL stopped working. It's not a matter of lack of money, it's a lack of confidence in new things.
The last brand that I gave some value to was Sansumg. My last cell phone... THEY FORGOT to add a piece to fix the flat cable for the on/off button. And twice the on/off button stopped working, and twice I sent it to technical assistance. The third time I opened the phone and repaired the button myself. My two Sansumg TVs break a few days after the warranty ends.
My sofa broke in less than two years.
It's all too easy to see the past through rose tinted glasses. Also remember that the "built to last" stuff from the past is often an example of survivorship bias.
The quality of everything is trash. And if you want something that has the type of quality you used to get 30 years ago - you're going to pay close to 4-10x as much.
Everyone is selling trash for cheap. We live in a mall of garbage.
Only buy CRI 95+ (99 if you can find them). Not because of the color rendering quality (although that is a great benefit), but because they will tend to have appropriately derated other parts of the circuit, which are the elements that fail. They can do this for that product because at the more upmarket price, they can afford the additional 0.02 in COGS.
As to Nokia phones, well yeah. I understand there is a real market for them now, since they found they are very effective black box flight recorders.
Nokia phones weren't as durable as you remember. A Nokia phone would hardy last 2 years with limited use, either the battery or power connector would die quickly. iPhones get way more usage than Nokias and they easily last 3 years.
Also I've literally never had a LED bulb die on me.
still are as so many see to be purchased and then running the ground for short term profits
When these conversations happens, I always wonder why people want some of these items to last forever.
Are you going to stick with that 10 year old plasma TV? Great. I want new tech, and this stuff moves fast. Furniture is a bit different, but my parents had all kinds of good, long-lasting stuff that no one wants because it's out of style.
EDIT: Actually, in general I've found that my IKEA furniture has done pretty well (basically everything in the house is IKEA) with the sole exception of a "Lack" coffee table, whose surface is kinda disintegrating after 8 years (I think it's basically made of cardboard with a veneer...). The name should perhaps have been a warning.
I Often hear people saying that IKEA furnitures don’t travel well or don’t last long. It’s like we’re not going to the same IKEA.
That said, I am one of those people who doesn't get a lot from them so I can speak to some of criticism. Part of it is just the aesthetic, and theirs doesn't match how I decorate my own space or what I usually feel good around. That's just the nature of aesthetics, though, and there's always going to be some difference in taste between any two people and any two regions.
As for quality, though, I think the critique you hear reflects the quality of their budget products. If you're eyeing modern or euro designs at a fancy furniture studio and then go to IKEA to find a cheap approximation, you discover that much of the cheapest stuff has the same flimsy glueboard, peeling laminate, and unstable joinery of the cheap stuff at Wal-mart.
That shouldn't rally be a surprise (cheap is cheap for a reason) and doesn't hold true for their mid-range and higher products. And heck, it's not even really fair when Walmart and Target furniture isn't any better, but it's enough to keep feeding the reputation.
Price is sometimes an indicator (I bought two Ikea dressers ~15 years ago; I kept the cheaper one for only a few years while the more expensive one is still going strong) but not always (my 18-year-old sofa was the entry-level option at the time).
I grew up in a nearly all Ikea household, and it’s only later in life I have discovered their reputation.
Am I missing something?
But depreciation on IKEA is huge because while it can last a long time within a household, it moves very poorly so if it has been moved or reassembled once or twice, it’s likely near end of life. But hard to evaluate that, it’s not like it has an odometer — hence value for used it very low.
It's probably a signaling thing too...
With the exception of the aforementioned table (which I think cost about 8 euro at the time, so, really, what did I expect) I’ve found all their stuff to be of very decent quality, certainly better than what you could get from ‘traditional’ furniture stores at the same price.
They have a line of pine furniture I like, as well as other things that are solid for the price (their kitchen cabinets) but you only have one chance to make a first impression as they say.
I had an engineered wood bed frame from them split in half, whereas an older IKEA pine (not hardwood but whatever) bed frame still lives on.
Also the style does get really old pretty fast for me.
I think good second hand furniture is where it's at: you get to not buy yet another new thing and get something solid and good.
I mean, if you are comparing with heirloom class furniture then that’s certainly true. After taking the cabinet or bed apart and sticking it together 4 or 5 times, you certainly start to notice some degradation. But then we’re talking about a factor 100 price difference.
Yes I hate them.
You'd spend $60 on a book case and spend the next 4 hours trying to understand what the instructions mean and how to build it. You also needed a partner to hold corners together.
Now today, the furniture instructions are better and instead 16 different weird fastener, there are 8.
Its a frustration thing. Ikea didn't really do anything but be low cost. We blame Ikea like we blame Walmart for having drug addicts.
Every time I've moved, I think this will be the time I replace it, but the joinery has stayed rock-solid, the wood has aged beautifully (though I admit this is likely owing to a lack of pets or children) and even the upholstery has never pilled or visibly worn (though I keep thinking about ordering a replacement slipcover set from Comfort Works, which makes aftermarket upgrades for long-since-discontinued Ikea products). And the minimalist, Danish-influenced style somehow never looks out of place no matter what else I put around it.
This article has me thinking I may yet keep the Lillberg for years to come.
I don't think "cheap" construction is necessarily a bad thing, honestly. There's ways to do cheap construction such that it works just fine.
So while the materials are cheap and the style not high end, from what I've seen they maximize the engineering to make it durable.
Though I'm also going to point out that a LACK side table ($13 now) for 8 years is a rather good deal.
The internals are revealed on the Ikea page too: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/lack-side-table-black-brown-801...
Okay those cheap ones make sense, but for coffee table it is robbery...
Also… I haven’t priced out Lack tables in a while but it looks like they’re still only $20?! I last bought one in probably 2006 and they were $20CAD at the time.
I still own some Billies made in 1995 or so by Ikea. Literally massive wood and damn good book shelves. The ones bought by me in 2008 or so very noticeably less well build but still ok. The ones we bought in 2018 or so are shit, especially the shelves are so thin that they begin to sag.
In 2008 or so a friend of mine bought a "kallax" (another name then) and it was awesome, it's still in his basement and looks good. We bought one in 2023 and it's basically only paint, some "wood" and air. It's ok to store stuff in, but it's impossible to drill a screw into the wood. It's like trying to screw paper.
You can drill the thin wood in IKEA furniture like this, but you have to reinforce it.
IKEA has always had a mix of wobbly instacrap and solid stuff. I remember they made a short-lived modular shelf called BRODER [1], which was solid steel and came in wall-mounted or freestanding configurations, the kind of solid thing you want in a garage or storage space. I was shocked at how high-end it was. It was discontinued to cost and low sales.
[1] https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3209/3641557199_eb0860e9eb.jpg
At some point in my twenties, I decided it was time to upgrade from my broke college student IKEA lifestyle which to me meant West Elm. Every thing I got from West Elm was absolute garbage and none of it lasted more than a handful of years.
Now I'm in the prime of my career and could move up to something actually nice if I really wanted to, like Design Within Reach (truly the most ironic business name in existence). But it's just so hard for me to justify a 5x or more price jump, when, honestly, the IKEA furniture I have has been so good.
I have a decade-old IKEA couch that is still in great shape despite surviving cats, dogs, young children, a snoring spouse who slept on it every night for about a year, and being mostly occupied throughout the entire pandemic. It's a tank, and still looks good to me.
I think I've committed myself to having a style that is basically "IKEA + some vintage stuff" which seems to work well quality wise and is about an order of magnitude cheaper than getting new quality non-IKEA furniture.
It's not as well made as quality pieces, but I worked from the assumption that any couch I bought would be trash. Some of the nice things about a buying into a system like the Finnala are that when an arm, cushion, cover, or whatever fails, I can just replace that piece; there are aftermarket covers and legs; if I move it can be disassembled; and if a new place is smaller, the whole thing doesn't have to be trashed.
I love quality furniture, but it doesn't always fit the bill for a society where people can't afford a single family house or put down roots. (Note: that still doesn't necessarily justify all the items being sold today that are destined for a landfill in a few years.)
My coffee table is still from IKEA, but it’s metal. I’ve had it for 11 years now. It’s on wheels and some of them look like they’ve seen some stress over the years… and it’s been moved to 8 homes in those 11 years, which could have been the cause. But it still works great and I don’t know the the average person visiting my home would notice that.
I have been thinking of getting something a little larger and more grown up, but I love the functionality of the wheels, how it can get out of the way, and that I don’t have to baby it. It doesn’t look like they sell it anymore, but it was $40 well spent.
IKEA has also however gone downhill compared to ~10 years ago, however. A Poang today, compared to 10 years ago: does not have beveled edges on the wood (which makes it look cheaper and feel less 'soft'), and is even slightly narrower, so that the old cushions dont really fit in the new one.
I think we are seing the effect of increasing prices and breakdown of global supply chains there
Why are so many of them just plain uncomfortable? I'm looking for one I want right now, and I have to go around a furniture shop and try each out and I reckon, maybe 1/4 of them are suitable for a place you might enjoy sitting in.
The high end furniture shops seem to be the worst, i've seen 4 figure sofas that are the most uncomfortable thing I ever tried. Champions of form over function.
My last favourite sofa was around 2500 I guess, lasted 10 years, was excellently comfortable, but was unfortunately the wrong shape for my new place, I have not found anything anywhere near as good as that one.
It may be my height, much furniture seems a little off to me, and it is hard in general for me to find things I'm happy with.
One hack you can perform on most sofas is to add some height to the rear legs using castors or wooden blocks or something. This tilts it forward a bit. Sitting back or reclining is fine in a dentist's chair because there's head support but it's no good on a sofa! There our head and spines need to be balanced.
Anyhow -- quality of materials and design are both important but the fact is that average bodily awareness is poor and this is a fundamental reason why our furniture is worse than it needs to be!
Sofas have many different functions.
The plush sofa you sink deep into for TV at the end of the day has a different function than the firm sofa your dinner guests sit on the front of while sipping cocktails, etc
Many of the sofas you were looking at were probably designed for a different function than you were seeking.
I sourced high-quality foam and wool upholstery fabric from Maharam and took those to one of the best upholsterers/furniture restorers in Los Angeles. They did a wonderful job and now I have a super-comfortable couch with many good childhood memories, that should last me another 25 years before I need to replace the cushions again.
Point being, get a classic old piece and restore it. It will last a lifetime.
Same goes for old wooden windows etc. that can last a hundred years or more if properly taken care of.
"Heavy is good, heavy is reliable. If it doesn't work you can always hit them with it." — Boris 'The Blade' Yurinov
As for other pieces of furniture, e.g., cabinets and stuff, we bought them used from a place that combed estate sales in Denmark for furniture and sold it in the US. One attraction is that the old furniture is smaller, so it works in a smaller house.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a2/c9/50/a2c9506ff9f3d65541d5...
https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZrMM8Wa1DuU/UkRPE9INzeI/AAAAAAAAC...
I wrote my original post in haste - the cost was for doing the couch and a matching chair (same side-profile, just narrower.)
I wonder, is it even possible it's solidly made despite being very light?
Parents bought a living room set, it was double what a similar set would be at the local furniture superstore, but the fabric/cushions were a new level of terrible. Basically fell apart in two years.
It's a great place to find wooden tables, beds, dressers, but it's all heavy (as you'd expect) and hard to move.
If I was buying a sofa today I would get something from Stressless.
This is inaccurate. Their schooling is complete after grade 8.
From their point of view, the modern society may be needlessly infantilizing people who are halfway to adulthood.
We even treat university students like kids, hence all the obsession with micromanaging their campus experience.
I used to have some expensive, but ultimately crap, book cases. Book cases are not designed by people who own a lot of books. 36" to 48" spans of fast growth pine will stretch and bow within a year or two. I designed my own book case. I went to a furniture making store. We went back and forth a few times. The biggest sticking point that took four attempts for the furniture maker to understand was where to put the fixed shelf. It does not go in the middle because that wastes space. We made it out of pine. 7' 8" tall, so that when standing it up, it will clear an 8ft ceiling in modern American homes. 22" wide shelves so they cannot flex. Fixed shelf to counteract gravity. Made specifically to carry paperback novels and similarly sized books. "Sand it three times, prime it, sand it, prime it, sand it, paint it, sand it, paint it, no I don't care that a single book case will cost $200." I bought 24 of them. Many hundreds of lineal feet of book cases. We still have them 24 years later and they are as good as new. And the paint job, because it is two layers of prime and two layers of paint, on a mirror surface, looks like you just took the item from the showroom floor.
I have a plywood bookcase I made to store cooking books. The cheapest plywood you can imagine from the big box store. But because of the structural design, 15 years later it still holds up without any bowing or flexing.
Modern furniture is absolute junk. Even the "good stuff."
The issue is that most modern households in the U.S. can not hack that kind of pricetag for a sofa / couch. Hell, I could never spend that kind of jack on a couch, even if I literally saved up for it (which would take years)... it is just far too much of a percentage of my income for one furniture item.
So, how do we solve that issue (e.g. its good, but if it is 10% of your gross annual income, how could you afford it)? Either people need to get paid more, or ???
> Eighteenth-century furniture was expensive. At a time when a journeyman joiner earned three livres a day, a good-quality armchair might cost as much as a hundred livres.
No matter how much money I make, I like to think there's price-tags I'd still balk at just because I don't want to be a sucker. Or get involved in status-signaling.. not sure which is worse.
So I started thinking about comparisons also. I like to go back to cups of coffee, and you could spend 6 bucks on coffee easily.. is a piece of furniture worth a thousand cups? Maybe. On the other hand, you could own like 3 cargo containers for this cash (think of the material involved), or a used car (think of the utility!).
So nah, this feels like way too much money, unless it's a mint condition antique that some king and queen used to sit on. A huge Belffin modular super sofa with 9 seats and 2 ottomans is less than $2k.
The old clay pipes used to be the best for those, look much better than cinder blocks, but whatever.
I've purchased couches from West Elm, Restoration Hardware, and a few other well-known places, and they've all been disappointing. From now on I'll stick to Furnitureland and IKEA, but I don't know if I have the energy to go couch shopping at Furnitureland.
A good place to start in my opinion is with the well regarded office-furniture brands, Herman Miller, Steelcase, Hon, etc. They are well experienced in making furniture that can handle abuse, because commercial furniture takes a lot of abuse. And as far as durability goes, they make durable furniture in the highest volumes and have the most reasonable prices you're going to get.
You need 2.5 density foam or higher, or you need a "uncushioned" style couch.
(A little tip - the density you want for proper comfort varies by the thickness of the cushion, the weight of the intended users, and the whether it's the seat bottom or the back. The back needing a softer foam.)
This is completely illegal in Europe and I think it's illegal to serve this UI to an EU IP, even for non-EU websites.
Anyway, who cares, it's almost funny what lengths they go to to get you to accept cookies.
It's not "cheap imports" either, I don't think sofas here are imported. They are made to order in my country. They are just garbage.
I'm talking about midrange and even higher priced sofas. If you see the armature, it's mostly crap wood with "lots of staples" as mentioned. And a fancy cover, of course.
I will agree with the upholstery person in this article: it's not going to be worth it to pay someone to do it. I ended up reupholstering ours for around $500, but that's because I did all the labor myself. An amazing amount of work.
It was made with a lot of OSB, some of the most curved pine I've ever seen, and lots and lots of staples.
I fixed the frame by adding a variety of supports and glue and screws. The frame went from being barely sufficient to quite solid. I doubled the webbing and springs, and completely rebuilt the cushions. To an extent I used the existing fabric as the patterns for the new fabric, except: my wife wanted the cushions to have piping (that was a huge effort), and originally it had the back cushions built in and stuffed with polyfill, but I wanted to make them removable so I had to redesign the back and custom design the cushions.
The biggest mistakes I made were the foam I used for the cushions was way too firm. If I were to redo it I would do something like a 3 layer: firm, medium, maybe latex or low density memory foam. I'd also probably have used a leather considering all the effort I put in, largely to keep the cats at bay.
The real down side is that we're thinking of getting rid of it because it's really too big for our space, and unless I redo the cushions it's way too firm to use without additional pillows. But, despite all the work I put into it, I'd be willing to bet that we could't sell it, and probably couldn't give it away (selling furniture on craigslist is so frustrating).
End result: https://photos.app.goo.gl/Q8DMxQU7L9AggCBDA Starting reassembly: https://photos.app.goo.gl/rQRJfmYmSLew3rSN8
They've got an ingenious model from a profit perspective as well. Since you can't charge subscriptions for stuff like that, they can sell you pieces of a Sactional and then you can get more pieces as the space you live in gets bigger or your life style changes. They also sell additional covers so if you get bored of the previous ones, you can change the color without getting a new couch (though it is not easy to get them on and off).
My advice, wait until it's on sale. They regularly go for sale from 15-20%. If you aren't fussy about the type, Costco usually has them too.
- (though it is not easy to get them on and off)
no kidding. that was my second biggest gripe with this thing. I am in zero hury to use that feature.
The center section of my last sectional broke after about four months. Should any section break, I can quickly replace that piece instead of having to "deal with it" or replace the whole thing.
Sometimes they don't know what they have, I picked up a Herman Miller office chair for £30. It did have some paint specs on, which might have been why it was sold so cheaply. They came right off with a damp cloth though.
Let’s be real too: nobody’s going underneath the sofas at Crate and Barrel to see how they’re constructed. It doesn’t really matter that you can see and touch them.
I don’t even think the luxury brands are much better (e.g., RH). They’ll give you some solid woods and finer materials where you can see them. They are better but not by the amount I would like.
The cheapness isn’t something these manufacturers need to do, it’s just in their interest. Higher margins, more repeat purchases.
It’s not like salaries are high in big furniture production countries like Vietnam. They could do things in a more labor intense way and still make a profit. It’s just that they’ll make more money by making the construction cheap, and making a product that lasts decades is a good way to restrict future business.
I also don't really know what to look for. Most people don't.
In the past you could more or less rely on the store being somewhat reliable and somewhat trustworthy. I say "somewhat" because of course you wouldn't fully trust a salesman, but by and large: you could more or less trust that something was "quality" if it was advertised as such, and/or more expensive and the cheaper options, usually. You didn't need to have a Ph.D. in sofa construction to buy a decent sofa.
Now it's best to assume everything is a lie. Everyone is lying to your face, or just don't know what the they're talking about. Even expensive items marketed as "quality" cannot be relied on being quality at all.
Once upon a time a sofa was a product sold on the market because some people needed sofas, and some people and/or companies knew how to make them. "A fair product for a fair market-conform price". Classic capitalism and free-market economics where everyone wins.
But now it no longer matters if people need sofas, or whether anyone actually gets anything remote to a "fair deal", or any externalities like climate change, or if kids in Vietnam are being exploited. Burn the world, as long as I can sell my crummy sofa, because "free market allows it" is the only logical and moral argument that exists for some people. A sofa is no longer a product; it's just the means to making a profit. There's a subtle difference between to two.
All of this is part of "the financialisation of everything" and "toxic capitalism" that's been going on since the 80s.
It's really depressing that we have gotten to this point, seemingly the logical conclusion of the so-called efficient capitalist market.
Thus, people get foam, OSB, and cardboard in a fake canvas bag.
Good upholsterers are hard to find, often eccentrics, and usually will not tolerate cheapskates. If you own something pricey like a boat or restaurant, than most are happy to get something that will last. Even a few yards of period correct fabrics or leather is more expensive than the typical Ikea living room set.
One needs to learn these things if you want to stay married. lol =)
A couple of months ago, we stayed in a newer Holiday Inn Express. The bed and cabinets were very nice and well built.
For example:
https://www.charterfurniture.com/products/hospitality/desk-t...
My friend had an Article couch and after a handful of months it was so uncomfortable it was as if the stuffing somehow just vanished.
And yet when I look around the net all I can see are glowing reviews of Article couches all over :\
These were for the kid areas. They had reduced the previous (IKEA Ektorp) sofas to rubble over a couple of years. These new ones didn't last long at all. The suspension underneath the cushions is criss-crossed webbing in a softwood frame. Well you can imagine, a 90lb child jumping on that, the forces that develop. And then the frame breaks at the front. And there's nothing structural at the front of the sofa, just some 1/4" thick fiberboard, to anchor replacement frame material to so you can't really fix it.
Oh well. One of them now has solid plywood - very well fastened to what structural elements are available - so it's now very firm but the kids don't care. The other, I had the inspiration of mounting the plywood lower and putting another layer of cushioning in there (leftover seat cushions from the demolished Ektorp sofas). That's actually pretty good.
But without rambunctious kids, these sofas, which were already 10-15 years old, would have lasted quite a while longer. It's wizardly, the seating comfort they got out of such simple and cheap materials.
Pictures look good but it always disappoints. It’s the one online furniture store I will never buy from again.
It seems like the frame in the back has some sort of support that is made out of a material that is closer to cardboard than wood. When our kids run into it, the back of the chair deforms a bit and has to be bent back. I have no idea why the frame of a chair would be made out of something so weak. I expect we'll have to replace them in 5 years or so, and we'll aim for something more old-school.
Seems like Sofas are last to make the economical steel channel furniture jump, you can get tons of sturdy/durable bedframes for like $100 shipped on Amazon. Most cheap metal futon frames also last forever if it wasn't for the moving mechanical components. I'd like to see more steel + bolt sofas.
It's the best piece of furniture I've ever bought. It's made from "engineered wood", covered in quite good leather; I should have chosen a lower grade of leather, because hide isn't as easy to look after as some of the lower-grade leathers.
FTR, I've bought sofas and armchairs from artisan/craftsman makers, from junk shops, and I've also bought cheap disposable shit. After the Stressless, my best buys were all from junk shops. But this Stressless, I more-or-less live in it.
For cushions I already had some, but you can easily make them with more JOANN fabric and a big box of poly stuffing. Extremely basic sewing skills and a pair of scissors are all you need.
Give a man a fish...
In particular, it's comfortable, well built, but not bulky. I can take it apart move it in my regular sized SUV if needed. I move a lot, and eventually grew tired of bulky things that were difficult or impossible to move without professional help.
I also tried a Burrow sofa which has the same modular properties, but it was not comfortable at all and I had to return it
Also, never pay full price. They offer 25-35% off many times per year, usually around holidays.
I later wanted something matching for a different room - but the problem is, the Costco furniture changes seemingly every day and you never see the same thing again.
Easiest way to find happiness in material quality of life is to lower one's standards.
Many very good, long-lasting pieces of furniture come on the estate market for very cheap because a) no one wants to move the giant solid-wood china cabinet, or b) you can get a $15 sofa or table mailed to you, why would you want an ugly flower pattern on something that has already outlasted one owner?
Look for Thomasville, Drexel, or similar from the 1950s to the 1980s. Lots of midcentury modern, if you like that sort of thing, but plenty of other designs.
I'm writing this on a desk (currently missing the leather insert in the top) made of solid pecan. We got a 10' china cabinet, dining table that seats 12, and chairs for $300 a while back.
Unfortunately, I haven't seen stackable bookshelves from the 30s-60s lately and they were getting somewhat expensive, which puts a crimp on my obsession to decorate entirely with books.
Got this one in 2016 for $1,100, and it’s survived 2 kids with minimal pilling. It won’t impress anyone, but I have no problem using it.
https://www.ikeaddict.com/ikeapedia/en/Product/60276883/us-e...
I have no way of discerning furniture/fabric quality, and no one offers long warranties, so I don’t see a reason to spend more than IKEA prices.
[1] https://www.dwr.com/living-sofas-sectionals/quilton-chaise-s...
$2700 is what I got mine for. I think price might have been lowered to $2300 now.
It's built in Poland. Solid wood with steel reinforcement in the form of steel tubing in places, springs, and then a pillow system on top of that. The firm making it is the Swedish company SITS.
But I think one has to actually sit in a bunch of couches to see whether they're good.
The only problem I have with them is that they have almost no couch designs that have a more plush style. Almost all of them are firmer foams and just plain not appealing designs.
They're made from recycled materials and are vegan. So far they've been great, and they have a 15 year guarantee, but time will tell.
Other than that, I wish this article went less into things that don't matter (properly sized brackets are no worse, and sometimes better, than joinery, etc.) and more into the ergonomics, types of foam and other materials that actually matter. Like, how do I tell how long a cushion filling or fabric will last, or tell if there are springs that will sag without taking it apart.
What truly baffles me is how, in my middle-class suburban hometown, all of these families were able to furnish their massive 3-5 bedroom homes. Many families, including my own, would have a living room that was mostly for show (because hanging out happened in the den/TV room) yet contained thousands or tens of thousands of dollars of furniture.
That's your explanation.
The modern professional "middle class" was once called the petit bougeuosie and characterizes itself by trying to replicate aristocratic aesthetics and lifestyles with earned wages, which is mostly a lost cause and just creates a endless treadmill of labor and consumption.
Good on you for being so thoroughly free of the compulsion that they're an alien bafflement to you!
Older, antique furniture was much easier to work with and most newer furniture was practically impossible to reupholster at all.
I was pretty easy to see the difference once the bones were exposed.
We picked them because they were one of very few UK suppliers who could supply a sofa that's not covered in toxic flame retardants (the UK has kept some very dubious legislation in place on this issue, I think mainly because the industry lobbies for it as a protectionist measure).
The sofa we bought was on the expensive side, but not ridiculous. It's also seems beautifully made in general, and was carefully delivered by the firm themselves, who spent about half an hour manouevring it in.
So it's actually kind of a two sided loss in quality: the designs are flimsier even while the engineering requirements have become more demanding.
I tried the same here in the US with some high end Scandinavian furniture ($5k), the quote was up to 1x what I originally paid. In the end it made sense to just buy new again.
The cost of labor of where you reside has a significant effect on whether you purchase another 'junk' piece of furniture.
When it comes to sofas there's a less common low, and that's "model home" furniture.
These upholstered representations look just like the real thing but they are not counterfeits, merely imitations of what it would look like if the model home were to be equipped with actual furniture where its usefulness was a consideration.
Occasionally appearing on the second-hand market so caveat emptor.
I think there's probably just quality:price tiers and mine happens to be in the economical but decent quality range.
- is comfortable
- isn't full of fire retardant chemicals which turn out to be cancerous right after the warranty expires
- for less than $10k.
Pretty sure that means I'm going to have to learn how to sew.
Best furniture ever. Carted across the country twice. I still use both pieces every day. They've been reupholstered once.
In 1986 a Mustang GT was under $11k, now its about 3x that price.
1985 median home sale was $80k, 2023 median home sale was about $450k.
We only list brands that are A) plastic-free and B) use non-toxic materials.
The list of large-ish brands that fit those specifications can be counted on one hand.
The industry is rife with corner cutting, greenwashing, and lack of disclosure.
Sure, quality furniture is great but I'll wait until we settle down. For now, no regrets.
A little over a year ago the "leather" started developing holes in it from wear all over the place. The so called leather is literally paper thin and bonded to some low quality fabric.
I've never had this sort of problem with a couch before. It's very frustrating.
Got a custom from them and (partly because I asked) it's crazy sturdy. Cost a lot, and I got what I paid for :D
This isn't exactly a novel problem.
Higher-end sofas would have logically cost much more...
Whatever else goes on in my life, I've got that sofa problem handled.
Now people move every few years. And it’s hard to justify buying fancy furniture in a place you aren’t staying for long time.
My Rowe furniture sofa is 21 years old now and sits as if it was new. If I have a problem, I'll get it reupholstered or just order a new cushion from the manufacturer.
You also have to make a selfie so that you can see yourself construct it in the videos.
Just get a La-Z boy reclining sofa
I haven’t had to replace any of the relatively cheap stuff I’ve gotten from cost plus world market over a decade.
I might just be lucky or special, but I don’t think cheaper furniture is necessarily bad or throwaway. I’m not sure what the trick is. We’ve tended to buy robust looking furniture— solid wood dining table, welded metal dining chairs, a plush and thick sofa. Frankly, our stuff looked very pedestrian compared to some of our friends, but it has lasted.
Years later I spent $3500 on a sofa from Design Within Reach and it's terrific.
One contributing factor is the fabric you choose. But the biggest one is labor. The wooden construction uses only solid wood too but that is the least cost either way.
What I did when buying it is that I made a list of all design furniture shops in Berlin that sold Cor.
Then I drove to each of them and asked: this is my best price from your competitors. What is yours? In the end I actually paid 4,500€. I also learned the margin is ~45% of the list price for the shop.
Which gives you an idea about material and labor prices when you produce in Europe. I.e. Cor sells this to the shop for around 3k€. That already includes their margin. I would think producing this has costs of at least 50% of that attached. I.e. 1.5k€ for labor and materials.
I just started helping a friend re-produce an old design classic of his [2] as WFH has made requests for it spike. It's not a sofa, strictly speaking, but the changes in costs probably make it worth mentioning them in this context.
When we produced the first series, ca. 2004, we had material, CNC and labor costs of around 1,000€. Without upholstery. Upholstery varies greatly depending on finish. Different fabrics and leathers have very different prices and labor costs attached.
We are now looking at over 4k€ for labor and wood (it's made of Ceiba which is difficulty to source). I.e. we have a ~300% raise in production costs over 20 years in Europe (not counting upholstery!).
If we wanted to keep the previous price, we needed to switch to cheaper wood and move production outside of Europe. At the moment we are just considering targeting a wealthier clientele. Not everyone has this luxury though.
I guess I'm saying I dunno how much these factors play a role in the enshittification of sofas everywhere. But they probably do ... :]
I can’t read the site due to a massive “We value your privacy” pop up informing me about the 1532 data-harvesting “partners” they sell information to, and there’s only “Allow All” button accessible (which is illegal by GDPR).
They really value my privacy, for its resale value.
There is somebody who makes them but for the life of me I can't recall who.
They come with a built-in compressor.
But do they suck less than not having a sofa at all? I am a several-time-over beneficiary of cheap made-in-southeast-asia sofas. Shipped in a fridge-sized box right to my doorstep, assembled (by me) in ~15min, and perfectly serviceable. Is it up to the same quality level as a $5000 made-in-USA solid wood hand-woven twine-joinery (etc etc) masterpiece? No, but I couldn't have afforded that kind of sofa. And it didn't have to be hand-packed by a furniture transportation expert, and it didn't weigh 800 lbs.
I don't really see the "loser" here exactly - broke grad students, college kids, people in rural areas, and starving artists win; workers in developing countries win (the furniture factory sure beats the rice paddies); Instagram-sofa tech bros win. And gilded solid wood sofa makers can always market to the rich, who can afford to spend several months' worth of my rent cost on a piece of furniture.
Did anyone else find this weird / funny?
Like, just off the top of my head I'd put my bed at the top of my list, waaaay ahead of a sofa. Next might be the desk & chair I WFH at, and then it goes on from there.
I get that the article wants to build engagement by "raising the stakes", but c'mon. Sofas are not that important :)
Same situation with buying used cars. New cars suck. You can't work on them yourself and they have terrible UX. So people started only looking for used. Except the used prices skyrocketed to match supply & demand.
We can't keep this up. We can't all keep thrifting. Everyone knows it's better, everyone is on the prowl, and everyone has easier access to buyers, thanks to the internet.
The US largest generation is approaching life expectancy and we are below replacement numbers.
I've been pretty stunned during my travels to find that it's really only Americans who obsessively talk about or reference TV shows and movies in their small talk. No other culture seems nearly as interested, and some actively discourage it in favor of more real, personal topics. It's one of those things where once you start noticing it, it just gets cringier and cringier.
Not everyone lives in sitcoms or spends all their free time watching TV...
The only time I'm on my couch is when I have a few people over. And even then we're usually doing other things than just lazing about.
For one, it doesnt seem like americans are significant outliers in tv consumption[1] or smartphone usage[2]. For another, yeah if you're a foreign traveller people probably aren't going to make small talk with you about TV or other pop culture...
[1]https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/which-country-watches-th...
[2] https://explodingtopics.com/blog/smartphone-usage-stats#smar...
Americans constantly shove TV into the conversation even if they don't know that the other person or people are familiar with it. Though many are aware of American media output by virtue of the cultural colonialism enacted since brute force fell out of fashion. Even if they're not explicitly speaking about TV they're still doing the IRL version of posting reaction GIFs by quoting memes in response to earnest conversation.
I think you may be engaging in a bit of axe grinding here! I agree that the sofa is one of the post important pieces of furniture in my home [1], but for reasons that have nothing to do with television. There is no TV in the room! But it is still where I spend the most time sitting during downtime, reading books, talking to my family, etc. And when I have friends over, we're either there or at the dining room table.
[1] For the title of the most important, I might have picked my bed. But that's a quibble.
You make it sound like this is not merely a rare thing for you, but that it should be rare... I don't just passively sit and watch much television and yet I have spent an incredible amount of time in my life sitting on either my couch or the couch of a friend -- or even one of many couches at an office -- talking and laughing and having fun with other human beings. If I had to choose only one: a couch or a dining table, I'd go with a couch. Now... bed? That's harder for me, but I can totally see people deciding couch (as you can sleep on the couch but it is awkward as hell to invite people over and only have a bed to use).
For instance, people come by all the time to play pool. Does that mean I should advocate that pool tables are important things to have in the home?
My family doesn't watch TV. I purchased my sofa when I didn't even have a TV.
The most important aspect of my living room arrangement is how well it facilitates long, deep, conversations with friends who come over for visits.
I have 3 pieces of seating in my living room, a chair for reading placed next to a book case (large enough that a couple small kids can sit in the lap of an adult who is reading with them if so desired), a smaller 2 person sofa, and a larger 6ft long sofa.
I know plenty of other families who have similar arrangements with sofas so placed as to emphasize socialization with friends.
Now if we are talking about the 90s and early 2000s, yeah, it was all about amazing TV watching experiences.
> The only time I'm on my couch is when I have a few people over. And even then we're usually doing other things than just lazing about.
The couch is where you retire to after dinner has been finished and everything cleaned away. Board games may occur in other rooms (depending on one's coffee table situation) the of course a room that is laid out for conversation is going to see the most use when there are people over to have a conversation with.
FWIW now that I have a kid, I am hosting social events more often than ever before (watching children has a negative co-efficient for small values of n > 1, 3 kids are easier to watch than 1!), but even in my DINK life (at which point I didn't even own a TV), my couch got plenty of use.
If anything, TV has become dramatically less of a shared cultural experience for Americans since the post-network era began.
That's quite a leap. Did you consider that dwell.com might not have actually done a study on what Americans consider the "most important piece of furniture" but just used that phrase to justify the very existence of their article?
In any case, even though there is nothing on television I watch with any regularity currently, I would still rate my sofa as a fairly important piece of furniture. Not as important as my bed, but it is the largest piece of furniture and the centerpiece of my largest room. My kitchen/living room is open floor plan townhouse and I cook quite a bit, and I can't just stand all day, so that's where I rest, even though I'm just listening to music when I do so and not watching television. When I lay down to read a book, that's also usually where I do it. If I take a nap during the day, it's typically on the sofa. We usually eat dinner there, too, even though we're not watching television, just because it's more comfortable than any other place we have to sit. I even work from my sofa pretty frequently.
But I've got no complaints, personally. I paid $300 or so at the PX when I joined the Army almost 20 years ago and bought my first house and still have the same sofa. It certainly didn't fall apart on me. It's moved with me four times. My wife and I debate getting a nice one but always decide not to because our cats are going to tear it up and puke on it all the time anyway.
> I've been pretty stunned during my travels to find that it's really only Americans who obsessively talk about or reference TV shows and movies in their small talk.
It's a slight exaggeration, but yeah. I've really started noticing it on HN and some news-ish sites too, over the past couple of years: where a book would normally be used as a reference point, now a film is more commonly used instead.
Maybe it's hindsight bias on one of our parts.
Frankly, we'd probably use it a little less if our dining chairs were more comfortable, and I do think there's a very good case to be made that dining room chairs are more important than the sofa, but nonetheless, I really don't think a sofa is especially tied to TV culture in any way.
If we're going to be doing something rather than lazing around or eating, we're not going to be in the house at all.
