I saw a headline that Ikea was considering a rental program because there’s a cultural understanding that flat packed* furniture especially that made of veneered chipboard is disposable.
And yeah at least Ikea puts in some effort to make their furniture decent. Much of what you find at retailers is just chip board shit, bookcases that’ll collapse under the weight of actual books, etc.
My strategy is, I’m a woodworker. I’m slowly replacing anything cheap and crap in my life with oak, cherry and walnut.
*had to correct myself from saying flatpak there, Linux has me trained.
Ikea has a lot of chip board furniture but they also have some decent solid wood furniture for a good price.
It’s usually pine but still for the price it’s a decent quality furniture that could last for a good time in good condition.
I would agree that using solid wood is a step up from veneered particle board in terms of longevity and durability. But they still use the same joinery system, those pin-and-latch things plus unglued dowels as alignment pins. These do offer the ability to disassemble the furniture in the future but every time you lean on, bump into, or otherwise apply a racking load to the piece, all that force is going to get transferred to the tiny amount of wood fiber surrounding those screw threads holding those latch pins in place, and eventually they’ll start to loosen. They’re still not as solid as a good old fashioned glued mortise and tenon, dado or dovetail joint.
I just moved into a house a couple years ago. While I’m mostly getting used furniture, I’m slowly looking into making my own and learning to repair what’s out there.
I’m really bad at staining or painting. I never feel like what I do comes out even.
Stain can be really difficult, and the real shit of it is cheap woods like pine, poplar and birch that you’d likely want to stain are the worst at it, they tend to come out blotchy. My recommendation is maybe add some tint to the top coat to steer the color in a direction you want but generally pick a wood that is the color you want already.
