Alfonso Cuarón's "Ikea"

[Espresso]

@AliceWeir

Any time there’s a major sale on? People will literally be lined up outside, just waiting to get in.

Right there: that’s a room in hell to me. Going to Ikea (or any store) to line up and wait for the doors to open for a sale. On my list of ways to voluntarily spend time, that’s at or near the bottom.

I’m glad they have stuff that’s useful to you at prices you like. For me, the inconvenience of the place (since i don’t live in the suburbs) is a great big strike before we even get to my issues with what’s inside. And personally, I just don’t like about 75% of what I see inside, and the 25% is almost never worth the schlep. And those rare times it really is worth it, you’d never catch me there on a weekend or on the first day of a big sale.

@AliceWeir

I cannot buy either the aluminm frame OR the canvas for the $90 IKEA asks.

On this one, IMHO you are, um, not doing it right. If you shop estate sales, church bazaars, thrift shops and the like you can find all kinds of excellent frames for peanuts. By the time you are considering spending $90, the only question is whether you like the original art in the frame.

[AliceWeir]

Um, art is not a thing that can get done ‘right’ at all. You either love it, or you don’t, and that’s all you need to know. Maybe $90 is a lot to you. To me, it’s merely the base of an installation I may (and probably will) change over time. And I’m talking about a piece that is appx 4’ X 6’ - not small pictures.
I get what you’re saying about the lines - I don’t do Black Fridays or any of that. I even find all those rewards cards and coupons too annoying. I don’t even do IKEA sales, as a rule. I go during the week while everyone else is busy elsewhere. My only point was the enthusiasm and camaraderie I encountered when I did go on a sale day. I went there to look at stupid shelf, but came back with a whole new perspective.

WRT to all super-simple lines in most of the products - hey. There’s a reason why cabinet makers learn to make boxes. There’s a reason why Crate and Barrel is the name of a furniture store. And, there’s a reason why Home depot carries moldings and trims, and why there is even a place that just sells alternate legs and styling pieces for your IKEA stuff. It’s just boxes and panels and legs. But so is most of your other furniture. I can throw on a strip of molding or a cornice, and that flat square shelf becomes a victorian piece, or a bright color and make it mid-century, or whatever I can dream up.

I also get why you dislike the plain lines - I used to think the very same, couldn’t understand the attraction. I don’t care for most of the set pieces in the catalog, myself. Definitely not into the Swedish look. But that was before I got the idea that these are just the boxes you will make into whatever YOU like. I’ve seen decoupaged pieces that would fit any of the shabby chic trendy stuff so many people like these days, painted pieces that will fit in with anything else, etc. You don’t have to trek there to mess around with it - go online, or get one of the Droid apps and mess around. See what you see. It’s a case where you really can’t judge a bookcase by it’s cover, lol.

[Espresso]

@jsroberts

Obviously IKEA fans understand furniture on a deeper level than other people who just buy the finished product, and are maximising their living space to a greater extent than most other people.

That’s not obvious to me at all, unless by “Ikea fans” you mean the tiny subset of Ikea customers who really think about this stuff and use the products as the base for DIY projects, etc.

Apart from that small group, seems to me the overwhelming majority of Ikea customers are just there to get furniture and housewares, much of it with an appallingly short useful life, for a price they can afford, and they’re willing to spend time on assembly to help keep it cheap. And that’s all they’re there for. That’s certainly how I see Ikea furniture used the vast majority of the time.

@AliceWeir

Um, art is not a thing that can get done ‘right’ at all.

I agree. I was talking about buying a $90 Ikea poster just for the frame. If that’s not what you’re doing, never mind, I misunderstood.

@AliceWeir

I also get why you dislike the plain lines

I never said I dislike the plain lines. I love Scandinavian design and would live in a Danish Modern wonderland if I could afford it. What I don’t like is Ikea’s flimsy, disposable, banal take on the style.

I think I understand how the two of you are using these products in ways different from what most people do. It works for you, and that’s fine. But I’m not a tinkerer. I like well-built, functional furniture with clean lines, that comes as a finished piece. (And honestly, if I prefer a finished piece over an assembly-required one, that fact says nothing about my understanding of furniture, space, interior design, etc.)

In my experience – and I regularly shopped there for over 20 years – Ikea furniture is indeed functional, for the most part. But it’s rarely well-built, and when it is there are almost always better options available.

[jsroberts]

I was comparing IKEA and Apple fans - I get the impression that both companies like to massage your ego as an important part of the marketing process. In reality, most people are just putting a few pieces of wood together to make a piece of IKEA furniture, or doing much the same as anyone else if they buy an Apple project. Still, that little amount of effort to change OS or assemble furniture and the short term satisfaction of having something that seems more functional than what other people have can make you feel that you are on a different level as a consumer, especially when other people claim that they can’t understand the system.

In reality, there are many things that you shouldn’t buy at IKEA, but I think its success at marketing and design are very impressive. As for its durability, there are worse places and many people get bored of their furniture after a very short time anyway (how many 30+ year old sets of furniture do you see around?). If people are going to be getting rid of their furniture every 15 years anyway, I’d rather it wasn’t solid wood. It’s a bit of a chicken and egg problem (do people throw furniture away because it’s cheap or do they buy cheap because they don’t expect to keep it?), but our culture is not good at holding on to things for a long time.

[Jule]

I so suck at interior design. Maybe that’s why I find Klimt and Dali equally crappy.

[Jule]

And Hundertwasser.

[AliceWeir]

Oh - sorry. Yes, that remark was in response to somebody else entirely.

Laughing about the Danish Modern thing. You are young! (Congrats.) My mom filled our home with that stuff. To you - ‘stylishly retro’. To me - ‘just plain old’. I always laugh at stuff like ‘Design on a Dime’. Always minimum 50% IKEA stuff, and you could easily make a drinking game out of somebody saying ‘mid-century modern’ or ‘transitional’ throughout the show.

OTOH, I recently snagged a natural stone lazy susan for $20. It’ll be here after you and I are long gone… that’s not cheap disposable crap - that’s decidedly better than BB&B’s plastic, for the same price.

Yeah - it’s about the designing and building. (Tinkering is just the messing around part I may do on my way to a final design.) Not for everybody. I have a kid who is the Craigslist Queen. She knocks out unbelievable deals all the time. But, he likes to shop and haggle and kicks butt at that. Awesome, but not my thing. Different strokes…

Oddly enough, I have a ‘thing’ about stuff that doesn’t last well. Modern construction is generally crap, most products disposable, etc. After becoming very ill due to exposure some of the modern materials involved, and getting trapped on the bottom floor of my own ginormous house, I turned activist.
Put a lot of thought into it, eventually realized that stone, metal, and glass are what is required. Wood only lasts if it’s fossilized. Otherwise, it’s ALL just a matter of time, and therefore disposable stuff.

So, I decreased my living space, but I keep it all open as a studio. Anything modular and multi-purpose is great for my purposes. Initial idea was to create a basic, very affordable living space that could be re-purposed and/or redecorated in 15 minutes flat at any time by 1 person. Haven’t quite reached that entire goal yet, but it changes how I look at stuff now. Makes you ask - hey, what all COULD thingie there be? Kind of like ‘Hints from Heloise, after Heloise Gets Pissy About It’, lol. Odd unintended consequence is, if you go for safety and efficiency, the tree-huggers like it. If you go for economy and comfort, everybody else likes it. It’s pretty much a no-lose proposition.

So, yeah. Not something everyone enjoys, but I see the future there. And if you want things that don’t exist elsewhere yet, you kind of have to own a screwdriver, lol. It’s a larger hacker group than you might think, though. (not that numbers alone make a thing automatically more or less good.) The international feeds stay plenty busy, though.

[Espresso]

@jsroberts

I was comparing IKEA and Apple fans - I get the impression that both companies like to massage your ego as an important part of the marketing process. In reality, most people are just putting a few pieces of wood together to make a piece of IKEA furniture, or doing much the same as anyone else if they buy an Apple project. Still, that little amount of effort to change OS or assemble furniture and the short term satisfaction of having something that seems more functional than what other people have can make you feel that you are on a different level as a consumer, especially when other people claim that they can’t understand the system.

I guess it’s a pretty good analogy. Personally, I stopped buying into that whole Ikea way of thinking some time ago, and just started seeing it as a budget furniture store that puts you to work as part of the bargain, though I don’t deny I’d probably go back if I had a kitchen to remodel, for example. Similarly, with Apple products (which I still buy and use), I no longer get any particular satisfaction from being different, and have abandoned the idea that being an Apple user means I have any special insight into the universe because, well, it doesn’t. All I’m really doing is buying tools and toys from one company instead of another. (I keep on buying them partly out of familiarity with the system, and partly because they are usually well-built and last long enough to more than make up for the price premium.)

@jsroberts

As for its durability, there are worse places and many people get bored of their furniture after a very short time anyway (how many 30+ year old sets of furniture do you see around?). If people are going to be getting rid of their furniture every 15 years anyway, I’d rather it wasn’t solid wood.

It isn’t hard to find furniture, even in sets if that’s what you want, of almost any age you care to mention. That doesn’t mean it’s all good, or tasteful, or well made. But at least if it’s wood and well-made, it can be kept in circulation indefinitely. And if it’s wood and it’s falling apart or hopelessly ugly, at least it’s a potential source of salvageable materials. When particleboard and melamine are done, AFAIK that’s the end of the line. (Correct me if I’m wrong.) And some of the very ugliest pieces I see in my thrifting adventures are made of eternal metal and/or glass.

@AliceWeir

Laughing about the Danish Modern thing. You are young! (Congrats.) My mom filled our home with that stuff. To you - ‘stylishly retro’. To me - ‘just plain old’.

There’s definitely an element of nostalgia. I grew up around that stuff to a certain extent, but we also had a lot of older pieces (a few of which are now in my home), and then in the 80s Ikea came into the mix but it was rarely considered worthy of being placed where an adult visitor might see it.

What I like about mid-century style, whether Scandinavian or not, is that it’s generally (though not always) simple and understated and it’s relatively easy to find well-made pieces – of course there’s junk, too, always has been and always will be.

So yeah, give me 50s steel-and-formica kitchen table, still going strong, over anything comparable from Ikea, any day. I’ll also take my 30s bookcase, in a way an “Ikea piece” of its time, over anything from Ikea. And so on.

@AliceWeir

eventually realized that stone, metal, and glass are what is required. Wood only lasts if it’s fossilized. Otherwise, it’s ALL just a matter of time, and therefore disposable stuff.

You’re being a little hard on wood, IMO. Properly handled and cared for, it should last hundreds of years. Just semantics I suppose, but if something is built to last four, five or more times my maximum lifespan, I don’t consider it disposable. Of course, if you can’t use it for health reasons that’s a different story.

[AliceWeir]

True about the wood. I really love good wood, still own some. But yes, it can present some problems - from the point where it’s organic and subject to fungus and other rot, to newer coatings that often outgas into your house. (Think of me as a coalmine canary. If it knocks me out - probably not really good for you, either.) My general rule of thumb now is, if I can’t pitch all of it off the balcony in about 5 minutes flat, I really don’t want it in here at all.

These large storms over the past few years have taught us a lot, too. Instead of spending on wood furniture, I ripped out all the drywall and replaced with Durock) concrete wall board. I rigged draining systems for all pipes, so leaks cannot ever be an issue. I used tile coving and tile floors, so even if I (or they) did managed to flood the place, it can’t escape into my neighbors’ homes or wreck my possessions, and goes down the drain instead. Our homes are supposed to be secure and comfortable…but mostly, they aren’t really built (or priced) very well for that. It’s just stuff. It either serves your needs, or it’s worthless no matter what the price tag said. Still love antiques! I just don’t furnish with them now. If I want to be surrounded by them, guess I could always throw up a slide show of nice pieces on a USB drive and let the TV take care of it virtually…

I’ve blown it here and there…but never in a major way so far (Knock on concrete, lol). Way more fun than just buying stuff and being conventional all the time. Just wish I’d started sooner! (I still like 40’s/50’s kitchens, too!)