Jeff’s online bric-a-brac?
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All of our furniture has been acquired secondhand, except for the rolling office chairs (we get new ones of those every 3-4 years as they wear out, but they are perfect for their use in front of the computers) and the large sectional from Costco. The Costco sectional was bought for a particular corner in the living room, was $1k, and after 4 years of use looks almost new. I quilt, and throws for the couches are our friend, especially when we had cats.
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Not sure if it already got caught in the comment thread, above, but the Dwell hyperlink, in the OP, got its link swapped out with a link to the earlier BB West Elm hell-couch post. Here’s what you meant to link to, I think?
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I just bought an actual mid century couch off Facebook marketplace. $500 plus $200 getting it professionally cleaned. It’s in fantastic shape, not just for a 60 year old couch, but in general. Fabric hasn’t even faded.
If you want good furniture you’ve gotta buy antique. Buying new furniture is for chumps.
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It’s going to fade in that room. Notice the rug.
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One advantage of cheaply made furniture is that it becomes easier to DIY reupholstery, if you have a friend/relative or someone who is relatively friendly with a decent sewing machine and you are careful about stripping it down.
Of course you might also need to rebuild the carcass.
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This discussion is making me feel lucky there are so many auction houses in my area. The last one I visited had a warehouse full of older, solid wood pieces. They’ll be my first stop if something can’t be repaired and has to be replaced. Of course, that assumes there will still be quality cast-offs and estate sale items in the future. Now furniture companies are going out of business. My cousin moved last year, and sold his furniture as part of the process. He ordered replacements, only to find out the manufacturer suddenly declared bankruptcy and he has no hope of getting that money back:
https://www.thestreet.com/retail/another-popular-furniture-retailer-files-chapter-11-bankruptcy
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It’s good that assembly services exist, and they clearly fill a need - but assembling a new piece of flatpack furniture is one of the stealthy low-key pleasures that makes life good for me.
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Sorry for the confusion - it’s one of my terms for amazon, AKA
Sorry again. I didn’t mean to fuck w/anyone’s head, least of all yours.
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He’s cancelled the unfulfilled loveseat order. We’re hoping it will come back up on the site, but in the meantime the loveseat hunt begins anew. 
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I have a Zanzibar chest (we called it a Kuwait chest) that someone put a hot pan on and took off some of the finish. Maybe I’ll try this, obviously I don’t want to put a modern epoxy or acrilyic on it.
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If it’s old, it will likely be either shellac or an oil/wax mix. Either is pretty easily repaired. Put a drop of denatured alcohol on it. If the finish gets sticky, it’s shellac. If not, probably oil.
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[quote="anon94804983, post:91, topic:270251]
the unfulfilled loveseat order
[/quote]
Copyright Mills & Boon, 1970.
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[Brief tangent:
When I worked at a now-defunct chain bookstore, part of my job was stripping covers off magazines & mass market paperbacks to return them. Imagine my delight upon discovering some romance novels “repeated” their covers just inside, on glossy paper! I’d tear out those I found suitable, write something amusing on 'em, and stick 'em up on a wall or door in the back room. One I clearly recall involved a nude man looking right into the eyes of the viewer, whilst handling a woman whose back was to us, with her blouse falling off. I LOL’d and wrote, “Just wait until I’m done with this one, honey!” at the bottom and stuck it on the wall. The boss saw it first, and all but ROFL’d. 
]
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I totally hear you. Assembling a piece of Ikea furniture is like building a Lego set or doing a big jigsaw puzzle, with the added bonus of having a functional piece of furniture when you’re finished.
But when you need to put together several big pieces all at once, and you’ve got three little kids and a big ongoing project at work, Taskrabbit can be a life-saver.
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Buy It For Life furniture recs, Specifically Couches? (Reddit):
https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyItForLife/comments/1bglyfz/bifl_furniture_recs_specifically_couches/
If you are tempted to take on a re-upholstery project, look for older Thomasville, Norwalk, Henredon, Sherill, and Hickory brand sofas, according to my friend the professional antiques re-upholsterer. Some community colleges will offer a course on upholstering and if you strip–and save–all the stuff from a sofa with “good bones,” you can use your classroom time (and maybe the industrial sewing machines if you are so lucky) to redo the piece your way.
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you clearly know more about foam than I do… I say “memory foam” and I simply mean “foam” vs springs/coils + stuffing of some sort. If I ever get around to making a cheap sofa using something like pallets and foam, I probably ought to research it more than just use a cheap old mattress (but I’d probably start with a cheap old foam mattress).
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Try pallets and futon, far more hard-wearing.
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Damnit, I’ve got a super comfy Stickley couch in the garage that we picked up free and is in need of a reupholster job. I’d convinced myself that it should go as the garage storage space isn’t worth the uncertain future use timeline… only to find this article that speaks directly to my doubts.
The article is absolutely right otherwise about the low quality / short expected life of most anything new <$2000.
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Just had a couple old couches reupholstered here. I was amazed at what it cost, but when I compared it to new, at comparable quality, I quickly realized it was a steal to repair rather than replace.
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