For now, we have held off on buying a dresser for our room. (I’m sure everyone was waiting with bated breath for our decision. However, we did buy a wardrobe for L. Her new room does not have a closet, so I bought her this off Wayfair:
It cost us nearly $400. It’s a large item. I figure L will need more space as a teenager and I thought this would do the trick. But seriously, it’s a piece of crap. OK, I’m exaggerating. It’s actually fine and will get the job done. But really, it’s nuts how much junk is being thrown into boxes and called furniture these days.
I also need to get a dresser for the younger girls as their closet is smaller. (Notice a theme here? We basically had almost nothing in the way of dressers / chests of drawers / wardrobes in our old house. Our new house has significantly less storage space. *sigh*) Anyway, I started looking on Wayfair again, and as I looked at all the options, I just knew they were going to be junk, at least in my price range. It seems like, with new furniture, you have three or four grades:
1.) Junk you can buy at Ikea or Wayfair for $100 – $400, depending on the size of the item. Extremely low quality, one step up from cardboard. Heck, you can probably buy literal cardboard furniture at Ikea. Yes, it’s cheap.
2.) Higher quality mass market furniture. Say start with Pottery barn, which is often still made of manufactured wood at the lower end, and on up to Room and Board, which is real wood and usually about 2x the cost of PB. I have a few Pottery Barn furniture items, and I’ve always been pleased with the quality. I particularly like our upholstered beds and nightstands. But let’s get real – it’s mass produced of fairly low cost materials. You’re looking at around $1500 for a PB dresser. Way more than I want to spend right now.
3.) Bespoke unique furniture. Out of my price range.
So then I thought, I sell all my old stuff on FB and CL for outrageously good prices. We gave away a perfectly good table, for example, all real wood. The top is marked up from the kids but it’s very high quality. (We gave it away because the people who sold us our house left us a table, and we didn’t need two.) So I hit up FB Marketplace. And wow, there is some really nice furniture on there for cheap. All of the options I’ve considered cost $300 or less, with many coming in well under.
Which one should I get? This is for the kids’ room, and they don’t care, but might as well make a good choice, right?
I found a beautiful armoire I wish I’d bought for L instead of the piece of crap we actually bought, but to be honest, I’m not sure how we would have gotten it up the stairs. J has an injured knee right now, and so moving heavy furniture is a bit of a problem.
Honestly, my taste runs more to white and simple, and maybe I should change my taste. I’d rather have old and beautiful and white junk. I do love my piano. It’s worth mentioning that it’s over a hundred years old and plays just beautifully – better than most pianos that are much newer. I’m not saying it’s better than a brand new top of the line piano, but it plays better than your typical piano you’ll find in someone’s house.
