Am I the only one hacked off by MDF furniture ?

[displacedPA]

if any of you folks want really high quality last a lifetime furniture go to the amish. My parents have just about all their furniture in their house made by them.
They deal with a local guy you can bring him a picture of something and he will build it. im not talking 2x4 tables here! the latest thing they have made was a two leaf dinning room table it was 1'' thick solid oak top and chairs with seat cushions wrapped in leather! really nice stuff!!! basset, lane, thomasville could never have anything that was this nice...
The best part about it is that it really does not cost any more than your normal furniture store stuff. :2cents:

I'm not familiar with MDF, I have seen the guys on This Old House use it for interior door/window frames and molding. I worked one time at a place where we made sewing machine tops with particle board. They were really heavy.

Where I live, furniture factories or related businesses used to be about the only places to work. In the seventies when I went to work most of them were already using particle board. One local manufacturere still (last I heard) makes solid wood furniture. I said local, but they were bought out by a large company years back.

Most of the case good furniture is made overseas now. China, Indonesia, Vietnam, etc. All the companies bring it in. One company I used to work for turned one of their plants into a warehouse for imports. The only work now is unloading and reshipping and some repair work. But, supposedly it helps the consumer out by giving us cheap goods to buy. A man that owns a furniture store said a few years back that his wholesale prices hadn't went down any

Anyway, the Chinese particle board I saw on a sewing machine cabinet my wife bought last year isn't like what used to be used years ago. It seemed to have bigger chips and less glue and didn't seem as strong.

I have seen particle board used on some upholstery frames that came from overseas. Anyway, I digressed from the original question, but I am not a fan of particle board, and I could relate some more about Chinese made furniture and empty buildings around here, but maybe in another thread.

 

[studor]

Both MDF and particle board have their uses for paint grade requirements but in furniture they are strictly disposable IMHO. I admit to buying some of it for my step son who wanted it in his apartment -- fine antique furniture is probably an acquired taste
After that experience I think IKEA is Swedish for cardboard

 

[2LaneCruzer]

if any of you folks want really high quality last a lifetime furniture go to the amish. My parents have just about all their furniture in their house made by them.
They deal with a local guy you can bring him a picture of something and he will build it. im not talking 2x4 tables here! the latest thing they have made was a two leaf dinning room table it was 1'' thick solid oak top and chairs with seat cushions wrapped in leather! really nice stuff!!! basset, lane, thomasville could never have anything that was this nice...
The best part about it is that it really does not cost any more than your normal furniture store stuff. :2cents:

You're right about it being heavy; when my youngest daughter's first son was born, I told her I would make something for him...she wanted a solid walnut chest of drawers. It took me a couple of months, starting with rough cut Walnut, but when I got done I thought it was worth the time and effort. Only thing, it was so heavy I had to make a sled from a piece of plywood and pull it behind my tractor just to get it from the shop to the house. Our antique furniture is the same way, though, solid Oak, especially white oak is heavy. To get a quarter sawn tiger stripe oak table, you either have to have it custom built or find an antique.

 

[toppop52]

I've been in the upholstery business since 1977 and I've seen furniture go through a paradigm shift in quality. When I started out what was bottem end cheap furniture would today be considered medium high end. MDF/Particle board and plastics have replaced wood and sometimes are equal to or better than wood in certain places, but overall has severley lowered the quality. Also the fabrics used on lower end stuff today is atrocious! People are gaga over micro fiber, well it makes a great drying towel, but sucks for upholstery.
If you were to buy a sofa that was basic in 1977 it would have cost around $300, that inflates to about $1100 today, the same quality sofa though today would sell for around $2000! So when you buy a $500 sofa today you should well expect the junk you got is the junk you paid for. That's why I happily upholster older sofas all the time, using good quality fabric and padding that isn't made of particle swept off the floor and glued together like you find in cheap furniture now, for about $1200 each and my customers are very happy!

 

[jinman]

I have a bedroom set made by Kincaid Furniture in western NC that is solid wood. It's a discontinued mission style set, but Kincaid's website says they still make solid wood furniture. I bought my bedroom set 10 years ago for around $4,800. That's one queen bed, dresser, chest, and nightstand. I had to order the set and wait a month for delivery. I'm pretty sure you can still buy quality at Kincaid if you can afford it.

 

[chkntrktr]

I have a bedroom set made by Kincaid Furniture in western NC that is solid wood. It's a discontinued mission style set, but Kincaid's website says they still make solid wood furniture. I bought my bedroom set 10 years ago for around $4,800. That's one queen bed, dresser, chest, and nightstand. I had to order the set and wait a month for delivery. I'm pretty sure you can still buy quality at Kincaid if you can afford it.

Kincaid's is the company I referred to but I didn't know if it was okay to mention names. They are owned by Lazy Boy now. We have a DVD rack made by them and it is solid wood.

toppop, I also work in upholstered furniture. I don't really work, I do the purchasing for our plant. We do high end stuff so I buy better quality supplies, but I do see some of the stuff other companies put in their product. I try to save money where I can but not anything that hurts quality. Also, you are right about the fabric. We have more problems than ever with it, and a lot of it comes from China nowadays.

 

[MasseyWV]

MDF is nothing more than garbage. IMHO

 

[sodamo]

As much as I dislike the stuff, I do have a positive story. Was stationed in Germany in the 80s. I've always liked oak furniture and was determined to buy some. So in 86 I bought a number of pieces, you might call wall units, but were individual pieces of 1/2 and full meter widths and different configurations from open glass or wood shelves for books or china to units with upper doors, even a bar unit. All had lower doors and drawers which I examined pretty well. I probably over did it in that I bought over $5000 worth, all ordered from the factory in Belgium. You can probably imagine my surprise when delivered to find the sides were all mdf. Furious, I went back to the sales room convinced of a switcheroo. The salesman politely pulled put the samples I had seen to prove they were the same, just that unless pulled from the way staged there was just no way to tell. Of course with the language barrier when I asked about the construction and he proudly pointed out the doors and drawers...
But my point, those units were moved to 4 different apts in Germany, shipped across the Atlantic, placed in 3 houses on the east coast, transported to Hawaii, spent five years in our storage container until last year when we decided to place some back in service. So here we are 26 years later and the pieces still get complimented. and the wife still hates oiling them

David Sent from my iPad using TractorByNet

 

[JDgreen227]

I was sorry when they began using that crap ugly OSB to replace plywood for sheathing back in the early 80's and to me, using particle board and MDF for furniture is probably the only way they can build it cheap enough to make it affordable. I have purchased several really well made entertainment centers and bookcases from Goodwill that use a lot of oak trim and some parts are solid oak, but the majority of the case is just oak veenered particle board. Given the cost of oak lumber today nobody could affort to buy real oak furniture. When I began working for the state back in the early 70's they were in the process of replacing 1950-1960 vintage oak office furniture (desks, bookcases, tables, etc) with steel furniture and nobody wanted to buy the wood stuff at auction so we would smash it up with a forktruck and people would take it home for firewood, had I known how expensive oak was going to be 30-40 years later I am mad at myself for not salvaging the stuff back then.

 

[toppop52]

Another little FYI for antique lovers, much antique British garden country and Victorian furniture that gets imported here is brand new furniture, built in the traditional manor using lumber from antique buildings that are torn down. In the end the only thing old is the wood and the scam.