Furniture

Quality Furniture: Buying Lounge and Fine Bedroom Furniture

June 7th, 2021 by dayat No comments »

The benefits of quality furniture such as fine bedroom furniture and lounge furniture lie not only in its durability, but also in the way people perceive you when they visit your home. You may have done it yourself when visiting: looked at the furniture and drew an opinion on your hosts according to their choice.

Your furniture states who you are and how you live, although, while choosing quality furniture can enhance your status, that is not the main benefit of purchasing it. The craftsmanship of a high quality suite covered with leather is not just in the leather, but primarily in the way the structure of each piece is crafted and put together – the leather is only the cosmetic coating on the quality framework.

Quality Furniture is Built to Last

Quality furniture is built to last. Notwithstanding that, fine bedroom furniture, or any type of high quality furniture in fact, can be damaged just the same as any laminated flat-pack furniture – and sometimes they are even easier to mark.

Most people believe that chain stores will sell them quality furniture, but that is not necessarily so. Generally, the old saying that you get what you pay for is true, and a fair number of these stores will also sell laminated particle board and plywood pieces at economic prices. For genuine quality furniture such as fine bedroom furniture crafted from solid wood, you must buy from a craftsman.

Quality Furniture Stores

There are several stores that will sell you genuine quality living room furniture, and fine bedroom furniture made from solid hardwood, such as oak or teak, or with a hardwood base but a beautiful walnut veneer. Rosewood is another beautiful wood, as are maple and the beautiful deep red mahogany. Some prefer pine which is softwood with a clean, fresh natural look, and while not as resistant to damage as hardwood, many prefer it for kitchen and bedroom furniture.

Search for manufacturers such as Stickley Furniture, American Craftsman, Sherrill furniture, The Custom Shoppe and Southwood furniture or any of a number if similar firms that you can find online, and you can be sure of purchasing high quality furniture that will last as long as you will. You should never be in a situation where you think a piece of furniture looks high quality, but are wondering whether or not it is in fact just chipboard, particle board or plywood with a glued veneer or laminate. If reputable firms such as those above offer that, you will be informed of the veneer and the base wood – no attempts to trick you!

An online search of what is available on the internet is an excellent way of finding good quality custom furniture. Look for fine furniture manufacturers, or companies that distribute their work. You will not find high quality furniture in flat-pack format. When you purchase fine bedroom furniture, each piece will be delivered in its correct form and not put together in your home with screws and plugs, many of which might be missing!

Real Wood Shows its Quality

You can tell real wood from its smell, its feel and the glow that only comes from well oiled or waxed hardwood. Leather has its own feel and smell, although it’s not so much the leather that counts, but its quality. Many types of leather are so thin that you can easily stick your fingers through them – and don’t believe anybody that sells you furniture saying that it cannot be damaged.

Fine furniture can be damaged – it can be knocked, scraped, stained and scratched just the same as any other furniture. If somebody tells you that this table will resist all knocks and scratches then they are either being economical with the truth (lying) or trying to sell you a synthetic utilitarian piece. Genuine wood is vulnerable. Only thermosetting resins can resist knocks and scratches.

The same considerations are true whether you are purchasing furniture from Chicago, Miami or from furniture stores in Atlanta. Atlanta furniture stores are just as likely to sell you cheap lounge furniture as stores in Chicago. How can you tell? How do you know if you are buying a genuine hardwood dining table or one made from particleboard and cheap veneer?

How to Identify Genuine Fine Furniture

First check the legs. No cabinet maker would ever fashion a fabulous table from solid mahogany and then put some screw-on legs under it! The legs will also be solid – and made from the same wood as the table is built from. Check beneath the table: all cheap mass-producers will veneer the top of the table but not the underside.

If the wood at the bottom and the top look different, then you are being conned. Check the joints: high quality furniture should be made using proper joints: mortise and tenon for rails and dovetail joints for drawers and cabinet sides – absolutely not using commercial plastic joining pieces or metal or plastic corner joints, and certainly not just screwed or nailed together.

Lift a chair upside down and examine it: high quality chairs will have a canvas on the bottom, or at the very least proper webbing and springs on the seats to offer support and comfort. Cheap furniture will have a plywood base and a slab of foam!

Quality furniture, whether in the form of fine living bedroom furniture or quality living room furniture, can make an ordinary room look good and raise your esteem in the eyes of your visitors.

Learn how to distinguish between the mass-production furniture stores and th

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American Furniture: The Benefits of Handmade Furniture

April 7th, 2021 by dayat No comments »

Handmade furniture is not the only type of American furniture sold under that name. There are fundamentally three types of home furniture offered by American furniture stores:

Foreign Made

Furniture manufactured out of the USA, and offered for sale by American furniture retailers. These can be high quality pieces, handmade in the UK to exacting standards or cheaply put together in the Far East and of relatively low quality. Not all Far Eastern furniture is of poor quality, and much of the stuff coming out of China is very good, but it is not made in America.

Constructed in the USA

Furniture assembled in the USA, but from foreign parts or wood. The parts have been pre-manufactured outside America, like much of America’s car industry uses parts made in Japan or Korea. It might be easier to find spares for recliners and other functional furniture than items made and constructed outside the USA, but not necessarily.

Made in America

This handmade furniture is manufactured entirely in America from American wood and home-made parts. You will not find it as easy to find this type of furniture as you might think, since not all screws, nails and other metallic parts might have been sourced in the USA. However, the item is fundamentally American, made in the USA for principally U.S. manufactured parts and certainly from American wood. Parts are easy to get if your recliner stops reclining!

None of this suggests that the furniture concerned is not handmade, although much foreign furniture, and some American furniture, is made by robots. True handmade American furniture is offered by a number of well-known traditional firms such as Stickley, Sherrill, Southwood, The Custom Shoppe, Simply Amish and American Craftsman.

Handmade Amish Furniture

In fact, most Amish furniture is handcrafted by Amish people living in individual communities whose work is marketed by local or national furniture stores or distributors. Take Simply Amish, for example. This firm is located in Arcola Illinois, and most of the furniture they offer is handmade by craftsmen and women within 20 miles of their distribution center. They use wood from sustainable forests located no further than 500 miles away.

This an example of local men and women handcrafting beautiful solid wood furniture, and able to sell it through a central retail outlet such as Simply Amish, which in turn markets the furniture through local furniture distributors and retailers. That’s what Made in America is supposed to mean!

Benefits of Handmade Furniture

There are many benefits of buying handmade American furniture. A major benefit is quality: sure, some furniture made by hand can be of very poor quality, but firms such as Simply Amish do not market poor quality goods, and such products would be returned as ‘unsellable.’ It is not the individual ‘craftsman’ predominantly at risk, but the retailers and their suppliers.

That is why the more respected American furniture retailers will market only the very best handmade furniture alongside their mass-produced standard stock. Handmade American furniture is constructed using traditional carpentry standards as used by the master cabinet makers of years gone by: men such as Thomas Sheraton, Gustav Stickley and Duncan Phyfe.

Wood and How it is Jointed

Choosing the correct wood is an art in itself, and fashioning an elegant piece of furniture using traditional carpentry joints that is as sturdy and strong as you require it to be is a sign of a master-craftsman. This is the quality only attainable with handmade furniture, no matter where it is crafted.

Britain, the USA and Scandinavia are noted for the high quality of their craftsmanship, and France, Germany and Holland have all had their moments in furniture history. Today it is predominantly the first mentioned three that provide most of the higher-end handmade furniture. It is difficult to beat the craftsmanship of American furniture firms such The Custom Shoppe, American Craftsman and Stickley, while Southwood are without doubt the premier producer of reproduction furniture in the USA.

There are many Amish furniture retailers that market products that have been handmade by individual craftsmen, using the traditional techniques passed down from father to son. The old jointing techniques are the best because they have been devised over time to provide the strongest and most enduring joint between two or more pieces of wood.

No screws or nails can match a powerful tenon or dovetail joint for strength and lasting qualities. They will still be bearing weight when the metallic joints have all corroded away! There are few doubts in the minds of those that purchase it that handmade furniture is the strongest type of American furniture available today – it is almost impossible to beat handmade American furniture for strength and looks.