This is a guest post from Karawynn Long, who writes about personal finance at Pocketmint. Karawynn is a semi-regular contributor for Get Rich Slowly. She has been blogging since before “blogging” was a word. Here at the Koke-Long house we’re in the market for some furniture. Our living room is currently semi-furnished with a comfortable but deteriorating Ikea couch and some leftover dining chairs; we’d like a nice armchair or two and some tables. I’ve mostly gone for Ikea ‘cheap and new’ furniture in the past, but I’ve been disappointed by its (understatement alert!) lack of durability. This time I’d like to try buying used but higher-quality. As I began to look around, though, I realized that I knew very little about what makes for a strong, long-lasting piece of furniture. Anyone can identify a rip, scratch, or stain, or decide whether they like a certain color, without special knowledge.
But judging whether a piece is likely to last two years or twenty — just by looking at it — is harder stuff. Here’s an overview of what I learned, with a checklist at the end. Wood furniture — composition I used to think hardwoods were hard and softwoods were soft. Actually, hardwood just means ‘from a deciduous tree’ and softwood means ‘from a coniferous tree’, and some hardwoods (like aspen) are softer than some softwoods. What you want on exposed surfaces is a wood that’s reasonably scratch-resistant. You can test this easily enough by attempting to draw a thin line with your fingernail across the wood; if it makes a visible dent (use a flashlight here if necessary) you know it won’t stand up to much use. Structurally, any kind of solid wood or sturdy plywood will do the trick. If plywood, look for at least nine layers. Check the wood for knots, even on unexposed pieces; all knots are susceptible to cracks. Some woods, like pine, are ‘knottier’ than others, and therefore less desirable.
Avoid particleboard, pressed wood, or fiberboard. Veneers — a thin piece of premium wood covering a lower-quality piece of wood — are often used even in very high-quality furniture. As long as the base piece is solid wood or plywood, the only drawback to veneer is that it limits the number of times an item can be refinished. Wood furniture — construction Joint construction is the main determinant of quality furniture. Anything held together with staples or nails is shoddy construction. Ditto if it’s glued and you can see the glue. Dowels (wooden pegs slotted into two opposing holes) are good, as are screws. The best joints are either dovetail (interlocking squarish ‘teeth’ — see photo) or mortise-and-tenon (narrowed end of one piece inserted into a hole in the other). Corners should have a reinforcing block attached at an angle. Look for thin sheets of wood between drawers in a chest of drawers or desk. While not necessary, these ‘dust panels’ improve structural strength as well as protect drawer contents.
Drawers should run smoothly on glides and have stops to prevent accidentally pulling them all the way out. The best drawers have bottoms that are not affixed to the sides but ‘float’ in a groove, allowing for minor expansion and contraction caused by changes in humidity and providing extra strength. Lift the piece at one corner — it should not twist or squeak. Check that all legs are touching the floor. Press on various corners to see if the piece rocks or wobbles. Upholstered furniture — composition For a sofa or chair with removable cushions, unzip a seat cover and have a look inside. You should see a block of foam wrapped with dacron, cotton, or (for very high-end cushions) down, preferably with a protective inner cover (usually muslin). Foam-only cushions are both less durable and less comfortable. If you’re buying new furniture, inquire after the density rating of the seat foam: you’re looking for 1.8 pounds or higher. Removable back cushions may have foam as well but are more often loose fill.
In the latter case, multiple internal compartments are preferred as they prevent the fill from settling. If there’s a tag or label, look for a cleaning code: ‘W’ means water-based cleaners, ‘S’ means solvent-based cleaners (‘dry cleaning’), ‘X’ means no liquid (vacuum only). Upholstered furniture — construction According to Consumer Reports, the oft-touted “eight-way hand-tied coil springs” don’t have a corner on comfort; coil, cone, sinuous, and grid springs can all work well. Best just to test the feel of the specific piece by sitting in various spots to see whether you tip or sink. If the cushions are removable, lift and press down on the deck underneath: you should feel even spacing and resistance to pressure. Squeeze the arms and back: ideally you should not be able to feel the frame through the padding. Lined skirts and ones with weights will hold their shape better over the long run. Are the cushions reversible? You’ll get twice the wear if they are.
Flip them around and make sure any upholstery patterns match up both ways. Tip: Consumer Reports has a nice diagram to help you assess upholstered furniture construction. That’s a lot of information. If you’re like me, you might find it difficult to remember all of these factors while you’re actually shopping at the furniture store. To make things easier, I’ve created a basic furniture shopping checklist. You may download the 35kb PDF or simply print the list below: Armed with this information, I feel much more confident about approaching future furniture purchases, both new and used. I hope you find it helpful too. GRS is committed to helping our readers save and achieve their financial goals. Savings interest rates may be low, but that is all the more reason to shop for the best rate. Find the highest savings interest rates and CD rates from Synchrony Bank, Ally Bank, and more. This article is about House & Home Hints and Tips House and Home ShoppingI happen to live in a state that does not have an Ikea.
So when I found out about Cyber Monday, a newly anointed retail holiday on which many stores offer free shipping for Internet orders placed several weeks before Christmas, I ordered my Beddinge. It's a minimalist futon couch. It's dark gray and cost less than $300. The couch came (freely) delivered in two large pieces: The mattress tightly rolled up in plastic, the frame in a flat box. Two guys hauled them into a spare room in the basement. After months of putting it off, I squared my shoulders and headed downstairs for some assembly combat involving a bewildering variety of Allen wrenches and spring-release hinges. Then I slashed the plastic wrap around the mattress. I was soon overcome by a sweet and pungent chemical smell. Here, I have to tell you, my soldier's heart pretty much fell. Why was my sleek little Swedish couch reeking of something nasty? Wasn't Ikea the company with the long corporate reports about tree planting and forward-thinking policies on hazardous materials—and one of the first major retailers to discontinue the use of brominated flame retardants in furniture?
This was the reason I'd bought the couch. I know a bit about flame retardants because five years ago, I became one of a handful of women in America to measure them in my breast milk for a story I wrote for the New York Times Magazine. The European Union had recently banned two of the major commercial formulas of brominated flame retardants, called penta- and octa-BDEs. Produced in large quantities in the United States to meet furniture and other fire codes, they were poured into products—and quickly migrated into dust, air, soil, waterways, effluent, and food. Because flame retardants don't break down easily, they remain for years in the tissues of birds, aquatic organisms and mammals, including us, albeit in small quantities. An endocrine disruptor and neurotoxin, the retardants are linked to thyroid disorders and reproductive problems in animals and humans. By 2007, at least three states had enacted legislation outlawing their use, and the federal government asked for a voluntary phase-out across the country.
The problem was that no one knew what would replace them. There weren't a lot of good options. Why do we need flame retardants in the first place, you might ask? The first answer is that we build and then fill our homes with highly flammable petroleum products—plastics, finishes, and polyurethane foam, sometimes known as "solid gasoline." The second answer is that manufacturers make gobs of money selling flame retardants, and they've successfully lobbied for laws that mandate them. California passed a law in the mid-1970s requiring furniture to resist ignition for 12 seconds in tests with open flames and smoldering cigarettes. The state law was well-intentioned, but many experts don't believe it's been very effective in saving lives. The flame retardants that meet California's standard only delay the ignition of a fire by a few seconds. But when the furniture does burn, stand back. "It takes several seconds longer to burn but generates five times the carbon monoxide and eight times the smoke.
That's what kills people, so it's possibly more dangerous with it than without," says Arlene Blum, a chemist and executive director of the Green Policy Science Institute in Berkeley. (A bit more on flame retardants at the end of this New Yorker article by Jerome Groopman.) Because national furniture makers want to sell to Californians, we're all sitting on flame retardants whichever state we live in. Americans, and Californians especially, have the highest blood and milk levels of flame retardants of anyone in the world. We'd be better off with furniture made from wool and goose down. But as of yet, Ikea isn't offering any. So what is in Ikea's couches? I wanted to know. For one thing, I'd already passed the 90-day-return mark on my couch, and even if I hadn't, I wasn't about to deconstruct it back into a flat box. After opening all the windows on a frigid night, and shivering and gagging through the last bit of assembly, I stumbled upstairs to canvass the Internet. Plenty of other Ikea customers were also unhappy with the smell of their futons.
On a site called Green Living Q & A, people vented. One pathetic guy named Keith from New York said his couch had become "like Kryptonite" to him, causing him so much anxiety that his girlfriend left him. I was pretty sure whatever was in there wasn't Kryptonite, but no one seemed to have a better explanation. The company's Web site and statements were vague. I called Ikea's corporate media division, but they never called back. I decided to cleave off a small piece of the mattress and send it to Duke University. There toils Heather Stapleton. A dedicated young environmental chemist and new mother, Stapleton has become something of a flame-retardant queen. She tested house dust from across the country and determined that it's the major pathway of exposure to flame retardants for children, pets, and adults. The chemicals in dust come mostly from furniture and electronics. She's currently in the process of testing 100 baby products for flame retardants. (Manufacturers are generally loath to offer any information on which chemicals their products contain and labeling is not required.)
As a general concept, I'm not opposed to the idea of flame retardants. I was aboard an Airbus A330 recently that had to make an emergency landing because of a burning wire, and I was grateful for the chemicals. But it's one thing to have them in an airplane and another to have them marinating your home's furniture, including baby pillows.Stapleton found that my couch contains a flame retardant called 1,3-dichloroisopropyl phosphate, better known as tris, or TCDPP. This was one of the notorious flame retardants used in children's pajamas in the 1970s, until Blum and other scientists showed that the chemicals caused DNA mutations. Public outcry forced clothing manufacturers to stop using them. Most of the scary research at that time was done on brominated tris, and the type in my couch is chlorinated tris. The theory goes that the chlorinated version breaks down more easily in the environment but is more volatile, meaning that more of it escapes the foam. It probably acts in similar ways to brominated tris in the human body.
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission classifies TDCPP as a probable human carcinogen, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers it a moderate cancer hazard. The first time Stapleton's mass-spectrometry machine identified tris, she couldn't believe it. "At first, I thought, no one could be using this after all the concern in the '70s. But recently, Stapleton has found tris in a lot of Ikea products as well as in some made by other companies, including an infant nursing pillow. (The flame retardants probably weren't causing the smell that bothered me, though—Stapleton said that was other nasties that come from making foam.) To be fair, Ikea has few options. It does not put these flame retardants in furniture sold in any countries other than the United States and the U.K. Interested in what Ikea had to say about all of this, I e-mailed Bjorn Frithiof, a chemical specialist in the company's laws-and-standards department in Sweden. He responded as soon as the sun rose over Småland, the city where he works.
He seemed both matter-of-fact and contrite. "IKEA aims to refrain from the use of chemicals and substances that could potentially be harmful to people and the environment," Frithiof wrote. "IKEA is currently phasing out all flame retardants of the chlorinated tristype from our products. This work is well on its way and will be completed during autumn 2010." In a later e-mail, he said the company would replace tris with "an organo-phosphorous compound which gets incorporated into the polymer matrix of the foam filling. It is a bit early to say if this solution will be the dominant one for our products." There's nothing great about organo-phosphates, which can also persist in the environment. But if Ikea can figure out how to bind the chemicals to the foam, that would help. It would mean the chemical wouldn't waft out every time you plunk down on the couch. A better solution one would be to get rid of California's outdated flammability standards, or at least exempt certain products, especially ones made for children, who appear more vulnerable to these chemicals.