I've been thinking of building a couple of simple end tables for the family
room. When done, it will probably be $250 for wood and another $25 for
supplies, plus whatever so figure about $300. Add in the tools accumulated
over the years and I think it can be a pricey hobby at times.

Today we stopped at a furniture store. We're looking at upholstered
furniture and quality stuff runs well over $1000 and up to triple that.
This is all nice stuff that will last probably the rest of our lives. We
did not look at any of the tables though as I have this idea of what I want
to build. Meantime, my wife spotted a small table next to a chair. She
pointed it out to me and it was maybe 15 x 20. Looked OK. I reached over
and grabbed the price tag and nearly choked. This little table was $749. .

Suddenly, as my heart began to beat again, my simple table project seemed to
be quite the bargain. We just don't buy furniture very often so the price
was a bit of sticker shock. OTOH, we have our bedroom set for 42 years and
for the most part it still looks as good as the day it was delivered. As to
the doors and drawers works as well.

We did find three pieces we liked, negotiated a little better price, made
the buy. The Hancock & Moore recliner is leather. I've had leather in
cars, but this is the first time for furniture.

Next time you think wood is expensive. go to a furniture store and compute
the cost per board foot of the finished stuff. Far more than the 3X material
cost some guys here tout for figuring selling price.

On Sat, 10 Nov 2007 22:42:49 -0500, "Edwin Pawlowski"
wrote:


Next time you think wood is expensive. go to a furniture store and compute
the cost per board foot of the finished stuff.

Have you ever wandered through any of the Stickley-Audi showrooms in
CT? G

On the other hand, there's a Pompanusic Mills sp? store in West
Hartford that defines "overpriced", making Stickley look like a
fantastic value.

---------------------------------------------
** http://www.bburke.com/woodworking.html **
---------------------------------------------

On Sun, 11 Nov 2007 13:16:33 GMT, B A R R Y
wrote:

On Sat, 10 Nov 2007 22:42:49 -0500, "Edwin Pawlowski"
wrote:


Next time you think wood is expensive. go to a furniture store and compute
the cost per board foot of the finished stuff.

Have you ever wandered through any of the Stickley-Audi showrooms in
CT? G

On the other hand, there's a Pompanusic Mills sp? store in West
Hartford that defines "overpriced", making Stickley look like a
fantastic value.

---------------------------------------------
** http://www.bburke.com/woodworking.html **
---------------------------------------------

You can get free wood or you can pay $10 a board foot at the BORG. I
built a cherry table from a neighbor's tree he cut down.

Totally agree.
Like you, I steer clear of building larges pieces with lots of upholstery.
Having bought some Morris style leather recliners 4 or 5 years ago we also
looked at the Stickly furniture. The standard sized chest of drawers was
over $5k. The Stickle Morris style recliner was double what we spent on our
well known name brand recliners. To back up your findings of how better
furniture prices compare to your cost of wood to build the same thing, when
you get into the well known top end stuff the ratio increased even more.
When you get into the "really" top end stuff you can easily justify adding a
large piece of equipment for that job. My wife wants a "nice" jewelry box.
I had to do quite a bit of searching before I stumbled upon a couple of web
sites that offer very nice jewelry storage cases. For the style she is
looking for, the prices range from over $2k to over $4k. Some of these
jewelry chests go up to $9k.

You are probably going to want to take a look. ;~) Both sites have great
pieces.

http://www.westcreekstudio.com/

And for what she has picked out,

http://www.gerstnerusa.com/jewelry/22k.htm






"Edwin Pawlowski" wrote in message
...
I've been thinking of building a couple of simple end tables for the
family room. When done, it will probably be $250 for wood and another $25
for supplies, plus whatever so figure about $300. Add in the tools
accumulated over the years and I think it can be a pricey hobby at times.

Today we stopped at a furniture store. We're looking at upholstered
furniture and quality stuff runs well over $1000 and up to triple that.
This is all nice stuff that will last probably the rest of our lives. We
did not look at any of the tables though as I have this idea of what I
want to build. Meantime, my wife spotted a small table next to a chair.
She pointed it out to me and it was maybe 15 x 20. Looked OK. I reached
over and grabbed the price tag and nearly choked. This little table was
$749. .

Suddenly, as my heart began to beat again, my simple table project seemed
to be quite the bargain. We just don't buy furniture very often so the
price was a bit of sticker shock. OTOH, we have our bedroom set for 42
years and for the most part it still looks as good as the day it was
delivered. As to the doors and drawers works as well.

We did find three pieces we liked, negotiated a little better price, made
the buy. The Hancock & Moore recliner is leather. I've had leather in
cars, but this is the first time for furniture.

Next time you think wood is expensive. go to a furniture store and compute
the cost per board foot of the finished stuff. Far more than the 3X
material cost some guys here tout for figuring selling price.

B A R R Y wrote in
:

On Sat, 10 Nov 2007 22:42:49 -0500, "Edwin Pawlowski"
wrote:


Next time you think wood is expensive. go to a furniture store and
compute the cost per board foot of the finished stuff.

Have you ever wandered through any of the Stickley-Audi showrooms in
CT? G

On the other hand, there's a Pompanusic Mills sp? store in West
Hartford that defines "overpriced", making Stickley look like a
fantastic value.

---------------------------------------------
** http://www.bburke.com/woodworking.html **
---------------------------------------------

Pompanoosic Mills in Ridgewood, NJ is almost within walking distance, and
we bought a 3-seater couch and 2 single seat chairs in the Mission style,
which we love. Sometimes expensive is worth it. We might never buy
anything else from them, since Ikea is close to us too grin.

We did go look at Stickley in Manhattan, and liked some of what we saw,
but the pricing was wrong for us, and the staff were looking down their
noses at us - something I intensely dislike.

--
Best regards
Han
email address is invalid

On Sat, 10 Nov 2007 22:42:49 -0500, "Edwin Pawlowski" wrote:
snip
Next time you think wood is expensive. go to a furniture store and compute
the cost per board foot of the finished stuff. Far more than the 3X material
cost some guys here tout for figuring selling price.

I've been designing a "simple" entertainment center... mostly plywood with pine
trim molding (no hardwood here) and no doors or anything..
Pretty much a 10' long, 8' high and 23" deep set of adjustable shelves..

At $30 a sheet for plywood, I'm looking at over $300 for ply alone...
DAMN! Maybe we should just buy one...
Then my wife got online and looked at particle board stuff in that size and her
best deal would have been over $600... for friggin' particle board!

I'm much more of a turner than a flat work person, but how bad can I screw up a
big box? I'm going for it, to justify recent purchases of the TS and planer,
if nothing else... lol


mac

Please remove splinters before emailing

On Sun, 11 Nov 2007 14:17:19 GMT, "Leon" wrote:

Totally agree.
Like you, I steer clear of building larges pieces with lots of upholstery.
Having bought some Morris style leather recliners 4 or 5 years ago we also
looked at the Stickly furniture. The standard sized chest of drawers was
over $5k. The Stickle Morris style recliner was double what we spent on our
well known name brand recliners. To back up your findings of how better
furniture prices compare to your cost of wood to build the same thing, when
you get into the well known top end stuff the ratio increased even more.
When you get into the "really" top end stuff you can easily justify adding a
large piece of equipment for that job. My wife wants a "nice" jewelry box.
I had to do quite a bit of searching before I stumbled upon a couple of web
sites that offer very nice jewelry storage cases. For the style she is
looking for, the prices range from over $2k to over $4k. Some of these
jewelry chests go up to $9k.

You are probably going to want to take a look. ;~) Both sites have great
pieces.

http://www.westcreekstudio.com/

And for what she has picked out,

http://www.gerstnerusa.com/jewelry/22k.htm

$2,200 for an 18" x 20" chest?
If you're gonna make one, make several, Leon...
If those suckers really SELL for that much, you can give up your day job... ;-]


mac

Please remove splinters before emailing

"Edwin Pawlowski" wrote in
:

Next time you think wood is expensive. go to a furniture store and
compute the cost per board foot of the finished stuff. Far more than
the 3X material cost some guys here tout for figuring selling price.

Or you can go look at the compressed paper and chinese particleboard
"furniture'. Terry Pratchett writes in one of his books about $50 boots.
A poor man can't afford the $50 boots so he buys $10 boots. The rich man
buys $50 boots and wears them for many years, while the poor man buys a
pair of $10 boots every year and ends up spending more over the same
period.

"mac davis" wrote in message
...

$2,200 for an 18" x 20" chest?
If you're gonna make one, make several, Leon...
If those suckers really SELL for that much, you can give up your day
job... ;-]


Interesting thought, LOL, this "is" sorta my day job.

On Sun, 11 Nov 2007 15:46:46 GMT, Han wrote:

Pompanoosic Mills in Ridgewood, NJ is almost within walking distance, and
we bought a 3-seater couch and 2 single seat chairs in the Mission style,
which we love. Sometimes expensive is worth it. We might never buy
anything else from them, since Ikea is close to us too grin.

I didn't look at the chairs, as I was there on a mission. When I came
home I explained the place to my wife as Ikea made from real wood.

The bedroom chests and beds I saw in West Hartford were kind of scary.
Drawer fronts with widely differing gaps and zero attempt to select
similar boards, metal drawer slides that rolled open on their own, and
doors that wouldn't stay shut. Normally, I would not expect to see
metal slides or biscuit joined plywood drawers in dressers and chests
selling for the marked prices in this particular store.

One could possibly make the point that display models take a beating,
but I've never seen these issues in other stores in the same price
range. I saw the Pompy stuff more on par with commercial furniture
or better grade cabinetry, as opposed to fine furniture. I've never
seen a piece on display in a "better quality" showroom with messed up
face gaps or drawers and doors that won't stay shut. The West
Hartford store holds themselves out as on par with the finest
furniture, maybe the Ridgewood folks take a different approach?

I originally went into the store because I was commissioned to make a
king platform bed along these lines:
http://www.pompy.com/furniture/?category=9&product=6938, in tiger
maple, with a birdseye headboard. Pompy gets $3800 for this simple
bed, made of plain maple, and $5200 for birds-eye. The hidden
structure of the bed is birch plywood.

That is NOT cheap furniture! G

When I did the custom bed, I cut the drawer fronts out of continuous
Tiger Maple sides, so when the drawers are closed the figure moves
uninterupted from front to back. The cherry bed I saw on display had
no attempt at all to harmonize the side parts. I don't think the
drawer fronts were even from similar trees. I looked again to see if
the store staff had inserted the wrong drawers in the wrong slots, but
couldn't see a pattern.

The display bed also had a glossy, rather heavy, cabinet grade finish,
which my customer described as "institutional". On her bed, we agreed
on a lightly oil-popped figure coated with a rubbed down
nitrocellulose lacquer. She finished it with a Tempur-Pedic! G

---------------------------------------------
** http://www.bburke.com/woodworking.html **
---------------------------------------------

On Sat, 10 Nov 2007 22:42:49 -0500, "Edwin Pawlowski"
wrote:

This little table was $749. .

I'm pretty sure you're familiar with the Manchester Woodcraft / CT
Valley School of Woodworking.

If so, you're familiar with the cherry hall table on display, the
Woodworking II school project.

Did you know that a non-woodworker walked in out of the blue and
offered $800 for it? Bob accepted, and built another during the next
class. G

---------------------------------------------
** http://www.bburke.com/woodworking.html **
---------------------------------------------

"B A R R Y" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 10 Nov 2007 22:42:49 -0500, "Edwin Pawlowski"
wrote:

This little table was $749. .

I'm pretty sure you're familiar with the Manchester Woodcraft / CT
Valley School of Woodworking.

If so, you're familiar with the cherry hall table on display, the
Woodworking II school project.

Did you know that a non-woodworker walked in out of the blue and
offered $800 for it? Bob accepted, and built another during the next
class. G


Thanks for the reminder. I remember that table and it is just about what I
want to make. At least when I'm done, I know it will be worth $800 each.
I'll have to stop back and take a peek at it.

On Sun, 11 Nov 2007 18:45:49 GMT, "Leon" wrote:


"mac davis" wrote in message
.. .

$2,200 for an 18" x 20" chest?
If you're gonna make one, make several, Leon...
If those suckers really SELL for that much, you can give up your day
job... ;-]


Interesting thought, LOL, this "is" sorta my day job.

I thought you did bigger stuff, like cabinets and entertainment centers??


mac

Please remove splinters before emailing