I really enjoyed this video Pierre. So well thought out and executed. Also loved Drew. I have had people come to me thinking I could build cheaper than IKEA...
Thank you Jesper! Yes - this was in the extreme, but people dont expect the prices we have to charge. Im not sure how it is in Denmark, but my January electricity bill was a $1000 😅😂 - I need to start working with hand tools only
@@TheSwedishMaker I pay electricity per quarter so I haven't dared to look at January yet. But the last quarter of 2022 was 4x what I paid in the same quarter of 2021. I think this is why I usually make weird stuff. It makes better videos and can't be compared to anything in shops 🙂
@@TheSwedishMaker I sometimes buy Ikea, my biggest problem is when something breakes....what type of trashcontainer do I put it in....paper? Plastic? It's because of video's like yours I now build my own furniture....Thanks for the inspiration and subbtle jokes!
Anybody can build a bridge that stands, only an engineer can build a bridge that barely stands. It's actually the pinnacle of engineering that IKEA can build something this good from this amount of light material that is sturdy enough to be usable for years.
@@calitreesweet they're saying that Ikea's engineering allow them to build solid furniture with the cheapest materials and minimal labor. Whereas this guy needs expensive hardwoods and days of labor to build something that feels solid.
@@calitreesweet It's the same principle as "If I had enough time I would've wrote a shorter letter". Expertise allows you to do impressive things within impressive constraints
@@calitreesweet Not true at all. Typically when you work anything in engineering you aren't trying to make the best product possible. You are trying to make the product as cheap as possible while meeting the minimum standards. You are always trying to barely pass.
I’m torn here. On the one hand I heartily agree that handmade furniture takes time and skill to make, and that it is therefore unrealistic for people to expect it to be cheap (though pricing your labour at $100 per hour sounds ambitious to me!). On the other, I strongly disagree that IKEA furniture is badly made - I have IKEA furniture that I bought 30 years ago that still looks and performs well, surviving my sons childhood along the way. In fact I can’t remember any piece of furniture I ever bought there wearing out. Also I think that “veneer over cardboard matrix” material is great. It’s rigidity and strength is mindblowing, it’s crazy light, and keeping the amount of materials used down is a good thing. Overall, I think all you’ve really proved is that the IKEA tables are tremendous value if what you want is a utilitarian product, and handmade furniture is a lovely luxury that relatively few people can afford.
Welcome to RUclips woodworkers. IDK where they get this from. Your labor isn’t worth $100 an hour. It doesn’t take 20 minutes to glue up that table. Mechanics make $75-$125 an hour, and they do things by a pre-defined book rate charge, not you BSing your time. It doesn’t take 4 hours to glue up 4 boards, put rounded corners in it, put a chamfer on, screw on legs, and stain. Also, if that’s $100 in materials you’re getting ripped off on your material costs. Add to that that you new table isn’t gonna be a whole lot stronger than the ikea one, and I’m just lost. I understand that if you’re asking for custom work you’re gonna pay custom prices. But there’s nothing special about that piece.
@@nathan1sixteen Mechanics working at a shop don't have to pay rent or electricity, they don't have to find customers, pay for advertising, etc. Yes they typically have to buy their own tools but there's so much more that goes into running a business if you're doing it all yourself.
$100 an hour self employed is not at all comparable to a 9-5 salary. You have to pay for rent/mortgage, tools, accountants, health insurance, vehicles and time for acquiring materials, time for advertising, finding customers, writing contracts, negotiating, and most of all, you have to pay your own income taxes.
@@nathan1sixteen truth. I kinda cringe at the hutspa of RUclips carpenters. After 25 years of building I believe I am worth a good amount. I could never look at client in the face and charge them $750 for that table
@@coolbugfacts1234 that's a lie, I know many mechanics that rent a shop and have bills to pay, they can't automatically charge an extra 100 bucks an hour because of it, either you are really out of touch or the wife of one of thrse youtubers 🤣
That $15 "crap" that you cut in half has lasted me 8 years already and doesn't even look close to giving up. For that price and for the job it's doing, the piece is absolutely insane and doesn't need any further frills.
@@CptBolee Exactly, for 15$ that is the reason that it does not makes sense to look for the wood, get the tools, the time you put in to build it, the electricity you use, the screws, etc. It does not make sense, even to outsource it to a woodworker, that charges 10x if not more for table (yes might be sturdier) but the IKEA still hold up.
If you're using them properly and not pouring lots of fluid on them, they'll last pretty long. It's that simple. Of course they'll break easier than wooden table of same thickness and can take less stress, but you win some, you lose some.
It's not about lasting or not. It's about what You want around you. Cheap furniture is cheap and maybe not total crap, but custom made has soul in it. So it depends on your needs.
So for 1.5 x the price of that table is enough to get a loft bed whit a desk, a shelf, a wardrobe and extra storage from IKEA that will last 5 years? He'll yeah
As a 25 year carpenter, I think our time is valuable. But 750 is way overpriced. People may pay it. But we need to humble ourselves a bit. 100 an hour is fine for complex projects, but a simple table seems a safe enough project to charge a reasonable price. My guess was 300 or so. Even if the materials cost more, we have to compete with those who buy them in quantity. So we eat a bit. It's a nice table but the comparison isnt really valid in this case.... As the difference in material and needs is so vast. We all have to eat I get that. But we all have to be a little humble too.
I agree with you, but I think the idea is that these kind of projects aren't worth it for the maker, UNLESS you charge that hourly rate. Basically, you're taking time away from other projects that you could be charging that rate for. I don't think Drew outright said this but I do believe this was part of his point.
As an actual furniture maker (full time supports family). The price is out of line with reality. You may find 3 to 10% of your client list will pay that rate, nevertheless, you’ll be out of business chasing, waiting, and looking for them. These guys are first and foremost “content creators”. There is a reason why IKEA and Walmart are growing and most people can’t even name a local furniture maker. It’s hard and difficult to make a living. And it’s okay to turn down work, I’d say, I’ve turned down more jobs than I’ve accepted. I’ve also regretted clients too. It’s all part of the learning curve. Lastly, everyone’s market is unique and therefore challenging. After your established, find that new restaurant, office, hotel, designer, architect, etc etc. partner with a builder and offer a template piece that they pay for with the completion of a house. There are ways beyond overcharging. Get your own lumber milled and dried to control cost. My first 5 years were lean and barely kept a roof over my head, but after your established people seek you not the other way around.
Yeah. The pricing structures I use would put this table in the 300 to 350 range. And you’d be making about 30 bucks an hour plus overhead and profit for your business at that price. If you have to charge twice that then this table is too basic a job to accept, which is fair. I probably wouldn’t take the job as I have no interest in screwing prefab legs into a basic tabletop.
From a country without IKEA, I'm always amazed how IKEA is able to furniture pretty much all your house so cheaply and fairly decent looking, it's a blessing for the poor.
IKEA does a surprisingly good job with their design too. It's easy to construct, lasts a fairly long time in a household environment, and there's often some thought put into the design. Flat packed furniture from other brands is often annoying to assemble, costs more, has worse quality, and ends up with structural deficiencies over time. IKEA does what they do, very very well.
Yes and no. I'm pretty broke and when i look used table for instance, i look it to repair and restore.. when it turns out its IKEA shit, welp its pretty much useless even as fire wood. Old tables you can get from free to 20€ and of course prices go up better the condition and so on, but i just got very nice hard wood coffee table for free with two shape cut glass tops for it. Must have been several hundred new. Turned one end of it to essentially bed side table and another gets same idea but with a twist and little bit fancier, all from recycled materials and some work. Also from very scientific study of 6 couples that have went to IKEA.. 5 have broke up soon after, so one can conclude that IKEA causes break ups.
@@Hellsong89 true but if u wanna buy a table wanting to repair and restore and dont recognize it not beeing real wood while in the purchase process u shouldnt be doing it at all anyway
Yes! I grew up thinking IKEA furniture was an expensive luxury... I agree that craftspeople should be able to build high quality products and it would be better overall - IF all people got paid fairly for their work. (I write code and get paid more than my mom did as a secretary, but I definitely don't work harder than she did and I feel my work is arguably less important for the respective businesses' needs. I can now afford some well-made things by a local crafter that I could even pass on, while other people cannot - but they need good furniture too!
@@GuacamoleyNacho I remember IKEA Singapore used to be more expensive than Ikea Netherlands. Literally, more expensive. However, I looked at 2 items today and now it seems to be (more or less similar). From the text on the site I’m guessing this has been a recent development as the Singaporean site stated something like “we try to reduce our prices where we can”. In addition, I’m pretty sure wages in Singapore and Malaysia are lower, so relative to income IKEA is more expensive in Singapore and Malaysia. By contrast, a table made by a woodworker would be cheaper.
My father has done carpentry for his entire life, roughly ~40 years, and would scoff at the price of this table. Completely disconnected from reality and serves to prove why people opt to purchase from IKEA.
@@Zlanarod I mean, he is a professional with a workshop to pay for and more business overhead. Not to mention, woodworkers live with the risk of losing a finger or two when working every day. I think 100$/h is very much adequate.
@@maxdergroe9082 but it is not your expenses and risk that dictate the price tag if you're aiming at the general public and not a specific group, it's consumers will to pay. That's why people buy at IKEA, because it's cost effective...
@@maxdergroe9082 Thats an absurd claim. Pricing into the product the risk of losing your finger is stupid. Why would i pay for your incompetency? Im an electrician, which involves deadly voltages. Should i price my death into my hourly rate? Youd be living in caves.
“I have three kids” is not a metric for calculating cost. What you are staying is that if you had seven kids, the item would cost more… it’s completely irrelevant. The value of the item does not change dependent on whether you have no kids, or twelve kids. You might as well say that you used to live in a $200,000 house so you used to charge $300 for the table, but you bought a new $1,000.000 house last week, so the table that was worth $300 last week is now worth $1,500.
value is nebulous and determined by many factors. instead of debating all thatz you could just call the American guy delusional. but he is for sure in his right the value his time highly. and if he has clients who are willing to pay him, you really don't have any leg to stand on in the discussion.
@@razmetrez Except, we do. The guy thinks he's worth 100 bucks an hour but can't even properly finish a tiny coffee table properly. He's a grifter and you know it. You can value what you're worth but if what your worth is evidentially poor and you try to overcharge, people can and SHOULD call you out. Cry and seethe about it, ma'am.
@@TheTacticalHaggis he's not worth that to you. he may be worth that to others. cry and seethe about what you think "should" be, while ignoring what "is" or "could" be. what do you even know about that guy? this isn't his channel. have you seen any of his videos? are you just pulling this random argument about what his hourly rate is worth out of thin air?
He is not wrong in some sense. This could very be a case of "I have three kids I can't afford to charge less" or "I have three kids, if you are not paying me that, I'd rather play with my kids". And I'm sure he finds clients. So maybe it is a fine way to set price. He is not __calculating__ cost, he is setting price.
@@razmetrez I agree that the value of the table is different to different people. Some might see it as being worth $1000. Others may see value at $5000. But I can tell you for a fact that the person who thinks $5000 is a fair price will,not revalue it at $10,000 when the creator tells the customer that they have 4 kids. The number of kids the creator has in no way determines the value to the customer.
People keep saying that IKEA is low quality cardboard, but this guy's kids literally jumped and drew on the IKEA table and it was completely fine. Charging 100$ an hour for this, is insane, even for Sweden, considering the average wage there is 16$/h :'D
100 dollars an hour is steep, but on top of the 16 $/h you have to add social security, pensions, financing and maintenance of the tools and facilities. For 15$ IKEA provides great value.
Say you hire a carpentry business to come do some work on your house. You'll be charged hourly for the people they send. Their wage will certainly not only be 16$. Let's say it's 30$ - could be more or less, I'm not sure about Sweden. That 30$ is not what you'll be charged. Running a business has other costs than paying the employees, so you'll be paying an hourly rate that's a lot higher to cover expenses and profit for the business. Businesses that doesn't have employees have the same types of expenses. Those need to be covered by either a relatively high hourly rate or by marking up the materials a lot (typically it's both). For furniture, most people will just go to a furniture store, because economies of scale make things cheaper. It's not (necessarily) because the custom guys are ripping people off.
He said it is crap and will break and showed his kids using it. Yet nothing happened to it. He didn't show anyone using his own table. Also Ikea sells solid wood tables for a lot cheaper than 500€. Ikea is great because there is something for everyone, but usually people just focus on trashing the cheapest products. A student is not going to spend 500-1000€ on a coffee table.
As a person wanting to buy a table, a normal table, I think that if a table cost 15 bucks, I don't really care what is made of, as it's 15 bucks. Keeping the cost down is something good in my opinion.
Super inflated ego right there, literally no one js gonna pay a grand for a simple coffee table, no one is going to ask about it and the only experience gained is regret.
@@mangpobelmont-chaiyasungvo7039 it sometimes can gain you a conversation, but it's usually older people that ask. and even than, I had people ask questions about ikea stuff as well, so his point is kind of valid
He charges $100/hour?!?! Lol and the Texas guy is even worse. I'll just go to Mexico, much better craftsmanship and a fraction of the cost. They are woodworkers, not Doctors
Same IKEA Table. Have it since 2009. Survived 2 kids 5 international relocations and still intact. Not bad for15 euros. Love craftmanship and also have rather expensive solid wood furnitures. I don’t think IKEA is a good comparison to make people apreciate your work. Keep up the good content 🤙 P.s. By the way 750-1000 USD for an unknown woodworker’s simple coffee table you can forget it. And the “you don’t pay the table, you pay the experience” thing is outlandish BS unless you are a genious master of the craft and the utilize unique materials and techniques. You can have an iconic little desk designed by Le Corbusier for 1500. Your US mate is over his head and/or has very naive customers…
He probably has very naive customers. I live in the U.S. and there are a ton of techies who would spend their money the second they don't understand something or it sounds fancy.
@@miscellaneoussoundeffects7023 He also said that he's based in Texas, so I'd imagine there's a lot of rich conservatives there that care a lot about having conversation-piece furniture that maintains their dude ranch aesthetic.
@@miscellaneoussoundeffects7023 he also said that’s his minimum day rate, you could probably get him to build a much nicer table for the same price. It’s like tattoo shops that have a shop minimum of $150, whether it’s a 15 minute tattoo or an hour and a half
@@abculattera4446 Not a chance. I just bought a brand new computer desk for 750$. The body is solid wood but the top is particle board, but I can replace that with a butcher block that's been stained for another 75-100$ total. 500-1500 for that tiny tiny coffee table is absurd even in Texas. Maybe out in Cali where a 50sq ft apartment is 2k a month you could haggle it down to 500$ for that step stool masquerading as a table.
The last coffee table I made was $700. It was a small table at around 18x24 and used less common materials and soaked up about $80 worth of epoxy because the slab had voids on it. Catch is the client wanted that specific slab so I worked around the issues and made a usable table out of it. The base was also custom made since the top wasn't a common size or shape For the record I use Ikea products in my home too.
Yes, I think the moral of the video is not to hire a woodworker to do what IKEA does better for less. Hire a woodworker if you need something custom or that will handle more abuse or has a fancy design. But, the IKEA stuff handles a lot more than a lot of people need. Even in this video, those IKEA tables stood up to his family doing things that nobody would actually do. It looks more like a defect of parenting that those kids are allowed to do some of that stuff. I would never have been allowed to run over my parent's coffee table, even though it was built using a thick block of wood from a candy shop and extremely thick legs to support it. Even as a grown-ass 200+ adult man, I would have little worry standing on it or possibly even jumping on it.
Yeah, I agree... As a woodworker, I HATE flat pack furniture, but IKEA is probably the best maker for flat pack furniture. Maybe he should have used a different example. I get what he's saying, and in general agree 100%, but yeah, IKEA isn't bad.
@@johnbull5394 If you take care of it, it’s decent stuff. I’m a woodworker, so, I’m biased against it, but for anyone that isn’t a woodworker, or needs something quick and/or cheap, it’s decent… The problem is, for a fairly basic, custom piece, you are going to pay several hundred $$$. You can get something similar at IKEA for MUCH less… I can build my own, so, that’s what I do.
The thing that breaks that Ikea table would likely broke your table as well. Difference is that replacing ikea table will cost me less than fixing/replacing yours. I don't mind spending extra money on complex woodwork furniture but paying over 300 bucks on a simple coffee table is madness. Also like I am not gonna lie I have ikea furniture that is over 20 years old at this point and it still looks fine.
I paid $180 for my 55 inch/1.4 meter long computer desk. It has faux wood, but it is quite solid. The legs are made of lightweight but substantial blackened aluminum. I've had it two years now and it hasn't wobbled, or bent, or even scratched. Looks as good as the day I put it together. I imagine it will last years if I don't let children jump on top of it like baboons.
@@shinobuoshino5066 "You're buying the experience" I bet I could make a better and cheaper table and make it in less than 2 hours and I'm not a professional carpenter.
This was basically an advertisement for ikea. Their products hold up surprisingly well for how cheap they are. The ingenuity that goes into the IKEA furniture is pretty incredible. The fact that they can give you something that is pretty reliable, cheap and looks good is quite the feat. As someone who tried to become a full time woodworker, I know that 99% of people cannot afford to pay enough for my products to make it worth my time. Unless you are someone paying full price for original art work, you’re not going to be buying hand made custom furniture. Custom furniture is basically artwork itself. It’s awesome, for sure! But will not make sense for 99% of the world population to buy.
I think there is a middle way for those who want something better than $15 cardboard and can't afford $1000 custom artwork. If you start with a hardwood countertop board (from IKEA) you can make his table, with only hand tools as an easy weekend project. Custom made for a fraction of the price.
What this video fails to illustrate is how terrible some of the ikea builds actually are. I had a dining table with 6 chairs that I used to play board games on, and all 6 chairs have legs that are broken at the joints and the table started to wobble so bad I threw it away. I weigh 150 lbs so it was receiving a below normal amount of stress. Some things from ikea are fine, others are terrible.
Some people do pay a lot for quality woodwork, I’m talking about more in the cabinet industry. As I am a cabinet maker, some people want fully custom cabinets which are never cheap.
That ikea table is an insane piece of engineering, to mass produce something like that, with those structural capacities at that price... is really impressive
Yeah, I have 2 of them. Normally, I hate that kind of thing, but that specific table is actually pretty good. I've had mind for 8 years, and they look like new. I'm a woodworker and HATE flat pack furniture, but that's a good table.
It's a very common practice in composites, sandwiching a reinforcing material with a honeycomb pattern between two laminates (which is exactly what that Ikea table has done). It may not look like much, but the resulting structure is very strong.
Also, Ikea do solid wood tables too. We recently bought a really nice SKOGSTA table made from solid acacia wood for like 450 bucks. This guy would try to charge me something like 2000 because "reasons"
I have a whole bunch of them, some of them are over a decade old I could buy a new lack table every year for the rest of my life and it would still be cheaper than this guy's table
When the business is slow, then I'd push that wood through the planer to recoup value. Other than that, 100 can be justified if actual skills come into play.
@@EditioCastigata 100 bux an hour for something a 12 year old can create as a woodworking learning project? get outta here. If you ask for 100 bux an hour I'll do it myself.
@@blackicynoob6119 What do you think about using a gas mask or breathing protection while working with paint? I've heard professional painters get serious brain problems from constantly breathing in the vapors... I personally would go for a gas mask. Gas masks are great - if you ever need to clean some sewer pipes, you don't need to dry heave every 5 minutes. Edit: also I definitely think a 12 year old could do - At least myself or one of my brothers when we were 12.
There's a comparison you didn't realize you made (and sorry to point it out): - The Ikea table still looked great in the end even though your kids were pretty rough with it - Your table, (even though your kids didn't even play with it) wasn't even perfect because of the crack you had to fix so the "cheap and shitty" Ikea table was a better finished product than the custom job woodworkers table I think the most value you can bring to the table is that you can customize the designs (if you wanted the Ikea table 20 cm wider it would be something that can't be bought, but for the table you created it would probably be almost the same price and little extra effort)
@@Bosco-nq2kk I think he could have made a more inexpensive table the same size quite easily. He could have made his own wood veneers to make a hollow table with some wooden reinforcements just like a wooden bed frame, or even with triangles like a truss. He could have made simpler legs too, instead of paying $30 for them.
@@Bosco-nq2kk What he made isn't even any more embellished or unique to the IKEA table. The table he made is a simple square with rounded corners. Like, anyone can go to a yard sale, flea market, or thrift shop and get a better table for half the price or less. The average hourly pay for a doctor in the USA is $80/hr. They think they deserve more than a doctor for entry level skill.
@@The_Gallowglasstbf, if he were to start making his own veneers and internal reinforcements for a single one off table, that would likely increase the costs. The materials weren't where the costs got out of hand. It was the cost of labor. That being said $500 for a pretty crappy table is quite steep. $30 for the legs is way overpriced and The way the legs are positioned, the table would collapse the moment the kids jumped on it. He's gonna need to bring that cost down.
I actually think it's quite ingenious that IKEA was able to make a table with cardboard. In terms of business growth, making products economically feasible to clients is what will ensure the longevity of the business. It seems like you're specifically catering to a niche clientele who has the extra money to spend on custom furniture, which is different than the masses who shop at IKEA, so there's going to be a lot of controversy surrounding your video.
Couldn't agree more! Not to mention you can get yourself an Ikea furniture in a few minutes (i mean there is as much Ikea as McDo nowadays), different colors, sizes etc. Also, not all Ikea furnitures are made of cardboard. Now I'm not gonna say hand made is bad, far from it actually, but asking 500$ for such a tiny table is outrageous imho... (the other dude asking 750~1000 is out of his mind...)
It isn't that it's a niche clientele who can aford custom-piece prices, it's that it's a niche clientele who prefer the _lower_ amortized cost of durable goods, because they will keep them long enough to realize those savings. People often spend $600 a year (or more) on "bells and whistles" phone services, and streaming services, so it isn't that they couldn't aford this class of thing, and once you start the ball rolling on quality goods, you cut your ongoing costs, especially across generations. Yes, it's 20 of those cheap tables, but it's only _20_ of them, if they last 3 years each, that pays for itself in your lifetime, and your kids get to save that $5 a year for as long as they don't toss your old table. But that does mean skipping netflix.
@@lperkins2 IKEA tables last a lot longer than 3 years on average, $5 a year is such a small saving it's really not worth any concern, and if you're spending $600 on streaming services, you have a lot of streaming services.
@@Croz89 Mostly it is phones where people pay more than they need to. 600 a year is 50 a month. An "unlimited" plan for a single house hold member is often in the 50/month range. Drop that to a 10 or 20/month service on two people in the house and you've exceeded the 600 figure. Streaming "only" contributes 120 or so a year, per service, so if you are cycling between companies, or only subscribing long enough to binge a show, it is less significant by far. While some ikea furniture easily lasts reasonably well, that sort of cardboard table in a house of active children is going to have to get pretty lucky to last 3 years in the "line of fire". Doesn't mean it should get replaced with a $600 coffee table, just moving to the $40 range gets you MDF, which _will_ hold up somewhat better. But the broader point is about the difference in mentality between "this is disposable, I'll throw it away for style reasons in 10 years" and "this will be part of my estate which my children will want to pass to _their_ children".
@jo Indeed, but a "long time" for their _cardboard_ furniture is not really that long. First time it gets drenched it'll fail. If it gets something heavy dropped on it, repairs will be very hard (I have repaired some, mostly by scavanging parts from matched sets, but catastrophic failures are rather easy). Compared to even MDF furniture (still water sensitive), which can be resurfaced for about half the cost of replacing this, it is incredibly disposable.
as contractors, that's actually about the price. You don't pay contractors at the same hourly rate you would pay a full time worker. You have to pay them more because they have to account for client acquisition and downtime. In the west $100/h doesn't seem outrageous for a fairly skilled laborer. I live in the eastern US. I work in tech (think programming). My contracting rate is around $300/h. When I contract people to do work around the house. Especially the "couple hours of work" they are typically charges around $70/h. It's maybe a bit high. But it's not outrageous in that market.
Not everyone can afford to spend $500 on a small table let alone for every piece of furniture,i know this world of mass production is sad for artisans but cheap and good enough is in fact good enough for a lot of people,i personally own a few vintage used pieces of furniture and they are rock solid and don’t break the bank
If this table already costs 700$+ how much would be a cupboard with 10x the materials and work be? 9000$? Hell you can get a used car for that, which is 1000x the labour to build when it was new.
@@DarkSession6208 If you pay $700 for that specific table (without any real woodwork, just screwed legs), you deserve to be priced at least $9K for the cupboard. :D He was probably high from paint fumes when making the video. It doesn't make sense.
As someone who is currently apprenticing to become a furniture maker, it makes zero sense to me to try and rely on making stuff like coffee tables for the average joe. It makes a lot more sense to focus on making custom solutions to problems that a client can't simply go to IKEA for. It could be a coffee table if a client is looking for something very specific, but most likely it's something that requires a custom fit that can't be found in IKEA.
It would only make any sense if you're doing a set of furniture for a room, not just one loose piece as a coffee table. Still more expensive then filling a room with the standard cheap box store furniture, but it can apply your own economy of scale in regards to acquiring materials, delivering, prospecting and dealing with clients. At least when talking about regular joe remodeling or getting a new place, knowing how to "sell it to the wife" or just directly deal with a female homeowner is a better strategy, since they're more likely to require and first of all desire such services. Talking about making regular money, but you can and should prospect high end customers to make some "real money" to save up for dreams and retirement!
@@lazystart Saying that someone isn’t a carpenter because he doesn’t want to rely on building things where he can and will be loosing a ton of customers to the cheaper and better established competition is like saying someone isn’t a professional cook because he decides to focus on high end cuisine instead of opening a pizzeria when there’s already a Pizza Hut and a Dominos in the neighbourhood.
So, I am a teacher, paid around 100$ per day. Most of the furnitures in my house are from IKEA or similar (hej Jysk!). Some pieces needed more custom sizes and shapes, and these ones I built myself in my small workshop. They are a lot more expensive for an overall small gain in practicality. You can even say that it would have been cheaper to not build them and find a workaround, but it is a nice hobby. For a basic coffee table like the one you built, I believe that the right price would have been something like 200-300$, depending on the market. It is really basic, no shelf, no drawer, not even perfect finish or classy wood. There is always a danger in overpricing items: you cannot sell them, meaning that you cannot build them often, meaning that you need to charge more to make a living, meaning that you cannot sell them.
Is it that he has overpriced his work or that it doesn't finically make sense for most to buy bespoke. In the UK I think you could buy from a more premium supplier than IKEA and get a solidwood version for under 500 If you have customers willing to pay though why would you not charge 100 an hour. Most people can't buy supercar but doesnt mean it would be good for the brands to reduce the cost when the rich are purchasing
@@James-dv1df the problem is that its buying this is same as buying an solid cube of gold and using it as table and heck you can resell the massive gold cube its even better
@@James-dv1df That's why you don't go to individual woodmaker for something so simple, you go to them if you need something more complicated and customized or bigger set - of course their rates are higher and if you buy more, you pay less per item. Going to them for just such small thing is like starting whole power plant to just turn on 1 led bulb.
@@ZarHakkar if the table costs 700usd it wil be 3.4 million times more expensive maybe rich people like these types of things and it wil last basically forever and you can sell the gold more expensive because of inflation so it wil make you money win win
I love how you make a big point of the Ikea table being less durable, having your kids have a go at it, but then never revisit the topic to show the results. Nor contrast it to your table receiving the same treatment (especially kids running over it). I guess the Ikea table held up perfectly fine and there was nothing to show? Then there's the ridiculous price you charge for that simple coffee table a beginner could make. Domino's, premade legs and metal leg mounts, imperfect finish. Literally "you don't need to be a woodworker to create this" territory. Sure, it's just going to be in your living room, and if you're fine with that level of finish, that's fine. But if you make these kind of beginner mistakes, what makes you think your skills are worth $100/hr? And why start this project from raw ash. Expensive wood, and since it's not even formed into dimensionally stable boards, adds a ton of labour (and wear on the machines) that only serves to inflate the price for no added benefit. Can you honestly look your customer in the eye and quote $500 for that table, knowing that you could've shaved 1/4 off your labour time by purchasing finished wood? That would also have solved your knot hole issue, so you wouldn't have had to waste expensive epoxy and the time to mix and pour it. Even if I were to agree that your time is worth $100/hr (and we'll get back to that), buying premilled wood would have shaved an hour or more off your time. And yes, I know the machinery was a huge investment, and needs to be recouped. But I don't see you recouping the tens of thousands of dollars invested by trying to sell quickly and cheaply slapped together furniture at ridiculously inflated prices. I'm sure you do more interesting and unique stuff as well; simple jobs such as these are probably not worth your time since nobody will pay $500 for a coffee table that's just some glued-up boards for the top, with premade legs underneath. I wouldn't want to hop onto that Ikea table and jump around on it. But neither would I want to do that with your table with those thin legs sticking out at an angle. Nor do I require such levels of sturdiness from a frickin' _coffee table..._ I mean, it's great if your furniture can survive a nuclear holocaust, as opposed to that "cheap Ikea crap". But my requirements for a coffee table are for it to be able to support a fruit bowl and a couple of drinks, not to survive WW3. And sure, I know handmade quality can be expensive. A good handmade knife from an experienced knife maker can cost hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars. And it's likely not even better than factory made, as factories can very precisely and repeatedly tweak all variables during manufacturing and heat treating. But a custom knife represents a day or more of skilled labour, requires knowledge and experience, and often uses less common and more expensive materials to set it apart from the mass-produced factory knives. There's often finesse involved as well, from filework on the spine, to engravings on the blade, to differential heat treating to get the optimal balance between edge retention and overall toughness and flexibility. You, on the other hand, have just created the simplest possible coffee table, the "minimal viable product". No frills, no demonstration of skill, nothing. The table could have been made by the 15 year old cousin in wood shop class, I couldn't tell the difference, because you bring none of your skill or expertise to the project. If this is your A-game, you're not worth the hourly rate you ask for. And I'm going to assume your A-game is what I'd expect from an experienced woodworker, making this your C-game at best. You don't charge A-game rates for C-game performance.
I believe he explicitly stated this to be a cheap take on a coffee table and the angled leg mounts came from something old he had taken apart. You can also see that he makes an additional effort in assembling the IKEA tables as sturdy as possible where most buyers will turn the legs back from fully tight in order to line them up with the corners. Rest assured though that because the double headed screws grab in chipboard, play will form over time and the legs will start acting as levers to destroy the material even further. BTW IKEA used to have two versions of this table. One was sold as a kids play table, made from solid wood and I do actually believe this to have been ash. They had little wooden chairs to go with this table and even though this was meant for kids they could easily carry an adult with the kid on their lap. The other one was plastic and had plug-in legs that usually broke away within about three years. The current version is something of a mix between the two, with the worst feature being the leg mounts.
@@roslolian11 He isn't. What he said is that if he'd build this for a customer the time spent on making the coffee table would require him to charge $500 for it. That is the difference between hand building a single item versus having a robot spit out hundreds of copies per day.
My mom bought an Ikea table in 1990 and passed it on to me like any "real" piece of furniture. It's still going strong, doesn't wobble, and it's traveled internationally.
Honestly this just makes me more impressed by the excellent design of the basic IKEA coffee table. It's really light and easy to transport, it's sturdy and durable enough to its intended use, it's trivial to assemble, or disassemble when you need to move. It's the perfect example of a good cheap product that does exactly what it needs to do at shockingly low price.
@@codemy666 - I've had this exact same IKEA table. I've moved it with me three times and it's done so excellently every time. The only reason I don't have it anymore is because I have no place/use for it in my current apartment. Else it could've easily done another move without issues. All in all I probably had it for around a decade.
@@codemy666 If I have to rebuy that table 10 times because it broke everytime I changed location, it's still cheaper. Saying that "it's gonna last longer" is nor a good argument. The real thing is: you don't get a fully basic furniture item from a woodworker, it makes no sense economically. You ask for something that requires he experience they have, so that you get what you pay for.
i have this same IKEA table that i bought in 2016 (7 years ago) and it still looks as new and im using it every day. i don't know why would someone spend 500-1000$ on such a small table for the living room. plus it doesnt look bad anyways it also depends on your decor
@@Robert_10203 i know what you mean, but maybe i buy the 15£ coffee table and take the rest of the £700, go to a secondhand flea market or auction or anywhere and buy some prints or art or a small sculpture i can put on it. if i ever am really rich then i will buy hand carved furniture but until then it is just not sensible for me, and i cannot pay a rate that makes it worth the woodworker's time
I get your perspective, and as someone living on a pretty tight budget I understand the price squeeze. Here’s what I’d say: First: Ikea furniture has degraded a lot in quality. I still have an ikea bookcase from my first solo apartment (also in 2016! Haha our furniture is buddies) That’s 100% a compliment to Ikea. However, with recent management changes, the quality has gone down markedly. You can still use the rule of: if it looks complicated, the cost is cut in construction, but even the very basic stuff chips far more frequently, and generally goes from looking “nice” to looking bad pretty quickly. Second: You’re paying for something that’s going to be a part of your life (ideally) for a long time. If you can only afford Ikea, there’s absolutely no shame in living in your means. However, if you’re a moderately successful person; buying a piece that has a life beyond you leaves a legacy, a tradition. My mother still has my great grandmother’s dining table in our kitchen. It’s the table her mother grew up eating oatmeal at, where she served the first meal she (as a french traditional chef) made at 12. It’s the table I ate at my whole childhood, despite moving 9 times. It has survived my teenage lack of respect in the form of nail-polish remover and cold drinks without coasters, high school parents-are-out parties and conversations with my mother where I’m not ashamed to admit I shed a few tears. It’s still beautiful to this day. It’s had to be repaired twice that I know of, so god only knows how many times its been sanded and reglazed. But that table is one of the only things I want to keep when my mother passes away. Beautiful and timeless pieces are a repository for a life well lived. They are a safe deposit box for our memories. While you could buy 30 ikea tables for the price of a handmade one like in this video, how much value do you find in a house with 30 cheap tables, versus one table embellished with eighty years of family ups and downs? Third and last: Not everything in your home needs to be craftsman. There’s nothing wrong with shopping at ikea, or at a higher-end store, or buying secondhand. You life evolves and so do the things you need. However, having a handful of meaningful, steadfast pieces created by human hands is something I wish for everyone. The only “nice” piece of furniture I currently have is a beautifully engraved side table I bought secondhand. It’s mango wood, and every morning when I wake up and reach for my phone I feel the ridges of pattern carved into its surface. I’ve moved half a dozen times as an adult: and that side table (and my random ikea bookshelf) ate the only pieces that have come with me every time. The world is full of the impermanent. Everything is changing all the time, from what we’re supposed to wear to how we’re supposed to speak, and companies have convinced is that that’s how our homes should be: constantly changing, or constantly needing change. I disagree. If it is within your means, buy something you love. That you intend to have for the rest of your life. Home is our safe harbor in uncertain times; make your place of rest a constant companion as much as you can. Make your place of rest a place of solid in the storm.
@@oliverrh all well and good for those who are sentimental with their furniture. for me anyways i couldn't care any less that my family has had this large dining table for generations or other furniture that is special to them. i see them as objects that are useful and replaced when inconvenient or too worn down. my childhood bed was built by my great, great grandfather and i utterly hated it, i used to be a light sleeper as a kid and if you so much as farted with any sort of intensity while in that bed it would creek and make sounds so any time i turned in my sleep id wake up due to the noise. family refused to replace it due to that sentimentality, i eventually purposely broke the bed one night and made it sound like it happened in my sleep JUST so i could get a new one and not wake up the entire street when i rolled in my sleep lol. point is, its cool if you are sentimental for certain furniture, but many people are not and just want something affordable to replace something that broke or just to have an end table
I don’t think anyone is shocked that you can make better stuff than IKEA. The pricing, availability, convenience are hard to walk away from. You can go and furnish your house and be pleased with the result in 2-3 weeks. They will deliver and set up for you and everything. You’re just not getting the same from woodworkers. Which you shouldn’t, it’s not reasonable to expect the same. Most ppl just prefer the advantages of IKEA over the advantages of a single craftsperson.
The way I see IKEA is, you start out with that furniture to get you going in a new place if you're coming in with nothing or you're just renting. Then once you're established in your house and the IKEA stuff starts to breakdown you buy/commission the furniture that will last generations. By this time you get to that point you're most likely looking at having kids, or prepared to live in that place until death. If not then you're ready to throw/give that stuff away and move to a new place, buy the IKEA stuff again or if you have the savings buy the good stuff.
Only those living a comfortable middle class lifestyle (and its associated earning powers) could afford the kind of stuff in the video. If we all tried to do that when we first moved into our first house we'd just have a bed maybe and no other furniture in the house. It's totally unrealistic. I moved into a house within a year of finding a job and managed to furnish my entire house at IKEA. The IKEA furniture is much tougher than the video suggests and unless you do something unreasonable to it they will last for many years. You are much more likely to get bored of a piece of furniture than it break. And of the very cheapest pieces like that table, no-one is buying it to be a lifetime piece. To pay $1000 for that table means you are essentially living a designer lifestyle which is perfectly valid if you want to do that and have the means but it is totally out of touch with reality for the majority of people even in the 'richer' nations.
@@ruan13o Agreed. LACK is the worst example for this. what do you expect from a 10 quid table?? For that price, it's actually really decent. Just pay attention to materials & construction and buy the sturdy stuff like IVAR & FJÄLLBO instead of LACK & MALM. IVARs will last you decennia and are easy to take with you when you move houses as you can easily take them apart & rebuild them. Sure, handmade furniture to order would be nice, but your average IKEA customer is not the target audience for that. If they're buying the cheapest option for a table that's available, there's probably a reason for that.
@@CS-bn5wg honestly i have found that MALM is pretty tough for its price point, yeah its veneered chipboard but it can hold my weight with ease and is easy to put together/take apart in 5-10mins, i own a few pieces of handmade furniture mostly bookshelves and while I think they look great the IKEA stuff is easily fit for purpose, like you said they make moving so much easier, since almost all my furniture is able to be flatpacked it saves so much space when moving
I think in this video you perfectly proved that Ikea is the way to go. I would not pay that much money for what you were offering, as it was clearly imperfect even after all the stages of work you went through and that tiny ikea table took all the punishment like a boss and still looked perfect even after kids jumped on it. So this was a very good advert for Ikea
That ikea table looks like shit though, sure that's personal preference and you might like the ikea look put personally I'd love to be able to pay some extra for something that doesn't looks and feels cheap after having this stuff for all my life so far. And yes, there are a lot of other cheap producers but ikea still excels in this field and while it all looks samey it's at least tough.
@@Bobylein1337 I mean if you're into status and want quality stuff then sure that's your choice, but getting a coffee table at the price this guy is offering and the quality he has is terrible value for money. It would be a much better investment to buy something used instead. If it has some scratches or is a little worn out, just sand it, paint it or put lacquer on it and it's good as new for the fraction of the price. This guy is gonna happily take your money and then after a couple years you'll start thinking, you know this table really wasn't so special after all
@@Bobylein1337 ikea makes other coffee tables that are far nicer than this 15$ one... its not one or the other. there is a middle ground between the cheapest new table someone can buy and a 500-1500$ table built by this guy
My guess for price was 150€-200€. In Sweden, maybe too low, but in Slovakia I would do 4 hours for 50-100€ no problem. For 750€, I would do it myself in evenings. That is just way over for simple table. For 150€ we have whole bed - not custom made, but still real wood. We also have lot of stuff from Ikea for many years (some cabinets are 15 years old). It is very good stuff, but you have to consider what are your needs and how you will use it.
Nothing to do with Sweden's pricing, he's just rich and out of touch. Selling a table made of glued wood for that price just because he's charging 100$ an hour is ridiculous. He also ridiculously overpriced the materials, like 20$ for a few drops of glue is absolutely unheard of.
Tbh as a German that's much too much as well. We're considered one of the richest nations and I promise that trying to sell that table for that price would only get you to bankruptcy. It's just incredibly expensive for such a small and to be completely fair kinda useless item. We got quite some Antique stores where you find things like this made from solid wood which probably already lasted a hundred years and will last another 200. And even those items you'd need to buy a 2m wardrobe or a whole bed to warrant a price of 700-1000€
Hey there neighbor! Wanted to write the same about Hungary here. I could do a solid hardwood coffeee table for $1000. I should have went to a carpentry school but didn't want to do what everyone else in the family was already doing. I think i made a mistake, could have gone to a western country and made millions building furniture for ultra-rich who see $100/hr as a normal wage haha
You don't always have to talk down about people and their "perception" of ikea as amazing built quality. The common person understand that it isn't and doesn't care is the coffee table is cheap as long as it looks nice and isn't $750.
You know, it kind of is quality once you look at it from the perspective of the amount of engineering that had to go into it. It takes a pretty intelligent guy to make the most cost efficient table out of cardboard that is durable enough for a kid to jump on it.
Yes, their pricing system is whack as fuck. "I value my time at 1000 dollars a day". Okay babe but if what you produced in a day is worth like $150 or so at most, then generally you're not going to be able to mark it up to $750. Think about the claims they're making. Producing a small coffee table using modern tools very fast. Not even in the pre-industrial era when everything was made by hand with hand tools, would it be reasonable for a craftsman to charge their economy's equivalent of a thousand fucking dollars for this work. Utterly delusional.
IKEA has plenty of high quality builds, they just don't cost 15 bucks. Their top of the line METHOD kitchens have 25 years of warranty! You don't give that kind of warranty for things that will fall apart and have poor build quality.
A lot of people talk down on Ikea as if the only reason to buy their stuff is to chase trends. You would be surprised how much poor people's lives are improved by places like Ikea. I know plenty of poor older people that used a crappy folding "card table" as their main table for decades. Having access to Ikea level quality and pricing is a notable upgrade to many people.
I think on both sides of these comments there are extremes and almost cult like for IKEA being the only choice and the video saying everyone should bespoke build. There are different price points and IKEA fits one of them while bespoke fit another. I like your comment in that acknowledges there will be a need for low cost furniture for those who cant afford anything more. I do think there is a considerable difference in style and quality and the IKEA is cheap for a reason as its a cardboard table
It’s not a smart investment to buy IKEA products. They are for people that chase trends. You can easily get high quality secondhand furniture for fractions of the cost of IKEA.
Yep. Most of my room is furnished with IKEA because it's all I could afford. I'd love to get some hand-made furniture that uses quality materials, but it's just not feasible for me. Despite that, I've had all this stuff for years and have even disassembled and reassembled some of it when I moved rooms. I've also seen many examples of what you said about the folding tables. At the end of the day, people make do with what they got. But there's always gonna be someone that will yell at you about that just to feel superior lol.
I think it also depend on where you live. here in Thailand, IKEA is the best value in my opinions, I have some secondhand stuffs from secondhand shops, which are great, but the furniture are usually bad if it is cheap or more expensive for middle quality stuff, which most people here can't afford. I pretty envy how people in Europe or US has much more options than utter crap or really expensive like we do, Ikea fill that gap. Local brands that make a good quality stuffs at Ikea pricing is non-existent, we don't have good quality plywood or mdf made locally, we have to import them. I say that because I used to do lots of woodworking at my old job, good quality engineered wood doesn't exist here, we have to import, which I think is the case of many places as well. The availability of raw materials really affect the cost, even in low labor cost here, I still can't afford one off custom furniture, unless I make it myself.
We had 2 of those IKEA tables. Being so cheap, we had no expectations. The first one lasted 6 years. The second long enough to get the kids through Highschool. Once they where out of the house we bought a nice wooden table. We were very happy with the IKEA tables.
Everything, EVERYTHING i've bought from Ikea the past 20 years has eventually flakes, broke, rotted, peeled, basically it doesn't last. Unless you buy metal things form them -_-
I love how he says that kids will scratch it up and eat over it but that is literally why IKEA is much better with kids. If there is a huge scratch on a $500 table I would be mad. On Ikea I don't care. Worst case I buy a new one and I still have paid 1/30s
It's not about haggling the price of things. It's about selling something for what it's worth. They don't charge $5/ diaper because they're not worth $5 each, and this table is too small and very uninteresting for $500-$1000. It's a $150 - $185 table, maximum.
But wher you got the price you have in mind, for such a table ? It's the influence of industry, your experience in shops. If industry wouldn't exist, and you had to ask a carpenter, maybe you would get used to other prices. Prices is really something you get used to.
@@ShayanGivehchian You also pay according to your income, and it is insane to ask people from low income or even middle income to ask for 1000$ for such a simple table
@@ShayanGivehchian So as soon somebody lowers production cost things loose value ? On the same product it is. But here, it proves your evaluation function for "similiarity" is wrong. It's like buying supermarket bread vs. bakery bread. Does it make sense to pay 4 times as much in the bakery ? It does, because it is not a "similiar item". It only serves a similiar purpose. You have to find the difference in quality, to activly say, I want the cheaper or the more expensive version. On homogenous products, only there, it does not make sense to pay more, as you say.
@@holger_p If industry didn't exist, I'd get paid that much to sew people's clothes, doesn't mean I go around yelling at people for buying pre-made clothes.
I work in IKEA, we have multiple price range for different people with different wallet size. Also, that LACK is not for children because of the sharp edge and quality. IKEA do have children specific product which mostly solid wood, cost way cheaper, but that's because it's mass produced. So if you wanted a furniture to be looking as ever, go for custom made, if you're just want a furniture for functionality, just buy whatever from whichever company. Cheers!
This is a great wood project book ruclips.net/user/postUgkxkPIWb22DigCqxmlXerCyUF4HCl6eSU2L . Most of the projects use the pallet simply as a source of reclaimed wood not as a recognizable pallet so even if you didn't have a pallet you could make these projects with any reclaimed (or even new) wood. The instructions are excellent. The style is charming and would work with lots of different decor. There are quite a number of projects that involve tiling of teh wood pieces which is a really cool idea and can produce beautiful pieces when working with aged wood.
You can buy 33 Ikea tables for the price of that one table. It just makes more sense to treat the table like it's disposable because there's no way you're going to destroy 33 tables unless you're actually trying.
Even if you do destroy them you can with simple tools cut and reuse those pieces. I have heard of people picking up broken units for free and then taking them back to their shops where they cut them and make new things from them. This one time at an auction there were so much of this type of stuff, some missing units and some broken. Yet lots of it. I think 15 pallets of it and each pallet stacked 4 feet tall or more and 4 to 8 feet long sold for around 25 dollars for each pallet. This happens every few months at this auction place and once when I was there picking up that stuff I leaned from one guy picking them up that they build custom cabinets with them. They cut them down and make bases with them and then build out high end front faces. The cost for them is quite cheap because the material cost next to nothing. While you might have mis matched insides if you go their most basic route or they can and will match them. This reuse store place I have been too also sold pieces of this type of stuff for dirt cheap. While it can be cut to size and reused you can also buy most of the veneer stuff online pretty easy.
Exactly… Solid timber furniture can look 100x better, but that is outweighed by so many benefits of buying something cheap from IKEA. At IKEA, you get what you pay for, sometimes more than you pay for. For $500-1000 for a small coffee table, can the same really be said.. I don’t think so.
@@ruben247 I doubt it can be recycled easily with all that plastic, but it's not that easily broken either. That was his point, yet the Ikea table didn't break, and he didn't test his own table. He said himself that the legs were the weakest part, from how short those screws were I'd trust the IKEA table more tbh. And that ugly mount on the bottom, for 500€? Common, lol. He's kind of making a fool of himself tbh.
i think frankly that you proved a point for Ikea's business model. at the end of the day the table was functional, lightweight (ie cheap to ship, and used recycled materials (cardboard). The average joe (ie housewife etc.) likely isn't privy to all the elements that make a beautiful piece of furniture and nor do they care. They want a good looking affordable item and Ikea provides that in spades and were never a custom furniture builders customer to begin with. Also the price's for the custom stuff would seem way outrageous to the normal person who has never owned or could afford such fine furniture. I laughed out loud when i heard the prices offered - especially the higher prices.
True. It’s like, bro we can’t even afford houses, how’re we going to afford real furniture. Gtfo acting like I can afford more than $15 for a coffee table. Also, Goodwill exists.
Clueless. You get paid the GOING RATE for your work I assume? Why THE FUCK should a woodworker whom has spent literally THOUSANDS on the machinery to make these items, get paid the same wage as a kid flipping burgers in macdonalds? It takes YEARS of experience to make these items correctly, and even more years to learn how to do it QUICKER so it can be a bit cheaper. Do you bitch at the mechanics for charging what they do to fix your car? No ofc you don't, or if you do, you're an asshole. The ikea table will last a few months at best, it's literally made of hardboard (compressed cardbaord) with a cardboard hollow core. - its PAPER. - and you think it's "just as good" as the handmade one made from Ash wood that could EASILY last generations. $40 for one table - lifetime - months. TEN ikea table like that - cost $400, lifetime - LESS THAN 5 YEARS. OR a $500 table that you'll still be using when you retire. DO THE MATH, THE HANDMADE TABLE IS CHEAPER. Here's a simple question when was the last time you saw an item from Ikea being sold at a furniture auction? Maybe there's a reason why the only furniture being sold at auctions is THE EXPENSIVE STUFF THAT WAS MADE PROPERLY 50 OR 100 YEARS AGO. grrr SO FUCKING STUPID. YOU, with that mentality, are the reason so many craftmen are going out of business.
Y’all jus hating on this man 😭, sure we def don’t got that sort of money laying around to spend 500$ on a table, but plenty of people who are better financially will buy this. It is 100% stronger than the IKEA table as it’s 100% Ash and not some sort of cardboard mix, but a IKEA table will do its job. I’d say his table is more stylish and just better quality.
I’ve owned a shop for 6 years now I charge 60 bucks an hour and I have 108,000 dollars worth of tools. There’s value in my time but I also appreciate helping people get running again. I think you guys value yourself a to much
It depends on the location - you can get many things for much less in, let's say, Ukraine than in Spain. But you'll also make way less money for same thing there usually.
@@James-dv1df It does, but you still have to have a price that the customers will pay. Much of the equipment will last for decades. My Dad is a retired carpenter and he still has a bunch of tools from the '70s that work just fine, even after years of use on construction sites. Speaking as somebody that's in an accounting program, I don't understand why he's trying to amortize his stuff over such a short period of time. Much of this stuff is going to last for many, many years and probably still have value on the 2nd hand market when he is done with it. I don't see why he's charging so much for that stuff. I also don't get why he's charging that much for the time, It may vary a bit in Sweden, but around here carpenters make basically the median salary. Even after factoring in for self-employment tax, the correct rate should be closer to $50 an hour. Probably a bit higher to account for the stuff that needs to happen between jobs, but probably not $100 and definitely not $200. If you're charging that much, it's because you're providing luxury goods and shouldn't have trouble explaining why you're not charging IKEA prices.l
It's not, really. It's the fact that everyone's labor costs are insane nowadays because the cost of living is equally insane to boot. One feeds into the other. Services were cheap when people were willing to work for peanuts. Now? Pay an Indian man to do it and ship it overseas - it'll still be cheaper than local labor.
@@slizzysluzzer Some skilled workers charge outrageous fees, it has nothing to do with the other staffs. I just repaired the roof of a two-story house, a worker repaired it for 6 hours and charged me 4000 dollar. The AC duct work is even more outrageous, the whole house was charged over 20000 dollars, just 4 people worked for 2 days with some metal sheets.
I have an IKEA dining table that's lasted over a decade. It's solid wood (pine) and the only blemish is where I accidentally spilled a drop of crazy glue the first year I had it. And it was under $200. Those little white tables are meant for temporary use, like for college dorm rooms and such. They actually should be made of recyclable cardboard considering how briefly they will be used.
"you can buy this $15 Ikea table OR you can spend thousands of dollars on tools, hundreds of thousands of dollars on a house with a workshop, $50 on materials, and four hours of labor" LOL Also I had two of those $15 tables and they lasted six years and looked pristine still. I live in a small apartment, i don't have my own private workshop and a plethora of tools to build my own furniture
Exactly. "YoU DoN't NeEd IKOEA fUrNiTuRe cAuSe YoU cAn BuIlD YoR oWn StuFf!! LiSteN tO Me I'm SmArT!" You just need a few thousands to buy the tools and find a place where to put them and pay the humongous monthly electricity bill.
Excuses, you dont need lots of tools since you can outsource jobs to those that have them and you just choose the room to build. Build 4000€ custom desk in 2 room apartment, took me a year and 1200€ in materials. Tools were couple chisels, cordless drill, hand saw, couple rulers and measuring tape, box cutter, hammer, set of drill bits, router with its accessories, CA glue, wood glue so 200-300€ in tools you can get from drift shops or marketplace. What was not possible to make there was out sourced mostly the cutting up the plywood when i bought it, stainless steel accessories was welded for me and final finishing i did in buddys shop since could not really use spray gun in such place, but one can rent or borrow air compressor and sprayer and get space rented for couple days, or just out source that to person with those tools already. Also it requires more cleaning work than in dedicated shop, but you can do it. Its not optimal but its possible. From the sound of it, you are not really living in there, but going to sleep there before leaving to work. Least that is the imagine i get from that. Then again my 2 room was not in the best area of the town and neighbors were more curious than angry about the noise of router and hammering the chisel on the floor.
I used to work in the carpentry industry as a shop lead in a theater scene shop. I can confirm $100 an hour is highway robbery. I fully agree that handmade furniture has a certain warmth to it and that an Ikea table will never have, but having a simple coffee table costs more than a month of rent is out of this world crazy. Custom woodwork should not be only for the upper crust. As a shop lead who teaches people on woodworking, I encourage people to discover their local maker spaces and learn how to make the stuff they want to. I have a coffee table that I made out of scrap wood I found at a construction site and rusty rebars that was about to be thrown away. After everything, I only spent $50 on a table, epoxy, stain, and a workshop fee, price matching the Ikea. But at the end of this, I have a table that is infinitely durable being made out of rebars that were meant to build houses, rustic and charming, and I feel accomplished for what I did. My honest opinion: don't pay a woodworker, be a woodworker. It's rewarding, fun and you can tell your friend that you are a woodworker.
I agree that charging for work is important, and I'd love to have original furniture. But with Ikea, I can actually HAVE furniture rather than wishing i had furniture. So hopefully those rich clients of yours are consistent, and ikea will continue to maintain its poor clientelle.
Here is a philosophical and economic question: Why are there poor people in the world? Are there poor people in the world because that's just how the gods ordained it to be? Or are there poor people in the world because of the socio-economic system we live in? Yes, IKEA provides cheap furniture for the masses, but how come the masses can only afford cheap furniture? Maybe if corporations like IKEA payed all their workers a living wage in stead of placing their factories in places where they can pay their workers the absolute minimum, there would be fewer poor people.
@@davorzdralo8000 I'm not talking about Utopia, I'm just talking about a better way to do stuff. It's about finding a nice balance between automation and human craftsmanship that serves the needs of people, not the profits of a tiny elite.
Dude, those Ikea tables last forever, who cares if it's paper inside. I got one from the streets as a student, had it for 3 years, returned to the street and it was gone in 10 mins. Perfect condition to reuse for another person even after that probably, and also easy to carry as a found second-hand XD
3 years =/= "forever". Also, I'm guessing you didn't put it through the kind of abuse that small children would dish out on a regular basis. Get an IKEA coffee table that is a framed cardboard box with fiberboard legs screwed on, like the one in the video. Get a coffee table made out of real wood; you don't even need to pay for a custom piece...any local antique shop (or if you want the cheapest option, check out Goodwill stores) should have something roughly equivalent that won't cost $1,000. Use them both equally. If any of your friends have children or grandchildren, invite them over & let the kids pound on the tables, etc. When they're not around, feel free to pile things on both tables whenever you need to, use them as work surfaces, etc. Do the above for the next decade, & see which one is still intact at the end of that time.
@@schechter01 Antiques have issues on their own, esp. with kids in the house. Toxic binders. Formaldehyde, lead and arsenic. Lead paints, arsenic in old varnishes. Tobacco residue in the wood if it came from a smoker's house. You got kids, kids put shit in their mouths. You don't want to roll that dice. If you're going down that route, you damn well better do good research to make sure you're not putting a child in harm's way. Ikea's not perfect by any means but at least their materials are well known and documented - and if you want new and guaranteed toxic byproduct free, that's way more than $1000.
Exactly. Just don't puncture, cut or spill nasty stuff the top, or put very hot things on it, or have adults standing on it and you will be fine. The legs sometimes require adjusting but that's all.
I much prefer an IKEA $15 table. They are light, use much less natural resources and still hard and stiff enough at least for normal use. I can totally get behind going up to $40-$60 if you want a fancy looking one or if you have special requirements. But paying $700 for this is beyond my comprehension
Of course I don't discourage anyone who has the money to have their coffee table custom-made, it just isn't something I would ever have the money for o.O
Not sure what kinda math you're doing, but the IKEA table the person cited in their email is $500, and his quote was $3,000. While 3K is pretty rich for my blood, I would NEEEEVER pay $500 for something from IKEA.
Have you seen the price of hard woods these days 😂and you want for a maximum of 60. Bespoke is never going to be in the reach of many including myself however there is clearly a massive difference between a hard wood ash table and cardboard table
@@fdasfsjgasdfwe When working private they actually make 100+/hour. About half the income quickly gets "lost" to pay for sick days, vacation time, taxes and stuff.
I think this video miss several great points with the IKEA table. I've had that same table in a larger format for the past 25 years. It has been disassembled and put back together again probably 10 times during moves, and it is still holding up just fine. I am kind of tired of that design since a long time back so it is now used as a play table for the kids. Not every piece of furniture have to be heirloom. It is OK to change your style throughout your lifetime. And as far as sustainability, making furniture with cardboard is genius. They could literally have made the IKEA table from the leftover sawdust you generated creating your handmade table? Considering you probably threw that in the trash, is that better or worse? Before anyone points it out, I'm also from Sweden, and realize that sawdust goes to energy recycling. Sweden has so little garbage that they have to import from other countries to use in the incinerators. 🙂 Other than that, I really appreciate this video.
@@friedrichhayek4862 not if it's not forced upon you. It's of course different if some govt imposes certain choices on you, particularly if these choices are bad economically (very common), or worse, outright not even good environmentally either (that's also common and even more stupid, I have my doubts about electric vehicles and their batteries). But choosing, as an individual, to consider the impact of your own choices, and try to reduce your own waste or consumption or whatnot is just personal freedom and overall a good thing. If you can do it. I do agree that it's a bit of a luxury in some regards, so it needs to be done carefully, and not at the expense of the poorer people, which is happening a lot nowadays...
@@MrTresto Still virtue signaling neonazism. Specially after considering the fact that if you make some externalities cause harm to another person's property by the basic law of capitalism (private property) you should be liable to that.
This is like saying: "You should pay a gourmet chef instead of going to McDonald's!". Sometimes you just want that quick, cheap and easy solution, even though the custom gourmet burger most definitely would be great. In my Swedish home we have some IKEA furniture here and there while in the meantime we have old hand made furniture passed on through generations - the best of both worlds IMHO.
A video by a RUclips chef called The TRUTH about McDonalds (why it's so cheap)! urging you to instead visit a nice restaurant for your lunch would be funny
@@jukesngambits I would love to see a chef try and duplicate a mcdonalds cheeseburger have it look smaller and more basic(somehow) then say i need to charge you 33x's what mcdonalds is charging you.
Wow this video has taught me so much, I have to say this video is the best add for IKEA I have ever seen they should have paid you for this clear and blatant promotion of such a good quality cheap table they sell.
While I understand that getting solid wood furniture is nicer, I'm going to be honest I bought two of those lack tables for like 10 bucks each at Ikea about 8 years ago and they're still going strong. It could literally be made out of cotton candy on the inside. I spent 20 bucks and got two tables that have lasted me for a third of my life. I'd rather that than spend a couple hundred on a table that does the exact same thing.
You've just turned those $10 tables into story pieces. Seems like you've gotten more bang for your buck than you ever would have imagined! Jokes aside, at the end of the day people are in different phases of their lives and if people have kids etc, they tend to value their time much higher and thus want to be paid a premium which is fine. They'll hopefully always find a client that can afford their work, but if the client base ever runs dry, then they'll need to figure out what are the market expectations and come down to the median price that the market is willing to pay.
$1000 for a simple coffee table?! That's literally insane. That's a table. Not a luxury item. If it's not made of gold, it doesn't worth more than $500.
Going to woodworker for such simple and single thing is like starting power plant just to light desk lamp - of course it's going to be hella expensive and nonsensical. Materials, manual labor, tools, customization and lack of scale makes the difference. You go to such guys if you want a whole customized set of furniture or something complicated or unattainable in chain stores.
That's why custom made furniture is not for normal person, it's not more usability that is important. It's about soul that woodworker puts in it. It's made just for that one customer who wants something thats really unique. Every cut is made different for every table, every board. It's just about that. If You dont need that soul, then just go buy something from mass production.
Asking 100$/hours is crazy expensive. Don't be surprised if almost everyone buys IKEA products an not your stuff. Most of people don't even make 100$ per day. I will be agree to pay up to 200$ for a small table like this.
Yeah. Carpenters wouldn't exist if all of them charged $100 per hour. These dudes think they're curing cancer or something. All you're doing is buying wood, sawing it to dimension, sanding/painting, and screwing it in. No wonder people buy IKEA. You have some guy wanting to charge $750-1000 for a 24 x 24 table, lmao...
well i think most that work full time make well over 100.00 a day, that doesn't mean they can afford to pay this guy 100.00 an hour to make the most basic small coffee table. It's a 200.00 piece tops. A simple google search of real wood furniture shows this is an insane price scheme. Makes me think he's making his money off youtube, same as the other guy, not off his carpentry businessness.
@@tric5122 In my country $5.50 an hour is minimum wage. I can get a local craftsmen to build me a dresser for $600-750. Swedish money must be valued diff.
Followed your advice. So now I sit here happily in my apartment filled with my coffetable and one chair i got from my budget. Great advice👍 I love sleeping on the floor, it's good for the spine, and who needs chairs or sofas for guest, floor is good enough for my feet it's good enough for my friends!
Honestly, If I was spending $700-$1000 on making a simple small little coffee table, I think I would build it myself. Buy all the tools and materials, and make something. That approach has the added benefit of me being able to say "I made this". I could understand paying $1000 for a fancy or large table. I know everyone needs to eat but if I had that much money lying around I would get into wood working and blacksmithing. I am already trying to learn basic electronics circuits.
right, and i also feel that; and moreover I think wood-worker does not require that much skills and brain that he should be paid like engineers or software developers or electronics engineer like $100 hourly + this simple table was not even that hard enough to make that he should charge $500 for it. + ikea table feels eco-friendly as well. But I disagree with your one point where you mentioned that everyone needs to eat, bcs he is not just eating with this but building castles. For me everything is value for money and this is not worth that much. Also, eating or building castle is another thing but thing should be worth the money
@@AlphaCentauri2 They won't actually net $100hr clear as it is a business with overheads and inconsistent work unlike a salary job like a web developer or engineer. They aren't aiming to attract customers like you, but the uber wealthy who want custom furniture and have high paying jobs where their time is more valuable than learning how to make a table. Personally i think these videos are stupid as the target market for ikea is utilitarian furniture at a competitive price that 1000s already have in their homes and comparing it to a piece of custom furniture that appeals to a completely different target market is not apples to apples. The $100 hr is likely reasonable when taking in to account overheads of running a business. You have to pay for rent/mortgage, tools, accountants, health insurance, vehicles and time for acquiring materials, time for advertising, finding customers, writing contracts, negotiating, and most of all, you have to pay your own income taxes. Edit: I do believe though that these RUclips carpenter overvalue completely basic tables where in the real world a client wouldn't pay anywhere near that much as it demonstrates not skill or craftsmanship.
@@AlphaCentauri2 I almost spat me tea out when he said his hourly rate, I didn't even charge that when I worked in gold as a jeweller, and I used to cut my own gemstones, and it's a lot harder working at these sorts of scales imo.
Thank you for showing us why it's better to go with Ikea 100% of the time. Holy hell, even if you replace the table every year for 30 years, you'd still be spending less than buying it from a woodworker!
@@VRSVLVS Yeaaa, that's dandy and all, but tradition is kinda just peer pressure from dead people. So I'll keep my extra $400-$700 and replace the table whenever it needs.
@@cameron2448 I'm not talking about tradition. I'm talking about ecology and sustainability. Don't get me wrong, $700 is quite outrageous if you ask me, even if you only use traditional hand-tools to make it, let alone using power-tools. Likewise, $15 is outrageously cheap, even for a completely industrialised process. The comparison in this video is quite extreme. Still, It would be a good idea if we geared our economy towards producing more durable items that aren't expected to replaced whenever the fashion changes. And if we could produce coffee tables for $150 that lasts 10 times as long as the $15 table, that seems highly preferable from an ecological point of view.
The IKEA one looks nicer and let's be honest, yours is not nearly worth anything close to $500. I can appreciate that it uses better materials, will last longer, etc. but $500 for such a tiny basic coffee table is insane.
@@stevegandalf4739 l'd take the bet cos angled legs are no where near as strong as straight legs, l bet the home made table wouldn't even hold half the weight as the ikea table due to that fact alone
@@stevegandalf4739 while cardboard doesn't seem very durable the shape can make a huge a difference, as hexagonal tiling for example can withstand quite some force as it works with the physics of geometry just to give picture there are contests of people building bridges of paper that can withstand vast amounts of force. I don't know witch of the 2 tables would be able to withstand more force but cardboard per se doesn't need to be a bad thing for that metric
@@markothevrba I'd second that bet his table is neither utilitarian, or minimalist. I'm not a woodworker, but I could certainly make something actually durable in the same amount of time.
Drew wants $750 for a simple table that could be made in a wood shop class. There's a difference between knowing what you're worth and thinking you know.
Yeah, Drew made me think, holy cow, I wouldn't spend $750 for "an experience" unless it involves a couple nights at a nice hotel room and some time on the beach.
Yeah if you have equipment/machinery that you can use for free then the price seems high. But when you buy and maintain the equipment and know what you are worth per hour... I don't make furniture but I do have my own business. There are many people that will undercut my price, but I know what my time is worth. I'm not going to lower my value to try and beat their prices.
@@LadyMarimeya Business expenditures and the value of the product are two different things. If a carpenter wants $750 for a very small, austere coffee table, he'd better be well connected to an affluent client base. The remaining 80% of the country will say no thanks and not give a rat's tail end how much he spent on his equipment.
@@LadyMarimeya "But when you buy and maintain the equipment and know what you are worth per hour..." Or you've just identified a market segment where you can't compete based on price. I own my own business as well. I do have competitors that can undercut my rate, but few can match my invoice as they tend to bill more hours for the same project. If it looks like my price will be too high, I offer customers contact information for someone who can.
I'm a college student so I use ikea furniture for two reason 1. Price- I obviously don't have a ton of money so I tend to save it where I can 2. Weight- because they aren't solid wood they're super light it makes moving SO much easier when you can pick up your desktop with one hand Solid wood hand crafted furniture is great but ikea still has a place in the market it just depends on your needs
Another bonus is that student housing is a somewhat temporary situation, and it's probably not a good idea to spend a huge amount of money on a piece of furniture, that you might need to get rid of in a couple of years. Also, IKEA does some things quite well. For example, their drawer slides are cheap yet significantly better than the competition, and that's why I prefer IKEA drawers. To finish, here is a tip for people on a budget who want real furniture: Well built solid wood furniture lasts for a long time, and custom/statement pieces are a bit difficult to sell. At times, you can find good quality tables etc. from second hand stores or online market places. Sure, the furniture might need a bit of refurbishing like little bit of sanding, and a new coating, or maybe you want to add/change/remove wheels or something, but that's something that anyone can do (and doesn't require power tools).
Me being a third world person it blew my mind when you said 500$. Even at the best place in a tier 1 city in my country, I can at best see it priced around 250$ and that is the highest estimate. Realistically I will say around 100-150$. IKEA is actually more expensive than going to your nearest furniture shop most of the time.
@@galvanizeddreamer2051 I bought an armoire in Mexico City a couple of months ago for about $300 all made in half inch pine wood 1.50m x 50cm x 40cm with doors and 2 drawers at the bottom, varnished with a clear coat, of course it was his design, not custom work.. still such a great deal! and yes even in Mexico I would consider this a deal but it's not uncommon to find works at this price
As a mechanical engineer i actually love the cheap ikea stuff. Materials might be cheap but there is a lot of ingeniouity in the designs (both in how its produced but also structural). And the greatness in the design makes me like it more than a lot of other designs. I love the kallax cabinets and the poang chairs. They have been with me for over 15 years, with over 5 moves.
5 moves is impressive. One thing that Ikea furniture doesn't handle very well is repeated assembly and disassembly. Aside from that they do a great job for the price and availability 👍
I actually feel a lot of love towards my ikea furnitures, they were my first furnitures, they allowed me to have a nice home and i built them myself, they sure have a lot of soul to me ^^
Totally agree with this. I dislike that he implied the IKEA furniture doesn't have a soul. There's so many pieces of furniture that I have built with my Dad and loved the experience and bonding time. There's always a new challenge and it's genuinely so enjoyable to build pieces of furniture. They have a lot of soul to me as well.
@@rajangill5801 I totally understand, every time i visit my mother i see that big cabinet me and my x built and i fucking hate it for reminding me of her. So yes IKEA furniture does have a lot of soul..
I agree with your sentiment, and the math for pricing - but the sad truth is that for $750 I could go through two crappy $15 IKEA tables every year for the next 25 years.. allowing me to continuously update the style of my decor and ensuring I never have to worry about repairing it. A part of me is sad that this is the way things are - but there's no way the average person could afford to furnish their home with handmade furniture.. At these rates - I could purchase a used car for the cost of furnishing my living room. So please consider that when someone tells you 'that's too expensive' - it's not always because they think little of your work, but rather because it is quite honestly not worth the money to the vast majority of consumers when they prioritize it against their needs and expenses.
As you said. How many people will be happy with what table they chose 10 years ago? If you have cheap one it's less heartbreaking to replace it. You'll need to move or fashion standards will change and what then? You'll be stuck with the table you no longer like. Not to mention it's more likely that somebody will have $15 in their pocket to spend each year rather than have $750 at any moment in theirs life.
@@emeralddreamer7738The custom table will hold value much better too, it's not like the money is gone. You could probably list the same table for as much as you bought it for if it's in good condition and get someone to buy it. Not as easily as a cheap one but I'm sure there's someone who appreciates custom work, like you would have if you bought the custom table in the first place.
@@TunaIRL It is possible that you could sell it. But how likely is it to find somebody with same taste for art? Who already doesn't own hiw own piece. And how likely is it that this person will want to buy used item (even if in perfect condition) for its full price? Recently I had to throw away a lot of old very expensive stuff - furniture, glass, carpets - because nobody wanted it, not even for free. It doesn't matter that when we see it we know it must have been expensive. Value of things is set by how much is somebody willing to give for it. Meaning that most of custom made stuff is worth big money only to the person who commisioned it.
@@emeralddreamer7738 If you have the man's table, you're basically competing in the same market as him when selling it. If he has clients coming in, you should also have a person wanting to buy your table. This is probably where your individual marketing skills come in to play when selling stuff off but that's how it is. You can always buy the Ikea table if this kind of stuff doesn't interest you. That's completely fine those are made for most people to buy after all.
@@TunaIRL It's nothing like competing. In scenario where I would live in area where he lives, owning table made by him. There would have to be a person who would want a the same or very similar table from him. Then I could try to sell him the table made by this woodworker. But the wookworker would have to want more money for the table he'd do for his new costumer in order for me to sell him the table I already own for the full price I paid for it. And this is the main flaw in your argument. What I would be doing is selling used table. What the woodworker would be doing is creating NEW custom made table. These are two different types of market. If the customer came to the woodworker, he is looking for a new custom made thing. I don't sell new custom made thing, I sell used table. We wouldn't be competition. But let's suppose the guy doesn't really care if the table is new custom made for his desires or second-hand table made for somebody else's desires. Let's say I paid 500,- for the table. And the woodworker ofers new custom made table for the customer also for 500,-. I can give him the table now while he'd have to wait for it to be made from the woodworker. But the woodworker would make it custom to his desire and he'd be the first owner. (again, two different markets) Now I can't sell the table for the 500,- I bought it for, because the value of 500,- is its value for me as it was custom made for me. For the customer it would be only second-hand handmade table. Its value to him would be lesser than the value of newly made cutom table made for him by woodworker. This means the value I paid is already lost. (yes, somebody might want my table, because I owned it and I could be famous, but how likely is that to happen? So its value won't rise, the number maybe will rise due to inflation and such, but it's value will stay the same or go down). So my option is to sell the table for less than I bought it - which already proves that No, I can't sell it for the price I bought it. And the only way I can sell it to him is if he wants teble and doesn't mind it to be second hand and not custom made for him. But if he doesn't need custom made table, then he would look for seconhand tables or somewhere where they make handmade tables that aren't custom made. And I agree with you. Who wants afordable easily desposable furniture that is made for it to be used and then thrown away. It's their thing. Who wants fancy handmade (custom or not) piece that would work as what it is + be piece of art. It's their thing. Each person has different taste for style and different amount of money they can spend. That's why I think the video is more of click-bait that anything usefull. Because what he creates is custom made handmade solid furniture. While companies like Ikea found a vacuum in market for easily affordable and desposable furniture for people who can't or don't want to buy solid handmade furniture. He only competes with people doing the same kind of things - solid handmade furniture. Ikea does not do that. He's simply comparing two things that cannot be compared (it's like comparing beer with sink water)
I'm surprised how much the price varies around the world. Where I'm from a table similar to what you made would cost around $60(Labour included). To us IKEA is the expensive option.
One might beat the cheap IKEA table, but I wouldn't let the kids anywhere near to a 500 bucks coffee table. Our similar IKEA table outlasted two kids, and it wasn't even that obliterated afterwards, aside for some additional coat of paints, penmarks and deep scratches - I am pretty sure those marks would also be present on a wooden one.
Exactly! the cheaper table gives me a peace of mind as its easily replaceable and I would rather let my kids jump around. Can't say the same for the custom one though
We had a nice solid oak coffee table growing up. It is still in one piece, although there are some scratches and chips on it. Nothing that couldn't be repaired if one was so inclined. They paid a reasonable price for them brand new from a furniture outlet. Believe you me, it was a beautiful table. Far more elegant and decorated than this thing and I don't think they paid over $800 for it back in the mid 90s. It was longer and oval shaped. A coffee table should be able to be used by everyone on the couch. Whatever he made is way too small.
The only good thing about the table is that it can be taken apart and refinished, repaired or glued I’m a woodworking novice and we have basically all ikea furniture, although it is the best choice for most of our furniture, im going to build my next desk out of thick hardwood. The amount of times I’ve disassembled and reassembled my desk setup, the pressed wood type material just can’t handle it. It could very well use a sand and finish but I doubt it’s gonna go back together again lol
I absolutely agree about the quality of furniture made by a woodworker being superior to that of stores like Ikea. However, I think there was a missed opportunity to compare the table you made to their Lisabo coffee table, which is made of solid birch and ash veneer. It is $129 so would still be more affordable than a handmade item, but it is a strong table and it is very similar in looks to the one you built!
Correct. I will buy the handmade for 250. I think is a correct price. But there is a huge difference in wood quality... Also its imposible to beat a multinational company prices. Its sad...
@@mrvaidel4999 What is sad about somebody getting a table that looks just like the woodworker's table, has solid wood legs and a veneer top for what appears to be 20% of the price the wood worker believes he could/should charge for his solid wood (glue-lam) top? It's better than buying the crap LACK table
Yep, I really like the look of light colour wood style of Lisabo series. Could be even an option if I need a table so this video kind of ends up being anti marketing for custom woodwork.
I feel internally torn apart about everything you said. My grandfather was a professional woodworker, my uncle as well, he inherited the workshop and restored antique furniture for a living. I do woodworking as a hobby and enjoy building those special solutions I cannot buy. My family owns quite a lot of unique furniture, some of them 100+ years old. They look absolutely amazing, are made of nice, solid wood and they are one-of-a-kind pieces. They will easily survive myself and I can give them to my children. Stunning. My problem is - they are not fun to use and not fit for my needs. Whatever they were made for 100 years ago is different from todays use cases. Instead of opening a beautiful davonport cabinet (a "bureau" in America?) to sit down and write a letter with paper and ink, I have an electrical height adjustable IKEA desk, because I am almost 2m tall, need a higher desk surface and want to look at a 32' monitor which cannot be fitted inside the davonport. Some of the old furniture has doors slightly bent, so the locks will not close perfectly anymore or the drawers run their wooden frame on wooden ledges and they will just fall down if you pull them out too far. I love the looks of old skillful woodworking, but for everyday use, I want effortlessly moving, full-extension, soft-closing drawers, even with a heavy load in them, perfectly matching doors, etc. Therefore, I will stick with modern furniture in my new house, although I could have much nicer looking, 100 year-old pieces basically for free. To have someone today make the same old-style furniture but using modern high-precision machines and perfectly working metal hardware would be my ideal situation, but I believe this is way too expensive to pay for.
What I have done in a similar situation is to mix and match old and new. Where function is priority new, where looks and memories matter, kept the old. So you can have the best of both worlds, and if done sensibly, it looks great.
I tend to dislike overusing wood in things for this reason. I think you generally have to limit wood used in any moving mechanics. The upside is wood can be sanded down to fit if it warps and expands sometimes. For things like chairs there's no reason not to have it all wood if made well. But I'm more of a metal person really. I usually find (even with modern furniture) people are bad at making functional furniture that isn't extremely niche and I have a hard time using it for anything. You mention the davonport which I understand is a writing desk with drawers. We got unlucky/lucky living in this time period where habits suddenly shifted and using pen and paper is fast falling out of favour... So we get to be the ones to design new furniture for the future generations...
Let’s also take in consideration that he is using the “most affordable” table from ikea. There is a variety of options you get from ikea furniture and usually the higher priced ones are made with better quality materials which still are more affordable than an artisan crafted table.
Let's also consider we saw his kid jump onto the "most affordable" table, and it survived perfectly fine. I'm pretty sure his custom table would sag through all four of its spindly little angled legs if it were tested the same way. Let's also consider the metal mounting points are store-bought, and the legs were salvaged from a different coffee table. So the only "custom" thing HE made was the tabletop. A square with rounded corners. And he wants $500~1000 for that. And it's not even finished properly. Final consideration is that a good chunk of his time went into turning raw lumber into planks, which if you value your time at $100 an hour isn't worth it. _Especially_ not for a simple project like this that you're staining solid black in the end.
Not forgetting other brands are available? Was thinking the same that could buy this table around £100-300 from a more premium brand in the UK than IKEA that was mass produced. Thinking like John Lewis or m&s It feels like in the comments people are in am IKEA cult and don't acknowledge you can buy from other places. Bespoke is always going to be expensive and only avaliable for the few
@@James-dv1df I wouldn't call it an Ikea cult, I'd call it a wood workers cult. There are tons of videos from them on RUclips tearing apart budget furniture and saying to spend $500 on a coffee table instead. It's absurd. Everyone knows that Ikea isn't the only brand, everyone knows it's not amazing quality. Just that it's amazing for its price.
This made me appreciate old furniture from my grandparents and great grandparents. As a Southeast Asian, $50 for a table is already too much since our wage is very low. Almost everything is MDF if it's marketed as wood. The wardrobe, table, chairs, and kitchen counters of my great grandparents still last until today. It's made from teak wood I think. My grandfather also owned a lumber company for a while and he got all the highest grade teak wood and built a wooden house too. No termites or water damage until today.
As a Singaporean, our pay is not bad but slightly below average from US and UK comparisons, but our cost of living is as high as places like NYC and LA. When I see my friends move out, they can't afford much more than Ikea when they're spending half a million dollars on their first home. Times are tough and of course most of us would love to upgrade to better furniture next time. I think it's kinda telling that the carpenters we often work with here can go their entire career working exclusively with chipboard, plywood and laminates, and never touch solid wood at all.
Yes, but the bright side is you can buy quality real wood table with a reasonable price (like you can't charge $400 for labor around here. That's higher than minimum wage "per month") I would say you can get real wood table under $100.
You know what would be nice? To make pressure test between between this 500$ table and 50$ IKEA one. I somehow doubt the custom one would be that much more durable than IKEA. 😂😂
i think there is a reason he didn't show his kids playing on the one he made like he did the one Ikea made; especially since his hada crack in it from the get go.
@@tric5122 I also think it shows an underlying issue: are you going to let your kids play around a $500-$1000 24"x24" table? Probably not. This in and of itself lends to wanting to buy an inexpensive piece that you don't have to feel the need to babysit and worry about. I'd also much rather replace a cheap table that gets beat up than pay much more to have my expensive table fixed.
If you've ever had actual wood furniture you should know that thing ain't going nowhere. I have a wood coffee table and could hold a dance party on it with as many people as would fit and I'd be comfortable with it not breaking a sweat. Not so much for the Ikea one. That being said I would rather get a new table since the one I have is pretty ugly. But wood does tend to be more durable than cardboard, for sure.
@@TunaIRL well-structured cardboard composite with larger thickness beats the planks - especially his design. We aren't talking about the same cardboard as used for boxes here.
10-15 an hour can't even get you a Walmart worker in most cities let alone a skilled laborer like a wood worker. I think 500-1k is bonkers but paying 10-15 an hour for this work is also bonkers too. I think 300 for the whole desk at 4 hours of labor for the desk an 100 for materials would be reasonable leaving around 50 an hour for the worker.
@@nnn1491 This is true. Most carpenters I know would charge $30-50/hour for something simple plus material cost. Something like this can be whacked out in 2 hours not including drying time. If they had the space to put it to the side and not interrupting other projects they will take the job and charge $200-250 depending on material costs. If they don't have space, they probably wouldn't accept the job because they aren't going to put a more valuable project on hold. They 100% would charge $100/hour for a complex project, but that is because those projects need expertise.
As a student I am very happy with IKEA, I have bought two of the 13 euro LACK tables in the video and they have so far lasted me 4 years without any problems, just a few scratches here and there. Even though the design is nice of the handmade one, and it may last a lifetime, I don't think I'd ever buy it for such a price. Just take good care of your stuff, then even cheap IKEA stuff will last a considered time
Absolutly. My family took it even to another level, we build our kitchen out of 10 to 20 year old IKEA furniture leftovers. It held together 4 years now. When i moved out i took my old IKEA stuff with me and it still holds after so much Time. I do not like when people shittalk stuff that is maybe not that pretty but serves the people. I rather have a IKEA table than to cut back on food or leisure.
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I think IKEA started introducing the cheap-ish paper like structure only a few years ago.
@@James-dv1df Well your friends probably know you though, they'd know if you're that rich because Everything in your house would be so expensive then, which would make it normal. But paying that amount for a coffee table while you're from the middle class is just laughable. Because it's just a waste of money lmao
I have one of those Lack tables. It's had a rough life and it is still looking pretty good. And stability is fine and it is light to move around. The whole point of the lightweight cardboard filling is to make a torsion box, to make a strong sheet with almost no material. My wife and I had our kitchen custom made by a furniture maker, the countertop is made of terrazzo, we chose the colour blend for it, etc etc etc. But Ikea is unbeatable when it comes to cheap and decent furniture.
@@mymemeplex Depends on where you're buying your doors. A woodworker will not be building a cardboard door and it is perfectly possible to create a door that is torsion resistant too. It all comes down to understanding how the grain in wood responds to different forces and then arrange the wood accordingly.
@@Arterexius sure. But I'm talking about many interior doors in even modern homes. They are just like the Lack tables, cardboard interior, pine battons around the outside, and 3mm hardboard on the outside. They do their job just fine. The door I'll build for my room will be from plywood, I want some more sound insulation. Its what you want from something.
@@mymemeplex If you want more sound insulation, then avoid the cardboard interior. Wood is great at reflecting sound, provided there isn't empty or mostly empty space behind it. In that case, it will be an amplifier
@@mymemeplex - If you want sound insulation, why wouldn't you use a standard door cavity, pry off one side (not difficult with wide chisels), spray-foam the core, and replace the side you took off. Why would you use semi-solid wood that has virtually no sound-deadening properties?
I am so glad I'm not the only one who thought the pricing was insane. There is a reason IKEA is in business. But seriously, @wittworks price model is just plain crazy not to mention unsustainable
If people are willing to pay why not charge that? Also it's a business with overheads such as purchasing equipment. One off bespoke is always going to be expensive which is why it's in the niche for the rich. I don't see any difference between this and supercar valet services charging hundreds to wash your car. Sure the same solid wood table mass produced would bring down the cost significantly but even IKEA producing would like be in the hundreds I reckon.
@@James-dv1df That's just it though. I can't imagine there are enough people gullible or foolish enough to pay $750-1000 for that shop class level table. The difference I see between this and 'supercar valet services' is the level of quality. If you have supercar money and are taking it for a wash, you'd expect the highest quality. That table, again, could be made by someone LEARNING woodwork.
@@ChaoticEnigma92 I do agree he could have made something more unique for the money. However not sure if will be much more expensive than other bespoke makers due to significant extra costs in bespoke one off vs mass produced (not just IKEA). Even in the 90s before IKEA in the UK we purchased off the shelf furniture rather than one off builds.
I would pay $150 for the material (I'm more than sure I would mess up something on the first try), $350 for some hand tools, and make a weekend project out of this. Then it will actually be a conversational piece since I was the one who made it and at least next time I'll have the tools to make something else. I think if I were to ever pay $400-900 for labor for a (coffee) table, I would at least pay that much for some exotic material and I would want a truly unique result.
Chisels, planes, sharpening stones, pull saw, sandpaper, glue, clamps, combination square, tape measure, drill, etc... You might be able to get all that for $350 shopping at harbor freight but it's going to end up taking you much longer than a weekend and a lot more than $150 in materials. Even if you were to buy quality hand tools, good clamps, and measuring tools with decent precision I have a feeling you wouldn't come close to making even a shitty table in two days.
@@KJ110813 You are kidding, right? I've made more interesting pieces in my woodworking classes at school then the wooden board with rounded edges he made and they took me roughly the same time to complete. He glued some pieces of wood together, trimmed the edges, rounded the corners, angled the underside, sanded and painted the board. Just buy milled wood and you can chuck the entire board out up until the sanding and painting in less then two hours, after the glue set of course. He salvaged the legs (which didn't fit in with the colour of the Ash board, hence the paint) and used salvaged mounts for the legs. He really only made the board and charging 100 Dollar for the labour per hour for, in all honesty, such a bad job (missed a crack in the wood before painting etc.) is ridiculous.
@@KJ110813 Awesome reply, little boy. Just goes to show that you have no idea what you are talking about and no arguments. I made those pieces when I was around 14 btw, which was 18 years ago.
Much as I like DIY woodworking, I actually really like ikea's engineering, they make their products reliabile with clever design rather than materials. For a single guy with no kids, that thing will probably never break for decades. It's true that it does seem to "not have a soul", but it has something else, a connection to all the history of tech and engineering that went into it. You can repair it just with different methods, the toilet paper and epoxy sculpting trick and a nice tablecloth can do a lot. It's not completely meaningless, it does make a statement. Someone was able to take cardboard like you'd find in a trash, and make something that, in very specific conditions(A person with no kids using it as a light computer desk) could stand up for 25 years, and maybe even better than some handmade stuff(They use basically plastic finish that will resist spills better than some real finishes). The biggest environmental problem is that people DO throw it away, not that they actually need to. But again, after my first real furniture build I have a ton of respect for what goes into this stuff, it's wonderful and I would hate to see the real art disappear.
You say that it won't break for decades. It lasts people maybe a year or two at most. The legs eventually come loose and break unless all you're putting on it is a table lamp and your cellphone and a book. Soon as you have to move it once or twice, it's done. I've had a few pieces of furniture like this. I ended up just spending a bit extra and making my own. It's not worth the time or energy to ship this trash around the world. Only for it to end up in a garbage bin a year after purchase because your 40 pound kid sat on it and it drastically failed. And why would you repair it? It's a 15$ table. The epoxy you'd use to fix it would cost just as much. And then you have the added issue of that ALSO taking CO2 and time and energy to produce. Why not just get something higher quality to begin with.
@@truckywuckyuwu Considering the materials used, some of those furniture is shockingly strong. Keep in mind that they only used a small fraction of the material... Some of them literally made out of mostly cardboard. Also it depends on how they get used. On a personal level, I am a bit of a mixed bag... I will buy some things from IKEA, and other things I will make myself. It really depends on the purpose. If I want something truly sturdy, yeah I will only get that if I make it myself.
@@truckywuckyuwu Many of these *are* only used for exactly that. If you have kids or move frequently it's a different story, but otherwise, modern life is a lot less hard on stuff than it used to be, people don't have as many heavy objects, especially not frequently moved ones. If you have more than a few pounds of stuff or kids you probably want better quality though. But otherwise, they've done a good job with literal cardboard, and if it does break it's probably not the biggest waste of resources you made that month because there's so little material.
@@truckywuckyuwu sorry, grew up in a poor house with a mother and four kids that were pretty damaging to their environment. We climbed on stuff like this all the time and used it for all kinds of things it wasn't meant or designed for. I've seen far more wood furniture get destroyed because it isn't structurally sound enough to handle rowdy kids. The argument holds water, until you have to repair or replace the wood furniture, then the entire point becomes moot. I love solid wood furniture, but every piece I have was salvaged from the side of the road where it was dumped, much like many prefab furniture pieces I own. Affording a table like the one he made, at those costs, is a luxury even many in the middle class cannot afford these days, let alone the poor who never could.
@@Shatteredragon Yeah, there's a big difference in the quality of furniture then vs now. You're buying literal cardboard now. It takes almost no effort to break it. I still had some ikea tables up till a few years ago that held up for like 25 years. They are of significantly higher build quality than the options you can get today for a similar pricepoint.
It's not just about the price for me. I love custom built and high quality furniture, but the time it takes to find a carpenter who won't tell you "Yeah I can build that in a month or two" was a deal breaker for me. Also most of them will just straight up say no (at least where I live) because they don't want to to work on some small order like a coffee table or a table top. They'd rather do a whole set of furniture for someone instead. I wanted a new table top for my PC with specific dimensions, color and feel. A month later after hours of searching and dozens of call I gave up. I couldn't find anyone who could do it in a reasonable amount of time for a reasonable price (everyone wanted like $600+, and would take at least 2-3 weeks) for 200x70cm table top painted in matte black finish. So I did a little more research, watched a few videos on YT and decided to do it myself. I bought a glued block of solid wood that was closest to my dimensions, cut it to my dimensions, did a few passes with sandpaper, stained it with black paint 3 times (until it was the color I wanted), applied oil 2 times with sandpaper passes inbetween. $300 and 5 days later (2-3 hours of work everyday), I have a perfect table top from my dreams that I built myself. Using it to this day and I'm still so proud of it. Oh and I still have some wood, a can of paint and oil leftover. So I could build a smaller table top or a shelf out of that.
Think about what you said. You spent $300 on materials and then did between 10 and 15 hours of Labor....... 25 to $30 an hour for skilled Artisan labor is incredibly reasonable so for $600 you were getting a pretty good deal from the professional and two to three weeks is a very short time considering that they are probably already working on projects for other customers.
That's a weird take. 300$ of material and 10-15 hours or labor, took a week to do. Don't get me wrong, it's amazing that you managed to do the project yourself, and in your case it was the thing to do, but you have to understand that you're not the first in line for makers. Of course they won't jeopardize their bigger projects just because yours is smaller and faster to do. 1 to 2 months to fulfill a small order is perfectly reasonable for custom made stuff, and 600+$ is also what you should expect. We live in a world where actual woodwork is compared to Ikea, and any delivery time seems to take forever since Amazon stepped in. Come on, it's just not fair.
@@naumen6508 I would Agree but If someone is Paying a Professional then it probably shouldn't take as long. Paying for Quality Is Great and all but at the End of the Day if You can do the same thing within a couple of days with a few hours then it definitely would seem like it's not worth the money.
@@Eclipse_XVX What makes you think he did the same thing tho ? He may end up with a similar table but he has no idea if he made a mistake during the process. Maybe his lumber was filled with humidity, maybe there's rot or deadwood he didn't remove and the table may crack down the line. Yes you can do projects on your own, but when you pay an artisan you're paying for far more than a finished product, you're paying for experience that'll ensure your finished product ages well and lasts. And yes it's going to take a while before you get it and it's perfectly fine.
@@ailurusfulgens1849 yeah that's true you can't do the same as someone who has years of experience and also has the equipment. But for this instance let's say it came out average with little to no imperfections and compare to what he said the pros would take. That still seems too long. Besides I still believe it's a little to high for what he basically wanted. Just what I think though.
750-1000 bucks for a basic table is outrageous, no matter how you justify it. If you're willing to pay for that, then either you're rich or you have your priprities backwards 😅
no one will go to a custom woodworker to make this simple table bro. if the table is 2x more complicated the price wont be 2x. like when you get a tattoo there is a minimum price you pay, usually 80-100 euro, even for a tiny piece.
Depends on the type of joinery used, the wood, and the finish. I can make you a basic pine coffee table with basic bitch joinery and a wipe-on Poly for less than $500. But if you want Teak, sophisticated joinery that actually requires skill, and a high-end finish that requires skill to execute then it’s going to cost you a lot more. Basic design =/= basic skill. Basic build quality = basic skill. The problem is a lot of people want a Lamborghini for the price of a Kia. And they can get indignant when they don’t get it. Btw, take a look at what your plumber or electrician charges for their skill set.
$500-1000 for a champhered board with four legs? Nope sir. Not gonna lie that this is Well executed but as a customer the price is way to high compared for what you get.
@@hasserecht3678 I agree, but I also know a handful of people that are wealthy enough to want something more fashionable in their home that would pay 1000 for a very well executed very nice piece. Those same people would also balk at 500 for what he built.
@@tric5122 Maybe they would. I actually don't know. Yes basically it's a slab with some bought hardware/legs. Insane. But anyways... imagine ... your tiny tiny coffeetable would cost 500-1000€. How much would be the interior of your entire appartment/house/whatever. Bonkers.
@@hasserecht3678 that's the thing, many craftsman were saying you don't take on a job this small unless you have time and space between other jobs to limit the cost bc that piece is to small and basic to charge that rate, or if it's one piece of a larger set you are making to lower the overall cost. This guy destroyed his entire premise with his cost breakdown. The other thing is it's not fashionable or even nice enough to be an heirloom piece you would hand down, if it survived that long (questionable since it came brand new with a crack).
I really enjoyed this video Pierre. So well thought out and executed. Also loved Drew. I have had people come to me thinking I could build cheaper than IKEA...
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Thank you Jesper! Yes - this was in the extreme, but people dont expect the prices we have to charge. Im not sure how it is in Denmark, but my January electricity bill was a $1000 😅😂 - I need to start working with hand tools only
@@TheSwedishMaker I pay electricity per quarter so I haven't dared to look at January yet. But the last quarter of 2022 was 4x what I paid in the same quarter of 2021. I think this is why I usually make weird stuff. It makes better videos and can't be compared to anything in shops 🙂
You are so right! 😃
@@TheSwedishMaker I sometimes buy Ikea, my biggest problem is when something breakes....what type of trashcontainer do I put it in....paper? Plastic? It's because of video's like yours I now build my own furniture....Thanks for the inspiration and subbtle jokes!
Anybody can build a bridge that stands, only an engineer can build a bridge that barely stands. It's actually the pinnacle of engineering that IKEA can build something this good from this amount of light material that is sturdy enough to be usable for years.
anybody- barely stands*
engineer- stands*
that's what you meant I think.
(edit: I don't think so anymore)
@@calitreesweet they're saying that Ikea's engineering allow them to build solid furniture with the cheapest materials and minimal labor. Whereas this guy needs expensive hardwoods and days of labor to build something that feels solid.
@@calitreesweet It's the same principle as "If I had enough time I would've wrote a shorter letter". Expertise allows you to do impressive things within impressive constraints
@@calitreesweet This is a brilliant way to put it
@@calitreesweet Not true at all. Typically when you work anything in engineering you aren't trying to make the best product possible. You are trying to make the product as cheap as possible while meeting the minimum standards. You are always trying to barely pass.
I’m torn here. On the one hand I heartily agree that handmade furniture takes time and skill to make, and that it is therefore unrealistic for people to expect it to be cheap (though pricing your labour at $100 per hour sounds ambitious to me!). On the other, I strongly disagree that IKEA furniture is badly made - I have IKEA furniture that I bought 30 years ago that still looks and performs well, surviving my sons childhood along the way. In fact I can’t remember any piece of furniture I ever bought there wearing out. Also I think that “veneer over cardboard matrix” material is great. It’s rigidity and strength is mindblowing, it’s crazy light, and keeping the amount of materials used down is a good thing. Overall, I think all you’ve really proved is that the IKEA tables are tremendous value if what you want is a utilitarian product, and handmade furniture is a lovely luxury that relatively few people can afford.
Welcome to RUclips woodworkers. IDK where they get this from. Your labor isn’t worth $100 an hour. It doesn’t take 20 minutes to glue up that table. Mechanics make $75-$125 an hour, and they do things by a pre-defined book rate charge, not you BSing your time. It doesn’t take 4 hours to glue up 4 boards, put rounded corners in it, put a chamfer on, screw on legs, and stain. Also, if that’s $100 in materials you’re getting ripped off on your material costs. Add to that that you new table isn’t gonna be a whole lot stronger than the ikea one, and I’m just lost.
I understand that if you’re asking for custom work you’re gonna pay custom prices. But there’s nothing special about that piece.
@@nathan1sixteen Mechanics working at a shop don't have to pay rent or electricity, they don't have to find customers, pay for advertising, etc. Yes they typically have to buy their own tools but there's so much more that goes into running a business if you're doing it all yourself.
$100 an hour self employed is not at all comparable to a 9-5 salary. You have to pay for rent/mortgage, tools, accountants, health insurance, vehicles and time for acquiring materials, time for advertising, finding customers, writing contracts, negotiating, and most of all, you have to pay your own income taxes.
@@nathan1sixteen truth. I kinda cringe at the hutspa of RUclips carpenters.
After 25 years of building I believe I am worth a good amount.
I could never look at client in the face and charge them $750 for that table
@@coolbugfacts1234 that's a lie, I know many mechanics that rent a shop and have bills to pay, they can't automatically charge an extra 100 bucks an hour because of it, either you are really out of touch or the wife of one of thrse youtubers 🤣
That $15 "crap" that you cut in half has lasted me 8 years already and doesn't even look close to giving up. For that price and for the job it's doing, the piece is absolutely insane and doesn't need any further frills.
my parents have had a couple of those for like 20 years now that're still holding up just fine
You can buy one brand new IKEA table every year for 30 years.. and it would still be cheaper...
@@CptBolee Exactly, for 15$ that is the reason that it does not makes sense to look for the wood, get the tools, the time you put in to build it, the electricity you use, the screws, etc. It does not make sense, even to outsource it to a woodworker, that charges 10x if not more for table (yes might be sturdier) but the IKEA still hold up.
If you're using them properly and not pouring lots of fluid on them, they'll last pretty long. It's that simple. Of course they'll break easier than wooden table of same thickness and can take less stress, but you win some, you lose some.
It's not about lasting or not. It's about what You want around you.
Cheap furniture is cheap and maybe not total crap, but custom made has soul in it.
So it depends on your needs.
So for 500$ i can buy like 33 of IKEA tables. Even if they last only one year it is still 33 years of service...
and they last forever, as long as you dont do anything stupid like jump on it, so the difference in value is even better
So for 1.5 x the price of that table is enough to get a loft bed whit a desk, a shelf, a wardrobe and extra storage from IKEA that will last 5 years?
He'll yeah
Plus you can buy different ones and have a different style each time xd
Yeah.
I said the same!
As a 25 year carpenter, I think our time is valuable. But 750 is way overpriced.
People may pay it. But we need to humble ourselves a bit. 100 an hour is fine for complex projects, but a simple table seems a safe enough project to charge a reasonable price.
My guess was 300 or so.
Even if the materials cost more, we have to compete with those who buy them in quantity. So we eat a bit.
It's a nice table but the comparison isnt really valid in this case.... As the difference in material and needs is so vast.
We all have to eat I get that. But we all have to be a little humble too.
1000% agreed, some of these guys on RUclips (like drew) seem to forget about life before having X amount of subscribers saying they would buy it
I agree with you, but I think the idea is that these kind of projects aren't worth it for the maker, UNLESS you charge that hourly rate. Basically, you're taking time away from other projects that you could be charging that rate for.
I don't think Drew outright said this but I do believe this was part of his point.
As an actual furniture maker (full time supports family). The price is out of line with reality. You may find 3 to 10% of your client list will pay that rate, nevertheless, you’ll be out of business chasing, waiting, and looking for them. These guys are first and foremost “content creators”. There is a reason why IKEA and Walmart are growing and most people can’t even name a local furniture maker. It’s hard and difficult to make a living. And it’s okay to turn down work, I’d say, I’ve turned down more jobs than I’ve accepted. I’ve also regretted clients too. It’s all part of the learning curve. Lastly, everyone’s market is unique and therefore challenging. After your established, find that new restaurant, office, hotel, designer, architect, etc etc. partner with a builder and offer a template piece that they pay for with the completion of a house. There are ways beyond overcharging. Get your own lumber milled and dried to control cost. My first 5 years were lean and barely kept a roof over my head, but after your established people seek you not the other way around.
@@d1986ben Excellent summation.
Yeah. The pricing structures I use would put this table in the 300 to 350 range. And you’d be making about 30 bucks an hour plus overhead and profit for your business at that price. If you have to charge twice that then this table is too basic a job to accept, which is fair. I probably wouldn’t take the job as I have no interest in screwing prefab legs into a basic tabletop.
From a country without IKEA, I'm always amazed how IKEA is able to furniture pretty much all your house so cheaply and fairly decent looking, it's a blessing for the poor.
IKEA does a surprisingly good job with their design too. It's easy to construct, lasts a fairly long time in a household environment, and there's often some thought put into the design. Flat packed furniture from other brands is often annoying to assemble, costs more, has worse quality, and ends up with structural deficiencies over time. IKEA does what they do, very very well.
Yes and no. I'm pretty broke and when i look used table for instance, i look it to repair and restore.. when it turns out its IKEA shit, welp its pretty much useless even as fire wood. Old tables you can get from free to 20€ and of course prices go up better the condition and so on, but i just got very nice hard wood coffee table for free with two shape cut glass tops for it. Must have been several hundred new. Turned one end of it to essentially bed side table and another gets same idea but with a twist and little bit fancier, all from recycled materials and some work.
Also from very scientific study of 6 couples that have went to IKEA.. 5 have broke up soon after, so one can conclude that IKEA causes break ups.
@@Hellsong89 true but if u wanna buy a table wanting to repair and restore and dont recognize it not beeing real wood while in the purchase process u shouldnt be doing it at all anyway
Yes! I grew up thinking IKEA furniture was an expensive luxury... I agree that craftspeople should be able to build high quality products and it would be better overall - IF all people got paid fairly for their work. (I write code and get paid more than my mom did as a secretary, but I definitely don't work harder than she did and I feel my work is arguably less important for the respective businesses' needs. I can now afford some well-made things by a local crafter that I could even pass on, while other people cannot - but they need good furniture too!
@@GuacamoleyNacho I remember IKEA Singapore used to be more expensive than Ikea Netherlands. Literally, more expensive.
However, I looked at 2 items today and now it seems to be (more or less similar). From the text on the site I’m guessing this has been a recent development as the Singaporean site stated something like “we try to reduce our prices where we can”.
In addition, I’m pretty sure wages in Singapore and Malaysia are lower, so relative to income IKEA is more expensive in Singapore and Malaysia.
By contrast, a table made by a woodworker would be cheaper.
My father has done carpentry for his entire life, roughly ~40 years, and would scoff at the price of this table. Completely disconnected from reality and serves to prove why people opt to purchase from IKEA.
The dude is a hipster
That guy charging 100$/h and calling his buddy charging 200$/h just to feed his echo chamber really is the greatest Ikea ad ever made.
@@Zlanarod I mean, he is a professional with a workshop to pay for and more business overhead. Not to mention, woodworkers live with the risk of losing a finger or two when working every day. I think 100$/h is very much adequate.
@@maxdergroe9082 but it is not your expenses and risk that dictate the price tag if you're aiming at the general public and not a specific group, it's consumers will to pay. That's why people buy at IKEA, because it's cost effective...
@@maxdergroe9082 Thats an absurd claim. Pricing into the product the risk of losing your finger is stupid. Why would i pay for your incompetency? Im an electrician, which involves deadly voltages. Should i price my death into my hourly rate? Youd be living in caves.
“I have three kids” is not a metric for calculating cost. What you are staying is that if you had seven kids, the item would cost more… it’s completely irrelevant. The value of the item does not change dependent on whether you have no kids, or twelve kids. You might as well say that you used to live in a $200,000 house so you used to charge $300 for the table, but you bought a new $1,000.000 house last week, so the table that was worth $300 last week is now worth $1,500.
value is nebulous and determined by many factors. instead of debating all thatz you could just call the American guy delusional. but he is for sure in his right the value his time highly. and if he has clients who are willing to pay him, you really don't have any leg to stand on in the discussion.
@@razmetrez Except, we do.
The guy thinks he's worth 100 bucks an hour but can't even properly finish a tiny coffee table properly.
He's a grifter and you know it.
You can value what you're worth but if what your worth is evidentially poor and you try to overcharge, people can and SHOULD call you out.
Cry and seethe about it, ma'am.
@@TheTacticalHaggis he's not worth that to you. he may be worth that to others. cry and seethe about what you think "should" be, while ignoring what "is" or "could" be. what do you even know about that guy? this isn't his channel. have you seen any of his videos? are you just pulling this random argument about what his hourly rate is worth out of thin air?
He is not wrong in some sense. This could very be a case of "I have three kids I can't afford to charge less" or "I have three kids, if you are not paying me that, I'd rather play with my kids". And I'm sure he finds clients. So maybe it is a fine way to set price.
He is not __calculating__ cost, he is setting price.
@@razmetrez I agree that the value of the table is different to different people. Some might see it as being worth $1000. Others may see value at $5000. But I can tell you for a fact that the person who thinks $5000 is a fair price will,not revalue it at $10,000 when the creator tells the customer that they have 4 kids. The number of kids the creator has in no way determines the value to the customer.
People keep saying that IKEA is low quality cardboard, but this guy's kids literally jumped and drew on the IKEA table and it was completely fine.
Charging 100$ an hour for this, is insane, even for Sweden, considering the average wage there is 16$/h :'D
100 dollars an hour is steep, but on top of the 16 $/h you have to add social security, pensions, financing and maintenance of the tools and facilities.
For 15$ IKEA provides great value.
There other overheads for this business as well. Guessing you dint get sick pay or holidays plus cost of machinary
@Ithecastic post a timestamp homie, I'm not watching this absurd ad a second time :'D
He charged $20 for the tools. If I'd rent access to a workshop for 4 hours, I'd have to pay much more.
Say you hire a carpentry business to come do some work on your house. You'll be charged hourly for the people they send. Their wage will certainly not only be 16$. Let's say it's 30$ - could be more or less, I'm not sure about Sweden. That 30$ is not what you'll be charged. Running a business has other costs than paying the employees, so you'll be paying an hourly rate that's a lot higher to cover expenses and profit for the business.
Businesses that doesn't have employees have the same types of expenses. Those need to be covered by either a relatively high hourly rate or by marking up the materials a lot (typically it's both).
For furniture, most people will just go to a furniture store, because economies of scale make things cheaper. It's not (necessarily) because the custom guys are ripping people off.
This is the best IKEA commercial I've seen.
you are part of the problem of modern society xD
He said it is crap and will break and showed his kids using it. Yet nothing happened to it. He didn't show anyone using his own table.
Also Ikea sells solid wood tables for a lot cheaper than 500€. Ikea is great because there is something for everyone, but usually people just focus on trashing the cheapest products. A student is not going to spend 500-1000€ on a coffee table.
@@cirisirpula152 Probably nobody in his right mind would buy that coffee table for 500 USD
@@cirisirpula152 it also takes time. a year of the kids rough playing on it?
As a person wanting to buy a table, a normal table, I think that if a table cost 15 bucks, I don't really care what is made of, as it's 15 bucks. Keeping the cost down is something good in my opinion.
@Neon Butter Exactly, and for me, there is nothing wrong with that if you know that if it's cheap, it's cheaply made.
@Neon Butter "that was fast" Heh, that's what's she sayd... heh...
@Neon Butter for me my IKEA table has 5 years old and still keep up look like brand new
Also how is a broke college student/post grad student supposed to afford a small 500 dollar coffee table
@@appleban6823 Exactly, absolutely surreal
"buying a conversation, an experience" - no Mate I want a freaking coffee table.
then go to ikea, peasant
Super inflated ego right there, literally no one js gonna pay a grand for a simple coffee table, no one is going to ask about it and the only experience gained is regret.
@@mangpobelmont-chaiyasungvo7039 it sometimes can gain you a conversation, but it's usually older people that ask. and even than, I had people ask questions about ikea stuff as well, so his point is kind of valid
@@mangpobelmont-chaiyasungvo7039 Sit on the floor and eat. Its simpler and cheaper. 😂😂😂
He charges $100/hour?!?! Lol and the Texas guy is even worse. I'll just go to Mexico, much better craftsmanship and a fraction of the cost.
They are woodworkers, not Doctors
Same IKEA Table. Have it since 2009. Survived 2 kids 5 international relocations and still intact. Not bad for15 euros. Love craftmanship and also have rather expensive solid wood furnitures. I don’t think IKEA is a good comparison to make people apreciate your work. Keep up the good content 🤙
P.s. By the way 750-1000 USD for an unknown woodworker’s simple coffee table you can forget it. And the “you don’t pay the table, you pay the experience” thing is outlandish BS unless you are a genious master of the craft and the utilize unique materials and techniques. You can have an iconic little desk designed by Le Corbusier for 1500. Your US mate is over his head and/or has very naive customers…
He probably has very naive customers. I live in the U.S. and there are a ton of techies who would spend their money the second they don't understand something or it sounds fancy.
@@miscellaneoussoundeffects7023 He also said that he's based in Texas, so I'd imagine there's a lot of rich conservatives there that care a lot about having conversation-piece furniture that maintains their dude ranch aesthetic.
@@miscellaneoussoundeffects7023 he also said that’s his minimum day rate, you could probably get him to build a much nicer table for the same price. It’s like tattoo shops that have a shop minimum of $150, whether it’s a 15 minute tattoo or an hour and a half
@@abculattera4446 Not a chance. I just bought a brand new computer desk for 750$. The body is solid wood but the top is particle board, but I can replace that with a butcher block that's been stained for another 75-100$ total. 500-1500 for that tiny tiny coffee table is absurd even in Texas. Maybe out in Cali where a 50sq ft apartment is 2k a month you could haggle it down to 500$ for that step stool masquerading as a table.
The last coffee table I made was $700. It was a small table at around 18x24 and used less common materials and soaked up about $80 worth of epoxy because the slab had voids on it. Catch is the client wanted that specific slab so I worked around the issues and made a usable table out of it. The base was also custom made since the top wasn't a common size or shape For the record I use Ikea products in my home too.
Coming from another wood worker, IKEA provides an incredible value in terms of engineering simplicity and effectiveness.
Yes, I think the moral of the video is not to hire a woodworker to do what IKEA does better for less. Hire a woodworker if you need something custom or that will handle more abuse or has a fancy design. But, the IKEA stuff handles a lot more than a lot of people need. Even in this video, those IKEA tables stood up to his family doing things that nobody would actually do. It looks more like a defect of parenting that those kids are allowed to do some of that stuff. I would never have been allowed to run over my parent's coffee table, even though it was built using a thick block of wood from a candy shop and extremely thick legs to support it. Even as a grown-ass 200+ adult man, I would have little worry standing on it or possibly even jumping on it.
Yeah, I agree... As a woodworker, I HATE flat pack furniture, but IKEA is probably the best maker for flat pack furniture. Maybe he should have used a different example. I get what he's saying, and in general agree 100%, but yeah, IKEA isn't bad.
Bookshelves. I hate cheap bookshelves where the backing separates from the sides and slowly falls apart.
@@joshuabray37 I have a 20-year old IKEA bathroom cabinet that has been in daily use for all that time. It still looks decent enough.
@@johnbull5394 If you take care of it, it’s decent stuff. I’m a woodworker, so, I’m biased against it, but for anyone that isn’t a woodworker, or needs something quick and/or cheap, it’s decent… The problem is, for a fairly basic, custom piece, you are going to pay several hundred $$$. You can get something similar at IKEA for MUCH less… I can build my own, so, that’s what I do.
The thing that breaks that Ikea table would likely broke your table as well. Difference is that replacing ikea table will cost me less than fixing/replacing yours. I don't mind spending extra money on complex woodwork furniture but paying over 300 bucks on a simple coffee table is madness.
Also like I am not gonna lie I have ikea furniture that is over 20 years old at this point and it still looks fine.
This video is basically grifters trying to downplay the level of grifting they do, lmao.
@@shinobuoshino5066 Can explain what you mean by a grifter here?
I paid $180 for my 55 inch/1.4 meter long computer desk. It has faux wood, but it is quite solid. The legs are made of lightweight but substantial blackened aluminum. I've had it two years now and it hasn't wobbled, or bent, or even scratched. Looks as good as the day I put it together. I imagine it will last years if I don't let children jump on top of it like baboons.
@@shinobuoshino5066 "You're buying the experience" I bet I could make a better and cheaper table and make it in less than 2 hours and I'm not a professional carpenter.
Putting any weight in his table would split the wood down the grain. There is a reason wood tables have aprons.
Few videos exist that make me angrier than this one.
Signed,
A woodworker.
honestly its like he missed the point of being a woodworker
@@Aleph-Noll The guy can't even finish a table top properly without messing it up but he thinks he's worth 100 bucks an hour? LOL
Agree, tbh is amazing how disconnected from reality this hipster woodworker is (even for his country)
This was basically an advertisement for ikea. Their products hold up surprisingly well for how cheap they are. The ingenuity that goes into the IKEA furniture is pretty incredible. The fact that they can give you something that is pretty reliable, cheap and looks good is quite the feat. As someone who tried to become a full time woodworker, I know that 99% of people cannot afford to pay enough for my products to make it worth my time. Unless you are someone paying full price for original art work, you’re not going to be buying hand made custom furniture. Custom furniture is basically artwork itself. It’s awesome, for sure! But will not make sense for 99% of the world population to buy.
I think there is a middle way for those who want something better than $15 cardboard and can't afford $1000 custom artwork. If you start with a hardwood countertop board (from IKEA) you can make his table, with only hand tools as an easy weekend project. Custom made for a fraction of the price.
What this video fails to illustrate is how terrible some of the ikea builds actually are. I had a dining table with 6 chairs that I used to play board games on, and all 6 chairs have legs that are broken at the joints and the table started to wobble so bad I threw it away. I weigh 150 lbs so it was receiving a below normal amount of stress. Some things from ikea are fine, others are terrible.
@@apolloventureful Some are some are not. I Have a desk from Ikea that is gigantic and serves me for years now and will serve me for years to come.
Until you spill some coffee on the IKEA table: then it turns to trash very quickly.
Some people do pay a lot for quality woodwork, I’m talking about more in the cabinet industry. As I am a cabinet maker, some people want fully custom cabinets which are never cheap.
That ikea table is an insane piece of engineering, to mass produce something like that, with those structural capacities at that price... is really impressive
Yeah, I have 2 of them. Normally, I hate that kind of thing, but that specific table is actually pretty good. I've had mind for 8 years, and they look like new. I'm a woodworker and HATE flat pack furniture, but that's a good table.
What I appreciate about IKEA is that it really is you get what you pay for it.
It's a very common practice in composites, sandwiching a reinforcing material with a honeycomb pattern between two laminates (which is exactly what that Ikea table has done). It may not look like much, but the resulting structure is very strong.
Also, Ikea do solid wood tables too.
We recently bought a really nice SKOGSTA table made from solid acacia wood for like 450 bucks.
This guy would try to charge me something like 2000 because "reasons"
I have a whole bunch of them, some of them are over a decade old
I could buy a new lack table every year for the rest of my life and it would still be cheaper than this guy's table
I'm a woodworker my self but man 100 an hour is insane and just prove ikea is the way to go
When the business is slow, then I'd push that wood through the planer to recoup value. Other than that, 100 can be justified if actual skills come into play.
@@EditioCastigata 100 bux an hour for something a 12 year old can create as a woodworking learning project? get outta here. If you ask for 100 bux an hour I'll do it myself.
Not something a 12 year old can do because of the finish, but without the finish its not worth it
@@blackicynoob6119 What do you think about using a gas mask or breathing protection while working with paint? I've heard professional painters get serious brain problems from constantly breathing in the vapors... I personally would go for a gas mask. Gas masks are great - if you ever need to clean some sewer pipes, you don't need to dry heave every 5 minutes.
Edit: also I definitely think a 12 year old could do - At least myself or one of my brothers when we were 12.
In what country do you live? To me, it doesn't sound out of whack for skilled labour doing custom work.
400 -1000 for a coffee table. You are insane dude.
RUclips star price :)
There's a comparison you didn't realize you made (and sorry to point it out):
- The Ikea table still looked great in the end even though your kids were pretty rough with it
- Your table, (even though your kids didn't even play with it) wasn't even perfect because of the crack you had to fix
so the "cheap and shitty" Ikea table was a better finished product than the custom job woodworkers table
I think the most value you can bring to the table is that you can customize the designs (if you wanted the Ikea table 20 cm wider it would be something that can't be bought, but for the table you created it would probably be almost the same price and little extra effort)
Ikea also makes solid wood tables that you can stain/paint yourself for the same material cost he lists.
@@Bosco-nq2kk I think he could have made a more inexpensive table the same size quite easily. He could have made his own wood veneers to make a hollow table with some wooden reinforcements just like a wooden bed frame, or even with triangles like a truss. He could have made simpler legs too, instead of paying $30 for them.
@@The_Gallowglass I agree. I feel it was a dishonest comparison.
@@Bosco-nq2kk What he made isn't even any more embellished or unique to the IKEA table. The table he made is a simple square with rounded corners. Like, anyone can go to a yard sale, flea market, or thrift shop and get a better table for half the price or less. The average hourly pay for a doctor in the USA is $80/hr. They think they deserve more than a doctor for entry level skill.
@@The_Gallowglasstbf, if he were to start making his own veneers and internal reinforcements for a single one off table, that would likely increase the costs. The materials weren't where the costs got out of hand. It was the cost of labor.
That being said $500 for a pretty crappy table is quite steep. $30 for the legs is way overpriced and The way the legs are positioned, the table would collapse the moment the kids jumped on it. He's gonna need to bring that cost down.
I actually think it's quite ingenious that IKEA was able to make a table with cardboard. In terms of business growth, making products economically feasible to clients is what will ensure the longevity of the business. It seems like you're specifically catering to a niche clientele who has the extra money to spend on custom furniture, which is different than the masses who shop at IKEA, so there's going to be a lot of controversy surrounding your video.
Couldn't agree more! Not to mention you can get yourself an Ikea furniture in a few minutes (i mean there is as much Ikea as McDo nowadays), different colors, sizes etc. Also, not all Ikea furnitures are made of cardboard. Now I'm not gonna say hand made is bad, far from it actually, but asking 500$ for such a tiny table is outrageous imho... (the other dude asking 750~1000 is out of his mind...)
It isn't that it's a niche clientele who can aford custom-piece prices, it's that it's a niche clientele who prefer the _lower_ amortized cost of durable goods, because they will keep them long enough to realize those savings. People often spend $600 a year (or more) on "bells and whistles" phone services, and streaming services, so it isn't that they couldn't aford this class of thing, and once you start the ball rolling on quality goods, you cut your ongoing costs, especially across generations. Yes, it's 20 of those cheap tables, but it's only _20_ of them, if they last 3 years each, that pays for itself in your lifetime, and your kids get to save that $5 a year for as long as they don't toss your old table. But that does mean skipping netflix.
@@lperkins2 IKEA tables last a lot longer than 3 years on average, $5 a year is such a small saving it's really not worth any concern, and if you're spending $600 on streaming services, you have a lot of streaming services.
@@Croz89 Mostly it is phones where people pay more than they need to. 600 a year is 50 a month. An "unlimited" plan for a single house hold member is often in the 50/month range. Drop that to a 10 or 20/month service on two people in the house and you've exceeded the 600 figure. Streaming "only" contributes 120 or so a year, per service, so if you are cycling between companies, or only subscribing long enough to binge a show, it is less significant by far.
While some ikea furniture easily lasts reasonably well, that sort of cardboard table in a house of active children is going to have to get pretty lucky to last 3 years in the "line of fire". Doesn't mean it should get replaced with a $600 coffee table, just moving to the $40 range gets you MDF, which _will_ hold up somewhat better. But the broader point is about the difference in mentality between "this is disposable, I'll throw it away for style reasons in 10 years" and "this will be part of my estate which my children will want to pass to _their_ children".
@jo Indeed, but a "long time" for their _cardboard_ furniture is not really that long. First time it gets drenched it'll fail. If it gets something heavy dropped on it, repairs will be very hard (I have repaired some, mostly by scavanging parts from matched sets, but catastrophic failures are rather easy). Compared to even MDF furniture (still water sensitive), which can be resurfaced for about half the cost of replacing this, it is incredibly disposable.
100💲 an hour ⁉️ In my country even specialist doctors doesn't charge that much 😂
neither in sweden, they make around 50 dollar/hour
This guys so overpriced no wonder clients rather get Ikea lmao
as contractors, that's actually about the price. You don't pay contractors at the same hourly rate you would pay a full time worker. You have to pay them more because they have to account for client acquisition and downtime.
In the west $100/h doesn't seem outrageous for a fairly skilled laborer.
I live in the eastern US. I work in tech (think programming). My contracting rate is around $300/h. When I contract people to do work around the house. Especially the "couple hours of work" they are typically charges around $70/h.
It's maybe a bit high. But it's not outrageous in that market.
American doctors start at least $75/hr for the lowest cost
Guys I get fucking 20 euro p/h Am i joke to this world. Why i am not getting this much
Not everyone can afford to spend $500 on a small table let alone for every piece of furniture,i know this world of mass production is sad for artisans but cheap and good enough is in fact good enough for a lot of people,i personally own a few vintage used pieces of furniture and they are rock solid and don’t break the bank
If this table already costs 700$+ how much would be a cupboard with 10x the materials and work be? 9000$? Hell you can get a used car for that, which is 1000x the labour to build when it was new.
@@DarkSession6208 If you pay $700 for that specific table (without any real woodwork, just screwed legs), you deserve to be priced at least $9K for the cupboard. :D
He was probably high from paint fumes when making the video. It doesn't make sense.
@@DarkSession6208 You can furnish an entire house here with $9000 with real-ish wood that's not that IKEA bullshit.
@@theairaccumulator7144 Funny, even a set of plywood based kitchen cabinets costs more than 9,000 bucks.
As someone who is currently apprenticing to become a furniture maker, it makes zero sense to me to try and rely on making stuff like coffee tables for the average joe. It makes a lot more sense to focus on making custom solutions to problems that a client can't simply go to IKEA for. It could be a coffee table if a client is looking for something very specific, but most likely it's something that requires a custom fit that can't be found in IKEA.
So you're not a carpenter in the trades or business sense. You're an artist with a carpentry problem.
It would only make any sense if you're doing a set of furniture for a room, not just one loose piece as a coffee table. Still more expensive then filling a room with the standard cheap box store furniture, but it can apply your own economy of scale in regards to acquiring materials, delivering, prospecting and dealing with clients. At least when talking about regular joe remodeling or getting a new place, knowing how to "sell it to the wife" or just directly deal with a female homeowner is a better strategy, since they're more likely to require and first of all desire such services.
Talking about making regular money, but you can and should prospect high end customers to make some "real money" to save up for dreams and retirement!
@@lazystart Saying that someone isn’t a carpenter because he doesn’t want to rely on building things where he can and will be loosing a ton of customers to the cheaper and better established competition is like saying someone isn’t a professional cook because he decides to focus on high end cuisine instead of opening a pizzeria when there’s already a Pizza Hut and a Dominos in the neighbourhood.
Yes, selling solutions is the core business here.
@@lazystartdude, he's selling solutions what big company didn't have, that's a business mind. You wanna go head to head with big company? Genius!
So, I am a teacher, paid around 100$ per day. Most of the furnitures in my house are from IKEA or similar (hej Jysk!). Some pieces needed more custom sizes and shapes, and these ones I built myself in my small workshop. They are a lot more expensive for an overall small gain in practicality. You can even say that it would have been cheaper to not build them and find a workaround, but it is a nice hobby.
For a basic coffee table like the one you built, I believe that the right price would have been something like 200-300$, depending on the market. It is really basic, no shelf, no drawer, not even perfect finish or classy wood. There is always a danger in overpricing items: you cannot sell them, meaning that you cannot build them often, meaning that you need to charge more to make a living, meaning that you cannot sell them.
Is it that he has overpriced his work or that it doesn't finically make sense for most to buy bespoke. In the UK I think you could buy from a more premium supplier than IKEA and get a solidwood version for under 500
If you have customers willing to pay though why would you not charge 100 an hour. Most people can't buy supercar but doesnt mean it would be good for the brands to reduce the cost when the rich are purchasing
@@James-dv1df the problem is that its buying this is same as buying an solid cube of gold and using it as table and heck you can resell the massive gold cube its even better
@@James-dv1df That's why you don't go to individual woodmaker for something so simple, you go to them if you need something more complicated and customized or bigger set - of course their rates are higher and if you buy more, you pay less per item. Going to them for just such small thing is like starting whole power plant to just turn on 1 led bulb.
@@Ganymede3310 Surely a solid cube of gold the size of the table would be hundreds if not thousands of times more expensive?
@@ZarHakkar if the table costs 700usd it wil be 3.4 million times more expensive maybe rich people like these types of things and it wil last basically forever and you can sell the gold more expensive because of inflation so it wil make you money win win
I love how you make a big point of the Ikea table being less durable, having your kids have a go at it, but then never revisit the topic to show the results. Nor contrast it to your table receiving the same treatment (especially kids running over it). I guess the Ikea table held up perfectly fine and there was nothing to show?
Then there's the ridiculous price you charge for that simple coffee table a beginner could make. Domino's, premade legs and metal leg mounts, imperfect finish. Literally "you don't need to be a woodworker to create this" territory. Sure, it's just going to be in your living room, and if you're fine with that level of finish, that's fine. But if you make these kind of beginner mistakes, what makes you think your skills are worth $100/hr?
And why start this project from raw ash. Expensive wood, and since it's not even formed into dimensionally stable boards, adds a ton of labour (and wear on the machines) that only serves to inflate the price for no added benefit. Can you honestly look your customer in the eye and quote $500 for that table, knowing that you could've shaved 1/4 off your labour time by purchasing finished wood? That would also have solved your knot hole issue, so you wouldn't have had to waste expensive epoxy and the time to mix and pour it. Even if I were to agree that your time is worth $100/hr (and we'll get back to that), buying premilled wood would have shaved an hour or more off your time.
And yes, I know the machinery was a huge investment, and needs to be recouped. But I don't see you recouping the tens of thousands of dollars invested by trying to sell quickly and cheaply slapped together furniture at ridiculously inflated prices. I'm sure you do more interesting and unique stuff as well; simple jobs such as these are probably not worth your time since nobody will pay $500 for a coffee table that's just some glued-up boards for the top, with premade legs underneath.
I wouldn't want to hop onto that Ikea table and jump around on it. But neither would I want to do that with your table with those thin legs sticking out at an angle. Nor do I require such levels of sturdiness from a frickin' _coffee table..._ I mean, it's great if your furniture can survive a nuclear holocaust, as opposed to that "cheap Ikea crap". But my requirements for a coffee table are for it to be able to support a fruit bowl and a couple of drinks, not to survive WW3.
And sure, I know handmade quality can be expensive. A good handmade knife from an experienced knife maker can cost hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars. And it's likely not even better than factory made, as factories can very precisely and repeatedly tweak all variables during manufacturing and heat treating. But a custom knife represents a day or more of skilled labour, requires knowledge and experience, and often uses less common and more expensive materials to set it apart from the mass-produced factory knives. There's often finesse involved as well, from filework on the spine, to engravings on the blade, to differential heat treating to get the optimal balance between edge retention and overall toughness and flexibility. You, on the other hand, have just created the simplest possible coffee table, the "minimal viable product". No frills, no demonstration of skill, nothing. The table could have been made by the 15 year old cousin in wood shop class, I couldn't tell the difference, because you bring none of your skill or expertise to the project. If this is your A-game, you're not worth the hourly rate you ask for. And I'm going to assume your A-game is what I'd expect from an experienced woodworker, making this your C-game at best. You don't charge A-game rates for C-game performance.
Can't agree more
Mna watched the vid and chose violence 😆😆
I agree though, I couldn't believe the 100$/hr rate
I believe he explicitly stated this to be a cheap take on a coffee table and the angled leg mounts came from something old he had taken apart. You can also see that he makes an additional effort in assembling the IKEA tables as sturdy as possible where most buyers will turn the legs back from fully tight in order to line them up with the corners. Rest assured though that because the double headed screws grab in chipboard, play will form over time and the legs will start acting as levers to destroy the material even further.
BTW IKEA used to have two versions of this table. One was sold as a kids play table, made from solid wood and I do actually believe this to have been ash. They had little wooden chairs to go with this table and even though this was meant for kids they could easily carry an adult with the kid on their lap. The other one was plastic and had plug-in legs that usually broke away within about three years. The current version is something of a mix between the two, with the worst feature being the leg mounts.
@@WhoStoleMyAliasIf this is a cheap take why is he charging 500 usd? Makes it even dumber 😂
@@roslolian11 He isn't. What he said is that if he'd build this for a customer the time spent on making the coffee table would require him to charge $500 for it. That is the difference between hand building a single item versus having a robot spit out hundreds of copies per day.
My mom bought an Ikea table in 1990 and passed it on to me like any "real" piece of furniture. It's still going strong, doesn't wobble, and it's traveled internationally.
Honestly this just makes me more impressed by the excellent design of the basic IKEA coffee table. It's really light and easy to transport, it's sturdy and durable enough to its intended use, it's trivial to assemble, or disassemble when you need to move. It's the perfect example of a good cheap product that does exactly what it needs to do at shockingly low price.
Cheap ikea stuff doesn't like repeated disassembly tho, it becomes very raggedy and loose after a few cycles
@@codemy666 - I've had this exact same IKEA table. I've moved it with me three times and it's done so excellently every time. The only reason I don't have it anymore is because I have no place/use for it in my current apartment. Else it could've easily done another move without issues. All in all I probably had it for around a decade.
@@codemy666 If I have to rebuy that table 10 times because it broke everytime I changed location, it's still cheaper.
Saying that "it's gonna last longer" is nor a good argument.
The real thing is: you don't get a fully basic furniture item from a woodworker, it makes no sense economically. You ask for something that requires he experience they have, so that you get what you pay for.
@@ApiolJoe We watched the same video, nice
@@codemy666 just squeeze some glue or epoxy into connections. It will be the last time you build it but it will last
i have this same IKEA table that i bought in 2016 (7 years ago) and it still looks as new and im using it every day.
i don't know why would someone spend 500-1000$ on such a small table for the living room.
plus it doesnt look bad anyways it also depends on your decor
But what about the experience?! How your social life ven looks like without this conversation piece?
@@Robert_10203 If you spent $1000 on a coffee table I would call you stupid and ask if you had money that I could "borrow".
@@Robert_10203 i know what you mean, but maybe i buy the 15£ coffee table and take the rest of the £700, go to a secondhand flea market or auction or anywhere and buy some prints or art or a small sculpture i can put on it. if i ever am really rich then i will buy hand carved furniture but until then it is just not sensible for me, and i cannot pay a rate that makes it worth the woodworker's time
I get your perspective, and as someone living on a pretty tight budget I understand the price squeeze.
Here’s what I’d say:
First: Ikea furniture has degraded a lot in quality. I still have an ikea bookcase from my first solo apartment (also in 2016! Haha our furniture is buddies) That’s 100% a compliment to Ikea. However, with recent management changes, the quality has gone down markedly. You can still use the rule of: if it looks complicated, the cost is cut in construction, but even the very basic stuff chips far more frequently, and generally goes from looking “nice” to looking bad pretty quickly.
Second: You’re paying for something that’s going to be a part of your life (ideally) for a long time. If you can only afford Ikea, there’s absolutely no shame in living in your means. However, if you’re a moderately successful person; buying a piece that has a life beyond you leaves a legacy, a tradition.
My mother still has my great grandmother’s dining table in our kitchen. It’s the table her mother grew up eating oatmeal at, where she served the first meal she (as a french traditional chef) made at 12. It’s the table I ate at my whole childhood, despite moving 9 times. It has survived my teenage lack of respect in the form of nail-polish remover and cold drinks without coasters, high school parents-are-out parties and conversations with my mother where I’m not ashamed to admit I shed a few tears.
It’s still beautiful to this day. It’s had to be repaired twice that I know of, so god only knows how many times its been sanded and reglazed. But that table is one of the only things I want to keep when my mother passes away.
Beautiful and timeless pieces are a repository for a life well lived. They are a safe deposit box for our memories. While you could buy 30 ikea tables for the price of a handmade one like in this video, how much value do you find in a house with 30 cheap tables, versus one table embellished with eighty years of family ups and downs?
Third and last: Not everything in your home needs to be craftsman. There’s nothing wrong with shopping at ikea, or at a higher-end store, or buying secondhand. You life evolves and so do the things you need. However, having a handful of meaningful, steadfast pieces created by human hands is something I wish for everyone. The only “nice” piece of furniture I currently have is a beautifully engraved side table I bought secondhand. It’s mango wood, and every morning when I wake up and reach for my phone I feel the ridges of pattern carved into its surface. I’ve moved half a dozen times as an adult: and that side table (and my random ikea bookshelf) ate the only pieces that have come with me every time.
The world is full of the impermanent. Everything is changing all the time, from what we’re supposed to wear to how we’re supposed to speak, and companies have convinced is that that’s how our homes should be: constantly changing, or constantly needing change. I disagree. If it is within your means, buy something you love. That you intend to have for the rest of your life. Home is our safe harbor in uncertain times; make your place of rest a constant companion as much as you can. Make your place of rest a place of solid in the storm.
@@oliverrh all well and good for those who are sentimental with their furniture. for me anyways i couldn't care any less that my family has had this large dining table for generations or other furniture that is special to them. i see them as objects that are useful and replaced when inconvenient or too worn down. my childhood bed was built by my great, great grandfather and i utterly hated it, i used to be a light sleeper as a kid and if you so much as farted with any sort of intensity while in that bed it would creek and make sounds so any time i turned in my sleep id wake up due to the noise. family refused to replace it due to that sentimentality, i eventually purposely broke the bed one night and made it sound like it happened in my sleep JUST so i could get a new one and not wake up the entire street when i rolled in my sleep lol.
point is, its cool if you are sentimental for certain furniture, but many people are not and just want something affordable to replace something that broke or just to have an end table
I love the craftsmanship of woodworking... but this was a damn good advertisement for Ikea tables.
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
I don’t think anyone is shocked that you can make better stuff than IKEA. The pricing, availability, convenience are hard to walk away from. You can go and furnish your house and be pleased with the result in 2-3 weeks. They will deliver and set up for you and everything. You’re just not getting the same from woodworkers. Which you shouldn’t, it’s not reasonable to expect the same. Most ppl just prefer the advantages of IKEA over the advantages of a single craftsperson.
The way I see IKEA is, you start out with that furniture to get you going in a new place if you're coming in with nothing or you're just renting. Then once you're established in your house and the IKEA stuff starts to breakdown you buy/commission the furniture that will last generations. By this time you get to that point you're most likely looking at having kids, or prepared to live in that place until death. If not then you're ready to throw/give that stuff away and move to a new place, buy the IKEA stuff again or if you have the savings buy the good stuff.
Only those living a comfortable middle class lifestyle (and its associated earning powers) could afford the kind of stuff in the video. If we all tried to do that when we first moved into our first house we'd just have a bed maybe and no other furniture in the house. It's totally unrealistic. I moved into a house within a year of finding a job and managed to furnish my entire house at IKEA. The IKEA furniture is much tougher than the video suggests and unless you do something unreasonable to it they will last for many years. You are much more likely to get bored of a piece of furniture than it break. And of the very cheapest pieces like that table, no-one is buying it to be a lifetime piece. To pay $1000 for that table means you are essentially living a designer lifestyle which is perfectly valid if you want to do that and have the means but it is totally out of touch with reality for the majority of people even in the 'richer' nations.
@@ruan13o lol more like millionaire.
@@ruan13o Agreed. LACK is the worst example for this. what do you expect from a 10 quid table?? For that price, it's actually really decent. Just pay attention to materials & construction and buy the sturdy stuff like IVAR & FJÄLLBO instead of LACK & MALM. IVARs will last you decennia and are easy to take with you when you move houses as you can easily take them apart & rebuild them. Sure, handmade furniture to order would be nice, but your average IKEA customer is not the target audience for that. If they're buying the cheapest option for a table that's available, there's probably a reason for that.
@@CS-bn5wg honestly i have found that MALM is pretty tough for its price point, yeah its veneered chipboard but it can hold my weight with ease and is easy to put together/take apart in 5-10mins, i own a few pieces of handmade furniture mostly bookshelves and while I think they look great the IKEA stuff is easily fit for purpose, like you said they make moving so much easier, since almost all my furniture is able to be flatpacked it saves so much space when moving
I think in this video you perfectly proved that Ikea is the way to go. I would not pay that much money for what you were offering, as it was clearly imperfect even after all the stages of work you went through and that tiny ikea table took all the punishment like a boss and still looked perfect even after kids jumped on it. So this was a very good advert for Ikea
That ikea table looks like shit though, sure that's personal preference and you might like the ikea look put personally I'd love to be able to pay some extra for something that doesn't looks and feels cheap after having this stuff for all my life so far.
And yes, there are a lot of other cheap producers but ikea still excels in this field and while it all looks samey it's at least tough.
@@Bobylein1337 I mean if you're into status and want quality stuff then sure that's your choice, but getting a coffee table at the price this guy is offering and the quality he has is terrible value for money. It would be a much better investment to buy something used instead. If it has some scratches or is a little worn out, just sand it, paint it or put lacquer on it and it's good as new for the fraction of the price. This guy is gonna happily take your money and then after a couple years you'll start thinking, you know this table really wasn't so special after all
@@Bobylein1337 bro nah the custom table looks like shit bro id rather use a ceramic plate as a table instead of that black shit
I agree reminds me of art and music and the future of it. Fuck that shit I'm saving money using AI XD
@@Bobylein1337 ikea makes other coffee tables that are far nicer than this 15$ one... its not one or the other. there is a middle ground between the cheapest new table someone can buy and a 500-1500$ table built by this guy
My guess for price was 150€-200€.
In Sweden, maybe too low, but in Slovakia I would do 4 hours for 50-100€ no problem.
For 750€, I would do it myself in evenings. That is just way over for simple table. For 150€ we have whole bed - not custom made, but still real wood.
We also have lot of stuff from Ikea for many years (some cabinets are 15 years old). It is very good stuff, but you have to consider what are your needs and how you will use it.
Nothing to do with Sweden's pricing, he's just rich and out of touch. Selling a table made of glued wood for that price just because he's charging 100$ an hour is ridiculous. He also ridiculously overpriced the materials, like 20$ for a few drops of glue is absolutely unheard of.
@@Zlanarod Totally overpriced!
Tbh as a German that's much too much as well. We're considered one of the richest nations and I promise that trying to sell that table for that price would only get you to bankruptcy. It's just incredibly expensive for such a small and to be completely fair kinda useless item. We got quite some Antique stores where you find things like this made from solid wood which probably already lasted a hundred years and will last another 200. And even those items you'd need to buy a 2m wardrobe or a whole bed to warrant a price of 700-1000€
Yeah i was like: "Hes gonna say a 100€ (i thought that was too much) because hes an artist" BOOM 500€! And the other guy said he should take MORE??
Hey there neighbor! Wanted to write the same about Hungary here.
I could do a solid hardwood coffeee table for $1000. I should have went to a carpentry school but didn't want to do what everyone else in the family was already doing. I think i made a mistake, could have gone to a western country and made millions building furniture for ultra-rich who see $100/hr as a normal wage haha
Bro literally said even a beginner could do it and then charged 100$ per hour smh
You don't always have to talk down about people and their "perception" of ikea as amazing built quality. The common person understand that it isn't and doesn't care is the coffee table is cheap as long as it looks nice and isn't $750.
yeah this video is extremely condescending and these woodworkers are pretentious
You know, it kind of is quality once you look at it from the perspective of the amount of engineering that had to go into it. It takes a pretty intelligent guy to make the most cost efficient table out of cardboard that is durable enough for a kid to jump on it.
Yes, their pricing system is whack as fuck. "I value my time at 1000 dollars a day". Okay babe but if what you produced in a day is worth like $150 or so at most, then generally you're not going to be able to mark it up to $750.
Think about the claims they're making. Producing a small coffee table using modern tools very fast. Not even in the pre-industrial era when everything was made by hand with hand tools, would it be reasonable for a craftsman to charge their economy's equivalent of a thousand fucking dollars for this work. Utterly delusional.
IKEA has plenty of high quality builds, they just don't cost 15 bucks. Their top of the line METHOD kitchens have 25 years of warranty! You don't give that kind of warranty for things that will fall apart and have poor build quality.
A lot of people talk down on Ikea as if the only reason to buy their stuff is to chase trends. You would be surprised how much poor people's lives are improved by places like Ikea. I know plenty of poor older people that used a crappy folding "card table" as their main table for decades. Having access to Ikea level quality and pricing is a notable upgrade to many people.
I think on both sides of these comments there are extremes and almost cult like for IKEA being the only choice and the video saying everyone should bespoke build. There are different price points and IKEA fits one of them while bespoke fit another.
I like your comment in that acknowledges there will be a need for low cost furniture for those who cant afford anything more.
I do think there is a considerable difference in style and quality and the IKEA is cheap for a reason as its a cardboard table
It’s not a smart investment to buy IKEA products. They are for people that chase trends. You can easily get high quality secondhand furniture for fractions of the cost of IKEA.
Yep. Most of my room is furnished with IKEA because it's all I could afford. I'd love to get some hand-made furniture that uses quality materials, but it's just not feasible for me. Despite that, I've had all this stuff for years and have even disassembled and reassembled some of it when I moved rooms. I've also seen many examples of what you said about the folding tables. At the end of the day, people make do with what they got. But there's always gonna be someone that will yell at you about that just to feel superior lol.
I think it also depend on where you live. here in Thailand, IKEA is the best value in my opinions, I have some secondhand stuffs from secondhand shops, which are great, but the furniture are usually bad if it is cheap or more expensive for middle quality stuff, which most people here can't afford. I pretty envy how people in Europe or US has much more options than utter crap or really expensive like we do, Ikea fill that gap. Local brands that make a good quality stuffs at Ikea pricing is non-existent, we don't have good quality plywood or mdf made locally, we have to import them.
I say that because I used to do lots of woodworking at my old job, good quality engineered wood doesn't exist here, we have to import, which I think is the case of many places as well. The availability of raw materials really affect the cost, even in low labor cost here, I still can't afford one off custom furniture, unless I make it myself.
@@smoll.miniatures good luck finding a solid wood coffee or side table for $15 😂, let sone something that looks halfway decent and not abused
We had 2 of those IKEA tables. Being so cheap, we had no expectations. The first one lasted 6 years. The second long enough to get the kids through Highschool. Once they where out of the house we bought a nice wooden table. We were very happy with the IKEA tables.
Everything, EVERYTHING i've bought from Ikea the past 20 years has eventually flakes, broke, rotted, peeled, basically it doesn't last. Unless you buy metal things form them -_-
@@thatguy5801 you should not place any kind of water in ikea tables, thats just common sense, water + cardboard = bad
@@sebasblos1 its not even water, its humidity from winter/summer slowly everything peels and flakes.
I love how he says that kids will scratch it up and eat over it but that is literally why IKEA is much better with kids. If there is a huge scratch on a $500 table I would be mad. On Ikea I don't care. Worst case I buy a new one and I still have paid 1/30s
@@Sadreath And with a real table you'd sand it slightly and then stain and shellac it , for 5$.
Labour $400 for 4 hours?!?! 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
RUclips star price :)
It's not about haggling the price of things. It's about selling something for what it's worth. They don't charge $5/ diaper because they're not worth $5 each, and this table is too small and very uninteresting for $500-$1000. It's a $150 - $185 table, maximum.
But wher you got the price you have in mind, for such a table ? It's the influence of industry, your experience in shops. If industry wouldn't exist, and you had to ask a carpenter, maybe you would get used to other prices. Prices is really something you get used to.
@Holger P. Exactly you pay what you think it's worth based on Market value of similar items. This just proves these don't make sense.
@@ShayanGivehchian You also pay according to your income, and it is insane to ask people from low income or even middle income to ask for 1000$ for such a simple table
@@ShayanGivehchian So as soon somebody lowers production cost things loose value ? On the same product it is. But here, it proves your evaluation function for "similiarity" is wrong.
It's like buying supermarket bread vs. bakery bread. Does it make sense to pay 4 times as much in the bakery ?
It does, because it is not a "similiar item".
It only serves a similiar purpose.
You have to find the difference in quality, to activly say, I want the cheaper or the more expensive version.
On homogenous products, only there, it does not make sense to pay more, as you say.
@@holger_p If industry didn't exist, I'd get paid that much to sew people's clothes, doesn't mean I go around yelling at people for buying pre-made clothes.
I work in IKEA, we have multiple price range for different people with different wallet size. Also, that LACK is not for children because of the sharp edge and quality. IKEA do have children specific product which mostly solid wood, cost way cheaper, but that's because it's mass produced. So if you wanted a furniture to be looking as ever, go for custom made, if you're just want a furniture for functionality, just buy whatever from whichever company. Cheers!
This is a great wood project book ruclips.net/user/postUgkxkPIWb22DigCqxmlXerCyUF4HCl6eSU2L . Most of the projects use the pallet simply as a source of reclaimed wood not as a recognizable pallet so even if you didn't have a pallet you could make these projects with any reclaimed (or even new) wood. The instructions are excellent. The style is charming and would work with lots of different decor. There are quite a number of projects that involve tiling of teh wood pieces which is a really cool idea and can produce beautiful pieces when working with aged wood.
You can buy 33 Ikea tables for the price of that one table. It just makes more sense to treat the table like it's disposable because there's no way you're going to destroy 33 tables unless you're actually trying.
Also the Cardboard Table uses next to no resources and is mostly recycled and can be recycled easily
Even if you do destroy them you can with simple tools cut and reuse those pieces. I have heard of people picking up broken units for free and then taking them back to their shops where they cut them and make new things from them. This one time at an auction there were so much of this type of stuff, some missing units and some broken. Yet lots of it. I think 15 pallets of it and each pallet stacked 4 feet tall or more and 4 to 8 feet long sold for around 25 dollars for each pallet. This happens every few months at this auction place and once when I was there picking up that stuff I leaned from one guy picking them up that they build custom cabinets with them. They cut them down and make bases with them and then build out high end front faces. The cost for them is quite cheap because the material cost next to nothing. While you might have mis matched insides if you go their most basic route or they can and will match them. This reuse store place I have been too also sold pieces of this type of stuff for dirt cheap. While it can be cut to size and reused you can also buy most of the veneer stuff online pretty easy.
Exactly…
Solid timber furniture can look 100x better, but that is outweighed by so many benefits of buying something cheap from IKEA.
At IKEA, you get what you pay for, sometimes more than you pay for.
For $500-1000 for a small coffee table, can the same really be said.. I don’t think so.
@@ruben247 I doubt it can be recycled easily with all that plastic, but it's not that easily broken either. That was his point, yet the Ikea table didn't break, and he didn't test his own table.
He said himself that the legs were the weakest part, from how short those screws were I'd trust the IKEA table more tbh. And that ugly mount on the bottom, for 500€? Common, lol. He's kind of making a fool of himself tbh.
@@ruben247 How many of those do you think end up getting recycled vs ending up in a landfill?
Is this an Ikea ad? Cause it only solidifies how good their furniture is for the price compared to those hipsters that ask 100-200$ per hour.... lol
i think frankly that you proved a point for Ikea's business model. at the end of the day the table was functional, lightweight (ie cheap to ship, and used recycled materials (cardboard). The average joe (ie housewife etc.) likely isn't privy to all the elements that make a beautiful piece of furniture and nor do they care. They want a good looking affordable item and Ikea provides that in spades and were never a custom furniture builders customer to begin with. Also the price's for the custom stuff would seem way outrageous to the normal person who has never owned or could afford such fine furniture. I laughed out loud when i heard the prices offered - especially the higher prices.
True. It’s like, bro we can’t even afford houses, how’re we going to afford real furniture. Gtfo acting like I can afford more than $15 for a coffee table.
Also, Goodwill exists.
@@asmodiusjones9563 when you buy a table
it comes with a box
means u have 2 tables now
@@anyoldthing the hand made one ?
@@godassasin8097 yeah and the second table can serve as a shelf also, it’s multifunctional.
Clueless. You get paid the GOING RATE for your work I assume? Why THE FUCK should a woodworker whom has spent literally THOUSANDS on the machinery to make these items, get paid the same wage as a kid flipping burgers in macdonalds?
It takes YEARS of experience to make these items correctly, and even more years to learn how to do it QUICKER so it can be a bit cheaper.
Do you bitch at the mechanics for charging what they do to fix your car? No ofc you don't, or if you do, you're an asshole.
The ikea table will last a few months at best, it's literally made of hardboard (compressed cardbaord) with a cardboard hollow core. - its PAPER. - and you think it's "just as good" as the handmade one made from Ash wood that could EASILY last generations.
$40 for one table - lifetime - months.
TEN ikea table like that - cost $400, lifetime - LESS THAN 5 YEARS.
OR a $500 table that you'll still be using when you retire. DO THE MATH, THE HANDMADE TABLE IS CHEAPER.
Here's a simple question when was the last time you saw an item from Ikea being sold at a furniture auction? Maybe there's a reason why the only furniture being sold at auctions is THE EXPENSIVE STUFF THAT WAS MADE PROPERLY 50 OR 100 YEARS AGO.
grrr SO FUCKING STUPID. YOU, with that mentality, are the reason so many craftmen are going out of business.
He showed the kids using the heck out of it and the tables were literally perfect
Homie hoped itd break and hurt his kid lmao
@@insertnamehere7574well, he also didn’t test his “500 dollar” table because he knew it would break and didn’t want his kid to get hurt.
@@speeddemon5339 Exactly, his looked pretty flimsy
@@c.s.7474 he even said "this isnt very strong"
Y’all jus hating on this man 😭, sure we def don’t got that sort of money laying around to spend 500$ on a table, but plenty of people who are better financially will buy this. It is 100% stronger than the IKEA table as it’s 100% Ash and not some sort of cardboard mix, but a IKEA table will do its job. I’d say his table is more stylish and just better quality.
I’ve owned a shop for 6 years now I charge 60 bucks an hour and I have 108,000 dollars worth of tools. There’s value in my time but I also appreciate helping people get running again. I think you guys value yourself a to much
Doesnt it depend on the location? For example tradesman prices are cheaper in the north of england compared to the south east.
It depends on the location - you can get many things for much less in, let's say, Ukraine than in Spain. But you'll also make way less money for same thing there usually.
Spatially for this quality of work. Not worth the price
Cost of living varies widely.
@@James-dv1df It does, but you still have to have a price that the customers will pay. Much of the equipment will last for decades. My Dad is a retired carpenter and he still has a bunch of tools from the '70s that work just fine, even after years of use on construction sites.
Speaking as somebody that's in an accounting program, I don't understand why he's trying to amortize his stuff over such a short period of time. Much of this stuff is going to last for many, many years and probably still have value on the 2nd hand market when he is done with it. I don't see why he's charging so much for that stuff.
I also don't get why he's charging that much for the time, It may vary a bit in Sweden, but around here carpenters make basically the median salary. Even after factoring in for self-employment tax, the correct rate should be closer to $50 an hour. Probably a bit higher to account for the stuff that needs to happen between jobs, but probably not $100 and definitely not $200. If you're charging that much, it's because you're providing luxury goods and shouldn't have trouble explaining why you're not charging IKEA prices.l
When the hell did real wood turn into gold? I'm looking at the silver maples in my yard and thinking about a boat.
It's not, really. It's the fact that everyone's labor costs are insane nowadays because the cost of living is equally insane to boot. One feeds into the other. Services were cheap when people were willing to work for peanuts. Now? Pay an Indian man to do it and ship it overseas - it'll still be cheaper than local labor.
@@slizzysluzzer Some skilled workers charge outrageous fees, it has nothing to do with the other staffs. I just repaired the roof of a two-story house, a worker repaired it for 6 hours and charged me 4000 dollar. The AC duct work is even more outrageous, the whole house was charged over 20000 dollars, just 4 people worked for 2 days with some metal sheets.
I have an IKEA dining table that's lasted over a decade. It's solid wood (pine) and the only blemish is where I accidentally spilled a drop of crazy glue the first year I had it. And it was under $200.
Those little white tables are meant for temporary use, like for college dorm rooms and such. They actually should be made of recyclable cardboard considering how briefly they will be used.
I thought they were just used for 3D printer enclosure frames these days
A woodworker built me a 6ft x 3ft x 4ft fully finished wooden desk complete with 6 drawers for $750. The prices you are charging is outrageous lmao.
"you can buy this $15 Ikea table OR you can spend thousands of dollars on tools, hundreds of thousands of dollars on a house with a workshop, $50 on materials, and four hours of labor"
LOL
Also I had two of those $15 tables and they lasted six years and looked pristine still. I live in a small apartment, i don't have my own private workshop and a plethora of tools to build my own furniture
Get good
You can also pay $500 for a coffee table that looks equally bad as the IKEA one
Exactly.
"YoU DoN't NeEd IKOEA fUrNiTuRe cAuSe YoU cAn BuIlD YoR oWn StuFf!! LiSteN tO Me I'm SmArT!"
You just need a few thousands to buy the tools and find a place where to put them and pay the humongous monthly electricity bill.
Excuses, you dont need lots of tools since you can outsource jobs to those that have them and you just choose the room to build. Build 4000€ custom desk in 2 room apartment, took me a year and 1200€ in materials. Tools were couple chisels, cordless drill, hand saw, couple rulers and measuring tape, box cutter, hammer, set of drill bits, router with its accessories, CA glue, wood glue so 200-300€ in tools you can get from drift shops or marketplace. What was not possible to make there was out sourced mostly the cutting up the plywood when i bought it, stainless steel accessories was welded for me and final finishing i did in buddys shop since could not really use spray gun in such place, but one can rent or borrow air compressor and sprayer and get space rented for couple days, or just out source that to person with those tools already. Also it requires more cleaning work than in dedicated shop, but you can do it. Its not optimal but its possible.
From the sound of it, you are not really living in there, but going to sleep there before leaving to work. Least that is the imagine i get from that. Then again my 2 room was not in the best area of the town and neighbors were more curious than angry about the noise of router and hammering the chisel on the floor.
@@planetcaravan2925 *get a loan
It's what you missed xd
I used to work in the carpentry industry as a shop lead in a theater scene shop. I can confirm $100 an hour is highway robbery.
I fully agree that handmade furniture has a certain warmth to it and that an Ikea table will never have, but having a simple coffee table costs more than a month of rent is out of this world crazy.
Custom woodwork should not be only for the upper crust. As a shop lead who teaches people on woodworking, I encourage people to discover their local maker spaces and learn how to make the stuff they want to.
I have a coffee table that I made out of scrap wood I found at a construction site and rusty rebars that was about to be thrown away. After everything, I only spent $50 on a table, epoxy, stain, and a workshop fee, price matching the Ikea. But at the end of this, I have a table that is infinitely durable being made out of rebars that were meant to build houses, rustic and charming, and I feel accomplished for what I did.
My honest opinion: don't pay a woodworker, be a woodworker. It's rewarding, fun and you can tell your friend that you are a woodworker.
I find it amusing to pretend i only have 3 fingers when i tell people im a woodworker.
I agree that charging for work is important, and I'd love to have original furniture. But with Ikea, I can actually HAVE furniture rather than wishing i had furniture. So hopefully those rich clients of yours are consistent, and ikea will continue to maintain its poor clientelle.
Here is a philosophical and economic question: Why are there poor people in the world?
Are there poor people in the world because that's just how the gods ordained it to be? Or are there poor people in the world because of the socio-economic system we live in? Yes, IKEA provides cheap furniture for the masses, but how come the masses can only afford cheap furniture? Maybe if corporations like IKEA payed all their workers a living wage in stead of placing their factories in places where they can pay their workers the absolute minimum, there would be fewer poor people.
@@VRSVLVS Fancy furniture requires hundreds of hours to build. Who is going to be doing that in your utopia?
@@davorzdralo8000 I'm not talking about Utopia, I'm just talking about a better way to do stuff. It's about finding a nice balance between automation and human craftsmanship that serves the needs of people, not the profits of a tiny elite.
@@VRSVLVS Isn't that exactly what IKEA is? That's basically their entire philosophy.
@@davorzdralo8000 The philosophy of IKEA is profit maximisation trough the brutal exploitation of labour. Everting else is just marketing talk.
Dude, those Ikea tables last forever, who cares if it's paper inside. I got one from the streets as a student, had it for 3 years, returned to the street and it was gone in 10 mins. Perfect condition to reuse for another person even after that probably, and also easy to carry as a found second-hand XD
you can even repare
3 years =/= "forever". Also, I'm guessing you didn't put it through the kind of abuse that small children would dish out on a regular basis.
Get an IKEA coffee table that is a framed cardboard box with fiberboard legs screwed on, like the one in the video. Get a coffee table made out of real wood; you don't even need to pay for a custom piece...any local antique shop (or if you want the cheapest option, check out Goodwill stores) should have something roughly equivalent that won't cost $1,000. Use them both equally. If any of your friends have children or grandchildren, invite them over & let the kids pound on the tables, etc. When they're not around, feel free to pile things on both tables whenever you need to, use them as work surfaces, etc.
Do the above for the next decade, & see which one is still intact at the end of that time.
@@schechter01 Antiques have issues on their own, esp. with kids in the house. Toxic binders. Formaldehyde, lead and arsenic. Lead paints, arsenic in old varnishes. Tobacco residue in the wood if it came from a smoker's house. You got kids, kids put shit in their mouths. You don't want to roll that dice. If you're going down that route, you damn well better do good research to make sure you're not putting a child in harm's way. Ikea's not perfect by any means but at least their materials are well known and documented - and if you want new and guaranteed toxic byproduct free, that's way more than $1000.
Yep.
Exactly. Just don't puncture, cut or spill nasty stuff the top, or put very hot things on it, or have adults standing on it and you will be fine. The legs sometimes require adjusting but that's all.
I much prefer an IKEA $15 table. They are light, use much less natural resources and still hard and stiff enough at least for normal use. I can totally get behind going up to $40-$60 if you want a fancy looking one or if you have special requirements. But paying $700 for this is beyond my comprehension
Of course I don't discourage anyone who has the money to have their coffee table custom-made, it just isn't something I would ever have the money for o.O
Not sure what kinda math you're doing, but the IKEA table the person cited in their email is $500, and his quote was $3,000. While 3K is pretty rich for my blood, I would NEEEEVER pay $500 for something from IKEA.
Have you seen the price of hard woods these days 😂and you want for a maximum of 60. Bespoke is never going to be in the reach of many including myself however there is clearly a massive difference between a hard wood ash table and cardboard table
Pieces of furniture made of plastic (and little of cardboard) designed to be discarded after few years. This roars about sustainability, sure.
@@roadtomanitoba9753 Those tables last decades my guy, not sure where you get the designed to be disposable after a year from
"PaY a WoOd WoRkEr InStEaD" bro thinks im gonna spend 12000 on a item that i can get for 15 just because he thinks its crap...
Dude is charging lawyer/doctor pay for a table.
no bro, specialist doctors make 50 dollar/year in sweden
@@fdasfsjgasdfwe
When working private they actually make 100+/hour. About half the income quickly gets "lost" to pay for sick days, vacation time, taxes and stuff.
I think this video miss several great points with the IKEA table. I've had that same table in a larger format for the past 25 years. It has been disassembled and put back together again probably 10 times during moves, and it is still holding up just fine.
I am kind of tired of that design since a long time back so it is now used as a play table for the kids. Not every piece of furniture have to be heirloom. It is OK to change your style throughout your lifetime.
And as far as sustainability, making furniture with cardboard is genius. They could literally have made the IKEA table from the leftover sawdust you generated creating your handmade table? Considering you probably threw that in the trash, is that better or worse?
Before anyone points it out, I'm also from Sweden, and realize that sawdust goes to energy recycling. Sweden has so little garbage that they have to import from other countries to use in the incinerators. 🙂
Other than that, I really appreciate this video.
Great words and understanding of what this guy doesn't talk about.
Excellent comment
sustainability aka neonazism
@@friedrichhayek4862 not if it's not forced upon you. It's of course different if some govt imposes certain choices on you, particularly if these choices are bad economically (very common), or worse, outright not even good environmentally either (that's also common and even more stupid, I have my doubts about electric vehicles and their batteries). But choosing, as an individual, to consider the impact of your own choices, and try to reduce your own waste or consumption or whatnot is just personal freedom and overall a good thing. If you can do it. I do agree that it's a bit of a luxury in some regards, so it needs to be done carefully, and not at the expense of the poorer people, which is happening a lot nowadays...
@@MrTresto Still virtue signaling neonazism. Specially after considering the fact that if you make some externalities cause harm to another person's property by the basic law of capitalism (private property) you should be liable to that.
This is like saying:
"You should pay a gourmet chef instead of going to McDonald's!".
Sometimes you just want that quick, cheap and easy solution, even though the custom gourmet burger most definitely would be great.
In my Swedish home we have some IKEA furniture here and there while in the meantime we have old hand made furniture passed on through generations - the best of both worlds IMHO.
this is like paying a gourmet chef to make you a mcdonalds cheeseburger. its not worth their time, or your money
@@tric5122 exactly
A video by a RUclips chef called The TRUTH about McDonalds (why it's so cheap)! urging you to instead visit a nice restaurant for your lunch would be funny
@@jukesngambits I would love to see a chef try and duplicate a mcdonalds cheeseburger have it look smaller and more basic(somehow) then say i need to charge you 33x's what mcdonalds is charging you.
@@jukesngambits you get my point ahaha
This dude really charged 100 an hour for the labour that he said it himself, a beginner on a sunday class can do 😂
Wow this video has taught me so much, I have to say this video is the best add for IKEA I have ever seen they should have paid you for this clear and blatant promotion of such a good quality cheap table they sell.
While I understand that getting solid wood furniture is nicer, I'm going to be honest I bought two of those lack tables for like 10 bucks each at Ikea about 8 years ago and they're still going strong.
It could literally be made out of cotton candy on the inside. I spent 20 bucks and got two tables that have lasted me for a third of my life. I'd rather that than spend a couple hundred on a table that does the exact same thing.
You've just turned those $10 tables into story pieces. Seems like you've gotten more bang for your buck than you ever would have imagined! Jokes aside, at the end of the day people are in different phases of their lives and if people have kids etc, they tend to value their time much higher and thus want to be paid a premium which is fine. They'll hopefully always find a client that can afford their work, but if the client base ever runs dry, then they'll need to figure out what are the market expectations and come down to the median price that the market is willing to pay.
@@ryangrant493 "hurr durr I have mouths to feed and therefore I deserve to get paid more"
a condom is less than $1 each
$1000 for a simple coffee table?! That's literally insane. That's a table. Not a luxury item. If it's not made of gold, it doesn't worth more than $500.
Going to woodworker for such simple and single thing is like starting power plant just to light desk lamp - of course it's going to be hella expensive and nonsensical. Materials, manual labor, tools, customization and lack of scale makes the difference. You go to such guys if you want a whole customized set of furniture or something complicated or unattainable in chain stores.
Yeah, but they should tell them that. And not say Ikea is crap. My wardrobes from Ikea are now 10 Years old - still Looking New.
@@lisiakp6029 Yep custom made items are expensive to the point a normal person can't actually pay for that luxury.
That's why custom made furniture is not for normal person, it's not more usability that is important. It's about soul that woodworker puts in it. It's made just for that one customer who wants something thats really unique. Every cut is made different for every table, every board. It's just about that. If You dont need that soul, then just go buy something from mass production.
@@Radoslaw1986xx the problem with this video is the dude is comparing ikea to a custom made table.
I am amazed at what an advertisement for IKEA this is. You have convinced me to never pay a woodworker for anything.
🤣🤣🤣
Asking 100$/hours is crazy expensive. Don't be surprised if almost everyone buys IKEA products an not your stuff. Most of people don't even make 100$ per day. I will be agree to pay up to 200$ for a small table like this.
Yeah. Carpenters wouldn't exist if all of them charged $100 per hour. These dudes think they're curing cancer or something. All you're doing is buying wood, sawing it to dimension, sanding/painting, and screwing it in. No wonder people buy IKEA. You have some guy wanting to charge $750-1000 for a 24 x 24 table, lmao...
well i think most that work full time make well over 100.00 a day, that doesn't mean they can afford to pay this guy 100.00 an hour to make the most basic small coffee table. It's a 200.00 piece tops. A simple google search of real wood furniture shows this is an insane price scheme. Makes me think he's making his money off youtube, same as the other guy, not off his carpentry businessness.
@@tric5122 In my country $5.50 an hour is minimum wage. I can get a local craftsmen to build me a dresser for $600-750. Swedish money must be valued diff.
Followed your advice. So now I sit here happily in my apartment filled with my coffetable and one chair i got from my budget. Great advice👍 I love sleeping on the floor, it's good for the spine, and who needs chairs or sofas for guest, floor is good enough for my feet it's good enough for my friends!
Coffee table AND a chair? Check out Mr. Billionaire over here doesn't have to squat at the table like the rest of us
@@ronakparikh and the millionaire speaks up too... I am just sitting here with my 40$ wood and 30$ legs
@@ronakparikh Someone's doing well...
@@lalimalik6614 psh 40$ wood and 30$ legs? you're lucky you have that. back in my day we could only afford the $20 glue!
Look at all these Richie Richard here, I just eat off the community sidewalk.
Honestly, If I was spending $700-$1000 on making a simple small little coffee table, I think I would build it myself. Buy all the tools and materials, and make something.
That approach has the added benefit of me being able to say "I made this".
I could understand paying $1000 for a fancy or large table. I know everyone needs to eat but if I had that much money lying around I would get into wood working and blacksmithing.
I am already trying to learn basic electronics circuits.
right, and i also feel that; and moreover I think wood-worker does not require that much skills and brain that he should be paid like engineers or software developers or electronics engineer like $100 hourly + this simple table was not even that hard enough to make that he should charge $500 for it. + ikea table feels eco-friendly as well.
But I disagree with your one point where you mentioned that everyone needs to eat, bcs he is not just eating with this but building castles. For me everything is value for money and this is not worth that much. Also, eating or building castle is another thing but thing should be worth the money
@@AlphaCentauri2 They won't actually net $100hr clear as it is a business with overheads and inconsistent work unlike a salary job like a web developer or engineer. They aren't aiming to attract customers like you, but the uber wealthy who want custom furniture and have high paying jobs where their time is more valuable than learning how to make a table. Personally i think these videos are stupid as the target market for ikea is utilitarian furniture at a competitive price that 1000s already have in their homes and comparing it to a piece of custom furniture that appeals to a completely different target market is not apples to apples.
The $100 hr is likely reasonable when taking in to account overheads of running a business. You have to pay for rent/mortgage, tools, accountants, health insurance, vehicles and time for acquiring materials, time for advertising, finding customers, writing contracts, negotiating, and most of all, you have to pay your own income taxes.
Edit: I do believe though that these RUclips carpenter overvalue completely basic tables where in the real world a client wouldn't pay anywhere near that much as it demonstrates not skill or craftsmanship.
@@Palo-jm7xc yes, agreed
@@AlphaCentauri2 I almost spat me tea out when he said his hourly rate, I didn't even charge that when I worked in gold as a jeweller, and I used to cut my own gemstones, and it's a lot harder working at these sorts of scales imo.
If you start with a premade hardwood board, you only need hand tools. A saw, a drill, sandpaper, screwdriver...
Thank you for showing us why it's better to go with Ikea 100% of the time. Holy hell, even if you replace the table every year for 30 years, you'd still be spending less than buying it from a woodworker!
The point is, one should not be looking at replacing a table every 30 years, one should be looking at replacing a table every 100 years minimum.
@@VRSVLVS Yeaaa, that's dandy and all, but tradition is kinda just peer pressure from dead people. So I'll keep my extra $400-$700 and replace the table whenever it needs.
@@cameron2448 I'm not talking about tradition. I'm talking about ecology and sustainability.
Don't get me wrong, $700 is quite outrageous if you ask me, even if you only use traditional hand-tools to make it, let alone using power-tools. Likewise, $15 is outrageously cheap, even for a completely industrialised process. The comparison in this video is quite extreme.
Still, It would be a good idea if we geared our economy towards producing more durable items that aren't expected to replaced whenever the fashion changes. And if we could produce coffee tables for $150 that lasts 10 times as long as the $15 table, that seems highly preferable from an ecological point of view.
@@VRSVLVS wood is a sustainable resource
@@VRSVLVS Wood is literally one of the best renewable resources. THe more you use it, the more CO2 gets sequestered.
The IKEA one looks nicer and let's be honest, yours is not nearly worth anything close to $500. I can appreciate that it uses better materials, will last longer, etc. but $500 for such a tiny basic coffee table is insane.
Also, I'd be willing to bet if you started to stack weight on those tables on a tile surface, the IKEA table would hold more.
@@markothevrba I wouldn't be happy making such a bet ..... The load carrying capacity of folded cardboard versus solid wood ?
@@stevegandalf4739 l'd take the bet cos angled legs are no where near as strong as straight legs, l bet the home made table wouldn't even hold half the weight as the ikea table due to that fact alone
@@stevegandalf4739 while cardboard doesn't seem very durable the shape can make a huge a difference, as hexagonal tiling for example can withstand quite some force as it works with the physics of geometry
just to give picture there are contests of people building bridges of paper that can withstand vast amounts of force.
I don't know witch of the 2 tables would be able to withstand more force but cardboard per se doesn't need to be a bad thing for that metric
@@markothevrba I'd second that bet his table is neither utilitarian, or minimalist. I'm not a woodworker, but I could certainly make something actually durable in the same amount of time.
Drew wants $750 for a simple table that could be made in a wood shop class. There's a difference between knowing what you're worth and thinking you know.
and for that price you could buy 50 IKEA tables, haha.
His a woodworker for the rich
Yeah, Drew made me think, holy cow, I wouldn't spend $750 for "an experience" unless it involves a couple nights at a nice hotel room and some time on the beach.
Yeah if you have equipment/machinery that you can use for free then the price seems high. But when you buy and maintain the equipment and know what you are worth per hour...
I don't make furniture but I do have my own business. There are many people that will undercut my price, but I know what my time is worth. I'm not going to lower my value to try and beat their prices.
@@LadyMarimeya Business expenditures and the value of the product are two different things.
If a carpenter wants $750 for a very small, austere coffee table, he'd better be well connected to an affluent client base. The remaining 80% of the country will say no thanks and not give a rat's tail end how much he spent on his equipment.
@@LadyMarimeya "But when you buy and maintain the equipment and know what you are worth per hour..."
Or you've just identified a market segment where you can't compete based on price.
I own my own business as well. I do have competitors that can undercut my rate, but few can match my invoice as they tend to bill more hours for the same project. If it looks like my price will be too high, I offer customers contact information for someone who can.
I respect the work that went into the table, but no way I would pay $500+ for such a basic table lol
I'm a college student so I use ikea furniture for two reason
1. Price- I obviously don't have a ton of money so I tend to save it where I can
2. Weight- because they aren't solid wood they're super light it makes moving SO much easier when you can pick up your desktop with one hand
Solid wood hand crafted furniture is great but ikea still has a place in the market it just depends on your needs
Another bonus is that student housing is a somewhat temporary situation, and it's probably not a good idea to spend a huge amount of money on a piece of furniture, that you might need to get rid of in a couple of years. Also, IKEA does some things quite well. For example, their drawer slides are cheap yet significantly better than the competition, and that's why I prefer IKEA drawers.
To finish, here is a tip for people on a budget who want real furniture: Well built solid wood furniture lasts for a long time, and custom/statement pieces are a bit difficult to sell. At times, you can find good quality tables etc. from second hand stores or online market places. Sure, the furniture might need a bit of refurbishing like little bit of sanding, and a new coating, or maybe you want to add/change/remove wheels or something, but that's something that anyone can do (and doesn't require power tools).
Me being a third world person it blew my mind when you said 500$. Even at the best place in a tier 1 city in my country, I can at best see it priced around 250$ and that is the highest estimate. Realistically I will say around 100-150$. IKEA is actually more expensive than going to your nearest furniture shop most of the time.
How much would one of your local woodworkers charge to do this table, of you happen to know?
@@galvanizeddreamer2051 I bought an armoire in Mexico City a couple of months ago for about $300 all made in half inch pine wood 1.50m x 50cm x 40cm with doors and 2 drawers at the bottom, varnished with a clear coat, of course it was his design, not custom work.. still such a great deal! and yes even in Mexico I would consider this a deal but it's not uncommon to find works at this price
@@econtrerasd Interesting to hear, thank you.
To top it off the coffee table he made was just basic af
As a mechanical engineer i actually love the cheap ikea stuff. Materials might be cheap but there is a lot of ingeniouity in the designs (both in how its produced but also structural). And the greatness in the design makes me like it more than a lot of other designs. I love the kallax cabinets and the poang chairs. They have been with me for over 15 years, with over 5 moves.
5 moves is impressive. One thing that Ikea furniture doesn't handle very well is repeated assembly and disassembly. Aside from that they do a great job for the price and availability 👍
Definitely not paying for this.
Dude wants 100bucks an hour for making a miniature coffee table. 😂😂
I actually feel a lot of love towards my ikea furnitures, they were my first furnitures, they allowed me to have a nice home and i built them myself, they sure have a lot of soul to me ^^
Totally agree with this. I dislike that he implied the IKEA furniture doesn't have a soul. There's so many pieces of furniture that I have built with my Dad and loved the experience and bonding time. There's always a new challenge and it's genuinely so enjoyable to build pieces of furniture. They have a lot of soul to me as well.
Soul is all the dings and wear on your furnitures, which only comes with the happy memories of a life well lived.
@@rajangill5801 No furniturehas a soul, yes you may like it or feel sentimental about it but it does not have a soul. Soul, is a myth anyway.
@@davidperry7128 You're just angry that you were born as a ginger
@@rajangill5801 I totally understand, every time i visit my mother i see that big cabinet me and my x built and i fucking hate it for reminding me of her. So yes IKEA furniture does have a lot of soul..
I agree with your sentiment, and the math for pricing - but the sad truth is that for $750 I could go through two crappy $15 IKEA tables every year for the next 25 years.. allowing me to continuously update the style of my decor and ensuring I never have to worry about repairing it. A part of me is sad that this is the way things are - but there's no way the average person could afford to furnish their home with handmade furniture.. At these rates - I could purchase a used car for the cost of furnishing my living room.
So please consider that when someone tells you 'that's too expensive' - it's not always because they think little of your work, but rather because it is quite honestly not worth the money to the vast majority of consumers when they prioritize it against their needs and expenses.
As you said. How many people will be happy with what table they chose 10 years ago? If you have cheap one it's less heartbreaking to replace it. You'll need to move or fashion standards will change and what then? You'll be stuck with the table you no longer like.
Not to mention it's more likely that somebody will have $15 in their pocket to spend each year rather than have $750 at any moment in theirs life.
@@emeralddreamer7738The custom table will hold value much better too, it's not like the money is gone. You could probably list the same table for as much as you bought it for if it's in good condition and get someone to buy it. Not as easily as a cheap one but I'm sure there's someone who appreciates custom work, like you would have if you bought the custom table in the first place.
@@TunaIRL It is possible that you could sell it. But how likely is it to find somebody with same taste for art? Who already doesn't own hiw own piece. And how likely is it that this person will want to buy used item (even if in perfect condition) for its full price?
Recently I had to throw away a lot of old very expensive stuff - furniture, glass, carpets - because nobody wanted it, not even for free. It doesn't matter that when we see it we know it must have been expensive. Value of things is set by how much is somebody willing to give for it. Meaning that most of custom made stuff is worth big money only to the person who commisioned it.
@@emeralddreamer7738 If you have the man's table, you're basically competing in the same market as him when selling it. If he has clients coming in, you should also have a person wanting to buy your table. This is probably where your individual marketing skills come in to play when selling stuff off but that's how it is. You can always buy the Ikea table if this kind of stuff doesn't interest you. That's completely fine those are made for most people to buy after all.
@@TunaIRL It's nothing like competing.
In scenario where I would live in area where he lives, owning table made by him. There would have to be a person who would want a the same or very similar table from him. Then I could try to sell him the table made by this woodworker. But the wookworker would have to want more money for the table he'd do for his new costumer in order for me to sell him the table I already own for the full price I paid for it.
And this is the main flaw in your argument. What I would be doing is selling used table. What the woodworker would be doing is creating NEW custom made table. These are two different types of market.
If the customer came to the woodworker, he is looking for a new custom made thing. I don't sell new custom made thing, I sell used table. We wouldn't be competition.
But let's suppose the guy doesn't really care if the table is new custom made for his desires or second-hand table made for somebody else's desires. Let's say I paid 500,- for the table. And the woodworker ofers new custom made table for the customer also for 500,-. I can give him the table now while he'd have to wait for it to be made from the woodworker. But the woodworker would make it custom to his desire and he'd be the first owner. (again, two different markets) Now I can't sell the table for the 500,- I bought it for, because the value of 500,- is its value for me as it was custom made for me. For the customer it would be only second-hand handmade table. Its value to him would be lesser than the value of newly made cutom table made for him by woodworker. This means the value I paid is already lost. (yes, somebody might want my table, because I owned it and I could be famous, but how likely is that to happen? So its value won't rise, the number maybe will rise due to inflation and such, but it's value will stay the same or go down).
So my option is to sell the table for less than I bought it - which already proves that No, I can't sell it for the price I bought it. And the only way I can sell it to him is if he wants teble and doesn't mind it to be second hand and not custom made for him. But if he doesn't need custom made table, then he would look for seconhand tables or somewhere where they make handmade tables that aren't custom made.
And I agree with you. Who wants afordable easily desposable furniture that is made for it to be used and then thrown away. It's their thing. Who wants fancy handmade (custom or not) piece that would work as what it is + be piece of art. It's their thing. Each person has different taste for style and different amount of money they can spend.
That's why I think the video is more of click-bait that anything usefull. Because what he creates is custom made handmade solid furniture. While companies like Ikea found a vacuum in market for easily affordable and desposable furniture for people who can't or don't want to buy solid handmade furniture. He only competes with people doing the same kind of things - solid handmade furniture. Ikea does not do that. He's simply comparing two things that cannot be compared (it's like comparing beer with sink water)
I'm surprised how much the price varies around the world. Where I'm from a table similar to what you made would cost around $60(Labour included). To us IKEA is the expensive option.
Sounds like you might be from Latin America, like me haha...
The situation is almost identical in Bulgaria! :)
Yup, I agree, in Latin America Ikea is the most expensive option.
About the same in Italy, maybe 80
Same CIS region.
"Pay a woodworker"
- A woodworker
One might beat the cheap IKEA table, but I wouldn't let the kids anywhere near to a 500 bucks coffee table. Our similar IKEA table outlasted two kids, and it wasn't even that obliterated afterwards, aside for some additional coat of paints, penmarks and deep scratches - I am pretty sure those marks would also be present on a wooden one.
Exactly! the cheaper table gives me a peace of mind as its easily replaceable and I would rather let my kids jump around. Can't say the same for the custom one though
I buy sturdy old vintage tables from second hand stores. They have proven themselves to withstand the tooth of time and life! :)
We had a nice solid oak coffee table growing up. It is still in one piece, although there are some scratches and chips on it. Nothing that couldn't be repaired if one was so inclined. They paid a reasonable price for them brand new from a furniture outlet. Believe you me, it was a beautiful table. Far more elegant and decorated than this thing and I don't think they paid over $800 for it back in the mid 90s. It was longer and oval shaped. A coffee table should be able to be used by everyone on the couch. Whatever he made is way too small.
The only good thing about the table is that it can be taken apart and refinished, repaired or glued
I’m a woodworking novice and we have basically all ikea furniture, although it is the best choice for most of our furniture, im going to build my next desk out of thick hardwood.
The amount of times I’ve disassembled and reassembled my desk setup, the pressed wood type material just can’t handle it. It could very well use a sand and finish but I doubt it’s gonna go back together again lol
I absolutely agree about the quality of furniture made by a woodworker being superior to that of stores like Ikea. However, I think there was a missed opportunity to compare the table you made to their Lisabo coffee table, which is made of solid birch and ash veneer. It is $129 so would still be more affordable than a handmade item, but it is a strong table and it is very similar in looks to the one you built!
99€ the one that is that size
Correct. I will buy the handmade for 250. I think is a correct price. But there is a huge difference in wood quality... Also its imposible to beat a multinational company prices. Its sad...
@@mrvaidel4999 What is sad about somebody getting a table that looks just like the woodworker's table, has solid wood legs and a veneer top for what appears to be 20% of the price the wood worker believes he could/should charge for his solid wood (glue-lam) top?
It's better than buying the crap LACK table
There's a reason he didn't do that. He wants you to think you can't get anything reasonable. His table only looks good compared to cardboard.
Yep, I really like the look of light colour wood style of Lisabo series. Could be even an option if I need a table so this video kind of ends up being anti marketing for custom woodwork.
I feel internally torn apart about everything you said.
My grandfather was a professional woodworker, my uncle as well, he inherited the workshop and restored antique furniture for a living. I do woodworking as a hobby and enjoy building those special solutions I cannot buy. My family owns quite a lot of unique furniture, some of them 100+ years old. They look absolutely amazing, are made of nice, solid wood and they are one-of-a-kind pieces. They will easily survive myself and I can give them to my children. Stunning.
My problem is - they are not fun to use and not fit for my needs. Whatever they were made for 100 years ago is different from todays use cases.
Instead of opening a beautiful davonport cabinet (a "bureau" in America?) to sit down and write a letter with paper and ink, I have an electrical height adjustable IKEA desk, because I am almost 2m tall, need a higher desk surface and want to look at a 32' monitor which cannot be fitted inside the davonport.
Some of the old furniture has doors slightly bent, so the locks will not close perfectly anymore or the drawers run their wooden frame on wooden ledges and they will just fall down if you pull them out too far. I love the looks of old skillful woodworking, but for everyday use, I want effortlessly moving, full-extension, soft-closing drawers, even with a heavy load in them, perfectly matching doors, etc.
Therefore, I will stick with modern furniture in my new house, although I could have much nicer looking, 100 year-old pieces basically for free.
To have someone today make the same old-style furniture but using modern high-precision machines and perfectly working metal hardware would be my ideal situation, but I believe this is way too expensive to pay for.
What I have done in a similar situation is to mix and match old and new. Where function is priority new, where looks and memories matter, kept the old. So you can have the best of both worlds, and if done sensibly, it looks great.
I tend to dislike overusing wood in things for this reason.
I think you generally have to limit wood used in any moving mechanics.
The upside is wood can be sanded down to fit if it warps and expands sometimes.
For things like chairs there's no reason not to have it all wood if made well.
But I'm more of a metal person really.
I usually find (even with modern furniture) people are bad at making functional furniture that isn't extremely niche and I have a hard time using it for anything.
You mention the davonport which I understand is a writing desk with drawers.
We got unlucky/lucky living in this time period where habits suddenly shifted and using pen and paper is fast falling out of favour...
So we get to be the ones to design new furniture for the future generations...
I love how the comments are just proving him wrong
Let’s also take in consideration that he is using the “most affordable” table from ikea. There is a variety of options you get from ikea furniture and usually the higher priced ones are made with better quality materials which still are more affordable than an artisan crafted table.
Let's also consider we saw his kid jump onto the "most affordable" table, and it survived perfectly fine. I'm pretty sure his custom table would sag through all four of its spindly little angled legs if it were tested the same way.
Let's also consider the metal mounting points are store-bought, and the legs were salvaged from a different coffee table. So the only "custom" thing HE made was the tabletop. A square with rounded corners. And he wants $500~1000 for that. And it's not even finished properly.
Final consideration is that a good chunk of his time went into turning raw lumber into planks, which if you value your time at $100 an hour isn't worth it. _Especially_ not for a simple project like this that you're staining solid black in the end.
Not forgetting other brands are available? Was thinking the same that could buy this table around £100-300 from a more premium brand in the UK than IKEA that was mass produced. Thinking like John Lewis or m&s
It feels like in the comments people are in am IKEA cult and don't acknowledge you can buy from other places. Bespoke is always going to be expensive and only avaliable for the few
I once tryied to destroy this very table, like, intentionaly, with hammer and axe. And it was not easy.
That shit's sturdy af.
@@James-dv1df I wouldn't call it an Ikea cult, I'd call it a wood workers cult. There are tons of videos from them on RUclips tearing apart budget furniture and saying to spend $500 on a coffee table instead. It's absurd. Everyone knows that Ikea isn't the only brand, everyone knows it's not amazing quality. Just that it's amazing for its price.
This made me appreciate old furniture from my grandparents and great grandparents. As a Southeast Asian, $50 for a table is already too much since our wage is very low. Almost everything is MDF if it's marketed as wood. The wardrobe, table, chairs, and kitchen counters of my great grandparents still last until today. It's made from teak wood I think. My grandfather also owned a lumber company for a while and he got all the highest grade teak wood and built a wooden house too. No termites or water damage until today.
As a Singaporean, our pay is not bad but slightly below average from US and UK comparisons, but our cost of living is as high as places like NYC and LA. When I see my friends move out, they can't afford much more than Ikea when they're spending half a million dollars on their first home. Times are tough and of course most of us would love to upgrade to better furniture next time. I think it's kinda telling that the carpenters we often work with here can go their entire career working exclusively with chipboard, plywood and laminates, and never touch solid wood at all.
Philippines have bad wage, but pretty good on construction and craftmanship, with the right and standard (or higher quality) materials of course.
Yes, but the bright side is you can buy quality real wood table with a reasonable price (like you can't charge $400 for labor around here. That's higher than minimum wage "per month")
I would say you can get real wood table under $100.
You know what would be nice? To make pressure test between between this 500$ table and 50$ IKEA one. I somehow doubt the custom one would be that much more durable than IKEA. 😂😂
i think there is a reason he didn't show his kids playing on the one he made like he did the one Ikea made; especially since his hada crack in it from the get go.
@@tric5122 I also think it shows an underlying issue: are you going to let your kids play around a $500-$1000 24"x24" table? Probably not. This in and of itself lends to wanting to buy an inexpensive piece that you don't have to feel the need to babysit and worry about.
I'd also much rather replace a cheap table that gets beat up than pay much more to have my expensive table fixed.
If you've ever had actual wood furniture you should know that thing ain't going nowhere. I have a wood coffee table and could hold a dance party on it with as many people as would fit and I'd be comfortable with it not breaking a sweat. Not so much for the Ikea one. That being said I would rather get a new table since the one I have is pretty ugly. But wood does tend to be more durable than cardboard, for sure.
@@TunaIRL Not with the legs he put on it. That things gonna give.
@@TunaIRL well-structured cardboard composite with larger thickness beats the planks - especially his design.
We aren't talking about the same cardboard as used for boxes here.
I'm a woodworker and I still buy stuff from IKEA at times. There's nothing wrong with it.
That is insane pricing man, you can pay very good carpenters 10-15$ per hour for simple projects like this. This is worth 200$ at max
10-15 an hour can't even get you a Walmart worker in most cities let alone a skilled laborer like a wood worker. I think 500-1k is bonkers but paying 10-15 an hour for this work is also bonkers too. I think 300 for the whole desk at 4 hours of labor for the desk an 100 for materials would be reasonable leaving around 50 an hour for the worker.
@@nnn1491 yeah this dude just wants you to pay for his lifestyle lol
Lol, you get what you pay for.
@@nnn1491 This is true. Most carpenters I know would charge $30-50/hour for something simple plus material cost. Something like this can be whacked out in 2 hours not including drying time. If they had the space to put it to the side and not interrupting other projects they will take the job and charge $200-250 depending on material costs. If they don't have space, they probably wouldn't accept the job because they aren't going to put a more valuable project on hold. They 100% would charge $100/hour for a complex project, but that is because those projects need expertise.
@@nnn1491 this depends on where you live, for example where i live 20 years experience as a woodworker would get you around 5$ an hour
As a student I am very happy with IKEA, I have bought two of the 13 euro LACK tables in the video and they have so far lasted me 4 years without any problems, just a few scratches here and there.
Even though the design is nice of the handmade one, and it may last a lifetime, I don't think I'd ever buy it for such a price.
Just take good care of your stuff, then even cheap IKEA stuff will last a considered time
Absolutly. My family took it even to another level, we build our kitchen out of 10 to 20 year old IKEA furniture leftovers. It held together 4 years now. When i moved out i took my old IKEA stuff with me and it still holds after so much Time.
I do not like when people shittalk stuff that is maybe not that pretty but serves the people. I rather have a IKEA table than to cut back on food or leisure.
I think IKEA started introducing the cheap-ish paper like structure only a few years ago.
@ its atleast as old as me, ~2 decades
If I told my friends I paid so much for a simple table they'd make fun of me for the rest of my life. Now that's a conversation starter
Maybe you could impress some girls by peacocking with coffee tables.
I guess they could think you rich instead?
@@James-dv1df
Well your friends probably know you though, they'd know if you're that rich because Everything in your house would be so expensive then, which would make it normal. But paying that amount for a coffee table while you're from the middle class is just laughable. Because it's just a waste of money lmao
@@James-dv1df and dumb
I have one of those Lack tables. It's had a rough life and it is still looking pretty good. And stability is fine and it is light to move around. The whole point of the lightweight cardboard filling is to make a torsion box, to make a strong sheet with almost no material. My wife and I had our kitchen custom made by a furniture maker, the countertop is made of terrazzo, we chose the colour blend for it, etc etc etc. But Ikea is unbeatable when it comes to cheap and decent furniture.
That's why doors are made like that as well.
@@mymemeplex Depends on where you're buying your doors. A woodworker will not be building a cardboard door and it is perfectly possible to create a door that is torsion resistant too. It all comes down to understanding how the grain in wood responds to different forces and then arrange the wood accordingly.
@@Arterexius sure. But I'm talking about many interior doors in even modern homes. They are just like the Lack tables, cardboard interior, pine battons around the outside, and 3mm hardboard on the outside. They do their job just fine.
The door I'll build for my room will be from plywood, I want some more sound insulation. Its what you want from something.
@@mymemeplex If you want more sound insulation, then avoid the cardboard interior. Wood is great at reflecting sound, provided there isn't empty or mostly empty space behind it. In that case, it will be an amplifier
@@mymemeplex - If you want sound insulation, why wouldn't you use a standard door cavity, pry off one side (not difficult with wide chisels), spray-foam the core, and replace the side you took off. Why would you use semi-solid wood that has virtually no sound-deadening properties?
I am so glad I'm not the only one who thought the pricing was insane. There is a reason IKEA is in business. But seriously, @wittworks price model is just plain crazy not to mention unsustainable
Dude wants to be paid 4 times more than a doctor for a crappy table that looks like it was made in a highschool woodworking class.
These wood hipsters are out of control.
If people are willing to pay why not charge that? Also it's a business with overheads such as purchasing equipment. One off bespoke is always going to be expensive which is why it's in the niche for the rich.
I don't see any difference between this and supercar valet services charging hundreds to wash your car.
Sure the same solid wood table mass produced would bring down the cost significantly but even IKEA producing would like be in the hundreds I reckon.
@@James-dv1df That's just it though. I can't imagine there are enough people gullible or foolish enough to pay $750-1000 for that shop class level table. The difference I see between this and 'supercar valet services' is the level of quality. If you have supercar money and are taking it for a wash, you'd expect the highest quality. That table, again, could be made by someone LEARNING woodwork.
@@ChaoticEnigma92 I do agree he could have made something more unique for the money. However not sure if will be much more expensive than other bespoke makers due to significant extra costs in bespoke one off vs mass produced (not just IKEA). Even in the 90s before IKEA in the UK we purchased off the shelf furniture rather than one off builds.
I would pay $150 for the material (I'm more than sure I would mess up something on the first try), $350 for some hand tools, and make a weekend project out of this.
Then it will actually be a conversational piece since I was the one who made it and at least next time I'll have the tools to make something else.
I think if I were to ever pay $400-900 for labor for a (coffee) table, I would at least pay that much for some exotic material and I would want a truly unique result.
Chisels, planes, sharpening stones, pull saw, sandpaper, glue, clamps, combination square, tape measure, drill, etc... You might be able to get all that for $350 shopping at harbor freight but it's going to end up taking you much longer than a weekend and a lot more than $150 in materials.
Even if you were to buy quality hand tools, good clamps, and measuring tools with decent precision I have a feeling you wouldn't come close to making even a shitty table in two days.
@@KJ110813 You are kidding, right? I've made more interesting pieces in my woodworking classes at school then the wooden board with rounded edges he made and they took me roughly the same time to complete. He glued some pieces of wood together, trimmed the edges, rounded the corners, angled the underside, sanded and painted the board. Just buy milled wood and you can chuck the entire board out up until the sanding and painting in less then two hours, after the glue set of course.
He salvaged the legs (which didn't fit in with the colour of the Ash board, hence the paint) and used salvaged mounts for the legs. He really only made the board and charging 100 Dollar for the labour per hour for, in all honesty, such a bad job (missed a crack in the wood before painting etc.) is ridiculous.
@@DragetaLP good for you little boy
@@KJ110813 Awesome reply, little boy. Just goes to show that you have no idea what you are talking about and no arguments. I made those pieces when I was around 14 btw, which was 18 years ago.
@@KJ110813 You know everything he said is true, and you're being a pathetic little child about it.
I'm not buying an experience. I'm buying a table.
Much as I like DIY woodworking, I actually really like ikea's engineering, they make their products reliabile with clever design rather than materials. For a single guy with no kids, that thing will probably never break for decades. It's true that it does seem to "not have a soul", but it has something else, a connection to all the history of tech and engineering that went into it.
You can repair it just with different methods, the toilet paper and epoxy sculpting trick and a nice tablecloth can do a lot.
It's not completely meaningless, it does make a statement. Someone was able to take cardboard like you'd find in a trash, and make something that, in very specific conditions(A person with no kids using it as a light computer desk) could stand up for 25 years, and maybe even better than some handmade stuff(They use basically plastic finish that will resist spills better than some real finishes).
The biggest environmental problem is that people DO throw it away, not that they actually need to.
But again, after my first real furniture build I have a ton of respect for what goes into this stuff, it's wonderful and I would hate to see the real art disappear.
You say that it won't break for decades. It lasts people maybe a year or two at most. The legs eventually come loose and break unless all you're putting on it is a table lamp and your cellphone and a book. Soon as you have to move it once or twice, it's done.
I've had a few pieces of furniture like this. I ended up just spending a bit extra and making my own. It's not worth the time or energy to ship this trash around the world. Only for it to end up in a garbage bin a year after purchase because your 40 pound kid sat on it and it drastically failed. And why would you repair it? It's a 15$ table. The epoxy you'd use to fix it would cost just as much. And then you have the added issue of that ALSO taking CO2 and time and energy to produce. Why not just get something higher quality to begin with.
@@truckywuckyuwu Considering the materials used, some of those furniture is shockingly strong. Keep in mind that they only used a small fraction of the material... Some of them literally made out of mostly cardboard.
Also it depends on how they get used.
On a personal level, I am a bit of a mixed bag... I will buy some things from IKEA, and other things I will make myself. It really depends on the purpose. If I want something truly sturdy, yeah I will only get that if I make it myself.
@@truckywuckyuwu Many of these *are* only used for exactly that. If you have kids or move frequently it's a different story, but otherwise, modern life is a lot less hard on stuff than it used to be, people don't have as many heavy objects, especially not frequently moved ones.
If you have more than a few pounds of stuff or kids you probably want better quality though. But otherwise, they've done a good job with literal cardboard, and if it does break it's probably not the biggest waste of resources you made that month because there's so little material.
@@truckywuckyuwu sorry, grew up in a poor house with a mother and four kids that were pretty damaging to their environment. We climbed on stuff like this all the time and used it for all kinds of things it wasn't meant or designed for. I've seen far more wood furniture get destroyed because it isn't structurally sound enough to handle rowdy kids.
The argument holds water, until you have to repair or replace the wood furniture, then the entire point becomes moot.
I love solid wood furniture, but every piece I have was salvaged from the side of the road where it was dumped, much like many prefab furniture pieces I own.
Affording a table like the one he made, at those costs, is a luxury even many in the middle class cannot afford these days, let alone the poor who never could.
@@Shatteredragon Yeah, there's a big difference in the quality of furniture then vs now.
You're buying literal cardboard now. It takes almost no effort to break it. I still had some ikea tables up till a few years ago that held up for like 25 years. They are of significantly higher build quality than the options you can get today for a similar pricepoint.
It's not just about the price for me. I love custom built and high quality furniture, but the time it takes to find a carpenter who won't tell you "Yeah I can build that in a month or two" was a deal breaker for me. Also most of them will just straight up say no (at least where I live) because they don't want to to work on some small order like a coffee table or a table top. They'd rather do a whole set of furniture for someone instead.
I wanted a new table top for my PC with specific dimensions, color and feel. A month later after hours of searching and dozens of call I gave up. I couldn't find anyone who could do it in a reasonable amount of time for a reasonable price (everyone wanted like $600+, and would take at least 2-3 weeks) for 200x70cm table top painted in matte black finish.
So I did a little more research, watched a few videos on YT and decided to do it myself. I bought a glued block of solid wood that was closest to my dimensions, cut it to my dimensions, did a few passes with sandpaper, stained it with black paint 3 times (until it was the color I wanted), applied oil 2 times with sandpaper passes inbetween. $300 and 5 days later (2-3 hours of work everyday), I have a perfect table top from my dreams that I built myself. Using it to this day and I'm still so proud of it. Oh and I still have some wood, a can of paint and oil leftover. So I could build a smaller table top or a shelf out of that.
Think about what you said. You spent $300 on materials and then did between 10 and 15 hours of Labor....... 25 to $30 an hour for skilled Artisan labor is incredibly reasonable so for $600 you were getting a pretty good deal from the professional and two to three weeks is a very short time considering that they are probably already working on projects for other customers.
That's a weird take.
300$ of material and 10-15 hours or labor, took a week to do.
Don't get me wrong, it's amazing that you managed to do the project yourself, and in your case it was the thing to do, but you have to understand that you're not the first in line for makers. Of course they won't jeopardize their bigger projects just because yours is smaller and faster to do.
1 to 2 months to fulfill a small order is perfectly reasonable for custom made stuff, and 600+$ is also what you should expect.
We live in a world where actual woodwork is compared to Ikea, and any delivery time seems to take forever since Amazon stepped in. Come on, it's just not fair.
@@naumen6508 I would Agree but If someone is Paying a Professional then it probably shouldn't take as long. Paying for Quality Is Great and all but at the End of the Day if You can do the same thing within a couple of days with a few hours then it definitely would seem like it's not worth the money.
@@Eclipse_XVX What makes you think he did the same thing tho ? He may end up with a similar table but he has no idea if he made a mistake during the process. Maybe his lumber was filled with humidity, maybe there's rot or deadwood he didn't remove and the table may crack down the line.
Yes you can do projects on your own, but when you pay an artisan you're paying for far more than a finished product, you're paying for experience that'll ensure your finished product ages well and lasts. And yes it's going to take a while before you get it and it's perfectly fine.
@@ailurusfulgens1849 yeah that's true you can't do the same as someone who has years of experience and also has the equipment. But for this instance let's say it came out average with little to no imperfections and compare to what he said the pros would take. That still seems too long. Besides I still believe it's a little to high for what he basically wanted. Just what I think though.
750-1000 bucks for a basic table is outrageous, no matter how you justify it. If you're willing to pay for that, then either you're rich or you have your priprities backwards 😅
no one will go to a custom woodworker to make this simple table bro. if the table is 2x more complicated the price wont be 2x. like when you get a tattoo there is a minimum price you pay, usually 80-100 euro, even for a tiny piece.
Depends on the type of joinery used, the wood, and the finish. I can make you a basic pine coffee table with basic bitch joinery and a wipe-on Poly for less than $500. But if you want Teak, sophisticated joinery that actually requires skill, and a high-end finish that requires skill to execute then it’s going to cost you a lot more.
Basic design =/= basic skill. Basic build quality = basic skill. The problem is a lot of people want a Lamborghini for the price of a Kia. And they can get indignant when they don’t get it. Btw, take a look at what your plumber or electrician charges for their skill set.
Id say just buy the wood pieces and do it yourself. Paying a woodworker half of a monthly salary for a coffee table is insane
That's a bullshit marketing technical thing.
In real life this absolutely doesn't cost this much.
$500-1000 for a champhered board with four legs? Nope sir. Not gonna lie that this is Well executed but as a customer the price is way to high compared for what you get.
o do a quick search for real wood, small coffee tables, and what you'll see in the 500-1000 range you get far nicer pieces. FAR nicer pieces.
@@tric5122 that might bei true but wasn't my intention. Imho $1000 is always too much money for a friggin coffeetable, No matter how exclusive or not.
@@hasserecht3678 I agree, but I also know a handful of people that are wealthy enough to want something more fashionable in their home that would pay 1000 for a very well executed very nice piece. Those same people would also balk at 500 for what he built.
@@tric5122 Maybe they would. I actually don't know. Yes basically it's a slab with some bought hardware/legs. Insane. But anyways... imagine ... your tiny tiny coffeetable would cost 500-1000€. How much would be the interior of your entire appartment/house/whatever. Bonkers.
@@hasserecht3678 that's the thing, many craftsman were saying you don't take on a job this small unless you have time and space between other jobs to limit the cost bc that piece is to small and basic to charge that rate, or if it's one piece of a larger set you are making to lower the overall cost.
This guy destroyed his entire premise with his cost breakdown.
The other thing is it's not fashionable or even nice enough to be an heirloom piece you would hand down, if it survived that long (questionable since it came brand new with a crack).