Good evening all,
The missus has seen some sticks of furniture in Oak Furniture Land. Has anyone bought from this mob? And/or are they just another DFS?
Regards,
MD
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My immediate impression was 'another DFS' but only exploration of their showroom/deals will tell.
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Funnily enough I bought an item of furniture from oak furniture land only yesterday.
The quality v price looks very good (of the item I bought) but the buying process was a bit daunting. Entering the store, one was confronted with loads of eager salesmen lined up like gunfighters at the OK Coral. You had to fight them off, often two at a time. In the end I had to tell them, by this time like a group of crocodiles round a chicken on a string, "You lot - P OFF or I am walking out of here"
Found the item I was after (I had checked it out online) and went to order it. Again I had to tell the salesman to back off with his incessant offers of furniture guard, insurance, faster delivery, delivery at a given time slot etc etc..
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Chinese/Indian/Vietnamese direct-sourced oak furniture I think, not had any but aware of them and have seen them. Not my sort of thing but they have 'branches everywhere' and have been around for a while.
Last edited by: Manatee on Tue 2 Jan 18 at 19:50
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Furniture is solid wood and quite cheap. Styling is on the heavy slightly clunky side.
My concern really is really ecological. Huge swathes of forest are being cleared to sustain the cheap furniture industry with high damage to the environment and wildlife. Very little of this forest is replanted.
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>> My concern really is really ecological. Huge swathes of forest are being cleared to sustain
>> the cheap furniture industry with high damage to the environment and wildlife. Very little of
>> this forest is replanted.
Buy antique furniture. It's cheaper than new, and it's still worth something once you've got it home if you change your mind a few months later. I've never bought new furniture in my life; antiques are green.
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Yes I agree. Some remarkable bargains around. I have a rather nice pine kitchen table which I bought for £50 at auction. Cleaned it up and painted it white. Bought four chairs for £80 which I painted in different colours. Looks very stylish.
Dark wood furniture difficult to sell at the moment. Saw a lovely Georgian maghogany dining table sell for £150 at aution before Christmas. You couldnt buy the wood for that even if you could find a source!
Last edited by: CGNorwich on Wed 3 Jan 18 at 10:41
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>> furniture in my life; antiques are green.
they are brown, few people want brown, let alone brown with browner patina
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We bought a dining suite a couple of years ago. Extending table, 6 chairs and a sideboard. A free mirror of choice was free. About £1300 for the lot.
Seems well built and very well finished. The three drawers are solid all the way through and the furniture is very heavy. We had 11 round it for Christmas dinner.
They were nice to deal with, plenty of coffee at the time as I would expect. Delivery was spot on as arranged. No complaints at all.
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Thanks so far, but Keep ‘em coming..
I am afeared however that this is one battle I may lose!!!
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We have a coffee table and some sideboards from there - they're fine. Seemed good value for money - dovetailed joints in the drawers. The coffee table is a heavy bit of furniture and very, very solid. Its future was the subject of debate only a few minutes ago (as we've downsized). We'd buy again from them.
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Damn. I’m losing ground. Quicksand anyone?
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The 'Heavy weight solid Oak' furniture supplied by many of the online Oak furniture retailers would appear to have a a common source. They often have identical items but with differing names. The item code is often the same! Discounts can be substantial at some outlets.
Beware of the term solid oak, at best it is often laminated,faced or veneered, and the 'solid legs' (or corner pieces) are laminated with internal voids. I discovered this whilst drilling and modifying a hifi cabinet.
Your chosen supplier may have his own factories or suppliers but look out for similar copies at better prices. I know that the same practices are common in outdoor furniture from Vietnam.
Sometimes the higher prices are justified by better quality control, or just attention to detail and packing.
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>>Beware of the term solid oak, at best it is often laminated,faced or veneered, and the 'solid legs' (or corner pieces) are laminated with internal voids. I discovered this whilst drilling and modifying a hifi cabinet.
IIRC they were taken to task with their advertising over this and had to 'amend' the claims. Perhaps someone from CA can confirm this?
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>> We did it all online.
I will next time, I was in the area* and wanted to check out the quality.
*We were checking out Barker and Stonehouse. Now there is a really weird assortment of furniture.
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Won't be buying from them again in a hurry then.
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Where we lived precluded popping to the shop for a look in all honesty. We now live within 40 minutes of Chester's "Furniture Village" - too many shops too much choice. We popped there recently to spy out a new corner unit - just too much information. The next purchase was a Stressless Chair - researched online it was bought from a family run shop on Anglesey, for the same price as online retailers and delivered at no charge.
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Have a look at Roseland Furniture online, Vietnamese (IIRC) made, good quality and really good value, we've bought two small cupboard units, very well made, the centre sections of the tops are apparently veneered, though you wouldn't know it, with solid edging. Not your master craftsman ultimate in quality though very good at brilliant prices and very well packaged when delivered. No idea on sustainability though the website might advise.
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During the past 9 months I’ve cleared all sorts of stuff through auction houses...decluttering for my Mother and deceased Aunt. Some amazing bargains at auction houses on furniture, even with the high commissions + vat.
Several weeks ago when I injured my back a neighbour friend of mine was decluttering. I bought a solid wood, partly fabric trimmed rocking chair off him for £35. At the time I couldn’t bear to sit down in one place, and had to kneel to eat and watch tv! The gentle rocking motion made the pain bearable.
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>> At the time I couldn’t bear to sit down in one place, and had to kneel
>> to eat and watch tv! The gentle rocking motion made the pain bearable.
Were you friends sympathetic, or did they find it difficult to conceal their amusement?
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Of course they were sympathetic. I’ve never previously had a back problem, but fortunately it’s now ok.
I did ask if the rocking chair came with a selection of jumpers.
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just bought a chest of drawers from Mobel oak, looks good stuff at reasonable prices!
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Ooh-er. The filter doesn't mind "c o c k" but doesn't like "a r s e".
Last edited by: Focal Point on Wed 3 Jan 18 at 12:29
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If you are tempted to buy ask for the item in front of you to be delivered. The answer will probably be "no" and the version you get likely won't be nearly as well finished.
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>> Ooh-er. The filter
Give it a rest. It's getting quite boring now. No, I lie, it became boring back in 2007.
Last edited by: VxFan on Wed 3 Jan 18 at 12:56
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If people are worried about sustainability would something like this be a good idea?
www.homedit.com/cardboard-furniture/
Anyone bought anything like this before?
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Sorry to contribute to your boredom, Dave.
It was merely an off-the-cuff reaction.
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If you want genuine solid wood furniture, do as we did and buy Ercol, used on eBay. We have all ours in light elm.
We have a free standing corner cabinet, a nest of three tables, a magazine rack a corner TV cabinet, a dining table and chairs plus a nice sideboard. New - many thousands of pounds. Eg. the nearest equivalent sideboard is around two grand: used
, it was £350.
Last edited by: Roger. on Wed 3 Jan 18 at 21:29
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It’s appreciating as well Roger; I bought a lightly refurbished blonde Ercol Studio Couch for our study around 10 years ago, partly for sentimental reasons (my Grandfather liked Ercol furniture and they had quite a lot of it) and partly because it was perfect for the study. £350 on eBay. They’re now well over £1k. The right mid 20th century furniture seems, at the moment, to be in demand!
rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.co.uk%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F272962021545
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All the furniture in our parlour is dark wood. Mostly by Providence Mill of Hyde. Excellent quality. A free-standing corner display unit, a tv/dvd cabinet, a side table in the alcove with drawer, a lifting top record player cabinet and a nest of three side tables. No coffee table, I'd only fall over it !
I also have a Georgian bow-fronted corner wall cupboard which we had in a corner but it dominated the room. I've been trying to sell it but no luck. I thought about auction and sent photos to Bonhams. They said, rather snootily, I thought " About " £150/200 Sir...but it is not the sort of thing we would wish to sell " That told me then !
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>> If you want genuine solid wood furniture, do as we did and buy Ercol,
My parents had a pair of Ercol fireside chairs bought in the fifties. They lasted into current millennium to go to saleroom when Mum downsized and left the West Riding in 2003.
They're probably still extant today complete with marks from me teething on ends of arms.
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We 'inherited' (well given and weren't allowed to refuse) an Ercol sofa and two chairs. Had cushions recovered and they are still in the conservatory. And the rubber strapping needing replacing around 7 years ago so had those made up and fitted myself.
For older people, they are a bit low.
Last edited by: rtj70 on Wed 3 Jan 18 at 22:45
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There's a pair of Ercol chairs here. One is a rocker. Had them years and years, must have 5 moves and were close to being got rid of this time around. But they're still here...
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Remember Alan Clark's sneer at the kind of people who buy their furniture?
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>> Remember Alan Clark's sneer at the kind of people who buy their furniture?
>>
Directed toward Michael Heseltine, wasn't it?
"He had to buy his own furniture". In other words, he didn't come from a family where one inherited the ancestral pile and all the furniture in it.
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Turn his hand to carpentry? I never knew.
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Oh yes. I always thought it was an odd sort of insult, there seems to be more merit in buying your own than having it given.
8< SNIP! You know why
Last edited by: VxFan on Thu 4 Jan 18 at 10:11
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deleted. Please give it a rest.
Last edited by: VxFan on Thu 4 Jan 18 at 10:24
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>>If you want genuine solid wood furniture, do as we did and buy Ercol, used on eBay. We have all ours in light elm.
"Solid" may include hardwood laminations (not plywood) for cupboard doors, which might otherwise sag. Chair legs and backs were usually beech, seats elm.
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I'm not really knowledgeable about furniture, is ercol the name of a manufacturer or a style or something else?
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Google "Lucian Ercolani". In my few weeks with the company (next door to G-Plan in High Wycombe in those days) one of his sons, also Lucian, ran production, the other - Barry - the commercial aspects.
Ercolani Senior was a Salvationist and the company a very honest one. In manning the showroom we were instructed to emphasise the "solid wood" mystique but also to point out the laminations.
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Thanks ambo, not heard of them before.
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My parents dining room in the 60's was furnished in Ercol , table , six chairs and sideboard.Beautiful design and solid wood. I wish we still had it now but it was sold by my brother for a pittance when my mother died in 1985.
It was expensive at the time but the old man had a fiver bet on Nicolaus Silver in the Grand National and it came in at 66/1.
After my mother asked him in fury where he had got a fiver to put on a horse he only got out of hot water by buying her the Ercol....
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When my mother died she had brown Ercol expanding dinning table, 6 chairs (two carvers) and two dressers.
Couldnt give it away, no-one wants brown furniture
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>> Couldnt give it away, no-one wants brown furniture
Not even to anyone colour blind? ;)
Last edited by: VxFan on Fri 5 Jan 18 at 12:54
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We had similar issues when MIL passed on. Hospice shops take loads of stuff, BUT if the cushions etc aren’t flame retardant they don’t want to know. Such a dreadful waste,ðŸ™
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Assuming Zero 's mum's Ercol was dark brown not the lighter elm or blonde finish it was typical of the massive difference in prices due to colour. With a following wind it is possible to get £500-£1000+ for an Ercol dining set with extending or large table and 6/8 chairs if in their lighter finishes. The same in brown might struggle to make £150 or less.
Might seem worth the effort to take the brown finish off and get back to the lighter wood but it seems Ercol used a water based stain before the top finish and this soaks into the wood so attempts to strip back can give very patchy result.
We still hang onto "brown" though... both medium oak and Georgian mahogany.... but not keen on the generic brown varnish type finish of say 1940s on where the wood could be anything underneath.
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Our own Ercol dining set is about 5 years old and has an elm top. Otherwise it was originally of light beech but that is now markedly darker, although it is in a room with central heating only; solid fuel appliances, even closed stoves, can cause browning.
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We bought two substantial items from them a couple of years ago - a very large sideboard with dresser above, and a smaller sideboard. (The Galway models - still available.)
The former was delivered in two parts on separate days - their cock-up. When the top part arrived, it was slightly damaged, having had the back stoved in. I decided I couldn't be a***d to send it back and repaired it with wood glue - so successfully you can't see.
We did visit a showroom before ordering online.
The styling is indeed a bit clunky and crude - the door fitting especially. I did pack some of the hinges to get things to line up better, but generally the furniture looks good and has provided excellent storage in our dining-room. I've waxed it twice so far and aim to do so every year.
I take the point about the possibly dubious provenance of the timber and the depletion of forests.
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Furniture - Bromptonaut
