My kitchen table is from Ikea, it's solid wood. My Poang chair from Ikea came with a 10 year guarantee and I expect it to last longer than that. This idea that everything that comes out of Ikea is barely going to make it home is nonsense.
Of course if you buy a side table for £6 then you can't expect it to last long. That isn't representative of the whole though.
IKEA is like McDonald's of furniture, there's a place for it, but like the McDonald's fancy burger options if you're going for that you'll have significantly better options for a bit more money
Only if you value your time at 0. If you value your time at more than that, the time it takes to get a contractor and back and forth with him to agree on a design etc makes it more expensive, since with Ikea you pretty much opt into a generic solution of one-size-fits-all.
I agree it's not for everyone; though I wouldn't say it's the McDonalds of furniture – this would IMO be Poco (https://www.poco.de/); also I'm saying that as someone who doesn't eat McDonalds :-D
Depends a lot on the line. Eventually one figures it out.
I love the Hemnes line for example: the design suits my tastes and it's all 100% wood – from the smell of it I guess pine.
Regarding the paint job, that can be the case, though I wouldn't know as I normally get them in raw wood. Sometimes I overpaint them myself with a different color.
There are different tiers of furniture at IKEA. Cheap lines made of particle board. More pricey ones made of good quality solid wood. Middle priced stuff that's somewhere in between.
Depends entirely on the quality of the welds!
An old rented flat had metal dining chairs. Eventually the welds on the back rests broke and they started popping off. Nothing I can do about that, as much as I would like an excuse to buy a tig welder...
My parents have wooden furniture which has been in the family for 100+ years and repaired many times.
And I'm working on a desk that I picked up 15 years ago and it's still in great condition even after daily use.
With IKEA you get what you pay for. If you want quality IKEA furniture, you can get it. But it won't be that cheap.
Good luck breaking the steel beam bed frame :)
Ikea furniture is not wood it's crap particleboards, cheap plastic, etc. - repairing that looks terrible. Their paint quality is crap as well - I bought a work desk that would scratch from moving a monitor on it and has wear marks from resting my hands. Same problem with kitchen table in a rental apartment - got scratched up from regular use and no way to repair it. Hinges on sliding doors would never stop correctly and scratch up the other door, loose/flimsy feeling mechanism in the first place.
I do have their standing desk - it fit the home office space perfectly and it was the only good delivery option during corona lockdown - I'm happy with that so far. In general IKEA is my least favourite furniture option but sometimes they are the most practical solution.