One of the things that undermines the used furniture market for higher-end furniture is storage. Larger pieces often get stored somewhere for a period before they're sold, but unlike veneered MDF, solid wood pieces are vulnerable to get warped by rapid changes in moisture, particularly if they get temporarily stored in non-climate-controlled storage facilities. I wonder if there's a business opportunity for some kind of efficient middleman that takes high end furniture off people's hands and stores it properly while facilitating resale.

There are all sorts of people who run small businesses like this, who often sell on craigslist and a shopify store. I bought one in his storage warehouse, nice guy.

This has been how I've largely addressed the missing middle issue for myself— I'm not up for $2000+ pieces, but when I want to do better than flat-pack trash, getting something for $300-500 second hand seems like a solid way to go.

Dealing with bed bugs and other pests has made me apprehensive about purchasing used furniture. It's a shame because you can usually find great deals on FB Marketplace, Craigslist, Kijiji etc.

Solution to this is to leave it in a quarantine room for up to 5 months (if you have the space).

Though and I say this anecdotally, when I moved back to the States I ended up refurnishing most of my house using street finds. We're talking like 10 different furniture finds include a futon frame (we bought a new mattress). Only 1 of those was upolsteres but was in great condition.

No bed bugs, I got lucky.

Where is it a cost-saving solution to pay for a quarantine room that will be unused for other purposes for up to 5 months, all so you can save a few hundred dollars by buying used furniture?

It's not unless you've got the space, I have a shed I put stuff in and let anything on it starve to death. You have to plan on for it

Bed bugs can go for ages without feeding; the only real way to kill them en masse is extreme heat—e.g. the dryer. There are services that come and seal your house up and then essentially pump 125F heat into it, to kill the bedbugs (bugs @ 120F, eggs @ 125F). If suppose if your shed gets to ~125F in the summer, should be good. Point being: heat > time-since-last-meal for bedbugs. (unfortunately I am speaking from experience)

Edit/addendum: The bed-bug-sniffing-dog, while a very good boy, is a total scam.

Thank you for saying it. Bed bugs can go literally three years without eating. Using the mixed-toxin (different bedbug poison for each treatment, minimum 2 treatments) approach usually works, but the only way to definitely kill existing bugs and eggs is to get every part of an object to over 125f. AFAIK, 125f is the instant-death point. That is, any bug or egg the hits 125f at all is dead. Otoh, 113f requires 90 minutes of exposure before the bugs are killed, and the eggs require 118f for 90 minutes.

You can definitely find nice stuff made out of maple on Facebook marketplace if you're patient.

I live on the west coast, and sometimes visit family in the Midwest. The quality and quantity of used furniture available over there is so much better.

I attribute this to much of California only becoming as densely populated as it is (which is to say, not) after around the 1950s. While there are families who have lived here for five or more generations, they’re by far the exception rather than the norm. The overwhelming majority of people who are here have comparatively shallow roots, didn’t bring furniture with them when they came here, and even if they have access to good furniture from elsewhere, it’s cheap and good enough to go to ikea.

So we purchased a couch three times: once from IKEA, again at a thrift shop, and once more from Rooms to Go (R2G).

R2G was, by far, the best option. I know that the sofa is "cheap" compared to what a "quality" couch would cost. (I paid $3200 for a three piece sectiona.) However, going into the showroom, having oodles of oodles of styles we could sit on, and giving the salesperson my card and having them take care of literally everything else (down to installation and placement) was amazing. The couch also looks great and is comfortable as hell.

The thrift shop couch was the second-best experience. Terrible selection, but we got lucky in finding a couch we liked. As it happens, the couch was an Ashley Furniture couch, which is kind of like R2G. We had to move it in ourselves, which was extremely annoying. But it is still standing and is still a great couch. (It's my office couch now!)

The IKEA couch was by far the worst. Buying the couch was easy, of course. Putting it together sucked, but whatever. The quality of the couch, though, was a disaster. Super lumpy seats within months of use, color stains discolored the couch permanently, even after cleaning, looseness, etc. I wouldn't buy couches from them again.

That said, we have tables from them that are still great. So maybe IKEA for small furniture you don't care about is the move.

I almost bought an IKEA couch without trying it,but I managed to buy one at a local store for not much more. A few weeks later I found my self at IKEA and tried out the couch. I was so glad I didn't buy it, all of them were so uncomfortable.

I got my sofabed from Ikea. It looks good to me and is an absolute joy to lie on. The few guests that have slept on it gave 5/5 reviews, firm feel and well slept.

Granted, it's just six months old so I don't know yet how it'll hold up. But I'm very happy this far.