2008-05-13 15:17:15.855287+00 by Dan Lyke 2 comments
It was a busy weekend. We made some forward progress on the front door trim, finished up a limestone and fir table for the back yard, and set up a lattice for some morning glories and other climbing flowers (although it's hard to see the lattice in front of that ugly fence in the pictures).
[ related topics: Photography Furniture ]
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#Comment Re: made: 2008-05-14 00:52:30.653959+00 by: Nancy
And check out the custom furniture! Found this hunting for a LOCKING liquor cabinet...his start at just $16,800....
wasn't sure where to put the link/comment so am just tucking it here -
#Comment Re: made: 2008-05-14 16:46:19.680765+00 by: Dan Lyke
Oooh, some cool stuff there. I too like that $17k wine cabinet.
On the price, the latest issue of Woodworking Magazine has an interesting editorial about the loss of the middle ground in tools. There used to be the cheap stuff, a middle ground of usable tools, and then the high end. Now, probably because we've lost the market for the hobbiests who'd use mid-range tools, we've lost that middle ground, it goes from Campbell-Hausfield and Ryobi straight to Festool![[Wiki]](/adbanners/lookingglass.png){kind=small}
, with little in the middle.
I think that furniture is largely the same: On the low end, Ikea is probably as good as any of the other various low-end vendors, especially the Thomasville's and others whose vendors make their money by selling you ridiculous pricing plans, and on the high end it's all custom built stuff that takes into account the character of the individual pieces of wood, and it's hard to find anything in the middle.
It wasn't that front door trim alone that took us both Saturday and Sunday afternoon, we were working on the rails and various other things related to it, but as we were doing it we were making decisions about what knots and grain features went where, and which boards we were going to use, and I started thinking about what it'd take to reproduce that commercially. That can't happen at the low end, and the market's small enough that if you're going to do it commercially, after one or two you can be charging high end prices.