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Ikea (discuss.tchncs.de)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/greentext@lemmy.ml
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[–] 23 points 3 years ago (4 children)

I can spend a good deal of time criticizing Ikea but on one thing I can't: their furniture is incredibly easy to copy and upgrade into a better version with minimal effort.

I took the time to break down, piece by piece, in a crazy exercise of reverse engineering, a love seat, to understand how they had designed and put together the thing.

After that, I sat to run the "numbers" and realised I could make it cheaper, sturdier and add storage room to it, with minimal modifications to the basic plan.

It was very interesting to discover.

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  • [–] 16 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    I mean sure but then it sounds like you’re already a woodworker with the proper tools. Most people aren’t that.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago

    I'm not. Far from that.

    In fact, I live in a country where being a carpenter is not even a hobby and traditional, small scale carpentry shops are very uncommon.

    We had a very strong push to shift the country towards services and white collar professions during the 80s and 90s.

    For myself, whatever little "carpentry" I know comes from personal curiosity. What I do is use the services of a carpenter to do what I can't, which is usually the cutting and rough fitting of parts, and I do the finishing, like sanding, stain, varnish, etc, which is also the most expensive and labor intense but requires less tools.

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