Shelby's Life and Whatnot

Baby Furniture

So yesterday we went out looking at baby furniture just to see what was out there on the market. We first stopped by our local boutique-ish store (the ish is because the store is actually pretty large, but they carry higher-end brands than Babies R Us) to look at all the matching crib and bedroom sets. We were pretty unimpressed. The quality seemed "meh" and none of the styles really caught my eye. We both noticed that the display furniture was pretty dinged up. Granted this is display furniture, but it's supposed to be in a child's room, and if it can't handle being on display in a store, how is it going to stand up to an actual child or two? I have read other reviews on the internet and this seems to be a primary complaint as well (soft wood that dings easily). Although I think my favorite part were the signs on every crib saying, "For display purposes only." I guess too many customers were just coming in and popping their babies in a random crib for a little nap while they shopped.

We then hit Ikea--one of my favorite stores. Ikea had a collection we liked, the Leksvik collection, and you can never beat the price at Ikea. I've owned a lot of Ikea furniture throughout the years and quality does vary. Ikea's solid wood products really are great products. They're very sturdy, hard to damage, and have withstood several moves. Their laminate pressboard products are less reliable. They look great, but if you ever plan to move them, you really run the risk of them falling apart (which is not a problem if they're going to stay in the same room you started them off in).

Bottom line was that we felt the quality of the Ikea Leksvik (which is solid wood) was just as good, if not better than the quality of the sets at the boutique store, at a fraction of the price. Since we weren't totally taken by any of the styles in the boutique store (and haven't found any online we liked) we figured we might as well just save ourselves the money and go with Ikea.

We didn't stop there, however. Our next thought was buying children's furniture from a regular furniture store with the idea that it would be higher quality than the "baby" furniture and would last throughout childhood. Well, we visited 4-5 other stores and only one of them even made children's furniture, so we struck out there. Then we looked at adult furniture, but all of the styles were very, well, adult. In particular, they were adult-sized, so you'd have like a dresser where the child couldn't reach the top drawer until they hit high school.

Anyway, I think Ikea is our choice. Ikea also betrayed us on our tv stand. We've been looking for a new tv stand to accomodate a larger tv, but we'd like it to match the rest of our living room set. Unfortunately, they discontinued the stain that the rest of the set is in, so while they have the perfect stand, it's in the wrong stain. On the tag in the store, it actually listed our stain, so we got all excited thinking maybe they'd brought it back. Alas, when we looked in the computer, it told us to ask a sales associate for help. We did, and the associate said it had a product number but no inventory and no indication of when it might come into stock. So the good news is that it seems that they will actually be making the stand we want. The bad news is that it's not clear when that will happen.