Preparing to Buy Furniture Online
There are many important aspects to consider when preparing to buy furniture online. This guide will attempt to answer some of the questions you may have concerning furniture, especially purchasing online. Once upon a time, no one would consider purchasing furniture on the internet. However, times and furniture have changed. In this day and age, the internet is a part of everyday life. Whether you’re an internet newbie or a seasoned veteran, you simply can’t ignore the vast selections and rock bottom prices available at your fingertips. Whether it’s noon or midnight, you can purchase furniture from down the street or in Asia. All of this selection and endless possibilities lead us to need some help in preparing and educating ourselves about our online purchasing.
First and foremost, you must know the company that you wish to do business with intimately. Some furniture dealers are simply brokers who act as a middleman between you and the furniture manufacturer. While this is certainly a way to save money, you cannot forget about customer service and company reliability. Firstly, I recommend that you investigate that company where they do business, online. A simple google search of the company name paired with “review” will often bring up a wealth of information both positive and negative.
Next, I recommend that you feel out their website. This is similar to getting a feel for a physical store. You likely wouldn’t do business with a dark and dirty back room filled with shady characters, and the internet is no different. A professional website is filled with information and product. The links should be working and navigation of the website should be intuitive and make common sense. A website with very little information and dead links is no better than the previously mentioned shady back room. It’s not a place for respectable internet business. Alternatively, you may consider companies that are doing business with a “middleman” such as ebay and amazon. These “middlemen” are very concerned with the private consumer and vet their prospective business partners. Not to mention, their ratings system is a great way to get to know the company from which you are considering purchasing furniture.
Once you have done your homework and properly investigated the reliability, customer service, and website of your prospective furniture dealer you are now ready to think about what type of furniture that you want. Furniture styles range from contemporary to antique. Do you like clean lines and shiny finishes, or more of a distressed antique look? The options are endless and you must consider what you have in your home now. A glass and metal dining table, for instance, may not be appropriate in a wood and leather filled room. You would more likely want to consider a dining set made of wood to live in harmony with your existing natural elements. The opposite is also true. A room full of man-made materials such as metals and plastics is not conducive to a wood dining table. Much of this is common sense, but we simply need to slow down and consider what we already own in coordination with the new products that are available. Another consideration is how will this furniture be used. Will children be using and abusing your furniture? If this is true, you need to think about the durability and stain resistance of your prospective purchase. Furniture with fancy scrolls and small breakable pieces may not be the best possible purchase for someone with children frequently in the room.
So you’ve found an online furniture dealer that you like. You’ve also thought about what would look good surrounded by your existing furniture and home decor. It’s now time to consider the construction and materials available to you. I want to talk about wood furniture as it’s often the most complicated and the most misunderstood. The first “dirty” word I want to teach you is veneer. Veneers have gotten a bad reputation very simply due to a lack of knowledge of furniture construction and some mass furniture marketers attempts at cutting costs. The first thing to know is that not all veneers are created equally. A veneer is a thin slice of “something” over something else. Some veneers are much like paper. If you happen to get a droplet of water on them they are destroyed. Other veneers are made of real hardwood such as oak or walnut. These veneers are sliced more thickly and bonded to another material so as to actually add longevity to your furniture piece as compared to solid wood. The fanciest most expensive furniture on the market today is made using real wood veneers. This is because of several problems with solid wood due to technological advances and nature. Solid wood is vulnerable to humidity. It lives and breathes, expanding and contracting within your particular environment. In the old days, this wasn’t a problem. Furniture in Kentucky was made using trees from Kentucky. Never leaving its natural environment, this wood was adjusted and therefore not as vulnerable to splitting, warping and cracking due to humidity and temperature changes. Technology has made it possible to build the furniture in one part of the world and transport it to another. This leaves us with wood that is sometimes not adjusted to its final destination. Veneers allow us to make furniture that can travel anywhere and stand up to the test of time. Veneers also give us the ability to create table tops with fabulous “starburst” patterns or other similar decoration that isn’t possible using solid planks of wood. It’s also important to point out that many pieces of furniture that use veneers also have solid components. A veneer table top, for instance, likely has a solid wood base. A desk with a veneer top often has solid wood pieces framing the contruction. That way whatever you are likely to hit in normal use is solid wood. Again, this is how the best furniture is built. You must be certain to look at these things before you make your online furniture purchase. I promised you more dirty words and I won’t let you down. Next, I want to teach you about MDF. Remember that I told you that a veneer is a slice of something over something else. Well, MDF is often that something else. MDF is quite possibly the most widely wrongfully disrespected word in furniture. MDF is a board made up of many scraps of wood bonded together. The problem is that many associate this with particle board. MDF and particle board could hardly be more different. MDF is compacted into a dense piece without much distinction between the individual components from which it’s made. Particle board is how it sounds, obvious particles of wood that are easily broken apart from one another. Furniture you find at discount mass consumer stores is sometimes made from particle board. Some of the best furniture in the world is often made from a real wood veneer bonded to MDF. Impervious to splitting, warping or cracking, this furniture will last many years. All of this is not to say that solid wood doesn’t have it’s place. As I’ve stated, table bases are often solid, as is the framing and general construction of many veneered pieces. Often, mission style furniture is made with a technique known as quarter-sawing. In layman terms this is cutting a plank of wood into pieces and bonding it in such a way that the grains stay tight, so there’s no splitting and it’s very solid and long lasting. You will often read this as “100% solid oak, quarter-sawn”. This is a popular, quality method of furniture production. Also, solid wood is very important in drawer construction. Quality furniture will never be made without solid wood drawers. This is definitely a question to ask your prospective furniture dealer when purchasing anything with drawers. Quality drawers are always dovetailed. Dovetailing is a method of drawer construction that joins the front and back pieces of the drawer with some method of interlocking. This is opposed to cheaper methods which glue and staple your drawers together. This is one of those hidden pieces of construction that determines whether your piece is for today or truly heirloom quality.
Of course one can’t think about buying furniture online without considering your different shipping options. Every dealer is different. They use different carriers, deliverers and methods of shipping. First, curb-side shipping is quite possibly the cheapest way possible of getting furniture to your door. In this method, your furniture dealer will arrange for your furniture to acccompany many other items on a semi-truck with drops and stops all over the country. When they arrive at your location the freight carrier will put your furniture on your driveway or curb and it’s your responsibility from that point. It is very important to inspect all boxes immediately. Any damage to a box must, at a minimum, be noted on the paperwork the driver will have you sign. The best option is to open the boxes and inspect all pieces for any damage, again noting anything that you find on the driver’s paperwork. This can be the difference between you footing the bill for a repair or replacement shipping or the freight company handling this cost. So check your delivery carefully, regardles of any complaints or impatience that you may encounter with your freight carrier. The next method of delivery might cost more money, but will save you a lot of time and hassle. This is called white-glove delivery. Your online furniture dealer will often arrange for your shipment to join a truckload, as in the previous example, but when it gets to your area it will be unloaded at a local delivery company. This delivery company will insepct the freight and bring it all of the way into your house, unboxed and setup. This doesn’t mean that it’s not important to still inspect your furniture. You never know if your local delivery
