I'm going to take a different view of this for people to consider:
My dad collected a lot of stuff. He wasn't a hoarder because most of the stuff had value, but he had so many collections: Coins, stamps, cigarette cards, movie posters, movie memorabilia, LPs, CDs, DVDs, so many other things.
When he died, I had to deal with it. All of it. And I am not a material goods sort of person overall, so I didn't want most of it. It took me years to sell off what I could. We couldn't even sell off most of the DVDs, LPs and CDs. They ended up either given to friends or to thrift stores. I'm still dealing with it even though he died in 2016. Who wants a life-sized ceramic bust of Charlie Chaplin (dog for scale)?
Did I make money from selling it off? Absolutely. It even helped when we needed some money. But it really wasn't worth the near-decade of stress I've had to go through to deal with this stuff and there really is no end in sight.
And now my mom is in her 80s and she has a house full of antique furniture like this which, again, I have no interest in (and no room for at this point).
Do not make your kids deal with this stuff unless they really want to. I said I would deal with it because my mom is just not good at this stuff and my brother lives too far away, but if I would do it again, I would either hire someone to deal with it all for a percentage and wash my hands of the whole thing or tell my dad that he needs to sell it off before he dies.
Instead of having a few items from my dad to really treasure, I ended up with a bunch of shit I didn't want to deal with and it makes the stuff I do want to keep, most of which wouldn't be worth a huge amount anyway, have much less sentimental value to me.
The amount I spent on college versus the amount that they spent on college
their pension versus my pension
cost of their home versus cost of my home
amount of adults in their household that had to work to support a family versus amount of adults in my household that have to work to support a family
Their CEO pay gap versus my CEO pay gap
number of summers where they took a week-long family vacation versus number of summers that I took a week-long family vacation
cost of a family trip to Disney for them versus no fucking way I could even consider affording that shit, let alone paying an overall subscription for quicker lines and somehow also individual extra charges per ride to get on those rides in less than three hours.
I've actually never found a name of an IKEA product to be fake. They can be obscure, odd, and some would normally be split. But never truly fake. Though, FEJKA does mean "to fake". Which is an honest name for a series of fake plants.
My father has reached an age where money means very little to him and his interest in "proper" furniture has skyrocketed. He will go out and buy a simple table for $3k-5k and tell me how the same model was bought for the American embassy in year x, or send me links to matching chairs by designer y.
I've yet to see a piece of furniture that's worth twice the price of what you can find on IKEA. A table needs to be water/stain resistant and that's about that. /rant
The one on the left took 5 months to make by monks in Tibet slave camps brought to you by China. The one on the right was made in 437.23 seconds by a Tormak 7000 series CNC discombobulizer 2000.
one is significantly 1) more useful and 2) does not cost $4000 to move next time the shitty apartment you’re renting gets sold to be “renovated” into luxury (cardboard) condos.
The one on the left is built to last longer, and is practically timeless. The one on the right will probably fall apart after a few years of use, and eschews fucntion for a more "modern" design that will inevitably fall out of style.
(Please correct me if I'm wrong about any of this.)
Meh.. I'm not the best woodworker but I'm not terrible. I'd hope by that time I can at least leave them a decent handcrafted stained table or chair or something.
No giant frescoes but nice routered edges on solid wood with a good burn+stain and a thick layer of lacquer.