And I furnished my entire apartment in IKEA - literally, everything except the mattress - for about $5 grand. Try doing that with handmade pieces.

And when it wears out, or I get tired of it, I'll put the old stuff on craigslist free stuff and get new.

The point of which is, we live in a constantly changing culture. This extends to my apartment as well, and I am not sorry about it.

As a native of the Rochester, NY -- the "birthplace" of Wegmans, I have always been amazed by the company's progressive attitude. I had many high school friends who got college scholarships from Wegmans -- any employee was eligible -- the caveat is that they were expected to work a during vacations and summer holidays. But it was well worth it, since they paid as well as any other job that college students tend to get when they are not in class.

Not to mention their efforts to buy produce locally, which as an ecologist, I find particularly impressive.

Now that I have children, I also LOVE that they provide free babysitting for children over 3 (while you shop). It is well worth the slightly higher cost of groceries (mostly meats).

Well done, Wegmans! You make a local girl proud and you have my loyalty.

The community in New Hampshire died out, I remember the last three women who gave guided tours of the place. My step-grandfather had a farm about 10 miles away and accumulated tons of Shaker furniture over the course of his lifetime but unfortunately I'm not a direct heir.

But the one in Sabath Lake, Maine, appears to be going strong. It remains a working farm and is noted as a exit on the turnpike. The advertisement I quoted for Shaker furniture, "Made for China but not in China" appears at the Portland Jetport.

My father's family comes from Salem, MA. That was one of the principal ports for the 19th century China trade. We, like everyone other family which hailed from Salem, have scads of China which was used to balance the boats on their return trips.

Not ready for that yet. I did spend several months trying to find the right bookcase for my dining room in a recessed wall. Building one is prohibitively expensive and the models down at a cabinet shop were the wrong size. Finally I found what I something that worked at the local futon shop. But they only had one in stock and have ordered another two since I want three.

The woman told me for those who order the smaller stackable variety they must be purchased at one time since subsequent orders are often put out to different factories in Asia and may not align.

Now days solid wood products are prohibitively expensive so why pay high prices for veneered MDF? Lets face it, the world has changed considerably since the days before even WW2 and cheap furniture, cheap in construction materials and workmanship, is the only option for most "on a budget". And IKEA does a great job of supplying the goods. To me is seems silly to spend the earth on high end furniture and install it in a crap built house as 99% of American houses are now days. The real tragedy is the failure of the building industry to offer really high quality factory built homes at reasonable prices. So the housing fiasco has left the country with a huge amount of cheaply made disposable (but not the mortgage) junk homes, many too far from employment for practicality. So many will be bulldozed to fill the land fills along with the disposable furniture left behind by the former occupants. Where ever they go, at least they won't have to pay for shipping their stuff. It's the frontier mentality we seem to be forever cursed with. Move on to the next boom town.

I know that one, I have family who live on the other side of the 101. It's fair to point out IKEA drove a hard bargain with the city giving them a tax holiday for a specified number of years. No individual craftsman could get that.

That's the closest IKEA outlet to me. When somebody suggests going up to shop on a Saturday well, frankly, I can't imagine anything worse. The rest of the stores in that mall are also national brand-name chains and have no allure either.

I lived for 7 years with second hand furniture from Goodwill and garage sales until I could afford the expensive, Italian-made sofa, chair, table and bookcase I really wanted. They are incredibly made, beautifully designed and built to last for generations. Every time I use the furniture I get pleasure knowing they were built with quality and pride. There is something to be said for well-designed things that have gravity and soul. They are worth waiting for if you can swing it.

Aging baby boomers are feathering their empty nests with bent plywood chairs from Design Within Reach and bubble lamps fondly remembered from childhood. Their own offspring, who likely set up their first apartments with IKEA sofas and tables, are now shopping for kids' furniture inspired by midcentury design.

It doesn't seem premature to say it: For some consumers, modern is quickly becoming the new traditional. And a host of fairly new urban brands -- Williams-Sonoma's West Elm and Crate & Barrel's CB2, as well as the lesser-known Danish firm BoConcept and Canada's EQ3 -- is proliferating, setting up shop with the hope that modern-for-the-masses will prove to be a classic decorating style....

Based on the address, CB2 appears to be in the old Virgin Megastore on Sunset Blvd in Hollywood. New time I go to LA I will check it out though I'm in the aging baby boomer demographic!

You can furnish your entire house with solid wood furniture for a tiny fraction of what you paid if you are willing to do a little legwork and dont mind used stuff. Yard sales, Craigslist, thrift stores have reasonably priced solid furniture if you are willing to search it out and dont need EVERYTHING RIGHT NOW. I move often with my job, and I keep moving expenses down by buying nice stuff used, then selling it FOR THE SAME PRICE I BOUGHT IT a year later. I spend around $300-$400 and I ONLY buy well-made solid-wood furniture (try reselling your ugly sagging press-board crap).

As for good products not being available new at reasonable prices anymore, They would be if we all valued well-crafted stuff. If the demand is there, more people would find employment making nice stuff. But Americans (not so much Europeans, who have always favored good design and construction) typically dont have much aesthetic sensibility and are content to fill their spaces with crappy stuff.