About Do-It-Yourself Furniture

History

• There are many different types, materials and styles used to design furniture. Egyptians built their homes and furniture from stone and people from the Middle Ages made their homes and furniture from wood. Old drawings show us different kinds of stone and wood furniture, from benches to thrones.

  In 1900-1920 America, the do-it-yourself, or arts and crafts, school of furniture making spread across the country. Do-it-yourself, or DIY, furniture is very distinct as the craftsman pay close attention to detail. Most of it was handmade, although sometimes tools were used.

Benefits

• When creating your own furniture or DIY furniture, you can add a personal touch to your piece. Not to mention, you can pay careful attention to small details and customize it exactly to your own taste or closely match your current home decor. You also can make it eco-friendly by using (or not using) certain chemical based products. Plus, you can measure and build it to fit perfectly into a desired spot in your home. These options are not always available at furniture stores.

  Saving money is another reason that creating your own furniture is better than buying from a store. Retail prices can sometimes be very expensive for certain famous brands. But buy doing it yourself, you can create a piece that resembles it and for far less money. You also have the satisfaction of knowing it was handcrafted by none other than yourself.

  Creating furniture as a career is another option when one gets involved in DIY furniture. This furniture can be created, advertised and sold. When friends and neighbors see a piece of furniture that you have created, they may want to pay you to make one for them.

Significance

• Before modern tools and electronic tools were invented, some other ancient civilizations created their furniture using nothing but their hands and tools created from rocks, wood and clay. This furniture would be worth a very significant amount of money today if one wished to buy a piece for their home. This is another reason that creating your own furniture is significant. It's your personal work created with your sweat and blood.

Additional Information

• Sometimes instead of creating furniture from scratch, people take old pieces of furniture that are either run-down or out of style and personalize them with fabrics, new fixtures, armrests and legs, or they may even tear the furniture completely apart to create new pieces. For example, an old run-down chair can have the back torn off and serve as a small side table or a stool. Another example would be to remove the cushions from dining room chairs, repaint them, replace the stuffing and re-cover the seats.

Warnings

• When creating your own furniture, it's important that you study other pieces of furniture in order to recognize the support boards that they use to hold certain amounts of weight. For example, some chairs cannot hold more than 225 pounds and some tables are the same.

  Also, when working with power tools or any tools for that matter, always practice extreme caution. Wear goggles to protect your eyes from dust or wood chips, and make sure your workspace is well-lighted and ventilated.