FYI, a quality frame starts with 5/4 kiln dried hardwood, double doweled with screws and glued, with corner blocks in all corners screwed & glued. Either 8-way hand tied or sinuous wire springs. To most manufacturers this cost them around 200.00. Quality padding meaning high density foam or fiber over the springs, arms, back and outsides adds about 30.00. Seat cushions should be in a woven ticking wraped with 1 1/2 to 2 ounce fiber or you can opt for fiber/down envelopes. Choose at least 1.8 pound density HR foam or a marshall spring unit. These usually cost around 35.00 to 50.00 per seat cushion. Backs should also be a woven ticking with at least 3 dividers filled with fine denier conjugated 100% fiber or a 50/50% mixture of this fiber with feathers/down. The cost is usually between 25.00 to 35.00 per cushion. Labor and indirect expensives adds around 40.00 per seat. Always calculate these numbers as chairs =1 seat, loveseats 2 =seats and sofas 3=seats and sectionals add additional corner seat. Add these numbers together then times 2 to get what a retail store should pay the manufacturer excluding the cost of the fabric or leather. Quality fabrics wholesale to manufacturers price starts around 8.00 per yard and leather around 4.00 per sq. ft. Same rules apply here take these numbers times the amount of material needed times 2 and add the previous figures and this is what the retailer pays the manufacturer. The retailer usually mark this up 100% then adds freight cost around 75.00 per seat,depending on the distance. This will give you a starting point on what to expect to pay. Or you could make the trip to NC and shop the factory outlets and save around 50%. BTW, Ethen Allen, Lazy-Boy, Ashley, Broyhill most their frames are plywood. One easy way to tell a quality upholstery is to lift up the seat cushion and it should be thickly padded under the cushions and you will not be able to feel any springs. That works only when they use springs and not elastic webbing, something you should avoid also. Hope this helps.

If you can fit it into your schedule, a trip to NC would be well worth it. We looked at a H&M couch at Bakers in Manhattan that was going for $8K. I thought that was crazy, and investigated where we could get the best bang for our buck. We went to NC and paid under $3K for the same couch.

Stickley Audi in White Plains offers some very nice furniture. They have bi-annual sales. Contact the store to find out the normal discount, and the discount during the sales (it may only be a 5% difference).

My parents had four children and we all grew up with Kittinger furniture. We learned what truly excellent quality was, as well as respect for fine furnishings. We did not plop or jump on furniture... it just was not allowed. My son grew up with the same type of furniture, and he knows not to plop or jump (he's now 18 and 6'5" tall, so abusing the furniture would have been easy for him).

As you have already figured out, you can pay for higher end furniture once and be done with it, or spend less now and spend more in the long run. Neither process is wrong. If you change your style frequently lower end furniture can be the right decision for you.

If you decide you would like higher-end furniture, y ou may want to start piece by piece instead of an entire room. Buy some "better" casegoods and less expensive chairs and couch if that is what the current budget allows. As a piece needs replacement you then add a higher quality piece. Few people can afford to go out and furnish an entire home in high end furniture all at once. It is either a piece-by-piece or room-by-room accumulation.

Good luck. :-)

The "custom" part is where most of the $17K went.

Any time the shop has to deviate from their standard patterns (longer, shorter, taller, etc) they have to re-set their machinery and it becomes a labor-intensive job.

Maybe her fabric was organically grown cotton, hand-woven in the Alps by elves ... and maybe you would prefer a sturdy microfiber suedecloth from a big textile mill.

No, normal people don't spend 17k on a couch. Or even half that. Or even 1/4 that!

The most I've spent on one piece is $3500 for a media unit, a custom piece by The Custom Shoppe, and only because we had to find something that was a custom size to fit into our narrow niche. And even then I was freaking out. We used our entire tax return for it. I'm sure that someone "rich" could have spent 17k on a similar piece from some tootsy fancy shop, but I guarantee that they didn't get any more for their money than I did.

The trick is finding a high-end look at a price you are comfortable with.

"Maybe her fabric was organically grown cotton, hand-woven in the Alps by elves"

I think Irish sofas (Clover Furniture is a good one) are made by leprechauns - much better than elf quality. Better to spend more now on leprechaun quality than have to replace that Swiss elf couch 5 years from now. Just sayin'.

You can get a good quality sectional for $1500, depending on the size and whether or not it reclines. Recliners cost more money of course.

I disagree that you shouldn't be able to feel the springs. We let people feel our springs everyday to show them the quality. You should have medium density foam cushions, that are dacron wrapped,and the back cushions should have zippers so you can add more fiberfill if you want to.
You should have hardwood frames and steel springs that are closer together on the ends and you should not be able to stick you hand into the sofa when you slip it between the seat and the arms.

I hope this helps.

Here is a link that might be useful: Klaussner Furniture