I found this thread because I just got off the phone with my wife who informed me that replacement slings for our set of six Telescope chairs will be $780.00! That is a very tough pill to swallow, and like many here we weighed this heavily against just getting a cheaper set from HD, Costco, or any number of stores. Our set is about 10 years old to date (purchased summer of 2010) and the aluminum frames, table, and umbrella have held up extremely well (we do store them inside for winter though). Ultimately, I decided to stick with these and pay the exorbitant price for a few reasons: - The rest of the set is extremely high quality. I feel good each year when I pull it out of storage - heavy duty powder coated aluminum construction that has lasted well and still looks 9/10 after a spring wipe-down. - It does bother me how much importation has changed - pushing us toward a throw-away-away-and-buy-another culture. I do feel like we enjoy additional quality on these American made items (not always the case). - Less and less stuff is American made any more. As an engineer and a maker, I miss the days when we made most of the best stuff here. This set still exemplifies that quality. It's a little thing, but something I rarely get to enjoy these days. - After 10 years, with very little degradation (other than the fabric slings), I know what to expect from this set, and feel confident that they will last another 10 years easily with new fabric. The convenience of going 10-12 years between having to think about this, or take a gamble on something potentially less durable is worth something to me. Surely, I'll be feeling the sting of this bill in about a month (so good thing I'm writing this now!), but I thought I'd share what tipped us to reinvesting in this very expensive set. Pic when new April 2010:

Thanks everyone for the comments and advice. I have been out shopping this morning at 3 different furniture stores. One was a chain type store, Levin...junk, junk and more junk (and thanks to all the info I am gleaning from here I could tell the junk), another mid-grade local place (think Broyhill, Flexsteel and Lane)...a lot of junk and a few decent pieces and then a more high end, family owned and ran local store. That place had a couple options that were within budget and were better quality than the other places. One piece in particular had all hardwood frame, 8-way hand tied coils, top grain leather, nail head trim and nice simple but classic rolled arms...I can't stand these awful poofy pillowed arms that so much furniture has now. The salesman said it was from the "South Pacific" but wasn't sure which country that meant...maybe Malaysia, maybe Indonesia. I will never get my DH to agree to used furniture...it's a losing battle that I'm not willing to take on. He has issues with other people's "garbage" so I know that's not gonna happen. Thanks again for all your advice and suggestions. Hopefully your collective knowledge will help me select something that will last longer than our current piece of crap!!! Just for reference, this is sort of the style I'm going for And this is what I hate... So if anyone knows of something in particular that you think is a good quality choice within my budge, please let me know!!! Thanks again!

I am thinking of using the Ikea carcasses and making the doors/drawers, so I have been up in the shop playing. Replacing the edge banding on ikea cabinet boxes is a breeze. I think it best to do before putting the cabinet together though. Get an old iron from goodwill. Don't use your good iron...might get glue on it. Anyway, you iron the existing edge banding to loosen the glue and then it just peels off. I got pre-glued cherry edge banding which is slightly wider than the panel. Use the iron to iron the new piece on the edge. Use a piece of wood to apply pressure on the edge banding before it cools. When it has cooled use an edge band trimmer to trim the banding piece to size. The edge trimmer is basically a razor blade in a holder. The tool cost less than $10. The price of the edge banding itself varies. I got my supplies from veneersupplies.com. The proprietor Joe is quite helpful. His website has a good explanation of the process, including pictures. Here is a link that might be useful: edge banding guide

So I read this about the 10-20% suggestion -- "The suggested numbers will be skewed at both the low end and the high end. It's really hard to do anything less than a 15K kitchen in a 50K house, as even rental grade components still cost a certain amount. It's the same with the upper end homes in areas where the market hasn't crashed too badly. When you live in a 1950's 1400 square foot box close inside the beltway in DC, you're not likely to spend 100K on a kitchen, even if your home is valued at that 1M. Most of the value is in the land, not the home." I was thinking "holy moly" until I read the qualifier -- five bedroom house in Arlington way inside the beltway (closer to 4k feet than 1.5) and we never ever pondered 100-200k when we were updating our kitchen. With respect to cabinets, we went the other way when updating (not remodeling -- and not gutting and rebuilding) our kitchen. When we bought the house a little over 13 years ago, it had a newly updated kitchen. White Shrock cabinets -- no solid wood was harmed in their construction. We never loved them, but we never hated them either. They're still fine. Heavy use from a family of five (well, 5 for the past 9 years) and they're still fine. Some little issues here and there, but they are not falling apart or listing or coming off the walls. When updating the kitchen early this year we started with the cooking facilities -- a 36" range and proper hood, with adequate ventilation. Added a new floor, because it really was time, a new matching pantry (which does have some solid wood inside), and small things, such as pot racks. We elected not to replace the cabinets because the old ones basically still work for us and the basic white looks fine to us -- not beautiful or lovely or awesome, but fine. Lovely cabinets are lovely, but it's a big kitchen, and the extra 30k or more we might have spent on substantially nicer cabinets was money we chose to keep. Similarly, we kept our granite counters -- not our favorite pattern, but a decent neutral tone, decent counter space, and they've held up just dandy to everything -- hot pans, you name it. I've nothing at all against the up-market cabinet suggestions. Paying for quality materials and workmanship absolutely makes sense if it's in-budget and appreciated. I'm just adding the perspective of somebody who has found a more budget oriented option to hold up fine. For me, the kitchen is about cooking. Storage is necessary, but I start with the cooking equipment -- range or top plus oven(s), ventilation, and prep space. For me -- just my perspective -- the boxes come somewhere down towards last. For free, I'd swap them in a heartbeat, but it's not free.