greenpond, My favorite pet peeve! I just love it when a customer comes to my store, opens the back of their Explorer, and asks me to load that 150 lb recliner in the back which has 2" of clearance on each side. Usually, its a slightly built woman (sorry ladies!) and there is just no way I can lift that in there without tearing up myself or the furniture. That has happened more times than I can count. How are you going to unload it at home? Pulling a 150 lb recliner out of an SUV is awkward, and is a perfect way to wreck your back. You will never see anyone in the furniture business deliver in a truck that requires them to bend over and reach - or crawl into a minivan and duck-crawl with a piece. I've seen a lot of people hurt themselves or drop the furniture over the years. We in the business have developed lifting techniques and have the tools to load and handle furniture safely without injuring ourselves. When you pull up in an SUV and ask us to load into it, we are at risk of hurting ourselves as well, yet we try to grin and bear it for the sake of customer service. Here's why stores prefer not to do this. These don't load smoothly due to confined spaces, Pieces can get bumped or bruised either during loading or in transit. Because the store assisted loading, we are legally liable for damages to the piece. I learned that lesson the hard way in the 80's. And if we place it on the sidewalk and say 'there you go' then that looks bad as well, as if we don't care. That's why we offer delivery, where we have all the right equipment to load, pad, and secure in a truck a person can stand up in. But yes, delivery does cost money, and many people do not want to pay for that service. I would estimate we damage 1 piece in 5,000 on my delivery truck. Customers hauling their own run a damage rate of about 1 in every 100. Oh, the stories! Here's a couple: * Did you know boxed furniture tends to fly out of pickup trucks at about 45 - 50 mph? Goes right over the tailgate and hits the highway. When it does, the customer has no insurance to cover it, as its cargo in transit which means it requires an Inland Marine rider to your auto/truck policy. You probably don't have that rider. I've had at least a dozen customers lose boxed furniture out of pickup trucks, including 250 lb sofas that they assumed were heavy enough to stay put - smashed on the interstate. * NEVER send a man to pickup furniture during his work day. They are always in a hurry, fail to load carefully or secure, or even pad the pieces, and ultimately I get a tearful call from the Mrs. hours later asking how to repair damages. Even more true if hubby is in the construction business and has a work truck full of wood, concrete and building residue and debris. Big mistake. There are times when for whatever reason its not practical to use the store delivery service. Maybe you have a beach house three hours away, or need the recliner for someone coming out of the hospital today. If you choose to haul yourself and the piece is heavy, sometimes its best to rent a cube van with a walk ramp, hand truck, tiedowns and pads. If the pieces are lighter, then SUVs and pickups can work, but bring plenty of pads (furniture-grade, not worn-out blankets) and tiedowns. Bungee cords at the very least, camlock rachets preferred, but not clothesline rope - and never nylon rope as it stretches. Plastic palletizing wrap is a godsend to keeping pads attached to the piece while loading. Have plenty of egress for the piece in question to load. Its no good to try to get things in with one inch to spare - thats always tough. And finally, bring your own muscle to the store. We'll supervise and be glad to give loading advice! Deliveries are not a profit center for most stores. We try to break even on them (most the time I lose money with diesel at $ 4.00 a gallon) but in most cases its the safe way to do it for both bodies and the furniture. -Duane Collie

Chris2009_2009, I'll try to answer your question though I'm not an expert by any means. Sounds like instead of 8 way hand tied springs, coil springs, s-springs, blue steel springs the furniture you are looking at has rubber webs to hold the cushions up. I may be wrong here but my best guess is check out an upholstered dining/kitchen chair, usually they have a webbing underneath them to hold the upholstered seating in place and give support. Of course the furniture could just be rubber/vinyl strips going from front to back or side to side like a lawn chair.

Fascinating! Could you address slab thickness? We mostly are seeing 2 cm, but at one place that both sells and fabricates slabs, they carry 5 cm and say thats better for the edge. Prices seem to be about the same.

I have no experience whatsoever with detached retinas, so I will happily get the thread back on track with an update! I don't think I participated in the original honesty thread, so I was about to do that now, but I JUST cleaned up the kitchen before sitting down to browse GW. Our house usually a giant mess (although, admittedly, the kitchen is the cleanest part usually), so this seems a very dishonest honest picture: The empty space above the sink will eventually house some dramatic and colorful art, and we will at some point get a backsplash and glass in our cabinets (hard to see, but all the uppers on the far left wall next to the fridge are waiting for glass). HOWEVER, that is a currently fully-functional kitchen right there, and that is true as of two months ago for the first time in FIVE YEARS. (I laughed ruefully at the comment about who expects a remodel to take a year. Five years and counting here due to some major life and remodeling surprises making for some seriously non-linear progress!) Needless to say, achieving function in the kitchen was the big accomplishment this year. By next year, we hope to be truly done with all remodeling, which still includes: painting/staining all the doors finally finding door knobs I can live with staining and installing the baseboards and door trim everywhere figuring out a backsplash I can live with and installing it designing the glass inserts for the kitchen cabs and getting them made/installed installing floating shelf in the kitchen finishing some touch-ups and trim pieces in the kitchen figuring out a fireplace surround design I can live with and getting that installed finishing the bathroom vanity drawers installing vent covers everywhere figuring out why the fire alarms keep going off, fixing that, and reinstalling them figuring out why the outlet behind the TV is not working going through what remains of our storage/remodeling items, paring then down severely, and finding permanent homes for the rest of the items hanging curtains and pictures! And though I'm not sure non-kitchens are relevant, honesty is, so here is what happens if you pan slightly right from the first picture: And even farther right: :D We are finally painting all our closet doors, and as you can see, everything in the living room has been shoved aside to make room for our saw horse painting set up. Also as the eagle-eyed among you may have noticed, the cat is a fan of our giant pile of remodeling stuff: My husband's and my original plan was to finish remodeling and then have only normal furniture and no piles of remodeling stuff in our living room, but now I am not sure either of us is cold-hearted enough to take the cat's tower of stuff away from her.