Last month, when I returned from Canada, Johann had a surprise waiting for me: a bar-height, solid-wood dinner table. H-frame and two coats of medium-warm stain notwithstanding, I recognized the top of our old table as part of the new one. It had been reclaimed and expanded, from a square to a rectangle and could now seat four. It was a beautiful piece of furniture by any stretch, but especially so since Johann had fashioned the whole thing from scrap wood and junk we had lying around. Total cost: $0.
So impressed was I with Johann’s furniture building abilities that I decided to make a few additional upgrades in our apartment. A table such this deserved a cute houseplant. The curtains hanging behind it should match, if not in color then at least in length. Most importantly, we needed new chairs, four of them, preferably not made of chocolate wicker, which is what we had been using up until that point.
“I have thoughts about the stools,” Johann announced. “I like those black wire ones in the window downstairs.”
I knew exactly which chairs he was talking about because we had stopped to discuss them before – not because either of us liked them, mind you, but because they cost an unbelievable $210 apiece despite looking suspiciously like upcycled oven racks. It seems that Scandinavian design follows the same principals of wedding gowns: the simpler it is, the more it costs.
I could think of better ways to spend $840+shipping than on four unremarkable and slightly uncomfortable-looking stools, but I decided not to say so. I figured if Johann makes a table from scraps, then he’s allowed to dictate what goes under it.
That might have been the end of our story, but for one small problem: those designer stools ended up being slightly too tall for our new table. We realised that rather unexpectedly when we just happened to walk by a waterfront café one night and found twenty of them sitting unattended on the outdoor patio.
“No wonder why this place is so expensive,” I complained. “They’re paying off their chairs!”
Johann rolled his eyes at me and stepped up to one of the stools. “They look higher than I thought,” he said, lining the chair against his leg. Before I could disagree, he nonchalantly produced a measuring tape from his back pocket and began taking down numbers like it was the most natural thing in the world.
I glanced around at the deserted footpath and closed bar. “What’s to stop us from just walking away with four of them right now?” I asked.
“We can’t do that,” Johann said
“Actually we can,” I replied. “We won’t – be we could.”
“Well they’re actually a little too high anyway,” Johann explained, snapping his tape shut. “And the bottom is gets wider at the base. They’ll still work, but it will be tight all around.”
Having never really wanted the stools in the first place, I seized on this new information.
“Well you know how I am about noise,” I said. “If these are going to be clanging against each other all day and night, I’m not going to be too happy about it.” For effect, I picked up two chairs and banged them together like a pair of cymbals. “Yeah that’s going to drive me nuts,” I decided.
“Stop,” Johann muttered. “You’ll chip the paint.”
“They’re lucky I’m not loading them in an Uber right now,” I shot back. “Honestly! Who leaves $10,000 worth of chairs lying around?”
Johann stooped to re-measure the base of the chair.
“Seriously though,” I said. “For $800, I expect to get a chair that fits and doesn’t make noise.”
Johann agreed and back to the drawing board we went.
Every relationship needs to be tested and that’s what furniture shopping is for. Nothing will teach you more about your significant other than say, picking out a carpet on a limited budget or looking at kitchen sinks. You walk into a store as two reasonable people with a healthy design aesthetic and you leave feeling certain the other person is color blind and in possession of a secret trust fund. Since when does this partner of mine have thousands of euros to drop on something to be stepped on? Who is this man who suddenly feels strongly about kitchen faucets? Where does he get the false confidence to buy anything in white?
But it’s not just the other person you’ll learn a lot about. Furniture shopping teaches you a few things about yourself too. I began this journey with a simple mission to sit down. Within a week, I had convinced myself that money was no object and that chairs were “a necessary investment”. Never mind that for the past three years I had been happily living out of a suitcase. Disregard the fact that I have been working diligently to live on a reasonable budget since I settled down in Germany. Forget that I know, with absolute certainty, that a stool cannot accrue interest and assist me in my retirement. And yet, here I was bragging to sales clerks about my new upcycled table and considering $2000 worth of Italian seating to go under it.
After a few days of browsing furniture stores and websites, the likes of which offered everything from mass-produced pressed particle board and plastic to one-of a kind, handcrafted chairs in wood and metal, Johann and I had only succeeded in figuring out what we didn’t like: saddle seats; blonde wood; things that swivel; anything round. There wasn’t a whole lot left afterwards. When we found something that we liked, it was difficult to justify the price. When we found something we could afford, it was hardly anything we wanted to take home. More often than not, the height and width of the pieces wouldn’t have worked anyway.
As we became more and more frustrated, Johann and I took to shopping in the evening, when the stores were closed and the sales staff weren’t available to talk us into $700 options made from plastic found in the Pacific Ocean. We walked around Helsinki under the cover of darkness pressing our face up display windows, pointing out pieces that we liked and then insulting one another to the core.
It was on one such trip that Johann saw the perfect stool. It was simple enough: a boxy thing with metal legs and a dark wood top. There were four of them at a table made to match.
“That!” Johann shouted, pointing through the window. “That works!”
“That does work,” I said, my nose against the glass. “If it’s the right size.”
“I can raise the table if I need to,” he offered.
“It might be a set,” I pointed out. “Hopefully you can order the chairs separately.”
“I’d buy the table and throw it away,” Johann said.
He was joking, but I believed him. I felt the exact same way.
As it turned out, when we returned to the shop in the light of day, we learned that it was not a furniture store at all. It was a small coffee shop tacked on to a furniture store and, unfortunately for us, the café seating was not for sale.
“Well just ask the barista if he knows where the set is from,” I told Johann. “Maybe we can order it directly from the manufacturer.”
It seemed like a long shot, but Johann did it anyway, interrupting the man pouring leaves into latte cups to ramble an elaborate question about in Finnish.
“Our chairs?” the man replied in English. “They’re custom order.”
“Well we really like them,” I explained. “Do you know where they’re from? We’re looking for something like this for our home.”
“They’re made special for us,” the man shrugged. “Custom order. Sorry!”
Johann and I were barely out the front door before I turned to him and mimicked the man in my best egghead voice. “They’re custom! We’re special!” I rolled my eyes. “He replied to you in English, did you catch that?” I asked.
“Did he?” Johann asked. “I didn’t notice.”
“Of course you didn’t,” I replied. One of the things I secretly hate about Johann is that he can understand Finnish, English and German so well that he doesn’t even notice which language is being spoken. I, on the other hand, require 100% concentration and near-perfect acoustics to grasp even the most basic German interaction. “Well that guy wasn’t Finnish,” I said. “Wherever he’s from – that’s where the chairs are from.”
“You’re probably right,” Johann said.
“You think he’s Turkish?” I asked. “Moroccan??
“Estonian,” Johann answered. “I bet he’s Estonian.”
We stopped dead in our tracks and looked at each other. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” I asked.
He nodded.
“Let’s get on that ferry,” I said.
If you are wondering why Johann and I considered traveling to another country by boat before say, browsing Amazon, you are probably not alone. For the record, we did that. There were a few options that we liked and would have bought without question. But the problem is that shipping furniture to Finland involves import taxes and delivery fees, the cost of which usually exceeds the price of the furniture itself. For example, this stool cost $73; but the taxes and fees when shipping to Helsinki came to an additional $115 per stool. For me, the only thing harder than justifying the high cost of designer furniture is accepting the high total cost of mass produced furniture. I figured if both options were going to approach $1000, then I might as well go down the street to the swanky Scandinavian shop and feel like I’m buying something special. Simple, sure… but special.
Oh and Wayfair, you ask? Well they don’t even deliver to Finland – which is a shame because these were exactly what I had in mind.
But, before getting on the ferry to Tallinn, I decided to try one last place: Etsy.
And that is where we got lucky. Not only were there a variety of furniture makers selling custom pieces, but many of them were affordably priced with reasonable worldwide shipping rates. We happened upon a shop called Woodlab Siberian, which offered a variety of designs that would have worked with the table. The dimensions weren’t exactly what we needed, but the shop’s tagline – Hey. Write to me, I will respond very quickly – made me think that I should ask. The owner delivered on his brand promise, answering our request within an hour and offering to make the custom order at no additional charge.
Still, we hesitated. The shop didn’t have many reviews and Etsy has been known to have some questionable sellers. But I decided to risk it anyway. After all, posing as a metalworker from Siberia on Etsy has to be one of the most implausible and least lucrative scams of all time. I would actually have an easier time believing that every Siberian is capable of making professional-quality furniture than that one person was pretending that he could on a craft marketplace. I mean, doesn’t the climate alone necessitate that Siberians have life skills that the rest of us have never been forced to learn? Haven’t they had to fend for themselves since the beginning? Aren’t Siberians themselves forged of steel?
I don’t know the answers to those questions, but I can tell you this: Vladimir shipped us four custom-made stools within 2 weeks. They cost $340 plus $140 international shipping. And they are so, so cool. The metalwork is beautiful, the size is perfect and they barely make noise. They look like they were made for our apartment, which I guess is technically true.
So, here is a commercial for anyone in the market for seating: consider Woodlab Siberia and many of the other sellers on Etsy*. You get a one-of-a-kind product and they get to make a living or supplement their income doing what they love. How’s that for Scandinavian simplicity?
*My only caveat, and I add this only if you are interested in buying, is that the wood on our seats can chip rather easily. We had a few slight flakes during shipping and then again when started using them. It’s easily fixed, but only if you have the space and tools to do so. If I had to buy them again, I would opt for the curved seat, which appears to be thicker and is probably higher quality wood. You should also ask the seller to pack the box with extra padding to prevent damage along the way.
Hahaha – The Mr and I have so many tales of furniture debates. Even that time we just tried to hang pictures on the wall… yikes.
I consider this our first of many :)
godspeed