What would be better?

All furniture comes in boxes that make it easy to ship. You are just putting together what is done behind the scenes.

Selling all of your chairs.

Hardwood furniture still exists, particularly if you have Amish nearby. You are going to pay though.

Amish furniture...dare to dream. The high cost of such things is part of why I'd like to pick up woodwork in my later years

It truly is. Lot of the pieces are not even wood, they have cardboard in them.

I could and I have most of the tools. If only fiat wasn't stealing all my time.

I augment ikea basic pieces with hardwoods. Like buying their "sektion" cabinet boxes and adding my own shaker-style doors. But even that has lost its luster now. There's still bullshit materials in there. next time I'm going to build my own boxes, too. Not a whole lot of reason not to, I've got most everything I need by now, finally.

Yep. I buy minimal functional parts from ikea and then add my own hardwoods (like building my own hardwood counter tops and cabinet door and drawer fronts), but I'm starting to get turned off even by those minimal bits.