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Everything you need to know when buying dining chairs

9/3/2017

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When it comes to furnishings, chairs are the most personal of all. We sit on them, we sleep on them, we move them around, and we put things on them. If you’re not sleeping or walking, most likely, you’re sitting on a chair. Therefore, we need to make the right decisions when buying chairs and today we’re going to talk about dining chairs. When buying a dining chair -

Make sure you have the right height. Put your chair against the dining table and sit to see if the heights of the chair and the table match each other. Your legs shouldn’t be touching the underneath of the table and the chair should smoothly go under the table after use.

Where are you using them? Are you dining outdoors or indoors? Most wood furniture should be kept indoors except teak while iron and plastic chairs can be used outdoors extensively with no problems. However, keep in mind that the color of almost all materials fade away in direct sunlight over time.

Are you going to move them around? We all move around dining chairs to a degree when we need extra seating on some special occasion. The lighter the better when it comes to moving. However, do not sacrifice durability for weight. At the end of the day, a chair is there to support your weight.

Stack them or fold them. Being able to stack or fold the chairs when mopping the floor or moving to a different place is a great thing. If that’s what you want, trying stacking or folding when you’re looking at the store. Again, make sure it’s still strong and sturdy enough for you.

Think about how you will clean it. Sooner or later, with use, chairs get dirty and dusty. How will you clean it? Chairs with simple design and construction are a lot easier to clean than chairs with complex artwork or details.

Plain or with upholstery? As long as the chair is comfortable for you, both are fine. Having upholstery doesn’t necessarily mean that a chair is more comfortable. Also, poor quality upholstery is sometimes easy to rip and hard to clean up. It can also make your seat hot in the summer.

Happy shopping!
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Furniture disaster 1 : The wobbly chair

9/3/2017

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Unless you are sitting on a rocking chair or some new age computer chairs that are supposed to promote movement, there is absolutely no reason for a chair to be wobbly.  To us craftsmen, a wobbly chair represents a failure in design, craftsmanship, and deep understanding of the relationship between the chair and its user. The worst of all, it is a waste of a valuable resource which is timber because we all know what wobbly chairs end up as most of the time : firewood. That's not sustainable at all, is it?
For this article, I will just stick to wooden dining and reading chairs because metal chairs and plastic chairs normally do not have this problem.

So how do we exactly shop for a wooden chair that will endure the test of time ?
Out of all kinds of furniture, chairs take the most abuse because they interact with humans the most. So the durability is key. Durability comes from the joints ( wherever two pieces of wood meet ) . There are three main factors regarding joints that will determine the strength.

1. Type of joint

Mortise and tenon joints ( sa-yway in Burmese ) have existed since the beginning of woodworking. If you go around historical places in Myanmar, wherever there are wooden structures, you will see mortise and tenon joints in furniture, doors, and wooden columns. These are tried and true ways of connecting timber and still the best joints for furniture makers around the world. The glue goes on the tenon surface and then bonds the tenon with the mortise. Rule of thumb is the longer the tenon the better because the glue surface area increases significantly. As you can see in the third picture above to the right, the tenon goes all the way thru and that's the best ! They are a lot of variations of mortise and tenon, but you get the point.
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The big no-no when it comes to joints are screw joints. Screw joints are the symbol of mass production furniture. They look good and feel strong as you look at them in the store but in a few months, they deteriorate really fast. Then, before you know it, your favorite chair has come apart. I'm not saying that there isn't a place for screws in woodworking at all, but joining two pieces of wood merely by screws is definitely not a good idea. For example, screw joints are very common in upholstery frames where springs, foams, and fabric ease up the stress placed on the joints.
So next time, whether you are  shopping for import furniture or local handcrafted furniture in Myanmar, just flip the chair upside down and check inside the seat to see what kind of joints are used.

2. Type of glue

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This is tricky because once the glue has dried and all the excess has been removed, there is no way to telling what kind of glue was used. The most superior type of glue is Polyurethane ( PU ) glue and it is one of the most expensive as well. You can see it in the picture above. Every piece at SIRBONI furnishings is built using PU glue. It is a moisture-resistant glue designed to withstand heavy abuse. Myanmar is a very humid place so that makes PU glue very suitable for furniture in Yangon. There is also epoxy glue which has similar qualities but it is an overkill for woodworking for the price. So next time, just ask the furniture showroom owner to see what kind of glue is used. If it says polyurethane on the bottle, you are in good hands!

3. Reinforcements

Corner brace or corner brackets are pretty much self-explanatory. They will turn a weak chair or table into something you can cherish for a lifetime. They come in different materials and forms but essentially they all do the same job pretty well. Surprisingly, in Yangon, only high quality producers put these in although they cost very little and can really kick quality up a notch. A lot of small shops don't use them for some unknown reason. I guess some don't know any better.
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Another kind of reinforcements are leg rails and armrests.  The leftmost picture is a very simple minimal chair. Just a seat , four legs, and a backrest and it is the weakest. The ones in the middle have leg rails that secure the legs. The one on the right has both leg rails and the armrests and it is the strongest of all three. The armrests connect the seat to the back rest for extra durability. However, since armrests are also a functional element, sometimes  they are not desired, especially in tight spaces like restaurants where one needs to be able to move around easily.

With this post, I hope to save as many chairs as I can before they become a pile of rubbish. If you have already bought chairs unknowingly, you can definitely ask local furniture store or SIRBONI furnishings to put in corner brackets and leg rails so that they will last for many years. Also, please spread the knowledge so as many people as possible can make educated buying decisions at stores and showrooms.
Photo credit - google images.
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Shopping for furniture in Yangon

8/25/2017

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In Yangon, if you ask most people they would all agree that furniture shopping is probably the most frustrating thing after the traffic... or maybe after the electricity cuts as well...

Furniture store and living mall frenzy of the past few years shows no sign of slowing down ( in fact it is speeding up ! ) but only a handful in the entire city fits the bill, especially for those with taste. Just to clarify, you are free to like anything you want. By taste, I mean the kind of furniture that shows your personality, your preference in design, or a certain coherent look. Of course, comfort is still the key.

I remember driving to three showrooms last April, just to get a computer chair not because I was choosy about a color or material or even the price, only because I couldn't find one that properly fitted a 5' 10" adult male. Probably the most number of chairs I sat on in a single evening in my life. Sigh...


These days, there are pretty much 4 options if you were to furnish your new apartment in Yangon.

1. a big furniture showroom covered in glasses in a major location with a sea of imported furniture. These showrooms range from super upscale to super low quality . They are great places for office furniture and la-z-boy recliners though. You are really going to pay for quality here.

2. a crammed store where there is nothing but badly finished wardrobes and identical living room set as the store next to it or across the road. The only claim to fame in those places is that it is " teak "

3. a dusty old wood workshop where you just know they work with wood but nothing is really in sight to verify they can actually deliver what you are looking for. They mostly do a great job but as a customer you gotta see it ... right ?

4. And lastly, few and far between, there are small to mid-sized handcraft furniture shops ( including refinishing shops for antique furniture ) that produce quality products at decent prices . They normally feature a good mix of different pieces to cover most of your apartment. There are not many of these around, at least not in major visible areas.


So where does the frustration come from?


For some people, it is time spent jumping store to store not being able to find what they want in one place. There are showrooms, for sure, with imports to furnish your house ten times over but the quality is often terrible. Sometimes, it is the wait time, especially for custom furniture. Overall, it is just a very segmented market with a lot of stores where the customers are underserved.


But with patience and determination and a lot of time, I believe you can conquer this game.

There you go! Happy furniture shopping!



Photo credit - MMBIZ
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    Author

    My name is Lin Tin.
    I am the co-founder and designer of SIRBONI furnishings.

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