How to Buy Your First Real Bedroom Set

I have browsed this forum before (and probably posted!) but I could not remember my old username, so I re-registered. It was a number of years ago now...

My wife and I are finishing some exhaustive home remodeling and will be expecting to move into our master bedroom at some point in the fall or early winter. We've been wanting a new bedroom set for awhile, but knew that it would be worthwhile to wait until we could fit a king set upstairs. Some details below:

Budget: Ideally $6,000-$8,000 but up to $10,000 for the right set, if needed.
King bed, low-profile sleigh or similar. Underbed storage/platform is a plus but realize we may need to separate the bed then. Wife currently hits the end of the bed at night when she gets up, so we are open to no footboard.
Pieces: 2 Nightstands, tall chest of drawers or combo with doors, and long/tall dresser with mirror. Assuming 5 total pieces for now, may add a 6th depending on price.
Style: We have really fallen in love with pieces that appear to be modeled after Louis Phillipe. The hidden drawers and thick molding grab us. Other styles similar to this are acceptable too (elegant but not overly detailed as my wife calls it). No mission/shaker styles and definitely nothing contemporary.
Location: Upstate NY area (Albany/Saratoga)
Wood: I like "character cherry", hickory and walnut (although I know this raises the price a bit...)
Color: We prefer a medium amber to light or medium brown. We have 2 huskies who love to shed, and the dark mahogany pieces we have downstairs show EVERYTHING. I do not want overly light either, as we have natural red oak floors throughout.
Other features: I prefer a full extension, soft close drawer. Must be ball bearing. I am not opposed to a center wood slide, but would need further education on why this would be superior. I would like mortise tenon construction and dovetailed drawers.

We have been to a few stores, and everyone seems to be pushing us to Amish made furniture. The problem is that these companies (although they claim are big) have little to no information out there. Some brands we looked at:

MillCraft (Amish)
J&M Furniture (Amish)
Simply Amish (...)
Stanley
Winners Only

I asked about Harden, but the sales rep showed me the MSRP for a 6 drawer only is $6,000 and is above our budget. I plan to view Kincaid later this week.

Is there anything I should be looking for particularly? Is my price range too low for good/excellent quality? Any suggestions on brand or retailers around here??

Thanks for the help!
John

I will be of no help on this as I don't carry any production brand wood furniture in my store, sorry. I can tell you that if a salesman is quoting MSRP prices to you and not offering you a discount, he's not telling you the real cost. Generally you can expect to pay around half of MSRP for production furniture. Perhaps other forum members can respond.

And about that "Amish" furniture <rolling eyes>. The Amish are farmers, not woodworkers. Ever since the movie "Witness" came out everyone has been in love with the Amish and their ways. I could tell you stories about the Amish....lol

Thanks for the Reply! Not everything we looked at is full on "production grade", in fact the "Amish" made ones had the most flexibility with hardware, color and wood varieties. The problem is that these companies are so small they do not expand upon their construction practices enough for me to evaluate them wholly.

We checked out Stickley tonight, and the $17k price tag was a bit steep for us. Durham was very reasonable, but we were not as impressed with the drawer operation.

Is our price range adequate for solid, quality furniture? I am not looking for anything "one of a kind", but I do not want the bargain bin wholesale either!

In my store, all my pieces are a la carte, I don't carry production sets. Production furniture is made on assembly lines or stations, where several people work on it all using high speed machinery, and that includes the Amish makers. People think the Amish are quaint and do things by hand - and that's not really true. They are not hooked to the public electrical grid in their workshops, so typically they have a pair of big Caterpillar diesels in the back running their own generators to make their product, and state-of-the art high speed machinery inside. It's all belt-sanded, jig made, and lacquer finished. That's never been my market, and I carry items that meet the general standard of hand-crafted, and in some cases even Benchmade (where one person works on it start to finish). So a chest of drawers in my store is $ 3K or so, a bed is $ 3k and up, nightstands close to $ 1K, etc. Its not for everyone, but its properly made and finished. Once you see the good stuff, the production furniture is not very appealing. Good construction is time consuming, and material is not inexpensive either. Sorry, I don't have an answer for you...maybe someone else can chime in.

Ah - ok - I believe understand now!

To be honest those prices you mentioned seem very reasonable...and quite close to what we were looking at paying with some of the brands I mentioned. We would prefer for the pieces to match (rather than an eclectic selection of different styles/colors/woods) but they do not necessarily need to be part of a set. Unfortunately, I am too far from you to take a tour to see the offerings you have in person. The places around me here all have production furniture then, and to my knowledge, there are no other stores around. Are there websites I can look at to reach some custom builders? The only one I have found thus far is Vermont wood studios.

There are some local craftsmen I found through www.custommade.com, I might try to reach out to them.

I use J.L. Treharn quite a bit. While not truly benchmade, it has all the earmarks of what you want in well made, handcrafted furniture. The "TODAY" line takes a few shortcuts like plywood backs and drawer bottoms, the "CLASSIC" group is old school construction and done at a higher level.

www.jltreharn.com