I’m really not of much value in a furniture store. I tend to take a look at something and declare that I can make whatever it is and refuse to buy it. My wife, however, may be inclined to ask me when I plan on making the thing in question. I always answer that it would take me very little time to make the table or book case or dresser in question.
But the fact remains, I almost never do it.

I am much more likely to buy second-hand furniture than anything new. I like to make discarded things useful. That, perhaps, is a bit of optimism regarding how I wish the world to treat me in my burgeoning age.
Then there is the furniture of the modern age, all of which comes in flat cardboard boxes. Through the miracle of particle board, you can have a bed, a dresser, a night table, a shelf, a portable toilet, all stacked up in cardboard waiting for your limited ingenuity to knock them together. Well, maybe not a portable toilet.
And people complain about the instruction sheets, in their melodramatic fashion. They express frustration about needing to distinguish between screws of different sizes and pieces of particle board of different lengths. But the reality is, there is nothing plainer than a flat-pack assembly sheet. If it was cooking, it would be the recipe for boiling water.

I say this, because I have assembled a number of such things. That makes me an expert.
In my regular and persistent perusal of thrift store furniture, I find a startling lack of flat-pack assemblies. I know this stuff is finding its way out of houses, because I constantly see examples on the side of the road awaiting garbage collection. I think I know the reason, however. It is designed to be moved only in its cardboard box.
My second oldest son was in need of a bed and the most practical alternative at the time was a “Captain’s” bed, featuring drawers underneath. It, of course, came in a gigantic cardboard box. However, it was already assembled. So, it was pretending to not be flat-pack furniture. Set up in his room, it was very nice and worked exactly as it should.
But then it was time to move to a new house. The bed was loaded into a moving truck and unloaded into his new room. It was, however, completely falling apart. It didn’t get damaged in the move. It was fine before it was put on the truck. But the act of picking it up and putting it down loosened so many fasteners, it was literally breaking apart at the joints.

I wanted to break it apart and set it on fire, but I fixed it, instead. It was not impressive. While fixing it, I could see that it was actually worse than flat-pack furniture, because it was fastened together with staples. There’s nothing wrong with a staple, if used properly, but I’ve never seen one used properly in furniture construction (I think I mentioned them before talking about a sofa). Staples are shot by the dozen into a single square centimeter of wood. They hold until the piece is moved. Then the wood breaks or they pull out. Normally, they are oriented to stab you as soon as you reach into where they hide. They are vindictive.
And that bed was from a so-called furniture store.

Needless to say, it will never make its way to a second-hand store. There won’t be enough pieces of it left.
Flat pack assemblies can be improved by using glue in appropriate locations. They can be strengthened by adding some reinforcing blocks where pieces are likely to be under strain. And they can be exactly what you need in a particular room for a particular purpose. And, if you put them together, you can be sure that nothing terribly stupid is being done. Unfortunately, it seems purchasing ready-made furniture is a roll of the dice. And short of rebuilding it, you have to live with the mystery of how it’s put together until it falls apart, which may be sooner than you’d expect.