Here in California, there are stores all over that sell cheap oak furniture. I've always thought of oak as one of the highest-quality woods for furniture, and we have some oak mission style furniture that is of terrific quality. I buy the cheap stuff for bookshelves because I have far too many books, and the cheap oak shelves seem to work very well. Can't say I like pine furniture, and cherry and birch are too expensive. I confess I haven't worried about whether the oak for my furniture (and the firewood that heats my house) is harvested by sustainable methods. There is oak growing everywhere here, and I've never seen the ugliness of clearcut oak forests like the clearcut pine and douglas fir forests I've seen in this area (mostly in Oregon, not California).

-Joe-