Wooden Furniture Shops

Natasha asks:

I wonder if you can help? About 3 years ago I bought some furniture from a great little shop on the Trafalgar Road, just round the corner from Greenwich Auction Rooms. I'm sure it was called No Ikea originally but the owner was telling me he had to change the name, for fear of being sued by Ikea and he then called it No Idea. It was a small shop with another unit round the corner which sold lots of wooden furniture, very similar to Next but half the price. I'm sure when I drove past the other day it had gone. Would you know?

The Phantom replies:

Always had a big cuddly old dog outside? I think you must mean Yew Wood Knot Believe It! which used to be where the Polish Deli is now (I have vague recollections of No Idea too...) I always thought they missed another appalling tree-pun (Yew Wood Knot Be-leaf It would have done the trick.) I don't know where they've gone to, if at all, but if it's mirrors you're after, try the mirror shop on Woolwich Road just the Charlton side of the flyover. For wooden furniture. Hmm - cheap stuff, I'd say the auction itself. Stewart John Antiques do repros at more expensive rates. Or how about the furniture shop on the side of Stockwell St market? A bit more ethnic-y but certainly worth a poke around.

If you're after office-type furniture do give Greenworks a go - it's all second-hand, recovered from office-moves and redecorations and some of it's a bit scruffy, but a lot of it's hardly or sometimes never been used - they have over-orders, one-year old stuff and sometimes things like a job lot of chairs that were not quite the right shade for the interior designer's whim, so they've come, still wrapped in their original plastic, to Greenworks instead of landfill, which is where, amazingly, they used to end up.

Any of you folk got any local suggestions for alternatives to wooden IKEA stuff? BTW has anyone else noticed that IKEA has really gone downhill recently - the prices are the same but everything is just that little bit thinner/wobblier/crappier. Local alternatives are always welcome...