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Okay, you guys, you’re going to have to forgive me if you have an Ikea store in your town already and don’t understand our excitement here in Southern Ohio, but this week we finally got one of our own in West Chester. My friend Andrea and I went to the Grand Opening today to check it out and took lots of pictures for those of you who want to shop vicariously. You can see all the highlights of their showroom and won’t even need to put on comfortable shoes!
Here’s the entrance, where you get your little cart, hook a yellow bag onto the hooks to make an impromptu “basket” in the cart, and head upstairs to the showroom.
I’m sorry, Ikea masterminds, but this does not work very well. I put two small pillows into that bag and it was full. What was I supposed to do with all the other fabulous things I wanted? Balance them on my head? An hour into our shopping we spied a woman with a regular, full-sized cart. Where did she get it?
We asked three different salespeople and got three different answers. One told us to go through a door that didn’t exist. When we returned to her and told her it was a dead-end, she said, “Oh, sorry, this isn’t my store. In my store there’s a door there. It’s weird they don’t have one.”
We searched and searched some more. Another salesperson said, “Sorry, the big carts aren’t allowed upstairs in the showroom.” So we went down to the ground floor, figuring they must be there if that’s the only place they were allowed. An employee there told us “They’re downstairs,” which totally confused us. Did this mean there was a basement level we hadn’t found yet? “No,” she said. “It’s downstairs. There is no basement.” Huh?
Now, you tell me. When you are on the ground level of a building and someone asks if you know where the carts are, wouldn’t you say, “They’re on THIS floor, around the corner”?
But no. She simply continued to repeat, saying it louder each time as if we were deaf, that the carts were “DOWNSTAIRS.”
We went back and forth with her like we were part of an Abbott and Costello routine for several minutes until we finally realized she was telling us they were on the ground level WHERE WE ALREADY WERE. There was no secret basement where they hoarded the full-sized carts. I was kind of disappointed.
This story is going on much too long. Here’s a picture from the showroom to break things up a bit:
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We finally had the bright idea to stake out the checkout area and grab carts from people who were checking out and no longer needed them. We were pretty darn proud of ourselves, I have to say.
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Then, less than five minutes later, we turned a corner and–hey!–an entire corral of full-sized carts were right there under the stairs, which we must’ve passed at least twice. We laughed so hard at ourselves. We both have college degrees. It shouldn’t be so hard to figure out how to get carts at Ikea.
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Now I’m wondering if I should’ve told you that story. You’re going to think I’m an idiot who doesn’t know how to shop! Let’s look at some more pictures to distract ourselves from how incompetent I was at finding my way around. Here was a black and white room filled with bookshelves:
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We kept seeing things we loved and the prices were amazing. But how did you actually BUY anything? Again, we were stumped.
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We finally asked a salesperson who explained that those pillows I had put in my bag were actually the display samples (oops) and not for sale, either. I had to buy a plain white pillow and then choose the fabric “covers” to to go over them. All the big items like chairs and tables were in a warehouse downstairs (with the full-sized carts).
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We almost felt like we were shopping in a foreign country. Lots of the labels on things were in Swedish, too, so we spent fifteen minutes trying to translate the words on the sheets Andrea wanted to buy to figure out what the thread count was. (Our conclusion: they must not list the thread count in Sweden.)
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Andrea’s considering this red and white duvet for her bedroom:
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Everything was so cheap it was almost laughable. We kept calling out prices to each other. “This entire cabinet is only $65!” “Look at these shelves for $150!” We pondered how many years a $20 chair might be good for and concluded that it didn’t matter. Even if it lasted a week, it was still a bargain.
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Andrea and I got separated at one point and she called me on my cell phone to say she’d meet me at the checkout. Problem was, I couldn’t find it. I wandered around in an endless loop, stopping occasionally to ask salespeople where I was and how to find an elevator down to the checkout, only to have them send me off in another wrong direction.
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Andrea called again: “Where are you?” I told her, “I’m passing the orange dining room for the third time.” She gave up on me and went to the snack bar to buy some cookies.
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The good news is that I found my way to the checkout lanes eventually and Andrea was kind enough not to ditch me (she was my ride home).
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I had to take a picture of this way-fun and funky Klippan loveseat that sells for $279. I’m trying to imagine what kind of room you’d have to have for that to work. They had lots of furniture with a high level of “entertainment value” like this. Fun colors, unusual shapes. It was a kick just to see things that are different from what every other store in town is selling.
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I liked the bookshelves and the chandelier in this room (below). All the rooms in the showroom were pretty trashed after the hordes had come through. I started out fixing the pillows and removing stray stuffed animals and other detritus that customers had left strewn around before taking photos of them, but by the time I got to this one I was getting tired and just shooting them as-is.
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I admit it–I’m the kind of person who gets irritated by things like that pillow not being straight and upright against the back of the sofa where you can see the stripes on it properly. I’m tempted to drive back over there and fix it, but I won’t. At least not tonight. I’m not that bad.
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You can see the striped pillow better in this picture:
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I waited as long as I could for this couple to leave so I could take a picture of this funky red, black, and white-tiled kitchen. You’ll just have to mentally Photoshop them out:
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I want these white shelves, but the TV console didn’t look right with them for some reason (the scale was off or something, right? Like it needs to be taller):
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One of my favorite rooms in the showroom was this colorful one below. I’m wanting those red cabinets something fierce:
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This room was set up like a teenager’s study area or dorm room:
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A gallery of cool chairs, all for ridiculously low prices:
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This room was completely surrounded by white bookshelves and even had one of those library ladders:
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Most customers scattered when they saw I was taking photos, but this woman was so taken by the white kitchen that she either didn’t notice me or didn’t care. The light fixtures were beautiful:
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Here’s the adjoining family room off the white kitchen (again, the messed-up pillows are bugging me, but I wanted you to see these human-esque light fixtures they had that were kind of unusual-bordering-on-creepy):
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And this concludes our long, exhausting shopping trip to Ikea. It was fun but a little overwhelming. Talk about sensory overload. I’d like to go back when the Grand Opening crowds have died down a bit. Sometimes it was hard to see the furniture because there were so many people sitting on it.
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After spending hours there and even having lunch in their cafeteria (which was the size of a football field in itself–here’s a picture of it, below), Andrea came home with a rug pad and I had two pillows. Yeah. Big-time shoppers!
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I plan to go back soon for more things after I’ve had a chance to think through my options for various rooms. I liked so many different chairs and bookshelves that it’s hard to narrow it down!
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In the meantime, I’m working on a mini-makeover with those pillows that I’m going to show you soon. I had a bland corner of my master bathroom that needed some pizazz, so I’ve been painting a bench, hanging curtains, getting new artwork, and adding the black and white Ikea pillows. That’ll be the next post, just as soon as I recover from my day of Ikea.
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If you have your own Ikea shopping stories to share, we’d love to hear them! If you have Ikea furniture in your house, tell us how it’s working for you. Has anyone bought one of those $20 chairs? If so, did they last longer than a week?
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This just in: When we were in the elevator at Ikea, I told Andrea, “I forgot to take any pictures for the blog!” There were two other women in the elevator with us who said, “That’s what we’re doing!” We chatted a bit before going our separate ways.
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Anyway, the weird thing is, I was just surfing around the Internet to find other posts about Ikea and found theirs. Small world! I recognized them in the photo, and as I was reading their account of cart confusion (we weren’t the only ones!), they mentioned meeting us in the elevator. Too funny. To read the story of their shopping experience at the new Ikea, go to
Mommin’ It Up!
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I found their blog via
OHIKEA (thanks to Jen for commenting and leaving the link here), a great local blog that has lots of tips and advice for finding your way around if you’re a newbie. I wish I’d read it before heading over there myself! (But then this story of our day wouldn’t have been nearly as entertaining, now, would it? Who wants to read a post that says, “I had no trouble finding a cart or locating what I wanted to buy in the warehouse, and I didn’t get lost once”?)
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For more information or to request a catalog, go to the official
Ikea website.
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Tagged as:
bookshelves,
chairs,
furniture,
grand opening,
Home Furnishings,
Ikea,
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store
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I love Ikea. I bought my office furniture there. (it’s the Liatorp line- I think it matches the white shelves you liked but the tv looked too small by them?) I love the furniture. HOWEVER- if you buy something that you have to put together and you live very, very far away from the store please check your boxes before driving away. Calling their customer service number was a nightmare when we were missing the entire left side of our hutch from a box. It took me weeks to get a real person to return my 397 messages. I won’t bore you with the horrid details and I vowed to never return. But I did. I can’t help it.
) My hutch and desk from Ikea are pictured on my blog.
Thanks for the advice and report as a veteran Ikea customer, Marie! That’s good to know. I’ll be checking out your blog!
I’m so jealous! There’s not an Ikea around here whatsoever. We may have to move back to Atlanta…
Julia, I’m sending you this link to a story in the Home/Garden section of yesterday’s Philadelphia Inquirer. I thought you might enjoy it. Be sure to look at the “More Images.” Ikea totally furnished a sample townhouse in black and white. Right up your alley.
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/magazine/16670216.html
Oh, THANKS, Meredith! What a great article. That was so nice of you to think of me!
I have an Ikea Butcher block island in my kitchen. It has hel up very nicely and it was easy to put together. I have heard that some of their stuff is a nightmare to assemble and that there are actually handypeople ( used to be called handymen) that have made careers of assembling Ikea furniture. Really, I read that somewhere just can’t remember where. Went to see ModVic today and what an undertaking that has been, but it is going to look great when finished in 3 (??) weeks.
Janet
As a veteran IKEA shopper, it was fun to read about your first trip there. I’d forgotten how easily lost you can get in the ‘maze’, how hard it is to find the carts, and how you don’t know NOT to pick up the items with the red tags, lol. I’m sure you’ll be back and find your own favorites — cheap Christmas wrapping paper, great frames, and yummy swedish meatballs in the restaurant are a few of mine.
As for quality, some products are better than others. Chairs are fine, as are bedframes, sofas, bookshelves, dressers. Quality is less questionable on some of their kitchen housewares and bathroom accessories. Basically, anything that gets enough wear and tear (like the Billy bookcase that gets moved from room to room to room) will fall apart eventually.
Welcome to the Church of IKEA!
I’ll give newbies another tip or four:
everything upstairs is available downstairs. so skip the pillows, write it on your sheet and get it in the pillow section of the marketplace after you get downstairs.They have it upstairs to kind fill in the gaps and add impulse shopping to the top floor.
also – there is a PATH, follow the arrows and no one gets hurt or misses anything.
you CAN take a cart upstairs, they were just not liking it for opening since it’s cumbersome. When you go up the escalotr in, go left into kids, and cut around the stairway on the back side of the elevator towards the cafe. Either take the stairs down, or the elevator on the other side (by the cafe, not the one by the escalator) the carts are right there, then take them UP into the same elevator and come back the same way you went.
Thats the biggest thing I see breaking the midwestern shoping midset, coping with ikea carts and the protocols of them.
I appreciate hearing from you Ikea vets. Apparently I should’ve talked to you about it BEFORE I went. Ha.
I was a total virgin and had no idea what I was doing (in case that wasn’t clear from my post!). My husband is teasing me because right there in that first pic I took is a giant sign next to the escalator explaining how things work. Well, all I can say is that there were gobs of people and so much noise and activity–not to mention fun stuff to gawk at–that we missed every single helpful sign there was.
Did I mention how confused I was by the window treatments, too? They were all, like, 116″ long, and I needed some that were 81″. Turns out you’re supposed to use their iron-on hemming kit to make them the exact length you need. That was another “aha!” moment for me.
I don’t think it helped that we were there at the Grand Opening when all of the employees were brand new. None of them seemed to know much more than we did!
I think I’ve narrowed down what I want to go back and get. If I pull that off, expect another post with pictures of my Big Get. Wish me luck, everybody!
oh and I’m betting te lady that said that carts were downstairs when you were already there, she’s probably from the chicago store helping out. They send in experienced ikea help in from all over the country for openings. The Chicago Schaumburg store has three floors, the top is the showroom, the second is the marketplace and the third is warehouse and checkout…
We had the exact same “college degree” conversation when trying to figure out the food court!! And I definitely tried to buy the floor model pillow as well… I will be much better prepared next time!
Jen–Maybe that was it! There were several employees who told us that their stores were set up differently, so they were a little confused about things themselves. I have to say they were all VERY helpful–at least tried to be. It was just a crazy day for everyone with the crowds and pandemonium. Don’t want anyone to think I’m ragging on the Ikea workers. Everything was new to them, too! -Julia
okay I have to amend my comment above with the the folowing everythign upstairs is downstairs with the exception of the kitchen fixtures… (pot racks, etc) – you CAN take a cart. They just dont like it when it’s so packed.
Even I find his layout confusing, I LOVE LOVE the chicago store. It’s i think much easier, but it’s the store I learned IKEA in.
Great post! Love all your pictures and I am so glad that a) we weren’t the only cart-confused shoppers or b) the only ones who tried to buy a display pillow! Maybe we’ll see each other there again sometime when we’ve recovered!
We went last week, as well. I loved it! I loved all of the black/white. There was a cute red sectional that my husband forbid me to buy. And of course, that light fixture. I bought it to go over the reading chair in my bedroom.
My husband commented when we left on my lack of buying. I spent so much time just looking (there was so much to see!), that I just bought the light fixtures and a set of shoe organizers. He was right, and now we have to go back, soon and without kids.
I have spent a lot of time (and money) in IKEA over the years, but I was stumped by the curtains recently. I’ve not bought a lot of soft-furnishings there and I couldn’t find the shorter curtains either. It took me ages to realise you have to shorten them yourself.
I’m bookmarking your site so I can link to my Ikea post. It’ll go up tomorrow!
great the highlights of their showroom
Ahhh, Ikea…Definitely a perk to moving to Atlanta. Though I’d have to agree: Ikea is a great place to shop, but they make it extremely annoying to purchase. Also, why don’t they let you order anything online??
Dana
I have had the $20 dining chairs for 3 years now. Still going strong with two kids of my own and all of their friends who come over. They aren’t the slightest bit wobbly! I heart my Atlanta Ikea!
Aren’t Ikea stores fabulous?! I love it. And I also live in a city that doesn’t have one. But I do agree that many areas in Ikea are hard to find. Their prices are awesome and so is their cafeteria! If you haven’t already, you must go to the cafeteria and order, if nothing else, their Daim cake. The almond cake is very good and so are the meatballs! Yum.