Last week I wrote about Ikea coming to Belfast. I wrote how I was looking forward to going to Ikea to see what all the Ikea fuss is about.
In Stockholm, last friday, I took the opportunity to visit the Ikea in Kungens Kurva. There is a bus from the center of Stockholm that you can take out to worship at the altar of Ikea. It is also free. The Ikea people are nice. They include things like free buses for those of us who don’t have cars.
The trip to Ikea was very worthwhile. Firstly, it got Ikea completely out of my system. I’ve been obsessed with getting to an Ikea warehouse store for a very very long time. For years. Since I first saw one on holiday with my parents in France. That was years ago. So, I won’t have to rush up to Belfast for months and months, especially as they have announced that they will be delivering to the Republic and I already have the shelves I would like picked out.
In Kungens Kurva a very large esclator takes you up to the top floor and you proceed to walk in circles whilst descending floors through kitchen, bathroom, study, children’s bedrooms, living room, etc etc. Eventually you end up on the ground floor where they have all the boxes for what you want to order. On every floor there are sample rooms done up and all the products are listed. There are helpful staff everywhere who will help you to design the kitchen/bathroom/bedroom/living room/whatever room of your dreams.
The Ikea stuff is nice. But, it is very definitely temporary furniture. I am not sure that I would be able to live with it indefinitely, save for the Billy book case shelves. It also stuck me that some of the Ikea stuff looks exactly what it is. Cheap. The quality isn’t bad, but it’s not super either. Given the prices, maybe my expectations were a little high. To be honest, I think I expected a little bit more. The kitchens especially seemed a little rickety. I couldn’t figure out if that was because they were hastily set up in display areas and so not properly installed or was it because they were akin to B&Q kitchens. i.e. Not Siematic, not Poggenpohl, not even Pronorm, not bespoke. I have played with a lot of kitchens in a lot of showrooms in a lot of countries and the Ikea kitchens were way up the rickety list. But, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt until I have time to play with the drawers and fixtures and fittings of a properly installed and plumbed Ikea kitchen.
Their interior storage is probably what blew me away most. They had really great things for inside wardrobes and bathrooms. I loved some of their bathroom stuff.
My assessment of Ikea and my way of thinking about what stuff of theirs I would use is this: we have really nice wardrobes that came with our apartment and there is no way the quality of the ikea wardrobes matches the weight and quality of our current wardrobes. But their interior fittings are crap. No baskets, no rails, no shoe racks that you can pull in and out. So I would go to Ikea for the interior fit out stuff, providing of course that the measurements match. But, wardrobes are fairly standard, 300, 450, 900, 1200 mm widths e.t.c. We have a really good quality kitchen but one or two cuporards and drawers could be better laid out. Again, I’d go go Ikea for the interior fittings.
If I had a baby who was going to become a toddler, child, teenager, i.e. would require a lot of different bedroom furniture for their different needs caused by growing up, it would be hard to beat the furniture in Ikea for children. They had some really fantastic stuff. It’s cheap enough to not to feel guilty about changing it to move with a child’s growing and changing needs, i.e. you can justify re-kitting out a bedroom at least once or twice between the age of nought and eighteen. In fact, it would be a crime not to if an Ikea is near you.
It’s really hard to judge but overall, I did get the feeling that their wardrobes and kitchens just didn’t have have that extra weight and sturdiness I have felt in other furntiure. The other furniture costs more, but in certain circumstances it is worth the investment. I think if I was in a house and installing a kitchen and wardrobes that I expected to last for twenty or thirty years I would probably not go to Ikea. On the other hand, a rental apartment that needed some updating or fit out (temporarily), Ikea all the way. A summer house - Ikea all the way. Except maybe for the kitchen. Their kitchens did not convince me at all.
Oh, it was in the run up to Christmas, so they had some nice Christmas things. In marked contrast to what I saw back in Stockholm city center, some of it was made in China, but in Ikea you expect that to be the case. I bought a cat-bed for Percy, my parents cat, (not Christmassy at all, but it’s Percy’s christmas present). I also bought some christmas night lights, (100 night lights for 17 or 27 SEK is hard to beat) , I bought a towel rail for the bathroom (I intend to get more of this particular range of bathroom stuff in Belfast, but I wanted to show it to SK and see whether he could be convinced to also intend to get more of this particular range), I also bought some bathroom storage baskets which are collapsable. Oh, and a lantern. They had nice wrapping paper e.t.c. but I like to buy my wrapping paper in Oxfam, so I didn’t indulge. I did get a glass bottle for the kitchen and also some paper napkins and a cheap table cloth for Christmas parties. One so cheap, I won’t care about red wine being knocked on it and staining it. I will worry about the oak underneath the table cloth, but not the table cloth itself because, again, the quality is not that great. Not compared to proper Swedish linen.
Did I like Ikea? Absolutely, yes. It’s just, some things I am picky about. If I wanted some nice glass storage jars - hit in Ikea. It’s so hard to find what was so readily available there. Cast iron cookware - not Le Creuseut, but really nice and heavy. Flatware - miss. Glassware - hit. Plain white porcelain - hit. Shelves - hit, dining room tables and chairs - didn’t pay much attention to, if I’m being honest. Beds - no time. The one or two I tried seemed pretty comfy. Slumberdowns, e.t.c. - hit. Towels, e.t.c. - miss. Bed linen - miss, especially if I had children sleeping on it. It was very coarse. Fabrics - hit. This is a thing I LOVE about Sweden. All the housey shops sell fabrics and some also sell wool for your crafty side. Ikea even sells cheap sewing machines.
