[Tigratrus]

I know we've got quite a few folks here that started out with one or two IKEA pieces (what's a couple small flat packs eh? They look so innocent...) here and there, or maybe a small project... That grew.

So I was thinking it might be interesting to pull some of those stories together to share with each other and new folks that are just coming in. So how did you IKEA addiction first start, and what has it led you to do?

For our part Susan and I got started because we had *really* fugly vinyl flooring in our kitchen and one day just pulled it back to see what was underneath. That led to ripping up all the vinyl flooring, and the plywood subflooring down to the original pine floor boards. While doing this we had a sudden epiphany that we could install a dishwasher in our breakfast room (Yay! No more washing everything by hand!) and maybe a prep sink and some much needed storage and counter space.

So I did some research on building cabinets, determined that a tablesaw was the fastest way to go and speced out the best bang-for-our-buck options. When Susan was less than pleased with the amount of time that would be required to actually BUILD the cabinets and doors, we started looking into the options.

My mom works at Home Depot, so we went there and looked at what they had (she gets 10% off coupons from time to time) and I was totally dismayed by the poor build quality of most of the cabinets, even the more expensive ones. Susan was heavily involved on Gardenweb/THS since we were die hard gardeners when we first moved into our house, so she did some research there and came up with IKEA as a possibly that we should look at.

So we did.

I was floored by the quality difference, the hardware and general fit and finish totally blew away what we'd seen at HD for a fraction of the price. We took home some parts and pieces to look at in detail, and that was that.

Since then

We *did* make the breakfast room over into a kitchen annex.

Calling all serial remodelers! 

Revamped my office with Billy bookcases and an IKEA computer desk.

Solved our 5 year old daughters tendancy to spread piled of clothing all over her room by adding two BONDE storage units with pullout cubes in the 8 cubbys on the bottom. By having a *specific* place for each type of clothing, she no longer needs to empty out entire drawers just to find the *one* skirt/dress/pair of tights that she's looking for.

Completely revolutionized our 6 year old son's room by adding a SULTAN ALSARP box spring/storage system with DEGERNES baskets underneath for even more gobs of storage.

Calling all serial remodelers! 

And along the way completely changed our site by working on the little site that Susan started to keep info about IKEA kitchens from constantly being re-invented.

So who else would like to share?

Hi, my name is James, and I'm an IKEAholic...

James

[Narf]

For me, it began with a store called Stor in 1989 ... not that I bought anything there, seeing how I didn't have much of any money back then either. But the concept already tainted me ...

Then a few years later, Ikea bought them out ... and the prices came down. I bought a few $29 dressers (still have 'em), $7 Lack half-round tables (a couple are still intact), had a wall cabinet that I'm thinking was from the System 210, and stuff from the AS-IS!

I used five Tore 33 doors (circa 1992-1993) + two computer keyboard drawers and built a sliding top coffee table, built a sofa table out of 2x2 and 1x3 lumber + two more of the same doors, and a custom computer desk using the same lumber and three doors.

Went on a dry spell for some time, buying some stuff every once in a while (still have some circa 1999 Pax(?) cabinets in the garage), and an occasional major ones when the time came (ie. Tundra flooring).

The bug hit again a few years ago when I went back to school in Pomona, which is right over the hill from the Covina store. It hasn't really stopped since.

As it was 15 years ago, I still aim for the bigger bargains from the AS-IS. The difference is that these days, the odds of finding the pieces to build out a complete unit from the "scrap" is much greater than the old City of Industry days.

-----
Historical note: Both City of Industry and Tustin were Stor stores, and were converted to Ikeas. Both have since been closed down, as they were much smaller than the typical Ikea these days, having moved to Covina and Costa Mesa respectively. There used to be an Ikea in Fontana too, though that one closed too.

[kingjosiah]

wow, now that is a name from the past! Back when growing up in Pittsburgh, I remember seeing a Stor near the airport. They always had the goofiest commercials and reputation of 'cheap' furniture. We've long since left Pgh and i suspect it is an Ikea now.

we've bought almost all our furniture from Ikea since the days of renting apartments, so buying our kitchen from Ikea was a natural progression. we took looked at HomeDepot/Lowes, but left unimpressed.

[DulcineaK]

James, great, fun idea for a thread... i'll try to type something up soon, but right now i'm busy plastering the living room, consequences of the "serial" aspect of my life

[torrus]

I used to buy IKEA stuff in the 70's from a small store in Mississauga (just west of Toronto) while in university, then got serious with a System 210 kitchen (Kvadrat white) in the early 80's...at that time it was totally self-planning.
Alas, the metric System 210 didn't last...I remember it had glass doors for all full-height wall cabinets.
We have since furnished most rooms with IKEA furniture - some better than others...at one time the whole family (four of us) worked at IKEA in various departments but have since moved on...
Still with the kitchen system on a daily basis.

[scrappy25]

Here in the MidAtlantic, the closest Ikea to Baltimore was in Virginia and we would make the 2 hour trek there to get a few items when we first got married in 1987. We loved Scan and scandinavian furniture, but the prices were out of reach for those of us still paying off student loans. Ikea Baltimore opened just after that we moved into our first house in 1989, and we happily furnished the whole house with Ikea. I remember being really happy that I could be in the right lane on my many trips home from the store, since the car was so full that I couldn't check my blind spot on the right. My mom, on visiting, made the sage comment that Ikea was for "PUPPIES"- that is, "Poor Upcoming Young Professionals." Of course, being puppies and then yuppies with several children, we never got around to replacing most if it as we had intended. We still have the Ikea beds with the European measurements, and the aforementioned System 210 for closets!

We recently finished our basement and I put in an Ikea kitchenette with much help from this site (especially Eva). This site was a real lifesaver for my many questions about the kitchen, and generated some great ideas for a 9 inch broom closet and under-sink, as well as over-fridge pull-outs. Of course, the basement library/media room is furnished with Ikea as well (the much-missed Magiker set). I am in the process of putting Malm headboards into our office as desktops- will post the results when I am done.

I am now thinking of expanding our upstairs kitchen and putting in Ikea boxes with custom fronts, so I hang out here occasionally to see what everyone is up to. What a great bunch of helpful people, and I LOVE seeing the finished kitchens!

So what are we called now that we are no longer puppies or yuppies?

PS I have Ikea catalogues dating back to 1988. The only catalogues that I have ever kept!

Thank you, Susan and James,and everyone else for all that you do to help us out!
Nancy

[splatgirl]

I think I would be more accurately described as a serial builder since I've only done a tiny bit of remodeling in comparison.

I remember going to IKEA Schaumburg for the first time in the early 90's. It is the experience I refer back to when looking for a means to forgive and be patient with all the out of (non-IKEA) town tourists that make my "quick" trips miserable and generally cause traffic jams by standing around mid-aisle gaping, looking dazed and confused.
I didn't get it at first either, but I have the 80's to blame...I didn't get a lot of stuff back then

Later on in the 90's I made a trip there from Mpls with a girlfriend. We stayed the weekend, spent a couple of thousand dollars, and came home with a truckload of silver Billy's, a few of the old plastic cartoon-shaped lawn chairs and the entire back seat stuffed to the gills with light fixtures, kitchen and home dec stuff. I designed our home office around those silver Billy and the rest of that original load of swag went a long way toward elevating the style in our old 70's rambler.

When I started thinking about designing our new house, I knew from the very first second that I'd do an IKEA kitchen. Truth be told, probably part of the reason I wanted to build in the first place was so that I COULD do an IKEA kitchen. Some place in that timeline came the announcement of the Twin Cities store which would have been like my greatest wish being granted even if I hadn't been planning on planning a kitchen. Knowing it was going to be that much simper to acquire was a dream come true.

Fast forward to almost five years later, with the kitchen, pantry, bathrooms, bike room, countless hours spent assembling, modding and hacking, and one "Romancing the Flat Pack" appearance under my belt, and there's still a fairly long list of IKEA stuff I want for the house either to adulterate or use as intended. And that list doesn't seem to be shrinking even though I'm still acquiring.
As far as what we've got to date? Too much to detail! There's not an IKEA-free room in my house, as long as storing leftover kitchen bits in the garage counts

To consider what I would have spent to this point to acquire stuff from other sources to fulfill the same needs...we've got to be beyond the $100,000 mark in savings by now. I've said many times before that there's no way we would have been able to afford to build the house we did were it not for IKEA.

[kelly]

We started with IKEA on a trip to Chicago about 10 years ago- mostly textiles because that's all I could afford!

When we had to renovate our kitchen in the old house, there was no IKEA close enough, so we used Mill's Pride from HD...Oh well. An entire house renovated without IKEA! Boo!

Funny, now we have more money ($1 would be more money, BTW), and we're quite happy with IKEA, thank you very much!

We started out looking at the high-end kitchens I'd been lusting after for years (I could afford magazines!)...and I'd seen enough fabulous homes with IKEA kitchens that we had to check it out...so I found IKEAFANS!

Without this site, we probably wouldn't have done IKEA. Without IKEA, we would probably gotten a home-improvement loan instead of paying cash- $30k of cabinets would have added a couple bucks to the tab...

And I think I got just about the same look and feel (and hardware!) with IKEA.

[climber_grrl]

I can't even remember when I fell in love w/IKEA, but my furniture buying started at a place called Plummers. That is IKEA-like in modern style, but no where near as price conscious. Of course mommy and daddy bought that furniture for me, so I didn't care as much.

1999 I got married (hubby # 1) and bought a new house. We needed a lot and had medical school bills (nothing like owing more every year than you make). Especially bookcases and PAX units for clothes/tv and computer stations.

2004 I was already married to hubby #2 (thank god!) and he's a real construction guy, at least he was for 5 years while he was trying to figure out what he wanted to do w/his life. We wanted to get out of our cookie-cutter OC home and into something we could make our own. We found our dream home deep in the canyon (that was in the middle of, but not actually on, fire for 2 weeks) in the middle of the forrest. We saw it and said, "We love it. Now let's gut it".

4? 5? 6? phases turned into 1. The kitchen, along w/the entire downstairs (1400 sq ft), was taken down to the studs and I got to design the all the cabinetry around the beautiful glass hood I saw at IKEA. There was never any question that we wouldn't use IKEA everywhere we could. We love the style and the price. We also couldn't have afforded the remodel w/o IKEA.

Now we have IKEA in every single room. Really.
* Kitchen
* living room (Klippan black leather - purrrr)
* den (Bonde bookcase turned into a sliding door!)
* 2 bedrooms (gonna figure out how to make floating nightstands for the 3rd)
* walk-in closet
* master bathroom (floating vanities anyone?)
* mechanical room (kitchen cabs and a butcher block for a work bench)

3 years later and we're still working on the "finishing touches" (stairs count as a finishing touch, right?). We're done buying the big stuff, but I just can't stay away. There is always something to buy at IKEA, like the "art" I made about a month ago. A picture frame w/slots for 5 pictures, perfect for some fancy color-coordinated paper from Michaels.

Now I need to find someone else's home to IKEA-fy. Maybe I should just stand at the entrance of IKEA and offer to help people shop and put together furniture. LOL

[Narf]

Originally Posted by climber_grrl

Now I need to find someone else's home to IKEA-fy. Maybe I should just stand at the entrance of IKEA and offer to help people shop and put together furniture. LOL

While I haven't offered to put anyone else's furniture together, I certainly have helped others to shop (including Ikeans!), not to mention help move out some questionable pieces from the AS-IS.

(Best one was a $9 Lack coffee table that was damaged on the top middle. I conveniently grabbed a $1.50 Nexus birch drawer front from the handyperson's corner and put it next to the damage. 3 minutes later, it sold!)