[snookums]

Do you remember what was the first Ikea item you ever bought?

For us it was a white table top with black edge, black Curry legs, and black chairs. It was when we were newly married in the early 90's and into the "black and white" thing.

Now a good portion of our house is Ikea. The entire playroom, the laundry room cabinets, two Pax closets, and soon to be the entire scraproom (in the planning stages). And numerous accessories everywhere.

You?

[kisaacs]

Actually, I think it was my entire kitchen. The IKEA near us opened 1 week after we moved into our first home, and the first thing on the list was to redo the kitchen. I had never been to an IKEA before, and the ths forums prompted me to check out IKEA and this site. Went in, loved the kitchens, and bought one the next week. Nothing like jumping in with both feet!

[Shouva]

Well, if you count the Ikea predecessor that Ikea bought out ....I remember shopping at "Stor" back in the early or mid '80's I think. Don't remember what I bought, but I remember loving the place and resenting Ikea for taking it over. I loved the "Stor" radio ads: a man with a doofy sounding heavy Swedish accent talking about buying "tehechapis". I'll bet that this was the beginning of Ikea using strange made up words for their products.

Directly from Ikea I remember buying cabinets for my townhouse I beleive in 1992. I did not use them in my kitchen, but elsewhere. They were a metric system and were called System 210. I actually still have two of them, unassembled in my garage. I have yet to figure out a use for them...but I will someday. I liked the depth of the upper cabinets. They were about 14" as compared to our American 12".

[DesignDiva]

I bought a large marble pastry board! It was like $10, this is back about 15 years ago. I thought it was awesome, had it for years.

[splatgirl]

In the 90's, long before IKEA Twin Cities was even a dream, a friend and I drove the 6 hours down to the Schamburg store with my full-size, four door, long bed pickup for a weekend of powerIKEA.
I think I spent about 2K. The first tiny drop in my now very deep IKEA bucket. Everything from Billy bookcases to kitchen scissors. Between both of our purchases, the entire truck was full, backseat up to the roof and the bed.
When I first heard that a Twin Cities store was in the works it was a huge relief, because I knew that someday I would build a house and want an IKEA kitchen for it and the prospect of doing this long distance via the Schamburg store was a bummer. In hindsight, it's a very good thing we got our IKEA, because I think I was there once or twice a week during our biggest assembly stints.

I have kept every IKEA receipt from our house project. They're stuffed into a legal size manila envelope that's literally bulging. Someday when I'm feeling brave I am going to add up the $$. Maybe I'll hold a "guess the total" contest using pictures of the IKEAdom that is our house as clues

Better yet, we could start the thread: "what's your longest IKEA reciept?", but then we'd have to decide inches or centimeters

[kelly]

My first IKEA buy was also at IKEA Schaumberg before IKEA Twin Cities came to be. We bought rugs, kilim pillows (still have 'em), steel waste can (still used) and a little nine-drawer FIRA storage box.

[Chuck]

I have a large System 210 "pantry" that is used as a wardrobe in my younger daughter's room. It's as old as IKEA is in the US - 22 years, perhaps - and works just fine. I also have a Boj piece that is 20 years old - it started as a changing table for my older daughter (now 20 y/o), morphed into a desk, then back to a changing table, and is now on its second life as a desk.

[climber_grrl]

I can't remember when it was, probably college, but I got a Billy bookcase.

Once I got into my 2nd house I got more bookcases and 2 PAX wardrobes, one for an actual wardrobe and one for a hidden computer desk.

Now we are starting to put together the cabs for the bathroom and kitchen and I just can't wait to outfit my new 8.5' x 7' walk in closet w/PAX and use a Bonde bookcase as a sliding door in front of my 1/2 bath. We might just have to get another Poang so that we don't have to fight over the one we have. LOL

[csholocene]

But I found a set of bambu window blinds at a resale shop that we use frequently. We have matchstick bamboo blinds on most windows (and paper blinds on the ones the cats like) and I needed to replace a couple sets. The Ikea blinds were about 15 times better quality than what I'd been getting, and even retail, they're cheaper than what's available in the local big boxes.

That's when I started thinking about Ikea pretty seriously.

[dentedvw]

I too purchased my first piece of Ikea at a resale shop. It is Farbstudie Qadrate Mit Konzentrischen Ringen by Wassily Kandinsky. I recognized it immediately upon entry at my favorite habitat for humanity store. It is unusual to find wall art at a building materials salvage store in any case, but even more so to find something so nice! So, I grabbed it immediately. I was pleasantly surprised to find it was Ikea. It's rather large (according to my wife, but I wouldn't mind a larger version), and takes up a prominent position in our dining room.



Here it is, in our dining room that used to be a small dark hallway, a pantry, and a coat closet. FWIW, I also got the light fixture at the same store, and the Heywood Wakefield set at another similar store. We are reuseaholics. Even the carpet (though temporary) was a scrap from someone elses home.