IKEA

For the uninitiated--which I was for a very long time--IKEA is a large home department store complex. Well...not just large.  Huge.  It's a little difficult to explain.  It isn't a home store like Menard's or Lowe's or Home Depot.  The only hardware that they sell at IKEA is the hardware needed to put together their products.  So what do they sell?  Everything else!  Furniture and furniture components for every room in the house.  Lights and lamps.  Kitchen ware.  Kitchen cabinet components.  Curtains and linen.  Counter top components.  I simply cannot list them all!  It is all from Sweden, very reasonably priced, and very versatile.

Want to design a kitchen?  Pick out a style.  Pick out a color.  Decide what kind of cabinets and drawers you want.  Measure.  Put it all together...some assembly required.  Everything leaves IKEA in flat boxes that you take with you (or pay them to deliver to your home).  On the weekends, the place is packed, with vehicles backed up to the loading dock for people to load their own purchases.  Folks travel for hours just to shop at IKEA, and because the stores are so big, they aren't very close together.  (The one near Meg is in Schaumburg--an hour away.  The nearest one to me here in Indy is in Cincinnati.)  And, of course, no visit to IKEA would be complete without stopping in their food area for Swedish meatballs, always served with lingenberries.  (At least I think they are lingenberries.  If I weren't so lazy, I would look it up!)

Megan and Denis's new house has a living room upstairs and a family room downstairs.  Since they are both computer people--Megan with an online art business, and Denis as a software engineer--they decided to make a studio out of the upstairs living room, with computer stations, worktables, places to stash everything (including cables), file cabinets, big printers, etc.  They measured and measured, then started on their design, trying to think of everything they would need in order to make it a sweet space to meet their needs, changing the design a couple of times, then starting the search for components to build it.  They were already aware of IKEA's offerings and so went about the business of shopping there to pick up what they needed.  OMG!  I think they bought the place out!  In fact, one of the last things I posted on Facebook before I left was that if anyone was thinking about shopping there, not to bother because I was quite sure there couldn't be anything left!!

The kids paid to have the stuff delivered to their new house.  For some reason, it didn't come when they had planned, so the assembly part of the project didn't start until after the actual move, which set them back a bit.  It all fell to Denis, who is quite deliberate and precise in his work (which is good because he was trying to please Megan who can be, shall we say, somewhat demanding?).  Denis worked for days to put the studio components together: every spare minute, while juggling work and sleep and children.  Then he was charged with hiding all of the cords.  (Big job!)  In any case, when it was all done, there were stations for his computer, Meg's computer, and places for both children's computers, plus all of the other accessories of a computer studio.  When I left just a couple of days ago, it just needed finishing touches which were already in the works.

It will be months before they can finally feel totally moved in because they still have to find places where everything will "live" in the process, but they are well on their way.  IKEA helped!