Fine Dining at Ikea

My tenant in the front apartment is leaving, and I figured it would be a good time to upgrade the kitchen in that place. The only problem is that I don't have very much cash with which to do it. I could go to Home Depot and get some of those do it yourself cabinets. It would be a little work, but I’ve done it before. That's when the Ikea light bulb went off in my mind. Cheap crap that looks good. Perfect. So I went on line and took a look at Ikea’s kitchen cabinets. I actually liked their line of kitchen cabinets called VÄRDE, so I put the base cabinet with the double sink in my virtual shopping cart. When I went to check out, I found that their shipping costs were $99, or one third the price of the cabinet. No problem, I’d just order it from the store near here, and go pick it up myself. ‘Sorry, not available at that store‘, was the comeback. Okay I figured, I’ll just have Mark drive me out to that store and I’ll find something else since the online experience wasn‘t working out.

After winding my way through the maze of Ikea showrooms, I finally found the kitchen cabinet area. The sign said, “Please sign in at the help desk”, so I did, or at least I tried to. At the help desk were two Ikea employees standing in front of the computer chatting. I walked up, and stood in front of them. Their eyes never came close to looking at me. Instead they kind of stared off and continued chatting. We were only two feet apart, but still they did not seem to see me. After a few minutes the young lady suddenly looked my way, startled, as if I had just suddenly materialized, and asked if I needed help. She was standing at the Ikea help desk, in an Ikea uniform, with an Ikea name tag, and she wanted to know if I needed help.

I was not pleased with the Ikea products. They were not the complete knocked down assemblies that I was led to believe. When I asked Miss ‘Do you need help’ if the counter tops had pre-cutout holes for the sinks, her answer was “No, you have to cut those out yourself.” So what I would have to do is buy a cabinet, a counter top, and a sink, all separately, and then do all the cutting and sawing myself. In other words, the exact same thing I’d have to do if I bought the same crap from Home Depot. The only difference being the crap from Home Depot, while still being crap, would be of slightly higher quality crap than Ikea.

Mark and I did eat at the Ikea cafeteria. I can say that the salmon plate was very good. As for the Home Depot, they only have a hotdog cart out front.