The IKEA Expedition of 2006!

The last time we ventured to Ikea was in Pittsburgh in 2003. I used to live near the store there back in 1992 but in those days I was married to the Antichrist and when you are married to the Antichrist you cannot buy items from Ikea. All items must be marked Ralph Lauren, Saks Fifth Ave or Tiffiny & Co. Now that the Antichrist is another man's problem and I have pursued my dream of owning a big old house with a yard and remarried a lessor demon we are open to the occasional expedition to Ikea.

There is a new store in Michigan near Detroit. This is a 3 1/2 hour drive from Dayton instead of a 4 1/2 hour drive to the Pittsburgh store. There is the added bonus of having a place to stay in Toledo, Ohio which is 45 minutes from the store.
A few weeks ago Deborah was in Toledo and ventured to Ikea. She spied a couple of items that she wanted to buy and twisted my arm into going up with her a week ago.
If you have never been to Ikea then you are either in for a surprise or a complete shock. Ikea manufactures very stylish modern looking European style furniture at a very affordable price. Most of it is made from particle board but some of it is beech, birch or pine. The bulk of the furniture is ideal for studio apartments, college dorms, small space living or people living in their first home. We tend to be attracted to the kitchen items and the lighting department. Ikea furniture is not really our thing, though there is a TV cabinet that we plan to buy and paint so that it fits in with our "Old Timey" look.
I remember my first Ikea experience in London in 1982. The paper Japanese lanterns are etched into my memory. Since then my Ikea purchases have been very limited to a few garden items and a welcome mat. After buying the "Crack house" we did buy some stainless steel racks and a countertop pot holder for our kitchen. We finally did some real damage this weekend though. Not bad but around $300 worth. Besides grabbing a bunch of stuff in the "As Is" department we got some more stainless stuff for the kitchen including a spice type rack and a wine rack.



We got a storage unit for Elizabeth's toys though nothing is big enough to house all her stuffed animals! The big scoop was this sink for $90.00. I will make a bench style base for it from some of the old 4 X 4 oak posts that I pulled out of the wall and some other scrap wood from the mound in the basement.



This will work great in the laundry room bathroom area where I am currently priming the walls. This faucet to go with it was a mere $29.00.




My original plan was to make a concrete trough-like sink and have wall mounted faucet hardware but this price was way too attractive and will save me a whole bunch of experimentation. We even went so far as to buy huge bags of perlite and vermiculite to make the concrete light weight. So the good news is that I don't have to worry about constructing a mold and getting all my measurements right for this project.

The bad news is there is a rumor going around that they plan to build an IKEA near Cincinnati next year....