James A.
Yelp
My wife and I really like IKEA: how they allow as much research as you want to do before you go to the store, how they keep a very accurate count of inventory that is available to the shopper, and presenting a huge variety of furniture and accessories that are durable, all for a decent price.
As my wife was completing the layout of our bedroom condo, she had her eye set on replacing our mismatched nightstands with the Vikhammer ($69.99 each). It has been out of stock for a while, but came back last week. She was getting emails stating this, one for each IKEA location (first it was available in Burbank, then in Covina). She figured out it was never going to be available in our nearest IKEA in Carson, and then started to throw out enough hints for us to go to make the 1+ hour trip before they sold out again. So we decided to combine it was a breakfast dim sum place that we wanted to try in Rosemead, and then go to IKEA when it opened at 10am. I also needed to buy a shelf to get my PS5 off the floor, so had perused the site beforehand to find the right piece of furniture that would fit properly. Settled on the Ekby Alex ($65) with the Ramshult brackets (three of them at $5 each).
There are two parking areas. The one that Google maps directed us to was an underground parking garage. It was huge, reminded me of an airport parking garage (requiring signs everywhere to tell which way the entrance was), and big enough to justify explicitly remembering where you parked. You need to take an elevator to the ground floor, where the main warehouse was. The rows are numbered alphabetically, with numbers telling you how far to go. Both Vikhammer and Ekby Alex were stored in this area, and we got the exact location by looking on the website by store location. You need a flatbed cart while shopping at Ikea.
Now, even though you see the shelf as one product, it is actually 2 different SKUs, and we had to go to the 'Home organization' section to pick up the Ramshult brackets. We also needed screws and anchors, so wanted the Trixig, which also seemed to be in the 'Home organization' section. Just to find that section took a bit of time. In this section, there is numbered system to find your stuff...you just have to walk around until you see the display, and even then the actual product might be stored a bit away (I didn't see any employees on the floor to help). It really is self-service here, but a good place to just browse for inspiration if you have time.
They only had one register open, so waited a bit. They sell Swedish food products here including chocolate. We didn't have the appetite to stop by the cafe for their famous meatballs. Checkout had no snags, and the large elevator fit our cart easily, taking us down to the parking floor.
All instruction/assembly instructions are provided online and for both of our products, no words were used...just pictures (to eliminate the need to translate to every language that IKEA sells their products). I'm not a visual learner, but have come to trust IKEA's instructions to get it done, and am always impressed with the engineering to design something like this, and provide the instructions to make it work. For the first Vikhammer, I studied each picture and was able to assemble it without having to undo/redo anything. I was so confident that I figured I could assemble the second one by memory...nope, took me longer the second time because I had to undo something TWICE...sigh..my sense of accomplishment took a nosedive after that. The Ekby Alex took a lot longer, requiring a lot of measuring and the use of my own tools...but the finished product looked good and I'm confident that a future convertible sleeper chair will fit.
I still remember when IKEA started to open stores in the Midwest, and how people (including us) would make a 2 hour one-way trip to Chicago to get furniture to bring back to our first homes. That's what we could afford at that time. We slowly started to buy "better" furniture made of solid wood for a lot higher prices. But now with us furnishing our downsized home, it seems to have come full circle, even including the long drive back and forth.