Ikea Kitchen Cabinets & Ikea Stores

[Steve Klc]

I haven't been to that one yet, Melissa, but let us know what you think. (I have family in New Hampshire.) Hope the new catalog is in the store by then--down here they still have a ton of the 2005 kitchen brochures lying around.

[MelissaH]

I haven't been to that one yet, Melissa, but let us know what you think. (I have family in New Hampshire.) Hope the new catalog is in the store by then--down here they still have a ton of the 2005 kitchen brochures lying around.

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We paid a visit to the New Haven Ikea store yesterday afternoon. It was a semi-directed wander: we had a list of items we wanted to look at, but that didn't stop us from perusing other sections of the store.

We parked the car yesterday shortly before 1 PM. Yesterday was a Friday, and we really wanted to avoid the I-95 traffic rush leaving NYC for points east, so we figured that we had two hours to do everything inside and then make tracks for the infamous Q bridge before the world got there.

Our first impression was that it's a BIG store, bigger than the one in Pittsburgh. But then again, our last visit to the Pittsburgh store was a year and a half ago when we were back for a visit, so maybe I'm just remembering it wrong. But just like the Pittsburgh store, it was laid out clearly upstairs, and things were about where I'd expected them to be...which meant that we had to walk through the whole upstairs to look at the things we wanted to see.

We probably spent more time in the sofa section than anywhere else, trying to find something that we liked and fit our budget, but was also comfortable to back and butt; we eventually discovered a nice-looking loveseat that fit the bill if you double up on the back cushions, but the tag said it was out of stock. (The chair and the full-size sofa were there, however.)

We then moved on to the relevant section for this post: kitchens. We saw probably six or eight different kitchen "rooms" set up with a variety of cabinets, carts, and countertops. Every single sink we saw had a totally useless faucet design: little tiny knobs set right up close to the faucet so you'd bang your knuckles on the spigot every time, and you'd completely slime everything if your hands were gooped up with chicken slime. They also had a selection of kitchen carts to play with (the real reason for our trip this time) and a corner with knobs, drawer pulls, etc. But we only saw three people working in the kitchen area, and they all seemed to be occupied helping the same person. I found a selection of kitchen planning goodies, including a selection of last year's kitchen catalogs and a list of this year's prices for the various doors available. I finally got the attention of one of the workers and asked about the new catalogs, but was told that they were late, and probably won't arrive until the end of August. We picked up a copy of the old kitchen catalog, because old with old prices is better than nothing.

I can't speak to the kitchen planning skills of the employees, since we didn't try them out. They seemed so busy that I hesitated to ask them about anything nonessential.

That was all we looked at upstairs. Downstairs, we got two six-packs of flutes ($4.50 each) and some plastic cutting boards to replace ones that are badly nicked. We picked up a mirror to go in our bathroom, and some other little odds and ends. We went to the information desk to ask where to find the kitchen cart we chose, since it hadn't had a tag upstairs. At the info desk, we also confirmed that the loveseat we liked was out of stock. After retrieving the box for the cart, we checked out the scratch-and-dent "As Is" area and found a nice chunk of butcher block, cheap apparently only because it had torn plastic wrapping. And on our way out of scratch-and-dent, we found the area that held the chair/loveseat/sofa we liked. We saw the cushions, cushion covers, and much to our surprise the loveseat area was full with boxes that matched the loveseat number. My husband went back to the info desk to be sure it was the same thing, and once we confirmed it we loaded one of them, along with cushions and covers, onto a cart as well.

Finally we checked out, and the final bill was less than I expected, always a nice surprise. I was able to sweet-talk them out of a new 2006 catalog, since we'd driven six hours to get there. And finally we loaded up the car and got out of the store and across the bridge, just ahead of the main part of the rush.

My assessment: not a bad store; I wish it were closer to my house. But it looked like they desperately needed to have more workers in the kitchen section, so you don't feel like you're imposing if you need to ask a question. The setups in the rooms are a good way to see lots of different things, but again it would have been nice to see a better-staffed area with workers flocking to help as they did in other areas of the store.

MelissaH