they have been trying for years to get one opened in Sheffield, but Sheffield Council don't appear to be very helpful... very short sighted IMO, we have to either travel to Leeds or Nottingham.. which is a pain!

Silly old Sheffield! Ashton council was able to offer IKEA a town centre site.

Up until now we've had to go to either Warrington or Leeds. This new store is practically on our doorstep.

we pretty much did that. Our downstairs is pretty open-plan and most of the stuff is from Ikea, barring the dining room table and dresser, both of which are lovely big chunky bits of real wood which will last forever.

Someone commented that our house felt very scandinavian. I wonder why?

:-)

I love the meatballs in their cafe too.

I like it how IKEA refuses to compromise on the whole Scandanavian thing. How they won't anglicise anything, not even the food.

Ailz loves the meatballs. I'm a vegetarian (or more properly pescatarian) so I wouldn't know, but my haddock and chips were pretty good.

We have an IKEA not too far away; I loves the lingonberries. And the meatballs. It's been open for a couple of years, and it's still insane to go in there. The next closest one is outside of Chicago which is a good seven/eight hour drive from Minneapolis, hence the hysteria.

We're lucky- we have a couple within an hour's drive and now this new one which is only ten minutes away.

I like to think- with Dresser and Morris and the Bauhaus people- that good design saves souls.

This is very nice. I think I might use this as my work sig!

And why not?

i'm currently running a boycott of our local IKEA after a terrible experience there involving a couch that we owned for approximatley 10 minutes. before this last experience (last weekend, we bought a couch and they were rude to us so we returned it even before we left with it...) i'd always loved the place. we'll see how long the ban stays in place, though, as i have a real soft spot for their furniture.