Our Ikea Ottawa Sneak Peek!

Jordan and I (Brian) have officially done something that not many people have ever done: we were in two different Ikeas in one day!!! Thanks to one of our wedding angels, Judy Ruggles of JR Creations, we got a two person pass to get to see the new Ikea early...and oh my, what a huge store!!!

 Here are some facts about the old and new Ottawa Ikeas:

Cow chairs for eating meatballs

Old Ikea:

• One of the smallest in the world
• Only a limited line of products
• One cash at the food court
• Limited parking

New Ikea

Jordan finally got her Ikea fabric...

•  The largest in Canada
•  A full line of products  (even fabric by the yard)
• Tons of parking even under the building
• Two separate food lines on the food court
•  Four cashiers in the food court
•  Huge warehouse
• Wide aisles
• A 5km walk if you walk the whole thing so you get your work out while picking out your favourite “malm”, “minut” or “trundle".

Looking at the new resturant

It was exciting to walk the new Ikea on Saturday, to see the newest Ikea before it's open and really take in the marvel of the assembly-required furniture world. I feel the most exciting part in this new “build it yourself” wonderland was the small apartments they have built inside the store: it gives you so many ideas on how to make that small space work. One of these apartments was a kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, and living space with a dining room table that was squished into 286 square feet and it was truly usable space. However, you may not have enough room to build all the furniture inside the apartment, but at least it all fits!

Full line of cupboard doors

Jordan's yoga moves in the isle

Walking along the store there is the quintessential Ikea blue arrows pointing you along your 5km journey in very wide aisles. Starting on the top floor, you have tons of room to start your yellow bag race, or to meander and look at the walls of accessories and fabrics from afar. You take a pit stop half way through to have a sit at their cafeteria while enjoying their meatballs and their famous gravy. You  go down the stairs to the second floor and trade your yellow bag for a shopping cart...and this is where the race is fueled by squeaky wheels and crashing metal. You have left the show room and entered the Market Hall where the stacks of millions of tea lights and tons of lamp fixtures are truly a sight. The aisles stay nice and wide so you can walk all stretched out; probably even holding yoga class in the aisles if you wanted to. You then round the corner and enter into the warehouse. And then the massive hot dog and frozen yogurt bar see you on your way out of the store before you head down the escalator to the bottom floor where you pick up your car and get to try fitting all the weirdly flat boxes into your car…or you can stop at the delivery counter to have all your purchases delivered and even assembled if you are not an Ikea wizard like myself.

Soft blanket...

The warehouse

I say that the new Ikea is a 10 out of 10 improvement over the old store, especially after walking both of them in one day; you truly get to see how big our obsession with the alan-key furniture world has become. At the very least, they have some great space-saving items, and who doesn’t want their very own “frack”?