<p>So...need to buy a bunch of stuff for DS to move into an apt. Can't you get online and order from Ikea but pickup in store rather than have them deliver? Anybody done this?</p>
<p>Why wouldn’t you just go to the store and buy the stuff there? Occasionally, they are out of stock, but otherwise I’m not sure what you’re accomplishing by ordering online.</p>
<p>Delivery, of course, costs and cuts into the price advantage of buying IKEA stuff, so I get that part of your question.</p>
<p>ebeeeee,
A couple of weeks ago we were in Chicago and needed to get some stuff from IKEA for DS #1’s apartment. These were all furniture type items, not the smaller stuff. The day before we went to the store, I went online, was able to plug in the particular store we would be visiting, write down the aisle number and bin number where the items were located, verify that they were in stock and how many “units” of those items were in stock so that I could reasonably guess they wouldn’t be sold out. We went to the store, bypassed walking through the display rooms and went directly to the warehouse area. We were able to load everything onto a cart within 10-15 minutes, just using the aisle and bin numbers. If you have to buy many smaller items such as kitchen supplies, it will take much longer. I have never heard of IKEA pulling items for you like Bed, Bath and Beyond does. I don’t think their pricing structure allows this.</p>
<p>Last year, we were in this same situation as my older D was outfitting an apartment for grad school in Boston. We have no IKEAs where we live. We first looked online and narrowed down our choices. We were in NYC visiting other D and spent an hour at an IKEA to look at those choices and others in person to get more of an idea. We took notes. Then, my D finalized her choices. You cannot order online and pick up at the store as we looked into that. However, online, you can put in the store for each item and find out if it is in stock which we kept doing up to the day we went to Boston. We went to Boston, and knew ahead of time which items we were buying and did not look in the showroom but just went to the stacks to get each item which we knew was in stock from having looked online ahead of time. We bought it all on a very busy Labor Day weekend (in Boston that is saying something with all the colleges). My D could not yet move into the apartment and I brought a dolly to Boston in my car and we had to bring every furniture carton up to our hotel room for the night and then the next day, the elevator in the hotel broke down and I just about died thinking how in the world would we get all these cartons of furniture down three flights. My husband was arriving with a UHaul truck with the rest of the furniture bought elsewhere and her other belongings. Luckily before he arrived, the elevator in the hotel was working again and we brought down all the IKEA furniture boxes on the two wheeler thing! Then, he put it all together in 24 hours. Fun times.</p>
<p>sooze et al…
Thanks. That is exactly the information I was looking for. We have a catalog I picked up at one of the LA stores. We know exactly what DS wants. Trying to expedite the process of getting it and I thought they did the BBB thing of being able to have them pull it for you.<br>
DS and DH will be doing the same Boston Ikea routine. Hopefully minus the broken elevator.</p>
<p>ebeeee…at first, I thought we’d do your plan as well but we called and asked if we could pick up the order and they said no. So, basically, do your shopping online, keep checking the in stock availability of each item for the Boston location and then the day they go, just go to the warehouse section and pick up the items on your list without looking at showrooms (unless your son wants to see the items in person first). Then again, in the warehouse, they usually have one of each item put together on display by the cartons of that item. It is pretty organized there. But going with all your “shopping” planned in advance online, made it just like a pick up of an order except you had to gather the order items yourself on the warehouse shelves, that’s all. </p>
<p>I forgot to mention that we realized after we left that one item was not the right color wood and so the next day had to go back to switch it and that was a little bit of a hassle but not too terrible.</p>
<p>Soozie:</p>
<p>We’re going to almost completely furnish S’s apartment from IKEA, so we appreciate your tips. We’ll have to hire someone with a van as our (rented) car will not accommodate the larger pieces. The apartment is on the third floor of a building without elevator, yikes!
But we will still have to go to the showroom to inspect some of the items and so S can try out some of the chairs.
I wish that S’s apartment did not end up looking like an IKEA catalog, but after we leave, he won’t have a car to shop from Craigslist or used furniture stores–and not much time, either.</p>
<p>Marite…D’s apartment in Cambridge is on the second floor walk up. D and hubby did the heavy lifting. Thankfully, this year she is not moving which would be a lot of work as now all the furniture is assembled and so on. She sublet it out for the summer as she was working in Europe. So nice to not have to move anyone this year! </p>
<p>While lots of what she got was from IKEA, not all was. Ordered a sofa online that had to be assembled and can also be a bed and had it shipped to us in VT. Got the mattress set at Costco in VT. Got the desk and bookshelves (also had to be assembled) ordered through Staples and delivered in VT. Most of rest was from IKEA. So, my husband did have to bring a UHaul trailer with this other non-IkEA stuff and whatever else from home. </p>
<p>I am now recalling a bit of the craziness because D had thought she’d get to come home after her summer internship in NYC last summer before starting grad school at MIT but later found out about an orientation and so we had to pack up all her stuff in NYC that she had for the summer and bring it home. she went by train to Boston for orientation. Then, I had to do some packing FOR her of her stuff here in VT from college as before she left fro summer, she thought she was going to get to come home again before grad school but never did! I had to have piles in the garage for hubby to pack into the UHaul trailer including the furniture ordered online. Then, I drove down earlier to Boston with D’s car that she has at school and did the IKEA and BBB runs and so forth with her keeping it all in a hotel room until her apartment was available Sept. 1 and hubby arrived with trailer and did the move in. </p>
<p>The hotel must have thought us a bit nuts considering I wheeled in cartons of IKEA furniture on a two wheeler (did not want to leave it in parked car overnight). Also, the day I arrived to meet D in Boston, my hotel room was not ready and so I left my bags in a waiting area and I had with me a birthday cake for D decorated with the MIT logo and had to leave that with them too. What we do for our kids!</p>
<p>marite, same scenario here except that DS has already looked at the stuff so they don’t have to go into the showroom part at all. Thanks everyone for the tips. We went to the Ikea website last night and couldn’t believe that you can’t order for pickup. Kept thinking we weren’t finding it right on their site. Now we know.</p>
<p>Marite, where is S moving to? Also, which chairs do you mean? I wonder if one is the ones my D got for her living room. She has the Poang chairs and you can select the color of the chair padding. They are comfortable and contemporary looking and inexpensive. D purchased everything herself for her apartment (though had graduation gift money). </p>
<p>I was just driving across Switzerland with my D this past week and passed several IKEA stores and we laughed as we don’t have one where we live but went through the whole IKEA experience this time last year.</p>
<p>We had an IKEA experience similar to yours, soozievt - 3rd floor, no elevators- YIKES! If I never see another Allen wrench in my life, I’ll be happy! I’m SOOO glad he won’t be moving for a couple of years.
Our biggest advice - assemble one piece at a time. Do not open a box until you have completely finished with another. Everybody work on one piece at a time. Trust me there is enough work to go around. (Somebody has to do the lunch run, right?)</p>
<p>Soozie, I tried to PM you but your box is full.</p>
<p>Woody…neither of my kids’ apartment buildings have elevators. I help move but the furniture pieces are my husband’s domain, both in terms of lifting them upstairs and also assemblying. I am more the unpacking and setting up type. :)</p>
<p>Marite, I find I cannot keep up with the PM box in addition to my personal email account and two work email accounts (plus facebook). I prefer email. Could you just click on my name and go to “send email”? Also, I realize I likely should not have asked on a public forum where your son is moving to but thought I must have missed some news from the boards but if you want, let me know privately.</p>
<p>Our neighbors ordered online at the IKEA Hicksville on Long Island. They have a white glove service that picks up all the items and assembles it. I tried to go their ikeausa site but couldn’t find it. My neighbor says it’s only available at the Hicksville store. They can also ship it if you don’t want to go to the store. I found this number online 516 681 4532.</p>
<p>Don’t underestimate how heavy this stuff is going to be! Most of the furniture is particle board and those boxes weigh a ton.</p>
<p>You could also try hiring some people off of Craigslist to do the heavy lifting for you. I think about $10-$15/hr would be appropriate in that case (total won’t come out to more than 3 hours max). Cheaper than delivery (at least in the Brooklyn store anyway-$89 minimum, bloody hell)</p>
<p>Another possibility is open some large boxes downstairs and divide up to carry upstairs. I have been forced to do this too many times!</p>
<p>We, too, did the exact same IKEA search and rescue! But instead of bringing stuff into the hotel for a night or two, we had to store it for about 10 days in between moving everything else out of the dorm (mid May) and moving into an apartment last summer (June 1). Luckily, the first month of the storage was free with no contract or expectation of renting for more than one month. So we took the storage room for a month and moved stuff into the apartment before the month was over. It only cost a little for the lock or something.</p>
<p>Not sure how this old thread got resurrected. We ended up going to the store, buying stuff and dealing with it. The white glove/delivery service was super expensive and there wasn’t a way to pre=order and have it waiting for store pick up, at least not at the store outsisde of Boston.</p>