I was pretty impressed with the quality of the Expedit bookshelf - we almost couldn’t lift it up once built. It’s very solid. The drawers that go in are pretty flimsy for the money, though, although on the other hand the cardboard Kassett boxes we also got are very sturdy for the money. Guess it kind of all works out in the end.
I would only point out that a municipality doesn’t “get” an IKEA by signing up on a wish list and receiving one if you’re cool enough. Someone (probably in Sweden) decides there would be enough demand that it would be a profitable location. So, by definition, someone not from Winnipeg thought IKEA would be suited for your fair city.
People get excited because it has a lot of affordable products, and is a comfortable, somewhat fun, place to shop. There’s free childcare, and a place to get inexpensive lunch, pencils and little paper rulers, and no one yells at you for sitting on the floor models. Plus you can get 90% of the items sold there home in a small car.
I’ve had nothing but good experiences with Ikea. I found a bookshelf that was almost like it was specifically built for the space I had, I mean the measurements were just perfect. Plus, I like their meatballs and the $1 hot dogs. Their names are funny and interesting, much better and easier to remember than “Oak bookshelf 30"x42”, model 345G".
I generally love IKEA. We are still using a piece of the changing table we got for our first child - who is now 28. I don’t know what I’d do without my many cheap white bookcases. I enjoy putting the things together, but I also do 3D jigsaw puzzles for fun.
I usually make a run through the one on my way back from work to get cheap kitchen things for Christmas presents. Except that this year, when I got there at 7:30, the first think I heard was that they were closing in 1/2 hour - one week before Christmas. 
So I grabbed a few things, and skipped my Ikea dinner.
Their self checkouts suck worse than those at Luckys, which is saying a lot.
This is…well, not entirely true. It can be for some pieces of furniture. I did my original shopping at Ikea over 5 years ago when I graduated college and moved into an apartment. I bought the Malm bed and the Klippan loveseat, and later the Expedit bookcase and some futon I don’t want to bother to look up right now.
Five years later, only the Klippan has broken. After years of flopping down full-body on it, the seat separated from the arm. However, since it’s naturally so low to the ground, it wasn’t rendered nonfunctional and I still use it to this day due to not having any money for more furniture.
The bed, quite frankly, is amazing. It’s survived countless body flops, people walking on it, and in a burst of frustration last night I stomped down hard in the center of the bed and was immediately concerned about breaking it, but the old thing just took it. The bookcase and futon both function perfectly too.
I’ll grant there are some shoddily-built pieces at Ikea, but for the most part I’ve found that to simply be a canard.
I find Ikea furniture to be of very good quality for the price point. They are not, of course, high-end heirloom furniture, but I don’t know any other place where you could buy, say, a $500 sofa and have it be of better quality. Sure, some of their stuff is pretty low end, but you can’t say you paid too much for it. Other furniture stores you have to wait until they have a 50% off sale just to feel like you are approaching a reasonable price for that item. I feel like Ikea prices their stuff fairly and you know what you are getting.
We have the Kramfors leather sofa in our family room and love it. The dog and 2 boys jump all over it and it looks brand new, plus the arms are confy enough to act like extra seating. People like to perch on them when we have company.
I love Ikea because they are so practical when it comes to actually using the items. Things are made to be washable and kid-friendly as well as look nice. We buy our kids’ furniture there and it makes for really fun and functional rooms for them. I don’t like to have furniture in the house that I have to worry about the kids spilling something or the dog shedding on, Ikea meets that need where stuff can look nice but I don’t have to fuss over it. Plus if they do somehow manage to demolish it, it’s not like we are out thousands of dollars. And a Poang chair can go anywhere you need an extra seat 
Jonathan Coulton wrote and performed a song about Ikea. Someone else made this silly video using it. Enjoy.
Yesterday, we drove down to Ikea planning to get a 4 by 4 Expedit bookcase for our living room so we could move our 2 by 4 Expedit into the kids’ room. We walked out with a 4 by 4 for the kids’ room plus the desk attachment and the Expedit entertainment center for the living room. So we walked in planning to spend about $150 and managed to spend almost $500. But we can finally put all of our crap away, nine months after moving it all up here! (And only a few months before we pack it all back up and find a better apartment in the spring.)
Some Ikea stuff is solid - I particularly like their bookcases. I own four of them.
However, the problem with Ikea stuff is that you must carefully pick and choose - some of it is shoddily made, and looks it after some use. You can’t do a whole room in Ikea and expect it to look good long-term.
That said, it is good starter furniture - a definite step up from milk crates and found boards. Or my step-uncle, who was so house-poor on buying his first place, he used his “for sale/sold” sign as a table for six months. 
There is an Ikea 15 minutes drive from where I live.
It is a Godsend for people with babies- irishbaby sleeps in an Ikea cot (Gulliver), with Ikea bedding, plays with Ikea toys, is dried by an Ikea towel, I nurse her sitting on an Ikea chair and footstool (Poang), she lies on an Ikea Sheepskin rug and when we go out we use the Ikea changing bag. I didn’t want things that were so expensive I would cry if she drew on them, but yet would last long enough that we only had to buy them once.
We also have some other stuff- Billy bookcases, a sofabed, an office chair, some kitchen bits and bobs, various throws and cushions and my bathroom storage units and the baskets on them.
All my wrapping this Christmas is Ikea- and very nice it looks too…I’ve gone for the cheerful little gnomes on brown paper theme.
So far, so good, everything still works as intended and looks good too.
It is a great place to go during the day with a colicky baby- you know that stage where they cry all the time and the only way to get them to sleep is by walking? Well, you can walk miles indoors, then have a reasonably priced meal, breastfeed your infant in a nice specially designed nursing area while drinking your unlimited-refill lingonberry juice, change them in the family restroom with the free nappies provided and finally pick up dinner and few odds and ends on your way out.
I love Ikea, with one single proviso.
You have to plan before you go.
Look at the catalogue and online. Pick your items, check the stock and location, measure the space you plan to put it in and get ONLY what you came for. Do not be distracted by the nice room displays, don’t be fooled by the fact that furniture looks tiny in their vast spaces, run as fast as possible through the marketplace area.
Don’t just turn up and browse…that way lies madness and finding your car full of furniture, blisters on your fingers from making flatpack furniture and your credit card bill bigger than you thought possible.
Pretty much everything I’ve ever gotten from Ikea with drawers has failed as they use the crappiest drawer glides imaginable. The lower-priced office chairs have fallen apart as well - the backs loosen and won’t tighten anymore. Loft beds - the metal ones are really flimsy, and the particle board ones are wobbly. Plus, if you’ve ever tried to climb a ladder with rungs made of thin metal bars in your bare feet, you’ll never do it again. Kitchen countertop - dented and chipped almost immediately, from light use.
Good stuff - everything else I’ve gotten has been fine. Kitchen cabinets, sink, faucet, bookshelves, lamps, housewares, kitchen wares, kids’ chairs, Swedish mustard. Just be aware that if it seems like it might be flimsy, it probably is.
Just don’t buy one of their beds, imho. We spent about $1500 and bought one of their substantial frames that used their whale-bone-like curved wooden slat support thingies instead of a box spring with their top of the line non-coil mattress, king-sized. Within a year the frame had split apart so we scrapped it, rolled up the wooden slats and put them in a closet, and just had the mattress on the floor for awhile. It was not long until we realized that the mattress already had dips on both sides with a hump in the middle no matter how often we tried to flip it. We are not so happy about the bed, but love the store and everything else we’ve ever bought from them, and the food too.
To be fair, this (and the crappy drawer slides) is true of the budget line from most furniture manufacturers. My desk and my chair are not from Ikea, and the keyboard drawer on the desk was horribly made, while the chair’s back is one heavy lean away from snapping. Cheap office chairs are completely worthless, I’ve come to discover. Better to spend an extra hundred or two for quality.
Curse you! I came to post the song.
We bought a sofabed for the guestroom - can’t remember the name, but basically the sofa is just the bed with half the mattress folded upright to form the sofa back. The seat (being half a bed’s width) is far too wide to sit on comfortably; however, it is an extremely comfortable bed, and being able to fold it up saves space.