Style in store

Vision of modern home leads to out-of-state shopping expedition

By Jay Dedrick, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published November 12, 2007 at 4:33 p.m.

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Photo by Ellen Jaskol © The Rocky

Christopher Herr tests a mattress - and catches his breath - during a whirlwind shopping excursion to Tempe, Ariz. He and buddy Craig Horton spent a day in March at the IKEA store in suburban Phoenix, where they filled a rental truck with cabinets, a mattress, lights and more before driving back to Boulder.

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Christopher Herr has traveled 900 miles for window blinds. Not just any window blinds, mind you, but the window blinds.

Like many of the fixtures and furnishings he and his wife, Tina Galgon-Herr, found on mega-retailer IKEA's Web site, they're only at the chain's brick-and-mortar stores. The Tempe location is the one that's closest to the family's Boulder home, so this is where Christopher is picking up an order of cabinets for the kitchen and great room. He's also shopping for a king-size mattress, dozens of odds and ends - and the perfect blinds.

Their sleek, minimalist design matches Christopher's vision for the custom home he's co-designed. The cool aluminum and chrome look suits his style. And the 39- and 47-inch widths will sync with his plan for the larger windows and sliding glass door in the main living area.

The pieces only help him, of course, if they are in stock.

They're not.

Worse, they're being discontinued.

"That really stinks," Christopher says, turning away from the trio of sales clerks who, despite good intentions and a thorough search of inventory, have failed to give him the answer he hoped for. "The design is just so clean and simple. But that just squished that idea."

Squish one idea and another one squiggles up. Christopher turns to a display of curtain wire - similarly sleek and minimalist in its own way. After all, he figures, the right neutral-colored drape could convey the same look as the shades while proving to be more convenient for everyday living. He picks the pieces and moves on to the next objective.

"I'm excited about those - I think they'll be perfect for the house," he says.

Whirlwind buying mission

Christopher is defining design on the fly during this day trip to the Phoenix area, which began with an Egg McMuffin at Denver International Airport at 6:30 this Monday morning in March. Christopher and lifelong friend Craig Horton have teamed for the whirlwind buddy- buddy mission, not all that different from Burt Reynolds and Jerry Reed in Smokey and the Bandit. Just substitute a truckload of furniture for the truckload of Coors.

Despite IKEA's lack of a store in Colorado - a Denver-area location is possible in the next few years - the chain has plenty of fans here. Its Euro-flavored goods are designed with clean lines, manufactured in huge quantities and sold at low prices. Christopher figures the cabinets and other furnishings give him the modern look he wants while helping keep down costs on the $500,000 home - now about $25,000 over budget.

He and Tina found the furnishings on the store's Web site and could have paid to have them hauled to Boulder. But shipping charges would have run about $1,000: It's cheaper for Christopher to buy a plane ticket to Phoenix and rent a truck to drive the stuff home. He and Craig hope to have the vehicle loaded by tonight, when they'll begin the drive back home.

The briskly paced journey has inspired memories of Christopher and Craig's spring break road trip from Fort Collins to New Mexico as high school seniors.

"The skiing in Taos was great - they had just had, like, 4 feet of snow," says Craig, a detective sergeant with the Fort Collins Police Department.

"Four feet? Not 17 or 18 inches?" Christopher asks. "I think that got exaggerated."

It would be tough for the two to exaggerate the staggering impact of the IKEA store, a massive 342,000-square-foot structure close to the highway. There's a children's play area, a cafeteria with Swedish dishes like shrimp sandwiches, dozens of household mock-ups showcasing the store's exclusive product lines, and a sprawling warehouse where shoppers flock to pick up everything they've picked out in the showrooms. There's even a Swedish market with gravad lax (marinated salmon) and frozen meatballs to go.

"It's like a theme park - or a circus," Craig says as he boards the escalator from the entrance to the main shopping level.

On the second floor in the kitchen department, Christopher shows Craig the bold red cabinet doors he's chosen for the house.

"That'll look great at Christmastime," Craig says. "Just put some green garland up there."

Craig's funny, Christopher admits with a smirk, "but usually at my expense."

Craig totes a handheld video camera, following Christopher and shooting footage of the shopping trip to provide to HGTV for the Dream House series. Christopher makes the most of his limited time in the store, swiftly choosing a mattress for the new master bedroom after taking just a few minutes to plop down on two or three.

"This is the good part of shopping without Tina," Christopher says, reclining on a spring mattress. "I can make decisions a little faster. She's good, but . . ."

Still, Tina's absence vexes him as he flips through a thick magazine of Persian area rugs suspended from high above. Confronted by dozens of choices, he seems downright daunted, taking in the colors and patterns like an insomniac channel-surfing at 3 in the morning.

He calls Tina on his mobile phone.

"Can I make this decision without you here," he asks, "if I find one I like?"

After a few minutes of conversation, he has the verdict.

"She said she trusts me."

Seeing the light

Typically, Christopher and Tina do their shopping together, whether it's surfing the Web on a laptop while sitting on the futon in their condo, or venturing out to stores with baby Talia in tow.

A couple of days before the Arizona trip, the family ducks and weaves through a maze of cutting- edge light fixtures dangling from the ceilings and stairs at Inlighten Studios, a funky little shop just off of Boulder's Pearl Street Mall. The radio plays, and Tina sings along to the Rolling Stones' Shattered, which can't be a soothing tune to the proprietors of a store filled with glass and lightbulbs.

Inlighten's Cheryl Gaiser isn't bothered by the music, but she lets Christopher know she's disappointed he didn't contact her sooner. Construction of the house in the foothills north of Boulder is nearly seven months along, and "we like to get in toward the beginning," she tells him. "Lighting can make or break the house. People tend to forget about the lighting budget on the first couple of projects."

"There's definitely some things we'd do differently next time," the young architect admits.

After browsing and picking out the stuff they love, then the stuff they like, Tina and Christopher have a lighting tally: $2,855 for their first choices; $2,008 for the second- best. Christopher had budgeted $3,000 for lighting, but, given budget overruns elsewhere, he'd like to keep it around $2,300.

He and Tina will pick and choose from their two lists and come up with a solution to make both as happy as possible. Christopher also can check out the lighting options at IKEA, which are bound to be less expensive.

In the meantime, Christopher can't help but spend a minute playing "what if."

"I feel a little bit like I screwed this one up," he says, tending to Talia outside the store after saying goodbye to Tina, who's off to work. "I really care about lighting. Good architecture can be ruined by bad lighting, and bad architecture can be saved by good lighting.

"Doing it over, I would have talked to a lighting expert earlier and more often. But that's why architecture is called an old man's profession: Every mistake is a lesson learned."

Designing on a budget

Back at IKEA, Christopher is working hard to avoid a different kind of mistake: choosing something Tina wouldn't like. He asks for a $500 rug to be pulled from its vertical perch and placed on the floor. He studies it, stepping around the edges, staring into the tapestry of red, green and gold zig-zags. At first, he asks if the carpet can be carted upstairs to the kitchen department, where he can see it next to the red cabinets.

Then he stops the clerk and apologizes.

"I can't do this," he says. "It's too big a decision. I can't make it without my wife."

Still, he makes enough decisions on his own to fill the rental truck, which the staff helps load as the shopping trip winds up shortly before 6 p.m., about 12 hours after arriving at DIA. Besides the bigger things - several boxes full of cabinet parts, which he plans to assemble himself - Christopher has gathered fixtures for the bathrooms and an unusual strand of saucer- shaped lights that he envisions hovering over the home's dining area.

"It's a way to do modern design on a budget," Christopher says of IKEA. "The stuff is just thought- out. I've never seen a cotton-ball holder that matches a Q-Tip dispenser that picks up on a Kleenex box. I'm not expecting this stuff to last forever, but for a starter home, it's great.

"I'm excited," Christopher says as he turns the ignition in the rental truck. "I'm worn out. But I thought it would take longer than this, so I'm relieved."

After dinner, he and Craig drive to Flagstaff, calling it a night at 10 p.m. They're on the road toward home at 6 the next morning. By dinnertime, Christopher is unloading the purchases in the garage at the home site, where, despite weather delays through the winter, incremental additions are helping build the excitement for him and Tina.

In February, glass patio doors on the first and second stories of the home's south side were installed, providing the first glimpse of the entryway to the patio and deck.

"The house has really opened up with the glass patio doors there instead of blue tarps," Christopher says. "Really, the house relies on being able to see outside to those exterior spaces. They give it more of a sense of graciousness, since it's not a huge house."

Windows are in place, and the concrete-slab floors have been poured. The roof is in place and awaits its weatherproofing.

Until the next phase begins outside the house, Christopher and Tina continue to think about the inside and the choices remaining: kitchen appliances, maybe a freestanding gas stove, shower tile. And the budget overrun means the purse strings are tight.

"There's still places I need to cut some corners," Christopher says. "I want the BMW countertops and Lexus floors. But it would be irresponsible for me to make those choices."

Other choices he's making, though, are proving to be controversial with a couple of key people:

His wife.

And his builder.

dedrickj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5484

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