Ikea

Old Glory waved from front porches, stood tall in flower pots and glowed from computer screens yesterday, as if the calendar had suddenly flipped to July 4. A star-spangled symbol of mourning, patriotism and even defiance, the flag came out of mothballs and flew off store shelves. Wal-Mart sold 88,000 flags nationwide Tuesday, the day terrorists struck. The retailer sold 6,400 on the same date last year, a company spokesman said. "I think everybody should be hanging their flags today, until we get this conflict settled," said Derek Deneke, 29, vice president of The Big Iguana Co. Ltd., a chain of funky home decor and clothing stores that normally couldn't be confused with a VFW hall.

THE DAY we dropped our daughter off at college, I slammed the car door on her hand. Fortunately, her fingers were only slightly injured. The upper door of a Windstar is equipped with a thick rubber gasket to protect fragile hands, as well as the assets of the Ford Motor Co. Feeling like some hapless sitcom father, I ran into the motel and retrieved a bag of ice. My daughter forgave me. An hour later I banged my thumb with a hammer I borrowed to attach...

MOSCOW -- It was such an ordinary moment -- just bringing in the mail -- but when Anya Pulyayeva turned to page 17 of the unfamiliar catalog in her hand and saw the cutest little lamp for only $5, the whole world suddenly lighted up. At that moment, Anya understood: She was born to shop. So, apparently, were thousands and thousands of other Russians who made their way to a distant suburb of Moscow yesterday for the opening of IKEA, a Swedish home-furnishing store. On a wintry March day, they ranged over snowy fields on foot, they transferred from subway to bus, they drove in cars snarled in long traffic jams, and they sometimes abandoned those cars on the roadside in their eagerness to answer the siren call of $3.50 pine stools and $21 fiberboard bookcases.

THE DOORBELL rang a few Saturdays ago to signal the arrival of my sister, Ann, her husband, Chris, and their son, Paul. They had driven up from their home in Sussex County in southern Delaware.They are the only part of my family not living in Baltimore. It's also the most expanding section of the Kellys.My sister's twin girls are 21 months old and ready to make the jump from cribs to their own beds. My nephew is 4.Ann is a practical person. She needed more furniture -- and her Baltimore relatives reside in what amount to household museums.

Brian Schwarzkopf is expecting a big bonus next month, and he's talking about it.He said his friends are jealous but they're listening to his exhortation:Wait until Oct. 9 to do your shopping at Ikea.On Oct. 9, all gross sales at the Swedish home furnishings chain's 152 stores worldwide will be divided among the more than 40,000 employees.Schwarzkopf, 36, a marketplace decorator, is one of 303 IKEA employees at White Marsh."Everyone who is full-time gets an equal amount of the sales, whether they are CEO or work in the warehouse," Joakim Gip, external marketing manager for IKEA, said yesterday.

BEIJING -- Exquisitely carved chairs from the Ming Dynasty bring as much as $80,000 at Sotheby's, but the most popular home-furnishing item in the Chinese capital these days may be an $8 steel floor lamp at IKEA.Since the Swedish furniture giant opened a store here in December, IKEA's showroom has become about the hottest spot in Beijing. Each weekend, tens of thousands of people pour through the doors in what looks more like an invasion than a shopping spree.As if wandering through an amusement park, people stretch out on the futons, climb the ladders of the loft-style beds and peer curiously at the do-it-yourself flooring.

Sometimes the interior structure of houses and apartments just doesn't make sense. Awkwardly placed heating/cooling units, electrical outlets and protruding walls often make it impossible to arrange furniture.One of the more vexing problems is where to put shelves. Sometimes you end up blocking an important electrical outlet just because your shelves won't go anywhere else. But now there's a solution to that problem. It's the individual shelf, and it comes from small and big shelf-makers.

It's so cool it's hot! It's puffy! It's futuristic! It's retro Day-Glo! It's . . . well, you get the idea.Inflatable furniture made from heavy-duty PVC vinyl is simply the most fun inexpensive furniture on the market right now. If the Pillsbury Dough Boy were a chair, he'd look like this.You can buy a roly-poly, tangerine-orange or midnight-blue sofa for $60 or $70. When you get tired of having it in your living room, hey - take it to the swimming pool. It floats.As long as you don't have a cat with sharp claws or a careless smoker in your family, you're OK. You might be OK anyway.

Peter Cheung is trying to follow the path blazed by the people who founded stores like Scan and Ikea -- bring the furniture of one's heritage from a far-off land and sell it in America.Cheung has followed such a path from China to Elkridge. And while U.S. 1 might be the last place you would expect to find intricately carved furniture made from an exotic hardwood, Cheung finds it a suitable locale."There's more traffic and it's a bigger place," he said. "Before, we were behind an industrial park."

IT MAY BE the smallest specifically designated space in the house, but -- just as it was 150 years ago -- it's one of the most helpful, convenient and comforting.The space is the pantry -- the very name conjures images of plenty -- and it's back, both in newly constructed houses and in kitchen renovations. After decades on the out list, when refrigerators and built-in cabinetry filled the old food-keeping role of the pantry and butlers who polished the silver vanished, pantries have again come into favor in the past few years.