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Just wanted to report back about our trip to the Seattle Ikea and our kitchen buying excursion.
We arrived about 2:30pm this afternoon, Sunday of Memorial Day Weekend. We were worried it would be insane, but it was pretty tolerable. A lot of unruly, unhappy kids (I feel sorry for them being dragged around all day--so boring for them!), but otherwise, not so bad. They had a ticket machine giving out numbers at the Kitchen help desks, but they stopped using them shortly after we got there because it wasn't needed.
We wandered around the kitchen displays, making sure that we thought of everything. We had spent the morning poring over our plans multiple times, remeasuring and discussing, and wanted to make sure we had every detail we could think of in place before bothering a nice salesperson. Then we hit up the nearest Ikean.
Tina was our Coworker. Now I am only 33, and yet everyone looked so YOUNG in this department! I admit I was concerned they wouldn't know their stuff. But hubby noticed that Tina had some award pins on her lapel that clearly indicated she Knew Her Stuff. And she did! She walked us through filling out our order form, calculated the number of cover panels, plinths, etc that we would need for our layout. She clearly had algorithms in her head that we were not privy to. Then we learned we had to go pull everything ourselves, go through the checkout, then turn over to the delivery department anything we wanted delivered, and take the rest home with us.
We were given a yellow Ikea folder with a detailed list of all the items we needed to pull, items we needed the "Tornado" to pull (a huge machine with stuff stacked in it that employees use to fetch particular items--only 4 of the entire list of things were found there), and a booklet walking us through how to do the installation. We hit the $2500 limiter which allowed us to receive free cabinet construction! So we still do the installation ourselves, but a certified company will come out and put the cabinets together for us! Yay! One less step for us! Tina gave us some really great tips, too. She said to start picking up the items from the highest row number to the lowest--the higher the number, the larger the box/item. So you can stack your stuff better. She also suggested we start off with two carts from the get-go, and separate the largest stuff--which we will want delivered--from the smaller stuff we planned to take home that day. That way when it came time to hand off the stack to the delivery department after checkout, we would be set.
We head out to the warehouse, already two plus hours into our ordeal and a bit weary, but ready to take on The List. We started by handing off our pull list for the Ikean at the Tornado, then head to the high numbers and started pulling our share. I ran down the list while hubby loaded, with the occasional hand from me for the heavy stuff. It was tedious, but not difficult per se. We found that our small kitchen needed three carts for all the items, and two items were out of stock and won't be in for at least a week, for which we got a rain check for the tax-free sale. As we were going down the list, we found some of the pieces we didn't need, or needed less of because of the modifications that we were planning to do. And in other cases, we found a few of the numbers didn't seem to jive with what we calculated we needed. So near the end of our run on the warehouse, I head back to the kitchen department and hunted down Tina to run our calculations by her and make sure we weren't missing anything or making a mistake. Turned out two of the items were minor miscalc's on her part, and the rest were right on and she explained them to me very patiently and succinctly, and I walked away with a better understanding of the questions we had to relay to hubby.
A nice gal on the floor near the kitchens helped us walk our carts up to the checkout. It was now about 30 minutes to close, and things were really slow. The gal at the checkout was really friendly, and she suggested we ring up the items we plan to have shipped separately, as the delivery department can then just scan the receipt for a full itemization of the delivery items. Which we did, and while the rest was being ringed up, I pushed the cart of delivery items over to the delivery department, paid $60 for our less-than-30-items shipping stack, and they reported we would get the stuff sent over on Tuesday. By the time I head back to the checkout, they were ringing up the last of the stuff and hubby and I were out the door. We were informed by Tina that the assembly service was running at about 2-3 weeks right now. Which is perfect, because that gives hubby and I time to demolish the existing kitchen and prep for the new one to come on in!
Now we need to scout our granite installers and get that squared away. And we still have to pick a wall color, backsplash tile, and flooring. But we are confident those will go swimmingly, as we already have some good ideas on that. So hopefully, by the end of June, yours truly will have the new kitchen in place! Yay! It only took 8 years!
You did great! i'm glad you got into the store, you can see now why that was so important.
I would rather have someone install and do the assembly myself LOL The install is the hard part, but the assembly is tedious so getting help with that will definitely be a nice perk. Great job!
Wow! That is a great experience! I'm so glad for you that it all went well!
That's a terrific description of how the whole process worked. I hope it is as smooth for everyone in the future! Even if there are bumps for others with crowds and stuff, what you shared will be a big help to future shoppers.
Free assembly? What a deal! That's going to save a lot of headaches and sore fingertips. Hopefully, when the other items come in, you can keep the kiddos occupied with meatballs and such before the long trek home.
I don't know if the free assembly is Ikea-wide. The Seattle store is one of those two or three independents, and it sometimes has sales others don't, and sometimes doesn't participate on sales and perks others don't. I know I saw it on a flyer IN store, and not online. So I would assume it is more a local store sale, but someone else chime in...?
I agree I would have liked the installation more than the assembly, but frankly I will take either! Hubby is pretty handy, and it's a small kitchen, so I am fairly confident we will work it all out just fine. *fingers crossed*
I am glad the rundown was informational, and hope it helps others. I felt like we walked in kinda blind, not sure what the process would entail exactly, and was pleased that it went pretty smoothly for us and our tiny kitchen plan.
To be honest, we could have brought our entire pile of stuff home in my SUV, except for a couple of the large cover panels might have needed to be strapped to the roof, and the overall weight would have been pushing it a little. So we opted to have the biggest stuff shipped. And since it was a flat rate up to 30 items, we ended up stacking the largest and heaviest 20+ items to be delivered to save our backs. But for the sake of information, for our 13 cabinet-kitchen, we could've driven it home in my Explorer, for point of reference.
Back to relaxing before we head out tomorrow to check out paint and flooring!
Heehee! Relaxing sounds so lovely, but honestly, I need the rest because I was in the ER on Monday morning with sever food poisoning! I was on a trip in Napa Valley with my dance troupe, and landed there suddenly on my last night there, and have been recovering all week (I will spare you the details!). So a trip to Ikea was MONUMENTAL considering I couldn't leave my house all week so far. So I am thrilled that things went fairly smoothly, and that I am home relaxing ready to take on another day, and many weekends ahead, of getting our kitchen going.
I promise to post pics as soon as I have them! Before and after!
Oh no! You poor thing- that's THE WORST! Glad you're feeling better and got to go to IKEA!! I know you've been planning a while- so really excited for you to take the big plunge. All your pre-work will be well worth it!!
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