[Barbara]

This weekend I drove to Seattle (5 hours each way) to get my cabinets. We took alarge pickup truck and horse trailer to keep the cabinets dry. We left home very early on Saturday during a blizzard. The roads were bad for about the first 60 miles. We found out the mountain pass by Seattle had been closed due to an avalanche. By the time we got there it had reopened however the roads were very very icy. We crawled over the pass very slowly. We got to our hotel and checked in. We decided to go to Ikea as there are open until 10pm. We checked in at the kitchen area and found out we had time that night to load the cabinets. Our original plan was to load on Sunday morning. We paid for the order and went to furniture pickup to discover that our truck and trailer are to big to fit in the parking area of furniture pickup. We asked one of the employees there what we could do. She told us the only option was to load it all on regular carts and we would have to push it out to where we were parked. They had us park a long way from the store as we had such a long trailer. We got our number for the order and went to eat dinner. After dinner we scouted out the area around the furniture pickup area and found a loading dock. We would have to hand the items down but it looked a lot better than pushing it way across three parking buildings. We went back to the pickup area and explained to another employee and he told us that would not be a problem. They did lose our order and receipt for about 15 minutes but work hard to find it and did apologize. We got it all loaded and the excel spreadsheet I made worked very well for checking the 115 items we had. We drove back to the hotel and had a good nights sleep. We went back to Ikea when they opened in the morning and did all our other shopping we wanted, had lunch, and drove home on bare and wet roads. Unloading was difficult as we had got about a foot of new snow and we can't use our back door due to construction. I opened a few of the boxes and did find a small dent in the corner of one of the cover panels. We can deal with that as we have a space that only needs part of a panel. Overall it went well and the employees were all helpfull. I would attach my spreadsheet but I am not sure how. I will paste it below if anyone needs to see what it looks like. It worked real well for me. Now on to cabinet assembly!!

The gridlines did not copy. under received I put slashes as I counted than crossed it out when I had all the items with that same number.


http://ikeafans.com/spreadsheet.htm

eta: Spreadsheet is available at the included link above

[Barbara]

My excel spreadsheet did not post correctly. If someone knows how to post it, give me some clues.

[GardenOfDarwin]

Hey Barbara! Thanks for posting this! If you can post it as an attachment or send it as email, either Tigger or I will take a shot at getting it back into a readable format. Glad to hear you made it safely home with your cabinets despite the hazards of the trip. What did you get???

Susan

[stacylu]

Hi Barbara

That's a great idea to list the pieces that way. I was wishing we had something similar when we picked ours up. We were there on Sunday (at the Seattle one) as well but later in the afternoon... and it was a downpour.

I'm glad you made it safely over the passes - they're currently closed down (and were last night as well). Can't wait to see pictures!

Stacy

[Barbara]

I got the Ulriksdal cabinets and some of the Varde. I decided to mix. I will post pictures later. Susan if you can give me your email address I will send you the spreadsheet. I tried it as an attachment and it did not work for me. Thanks

[GardenOfDarwin]

Barbara -- Can't wait to see Ulriksdal and Varde mixed! I sent you a private message....check the top right of your screen, and then email me your attachment.

Susan

[GardenOfDarwin]

Barbara -- I saved your spreadsheet as a webpage, posted it and added the link above. You should really post something to the Long-Distance Ordering forum about your experience! I think it would be really great for people considering the Long Distance method to hear of your fortitude!

Susan