Three weeks ago, I left work a bit early, picked up my mom at her house, and drove an hour to IKEA. It was time to order my kitchen – a move that happened a little earlier than planned because of IKEA’s spring kitchen sale. I decided I wanted to take advantage of the spring sale, and not have to wait for and count on the fall sale. So I finalized my kitchen plan, going to the extreme of actually installing Windows on my lovely MacBook Pro just to run the official IKEA software. Once I had it settled to my liking, I made an appointment with an IKEAN, hijacked my mom for an evening (with her gracious permission), and headed out. We got there a couple minutes early, and spent our spare time looking at range hoods and sink basins, two things I hadn’t made a firm decision about yet.

Then we met my IKEAN for the evening, pulled up my kitchen plan (saved to their servers online), and started the ordering process. Along the way, I added an over-the-range microwave that has an external vent, picked a sink, and failed utterly to choose a faucet, since I couldn’t find one I liked there. I’ll have to go hunting for options soon. We tweaked some innards (my pantry drawer/shelf ratio, for example), made the IKEAN show us both kinds of corner cabinet, the pantries, and the over-range microwave. He was great- knew exactly where each different option was, and explained why, for example, I didn’t want a shorter cabinet over the microwave… because I am tall, but not so tall that I want to reach over my head to take food out of the microwave.

Once we had the full plan finalized, he turned it into an actual order – which we then scrolled through to make sure all my doors were the right style, and all the pieces were correct for the various cabinets. We caught a couple that were wrong, fixed them, and then added the cover panels for the end of the cabinet runs. Then he advised me to call my debit card company, since many of them have a daily limit… which turned out to be true for me. The woman on the phone was very helpful in raising my limit — and also very amused that I was in IKEA, about to buy a kitchen. She told me to “have fun!” before we finished the call. Then I paid for all my cabinets, a microwave, sink, and dishwasher. YAY DISHWASHER – remember, the dishwasher (or lack thereof) is what started this whole process! We set up delivery, though the warehouse was missing one drawer front that the store had in stock, so I was instructed to pick up the drawer front and arrange for the delivery downstairs before we left. I also had to buy the knobs in-store, since the warehouse doesn’t stock them. Before we left the kitchen zone, I got handed a folder with the visuals of my kitchen plan, the order listed by cabinet, and then the order listed by part type (doors, cabinet frame, drawer runner, etc). It also had the assembly instruction DVD, and the very long receipt from the actual purchase.

We headed downstairs, picking up some minor odds and ends along the way – a drawer organizer for Mom, a whisk for me, 14 boxes of knobs, etc. After checking out, I picked up my drawer front and paid for delivery of the rest of the order. And then we left IKEA, about 2.5 hours after we arrived, having spent almost 4,000 dollars on my kitchen, carrying a folder, 14 boxes of knobs and a drawer front. And that is how it starts. Tomorrow, the rest of the order arrives.