We have prayed and planned and prepared and felt that we were as ready as we could be. The 10% off $3500/20% off $4500 kitchen sale was nearly half over, and as I understand, things start going out of stock near the end.
Since we both drive small cars, we knew we were going to have to figure out some other way to get the kitchen home. We're about 110 miles from IKEA, so we needed a one-way rental. A little research, and we found that Budget Truck had a location 4 miles from IKEA, and we could drop the truck off about a mile from our house, for around $105 + gas. We reserved their smallest, a 10' moving truck. Picked it up on the way down, and we entered IKEA at around 9:30.
The following paragraph is a short description of how IKEA is laid out. If you've been to an IKEA, you can skip this paragraph. The stores are big. IKEA West Chester is almost 350,000 square feet. Nearly 8 acres. You enter the store, and go immediately upstairs. They have displays of the furniture, dozens of "rooms" decorated with IKEA products. There are arrows on the floor, that route you through the displays. Also upstairs is the restaurant, where they serve food. Once you've gone through the upstairs, you go downstairs, which is divided into two major areas. First is the "home goods" section, basically their small non-furniture items. Candles, dishes, lights, rugs, frames, pillows, etc.etc. Then is the self-serve furniture section. When you picked out the furniture you liked upstairs, you wrote down an aisle, section, and bin number of where the item is. You grab a flat cart, go to the aisle, section, and bin, and load your own furniture. Wheel it to the checkout, pay, and you're on your way.
While the building opens at 9:30, it's mostly to allow you to go in and eat breakfast. There's no sales staff on the floor, but you're allowed to begin walking through/shopping the upstairs area. Sarah and I, with our 3D print outs, went straight to the kitchen section. There was no one else in sight, which felt strange, as crowded as IKEA usually is. We had a few minutes, so we looked at the kitchen displays, confirmed our colors and styles, and waited for the workers to start filtering in. When they did, a nice IKEA co-worker named Heidi was able to look over our plans, and begin the process of entering our order into the system.
We weren't entirely sure of how the whole process worked. One cabinet can be several boxes, as the frame, doors, handles, hinges, bumpers, feet, drawers, and shelves are all boxed separately. Multiplied by 18 cabinets + misc = lots of stuff to try and find yourself. We were pleased to discover that with the exception of handles, they pick the order from the warehouse for you.
IKEA had a promotion this week, spend $100, and eat for free in the restaurant. We told Heidi we were going to do that, and she said, "Ohhh, you have to eat first, then when you go to pay for your items, you give them your food receipt and they deduct that from the total." The problem is, picking the order takes quite some time (I've heard up to 3 hours), and they don't start picking until you pay, so we wanted to get that started as soon as possible. Doh! She came up with a plan though. We would pay for the kitchen upstairs (minus the handles), so that the warehouse could begin picking our order. Then, we could shop some more, go eat lunch, and then pay for the handles in the regular checkout lines downstairs.
Being over 100 miles away, and owning only small cars, our biggest concern was that something large would be out of stock. The cornice, deco strip, and countertops, all come in 8' lengths, and would need to be in stock to get it home in the truck we rented. Thankfully, everything long, and everything heavy, was in stock. Unfortunately, 3 of the drawers were not. We paid for them yesterday, and we'll have to pick them up in 2-3 weeks from their distribution center, somewhere a little south of West Chester. Bummer. But at least what was out of stock is small, and will transport easily in one of our tiny cars.
Heidi finished our order at 11:15, about an hour and 15 minutes after we started, and then we paid. That was a scary swipe of the card, but it was 20% less scary than it could have been. Since the store still wasn't very busy, she said it would probably take 45 minutes for the warehouse to pick the order.
We checked out with our handles, got our free lunch, and around 12:15 or so, brought the truck over to the loading area. The order was picked, but they still needed to double check it. Around 12:45, they had finished checking it, and wheeled our 4 carts out to us. We carefully wheeled them to the loading area, and did our own double-check as we loaded the truck. 1800 pounds, 170 packages (boxes/bags).
It was 2:15 at this point, and we were exhausted and thirsty. Then came the biggest problem we would have, all day. The vending machine would not take our dollar bill. Noooo! So instead of a bottle of Pepsi for $1.50, I got a hot dog and fountain Pepsi for $1 at the IKEA cafe near the exit. Now that it's Saturday morning that I'm writing this, I wished I'd picked up a 6 pack of cinnamon rolls. Oh well.
So, hydrated and snacked, we headed home the 2ish hours, with a little traffic at the 70/71 Columbus split. A couple minutes rest, then began the process of unloading the truck. We were just going to unload into the garage, and then take our time moving it from the garage to the basement, but we bit the bullet, and took everything but the countertops straight down. The countertops, weighing 77lbs for the 6' sections, and 101lbs for the 8' sections, are in the entryway.
Thus ends our kitchen-purchasing trip.
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