Kitchen Progress Report

Well, we finally have our new kitchen! In our basement, at least. We picked it up last weekend, and I can't wait to get it installed! Some are still in boxes, but some are built and ready to go.

All in all, the whole experience of buying an IKEA kitchen was pretty good. I went in with an open mind, expecting that it will take all day, that there will be a few mistakes, and that we will be taking the four hour trip back to Calgary in the next month back to IKEA.

I was mostly right. We had our design fine tuned, so the ordering part only took about twenty minutes, getting to the checkout another twenty minutes, and waited for about two hours for staff to round up all the parts to our kitchen. Two hours isn't bad, and is an ideal amount of time to go through the store at a relaxed pace. 
So I was wrong about that. It didn't take all day.

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Things I should have done? I should have checked the list. It was so fast and automated, I just figured everything would be right. We knew exactly which cabinets we wanted; I probably could have listed all the IKEA serial numbers off for you. Okay, maybe not quite, but I definitely knew which sizes and styles we were going for.

Imagine my surprise when we got home (4 hour road trip) and we have a 30"x24"x80" pantry cabinet instead of the 24"x24"x80" cabinet that we needed. And a missing shelf and a missing drawer face. I'm not sure how the automated system turned our 24" cabinet into a 30" cabinet, but I might have been a little upset if we were really ready to install the kitchen.

Sometimes, it is good to procrastinate. I mean, plan early... We are picking up our special ordered countertops and outswing doors in a month back in Calgary, so I knew we would be back, but still.

At least a mistake or two were expected. And thanks to IKEA's 45 day return policy, we should be just fine.

Check the list before you leave IKEA!

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When I started to build a few of the cabinets, I was pumped. Pretty easy to build! They gave you all the pieces to every cabinet in a nice little bag, and I was using every single nail that IKEA supplied you with to secure those backings on. Don't want the cabinets to be flimsy!   It was going really smoothly until I noticed that I nailed the cabinet backing on the wrong way on two of the cabinets. 

Then I remembered. I had used every single nail. 

You definitely don't want to pull out 25 tiny nails from 1/4" backing. Heed my warning!

Picture Tip #1

So, despite that minor setback, in a few hours, I had managed to build all our upper cabinets. I have to say, pretty proud of how they are looking. Especially now that we fixed the backing of those two cabinets. Next step- the base cabinets! 
Maybe tomorrow....

Until next time, happy cabinet building!

Xo Jena

Mission Complete: Upper Cabinets Built (minus the doors)