Imagine this…you walk into IKEA sipping your favorite beverage, leisurely pick out your items…and then set them up for delivery and go home!
No wrestling them into your car, no worrying about if they will enforce the ’15 minute’ loading zone rule, just a peaceful drive home, knowing that your items will be delivered tomorrow. It sounds like a dream, right?
Nope – it’s just what it’s like to order an IKEA Kitchen.
But let’s back up a bit. Before we finally got to IKEA, we had to prep our kitchen for the new cabinets. We planned a new layout, dreamt about finishes, built a wall, and wired new electrical.
It’s been super fun, but it was time to get down to the most expensive part – the IKEA cabinets. I utilized IKEA’s kitchen measuring service and IKEA’s Delivery service, and GUYS IT IS SO WORTH IT.
Seriously. Don’t buy an IKEA kitchen without also paying for those two things.
First up – the measuring service. I actually booked this when I went to IKEA a few weeks ago to find out if they actually offered the new AXSTAD cabinets or not. They’d been on the website, then off again, then on again, and I wanted to make sure I’d actually be able to get them.
After a quick trip to IKEA, an associate confirmed that AXSTAD was indeed available for purchase. Hooray! I snapped a quick picture and bought a sample cabinet front.
Measuring Service
While I was there, I booked the IKEA measuring service, since the price of the service would be refunded to me if we bought a kitchen (which I knew we would).
Even if it wasn’t refunded, it would have been worth the price. The peace of mind that you have when someone else measures your room and gets the same dimensions that you did is priceless, especially when you’re spending as much as a whole new kitchen costs.
The actual measuring service was quick and easy.
The measure-er texted me an hour before he arrived to let me know when he’d be there, did the whole survey while I was feeding my children breakfast, and was patient with me when I needed to reach around him for the 12th time to get a clean spoon because my daughter had thrown another one on the floor (ah, toddler mealtimes).
He even used a laser distance measurer, which usually run about $100, to get extremely accurate measurements.
When he was done, he informed me that they would send over the drawings in the next day or two, and construct our kitchen in an IKEA kitchen planner account. Here’s what they sent:
I was super happy with the
If I was to pass on any advice to someone considering an IKEA kitchen, it would be to have someone double-check your work. If it’s free (after the refund, which they applied no problem), why not?
If you have trouble getting consistent measurements when you’re DIYing, check out this post. I break down what all the markings on a measuring tape mean, and tell you how to use it effectively.
Using the double-checked measurements, I triple-checked everything in our IKEA kitchen planner layout and once again traveled to IKEA to actually place the order. It was day two of their kitchen sale, and surprisingly on a Friday morning, they weren’t too busy!
I caught the eye of someone in the kitchen department, and she went through the layout with me. Once we decided everything looked right, she said to come back in about 20 minutes once she had everything drawn up, and I could check out.
A quick trip to the cafe for some delicious Lingonberry juice later, I was back and ready to spend the most money I ever have at one time (besides buying a car or house).
This kitchen has been a dream of ours for years, and I was bubbly thinking that it was actually going to happen once I swiped my card. She walked through the receipt with me, scheduled delivery for the next day, and we were done.
Delivery
The delivery fee was only $59, and I live about 45 minutes away from the nearest IKEA (Not close, but a LOT closer than many of my friends and family). I would imagine the delivery fee would be more depending on how far away you are
I have definitely stuffed things into my car to get away from paying for delivery from IKEA in the past, but a whole kitchen? No way. It was only $59 and worth every single penny.
They’ll deliver it to whatever room I want, unload it all from the truck, and all I’ll have to do is inventory everything. Way better than packing, transporting, and then unloading all of that myself (with two kids in tow!).
After we moved into this house ourselves, I said I’d never do that much heavy lifting myself ever again. The smile on my face in the picture below is from that day, and it’s totally fake – my whole body hurt for DAYS afterward.
The delivery was uneventful, other than a few tense moments while they were getting the pallet(!) off the truck. I think if someone could make a ramp that is wider than a tightrope on the back of a truck, they would sell out. Those things are impossible to get wide items down safely!
After delivery, I made sure to take a few pictures of any spots that seemed damaged, but I didn’t come across many – just two places where the straps had cut into the cabinets.
You can kind of see the strap rub marks on a few of the cabinet fronts, but you really have to squint. It certainly isn’t big enough of a deal for me to drive all the way back to IKEA, return the panel, get a refund, buy a new panel, and drive back home to install it.
Inventory
The only downside of buying an IKEA kitchen that I’ve come across so far is the turnaround time for inventorying everything. You have to make sure the delivery is right within 48 hours of receiving the shipment, which I think is a little crazy when you think about how many parts are in a kitchen.
IKEA doesn’t make this particularly easy, since they group all the parts for each cabinet together instead of all the doors, hardware, etc, together. We managed to knock it out in a few hours (Our order was around 300 parts), so I think it’s do-able, but it could definitely go faster.
If you’ve got a particularly HUGE order, I think typing all the product numbers, quantity, and which cabinet they belong to into a spreadsheet could REALLY help.
That way you could use keyboard shortcuts to search the spreadsheet. Finding the product numbers on the inventory list was by far the most time-consuming (and mind-numbing) part.
Overall, I am SO happy with my experience with IKEA so far for our kitchen cabinets. The kitchen department staff were kind, patient, and knowledgeable, the delivery price can’t be beat, and the measuring service was fantastic. If you are thinking about ordering an IKEA kitchen…just do it.
Splurge for the luxuries of having someone else measure for you and deliver everything. You’ll have enough work on your hands putting everything together!
