3.20.2011

Idea: Ikea

Well, my hubby and I bought a house, and while we are not going hog-wild about furnishing it and instead are taking our time, we took a trip to IKEA, which is about 2.5 hours away, and we found a couch and chairs for what will be our sitting area. We were going to wait to get the items, but they are not in the catalog, and we were told that they may not be restocked. Possibly a marketing ploy, but we also went furniture shopping in the area and didn't find anything we liked nearly as much for the same price, so we decided to bite the bullet and buy the items.

Last week, we bought one Jappling sofa (sofa or couch? I don't know which I prefer), two chairs, and two ottomans. As I had the little man with me in the stroller, I was unable to navigate a cart, so we loaded everything on one cart. It was a feat, and people were impressed as we wheeled our way to the checkout line.

After half an hour in the checkout line, we finally wheeled our haul over to the furniture delivery area. Our little 4-door sedan is not going to hold anything except an ottoman or two. Now, to make sure that we were in the delivery area, we called customer service. Twice. So imagine our surprise when we filled out our information, the associate entered our information, and then informed us that we were out of their delivery area.

"We contacted your customer service department on two separate occasions to make sure we were in the delivery area," we said.

"Yeah, I'm sorry about that," our associate said. "They frequently give out the wrong information. We've had a lot of complaints about them."

......and? Because you have a crappy customer service department, we have to pay the price? Apparently so. We asked if they could hold it so we could get a truck, and they said no. So we had to return all our items. After 7 hours, we were home empty-handed.

Now, piss me off by doing something crappy like this, and I cut ties with you. No more of my business will you have. However, being in a marriage means that sometimes you are faced with someone articulate who makes compelling arguments: we tried to find something else, we didn't like what we saw, we didn't like the price of what we saw, and we really liked the stuff at IKEA.

Dammit.

While relaying this story to a coworker, John was offered said coworker's truck. We also used his truck to get our crib from Richmond. It's a 1993 Toyota Tacoma with 246,000 miles, and it's a stick-shift. John doesn't drive stick, but I do. So yesterday, at 8:20 am, we set off on our journey to reclaim our sitting room furniture.

With a baby in tow, everything is about an hour slower than it used to be because we have to fill up his tank first or else there's gonna be trouble. So around 10, we set off for IKEA, John and baby in one car, me in the truck.

We wasted no time at IKEA. We were there to get our items and get home. So that's what we did. When we got the items out to the truck, John realized just. how. big. the boxes were. The furniture itself is not that big, which is one reason why we liked it. But the packaging around them was enormous. Even a guy who had an Escalade wondered if the box would fit. John's original idea was to angle the couch on one side and the chairs on the other. However, the boxes were just too big for this. I started to sweat. We put the couch on the bottom, then the chairs on top. They cleared the top of the truck by about a foot. I said there was no way I'd be able to drive home with them like that. So he thought about putting the couch on the top because it was heavier and would anchor down the chairs. But that didn't change the problem of the height. Baby started to get tired of being in his carseat. I started to sweat more. Finally, John came up with a solution - take the furniture out of the boxes and place the chairs upside down on the couch, and strap everything down tight. So we took everything out and loaded it up, stopped at Wal Mart to get some duct tape to secure the cardboard we'd wedged between the straps and the furniture, fed the baby, and then headed out.

Our normal 2.5 hour trip took us over 3 hours to complete. We stopped twice to tear off paper that was shredding in the wind and to feed the boy. We rolled home around 6:30, and I again fed the boy while John unloaded and inspected the chairs for damage. All good. We unloaded the couch, gassed up the truck, and were on our way to drop it off. At 9:00 last night, we finally ate dinner.

We now have a new rule: if it don't fit in the car, we don't buy it from IKEA.

Wow, now it's March

October was the last time I posted here, huh? Time has flown, and I've been busy. I had a baby in December (you can go here to read about my journey of pregnancy) and have consistently missed sleep. So when I have the option, I sleep. But now I am awake, and I am ready to write a post. Stay tuned.