In the last several months, we have made 100s of revisions of our kitchen layout on Ikea's 3D kitchen tool. It's simultaneously fabulous and frustrating and definitely addictive.
Here's our spot for our kitchen and the layout we chose. Except for that our peninsula area is not that long.
Our house design program is not too accurate, but you get the idea. Now here is our kitchen using the 3D tool.
Fun, right??
What's even funner than that is that Ikea does seasonal kitchen sales and we were able to save 20% off of all our cabinets, sliding drawers, drawer pulls, countertops, oven, dishwasher, etc.
The sale ends April 24th. So with one of our precious few weekends left before we leave the country, we packed up around six am and drove four hours away to our nearest Ikea in Kansas. We did the whole Ikea experience.
We had a Europeanesque lunch (which was free with a voucher because we came on a Family weekend and I might have had two plates of smoked salmon)
We did the Ikea Kitchen Purchase Event (which was a several hour event; people have blogged about this marathon and they ain't lyin)
We followed the magical illuminated arrows all the way through the store while Ikea stockroom workers prepared our SEVEN carts of merchandise. Not a cart like the one Eva's in. A big, piano dolly of a cart.
And we loaded it up ourselves. Cabinets are heavy, ya'll.
I thought there would be several stout workers in yellow & blue striped shirts helping us unload our goods, but that was an oompa loompa fairy tale of a dream.
Daniel pushed all those carts from the stockroom to an elevator and out to the loading area while I waited with Eva in the car. Then he and I loaded the contents of the SEVEN carts into our car and the U-haul.
With the 2234235938749685 items in our little kitchen, only 8 weren't in stock. Not too shabby.
Overall, we had a pretty smooth experience and I really like their materials and their smoked salmon. If only they had oompa loompas.