The cabinets are here! They sit in my floorless living room, awaiting installation. Every single part I ordered arrived, with the exception of two critical parts: the frames for both the base corner and the base sink cabinets are not here. A third missing part, the frame for the high pantry cabinet, is on its way, scheduled to arrive Saturday.

I had IKEA deliver them to me through their Home Delivery service. IKEA sold me the two missing cabinets but had I not checked the delivery I would not have known they were missing until I tried to assemble them. You see, with IKEA, everything is modular. Each cabinet has separate part numbers for the frame, doors, drawer fronts, drawers, shelves, hinges, dampers, etc. You have to be very organized to figure out what’s going on. There are 16 different stacks of parts in my house right now, representing 15 cabinets + 1 category for other hardware.

Anyway, when IKEA sold me the cabinets they weren’t actually in stock at the time I paid for them. They have a poor and quite strange inventory management system which allows them to “oversell” items. So I had to call them, get a refund, order the missing parts from their website, and then get another refund from the store for the cost of the online order’s shipping.

Also it should be noted that when I ordered the high pantry cabinet, they didn’t actually order it because it was also “oversold”: instead they sold me a gift card for that amount, made a copy of it for their records, and then when it came in they used my gift card number to purchase it for me. They then comped a second home delivery for that one part, which of course I had to schedule with them over the phone.

It all boils down to the fact that they sold me something when they shouldn’t have and now I have to wait several weeks to put in the base cabinets. The corner and sink cabinets are kinda critical, and I can’t start in that section of the kitchen without them. :P

But at least I’ll have a kitchen.

Eventually.