Kitchen Wars

As some of you may be aware we have been slowly modernising our kitchen at home over the past couple of years. We had decided to go for a modular IKEA kitchen. Several reasons for the, we liked the look of their kitchens, flexibility of design, and our local store was not much more than an hour up the road. But the big factor in their favour was that we could buy a few pieces each month when we got paid. That way we would have a new kitchen without putting any major strain on our finances. We could still travel, do pretty much what we wanted, and have a nice new kitchen to boot. A perfect solution.

 

As you will also likely be aware, my life never goes that smoothly.

 

We have now gotten so close to our purchasing finish line that we were thinking for who would do the installation work, and how soon could they do it. Only one more cabinet and a couple of doors left to buy. You can picture the look on our faces when we discovered a couple of weeks back that, after 20 years of sales, IKEA had decided to change their kitchen cabinet range. Completely. The system we had been painstaking collecting, was now instantly no longer available for purchase at any store in Sweden. To cap off a perfect plan, their new system was not compatible with their old (our) system. Cue panic stations from our end.

 

Definite information was pretty hard to come by, so we headed up the road to our store in order to beat some information out of their staff with a blunt instrument. We came away with a couple of alternatives. While I'm still technically pissed off, I don't yet wish an untimely death on all things IKEA. We have the choice to complete the purchase of our kitchen. While we can't buy through the stores any more, we can purchase via IKEAs head office, for as long as their stocks last. That would hopefully get the job done and would solve our immediate problem. The downside with this is that, should something go wrong with our kitchen in the future, we would be screwed when it came to buying new hinges, doors, etc. We would have the kitchen we liked, but would have to wrap it a little in cotton wool. And you know our luck.

 

The alternative offered to us by IKEA is quite generous. If it turns out to be completely correct on the day. We can return all our kitcken cabinets, providing the cartons are unopened and we can show proof of purchase. There is no time limit on how long ago we purchased any of the cabinets. Again, this is only verbal from them. If we do that, they will give us a store credit equal to the total value of our purchases. As we bought 99% of the stuff longer than 30 days ago, we don't get the option of cash back. That's just fine by us, we want our new ktichen.

 

After chewing it over for a while, we think we'll go with the upgrade option. The main bonus is security of future supply. If something goes wrong during the next 20 years, we know we are covered. It's going to be a major execise as we have to physically take everything back to the store, and we're probably talking about a couple of hundred kilos of kitchen furniture. But when has my life ever gone smoothly ?