The Lost Weekend...part 2

One very nice addition Ikea has made recently (at least at our Ikea) is a flat-rate delivery service.  So no matter how much stuff you have, as long as you are within their area, you can get it delivered for $59!  And if you're super lazy...you can just give them a list of the items you want and they'll pull it off the shelves and deliver it for you!

So bright and early sunday morning (two hours before the delivery window was supposed to be) they arrived with our mattress and bedframe. Of course, I was excited as this meant I got to spend a Sunday putting together Ikea furniture; a past-time I rather enjoy.  After moving the old bed, laying out all the pieces, and getting all my tools together, I started work. But about halfway through the construction, I found that one of the pieces didn't fit in the pre-drilled hole no matter how I tried to get it in. After trying for about 15 minutes to smush it in place (square peg - round hole anyone?) I gave up and went back to Ikea to see if it was the wrong part.  They told me that in fact, yes, that piece was from the King set and gave me the right piece. Of course, when I got home it took only about 10 seconds to realize that although now this piece fit in the pre-drilled hole, it did not accomodate the bolt that was supposed to pass through it.  So back to Ikea I went, this time taking the bolts and the piece in question.

This time they saw that the bolt and the piece did not, in fact, go together and asked to make sure we had gotten both boxes from the Queen stack and not one from the King bin. Thankfully Mandy had stayed home this round and confirmed they were both Queen size. So they gave me my hardware back and asked me to bring in the headboard.  Umm....what?  The headboard that put together, is about 4 feet tall by 6 feet wide? that wouldn't fit in my car in the first place so we had it delivered? "Oh, well maybe if we can see the sideboard with the pre-drilled hole."

So off home again. This time I brought pictures of the box labels to show they were the same item boxes 1 and 2 of the Queen, the sideboard, the footboard and all the nuts and bolts. We show up and after about twenty minutes of talking with the guys in the shop, they find the problem.

They have two different suppliers for this one item, and somehow we managed to grab box one from one supplier and box two from the other supplier.  EVEN THOUGH they are supposed to be identical, one of them was making the parts wrong! ARGGGGHHHhhhhh! They're suggestion is to bring the bed back in and pick out another one with the same supplier lot numbers. But of course, now it's almost 3pm and if we want to have the correct bed delivered that day we have to buy it by 3pm. 

Fast forward a few hours; we've had the new bed delivered, put that one together (keeping the old one in case we needed to cannabalize parts) and have the mattress all together. We decided there was still time to return the old bed (trip FOUR to Ikea in one day!) so we just dump everything in the trunk with the seats folded down, drive it back, load it helter skelter on a cart and just wheel the whole mess to customer service.  Thankfully the guy (who wasn't part of any of the previous encounters) just accepted the receipt and refunded the money, because lord knows we weren't going to go through and put everything back in order!

Mandy diligently working on the second bed!

Total time spent on this bed....12 hours! Total time spent on this rant...probably about the same! =)

The finished product!

So, IKEA, how do I apply for a refund of my weekend?

In preparation of visitors later this month, we have recently been looking and thinking about getting a new bed. Our old bed was a full-size (yes, for both of us!) I had bought first year of medical school...so...carry the one...8 years ago! It had definitely seen better days and mandy always insisted it tended to slope towards my side (an insinuation to which I still take offense!). But buying a new mattress is such an unpleasant proposition we have kept putting it off.

Like many major household purchases, it's so hard to really know if you'll like it before actually making the purchase!  Consumer Reports was of little help (they only tested 26 mattresses for goodness' sake!) except for two pearls of advice:

• One, go to the store and lie on the bed, and not just for thirty seconds, but for 15 minutes. 
• Two, comparison shopping isn't really possible because for each vendor, mattress companies will often rename the mattress, using different coverings, etc.  So shopping around for the best price is mostly a waste of time

Consumer Reports top rated mattress brands were Tempur-Pedic and Sleep Number beds, but average prices were $2465 and $1835, respectively.  Next in line...IKEA at $515!  Not too hard of a decision there, particularly since they're literally less than a mile away.

The line we ultimately chose was the Queen size Sultan Hansbo, which is a memory foam topped spring mattress.  It took a little while to choose a mattress as Mandy prefers the rock hard beds while I need my pillow-top, sinking-into-a-cloud, marshmallow style mattress. In retrospect, this ended up being the easiest part of our weekend.

Next step was selecting a bed frame, since now that we are adults, we are trying to move away from just throwing the mattress on the floor.  They have some very nice beds at IKEA, although unfortunately they have discontinued the Leksvik line (from which most of our other furniture draws). We chose the Hemnes bed mostly because it provided under-bed storage space but also a headboard (neither of us have ever had a headboard!). And at $199 for the Queen bed, how can you go wrong?

We would soon find out...