More than one weakness

Adam and I were at dinner when I misheard and thought Adam said, "That's my one weakness..."

plasticann: Well, I think you have a few more than one weakness, I could list a couple.
Adam: Umm, I said it was one of my many weaknesses not my only weaknesses.
plasticann: There's one weakness that I had in mind, you're not very good at figuring out distances, volumes, lengths, etc.
Adam: I don't really know what's a quarter mile when you're navigating?
plasticann: Quarter mile is our house to Davis, half mile is our house to the church and a mile is our house to Porter.
Adam: But that doesn't help because I'm driving not walking.
plasticann: You're also not very good at figuring out volumes and lengths. Like the other day you asked me if two feet was [plasticann holds her hands about 12 inches apart].
Adam: I'm not really sure what's a liter.
plasticann: A liter is almost like a quart.
Adam: What's the little skinny carton?
plasticann: A quart!!! I really need to quiz you on this stuff. How many cups in a pint?
Adam: A pint weighs a pound the world around!
plasticann: How is that helpful? Come on, how many cups in a pint Adam?
Adam: Umm, three quarters of a cup?
plasticann: What??? A pint is 2 cups. It's half of a skinny carton also known as a quart.
Adam: I thought a pint was the little one [holds hands about four inches high].
plasticann: That's a half pint or a cup.
Adam: I always thought the little one was a pint.
plasticann: I think we've figured out the root of the problem. You thought the little one was a pint when it was a half pint.
Adam: They never taught us this stuff in school.
plasticann: School? You learn this stuff by shopping at the grocery store.
Adam: I guess I never food shopped growing up. I also didn't learn the state capitals.

Kitchen Renovation: IKEA ordering lessons learned...thus far

Adam and I made our second trip to IKEA this week to place our giant order of cabinets. The ordering process was pretty smooth because we tried our best to be prepared. We still learned a few more lessons along the way which I'm sharing in hopes of saving someone else a little trouble.

IKEA is surprisingly easy and difficult all the same time

• IKEA is amazing wonderful and utterly frustrating. The customer service is surprisingly good as long as you stick with one sales channel. I've called them a few times to check on cabinet dimensions and they actually pick up the phone and try their best to find the information. One phone customer service rep even called the store and asked them to measure something for me while I was on hold. I've asked them questions over email and they usually respond within a day. 

• Similarly, the in-store experience is pretty good. Both times they patiently answered my questions and checked my order a few times. Some kitchen specialists are better than others, but they were all helpful. Jenni, who helped me on Monday, was awesome about checking all my colors, asking me lots of detailed questions and editing the order so I didn't order too many extra toe kicks, doors, shelves and hinges. 

Don't try to cross sales channels. There's no integration across the two experiences. 

• In the beginning, I wanted to use their in home kitchen design and measuring service that's operated out of their stores. I couldn't schedule the appointment over the phone or online. They asked me to drive to the store to make an appointment in person for someone from the store to drive to my house to measure my kitchen. Makes no sense for the customer especially a car free family like ours so our contractor helped us measure and I did the design myself.

• I wanted to change my delivery date so I tried calling yesterday. The automated system literally hung up on me multiple times when it was supposed to transfer me to someone at the store. I emailed IKEA trying to change my delivery date and received a response that I needed to either call the store (who keeps accidentally hanging up on me) or drive to the store to make the delivery date change in person. I'm resigned to keep my original delivery date. 

Take full advantage of their online planning tools, but don't trust it blindly.

• The IKEA 3D kitchen planner can be a bit buggy, but is good enough. Basically, you enter the dimensions for the room layout and you can drag and drop cabinets. I obsessively used this tool for both kitchens making edits along the way. It's kinda addictive like Candy Crush is for Adam. Sometimes the kitchen planner doesn't let you do what you want and you just have to remember it's not you. The kitchen planner program can be wonky, naughty and petulant...you're not the crazy one.

• The kitchen planner program is like a bad version of Microsoft Word. Like Word, the kitchen planner will want to "format" your order with the best of intentions yet totally gets it wrong. For both my orders, the kitchen planner tried to calculate the number of accessories I needed and both times, it made major errors like undercounting the number of cabinet legs I needed or overestimating the amount of material I needed. Triple check it all and assuming nothing is accurate. This is where the in store staff's expertise is very helpful.

• The kitchen planner lacks common sense because it's a not super bright computer program. I almost ordered extra cabinets because I found wayward extra cabinets hidden inside obstacles and walls. I couldn't see it visually, but the extra unexpected cabinets appeared on the order list so I had to hunt them down and delete them.

• The kitchen planner is also a bit color blind which is how I accidentally ordered a birch cabinet for plasticmom's all white kitchen. I almost ordered the off white parts for my white kitchen based on the kitchen planner's recommendation. Off white is a default setting that was mascara ding as an expert recommendation. 

Be prepared to be prepared

• Because I'd spent two months working with the kitchen planner and my contractor creating dozens of iterations, I thought I was prepared. I knew the cabinet configurations and dimensions IKEA offered in and out. I had checked my item list about 10 times and made corrections with each version before our store visit. It still took me over an hour with the kitchen specialist to place my order. I got about it 95% right and 5% wrong even with all my obsessive preparation. Granted none of the minor mistakes were tragic, but I needed their in store help to get it as accurate as possible if I wanted to avoid another trip to IKEA for missing parts.

• Even with all the preparation, I felt low level anxiety during the ordering process because there were so many details to tend to. I was totally flabbergasted that other customers were literally planning their kitchens from start to finish at the store. The couple across from me was having an animated conversation about corner cabinets. Turns out many people spend the day at IKEA planning their kitchens using the IKEA computers. Some even come in an hour before the store closes expecting to order a kitchen before dinner. I can't even imagine! I'm not laid back enough to wing designing a kitchen in one day with a lunch break for Swedish Meatballs.

• Check the order obsessively, but expect some minor mistakes because minor mistakes are part of life. I accidentally ordered plasticmom a brown birch sink cabinet and I accidentally bought her 40 cabinet pulls when I only needed 20. Thankfully, I returned the cabinet pulls and you can't see the birch cabinet with the white doors. 

• Also be prepared to take delivery of hundreds of little boxes and parts. I had over a hundred items to inventory plasticmom's kitchen and it took me 2 hours to inventory the items with their 8 digit SKU numbers. My kitchen will be about three times more parts so I'm blocking out an entire day next week to get organized after they deliver.

Get a good night's sleep and remember to eat

• Eat lots of snacks...that's just a life philosophy of mine
• Take bio breaks
• Wear comfy shoes and cross body bags for all your gear

Get the IKEA family card upfront and use it for all your purchases

• The IKEA family card is free and it's actually great. I used it to get 20% off our kitchen cabinets which is a nice chunk of change. The kitchen promotion is running through end of April and they run the promotion a few times a year.
• They'll also price adjust any purchases up to 90 days so had I bought my cabinets before the promotion, I could have gone into the store and received the discount on past purchases as long as I used the IKEA family card. 
• You get free coffee and free tea at the cafe.
• Key takeaway: no IKEA family card, no price adjustment, no promotions and no free coffee.

Kitchen Renovation: Practicing on plasticmom

I should probably clarify that I'm actually renovating two different kitchens. Since I'm new at this, I decided to start with plasticmom's smaller and much simpler kitchen project. For a few reasons, some selfish and some not, I prioritized her project first:

1. plasticmom is off somewhere warmer and it would be more convenient to complete her kitchen while she was away so she could come home to a nice new kitchen
2. I'm practicing on her project for experience before I tackle my own
3. By the time our remodel is underway, plasticmom will be back in Beantown and I'm hoping she'll use her new kitchen to make us lots of prepared foods we can microwave in our living room kitchenette. Thanks plasticmom!

I've been wanting to get her new cabinets for a while because hers are about 30 years old and held together by glue. Since her appliances are in good shape, we only updated her tile and her cabinets. I found the prospect of cabinet shopping a little intimidating and overwhelming so when our contractor suggested IKEA, I decided to check it out.

Original 1990s Kitchen, still in decent shape, but limited base cabinet storage

Electrical work for new layout, moving some outlets, adding some more...

First, plasticmom and I went to IKEA in LA over Christmas and picked out the cabinet doors she liked and cabinet pulls. Then, I used the IKEA 3D online tool to try different cabinet layouts. After much trial and error, I finally settled on a cabinet layout with more cabinets with drawers. plasticmom is kinda short and can't really reach the wall cabinets very well.

Her original kitchen also had a full sized dishwasher which was a bit of a waste on plasticmom since she never used it so we swapped the dishwasher out in the new layout for another base cabinet. I figured she could always swap the base cabinet out for a small dishwasher later if she wants to. For now she'll enjoy the convenience of more base cabinet storage.

The original kitchen also had 2 dead corners under the counters. By shifting a few things around, we were able to get one corner base cabinet with a rotating carousel. The second corner is still dead empty space. We didn't want to spend the money to get truly custom cabinets to maximize storage.  That's one of the tradeoffs when going with IKEA versus more custom options.

New corner base cabinet in the spot that was previously empty dead space

Original sink

New sink is shifted more to the center

I accidentally ordered a birch cabinet for the sink, but fortunately the doors will cover the cabinet so you won't be able to see the birch cabinet until you open the doors. I'm trying to pass it off as a design choice, but really I made a mistake which is why I worked on plasticmom's kitchen first

Since IKEA doesn't offer cabinets smaller than 12 inches, my contractor offered to use IKEA cover panel material to build custom narrow 9 inch open cabinets to fill the cabinet gaps.

Custom narrow open cabinets to the right and left of the hood and stove

Custom narrow open base cabinet made from IKEA cover panels

New tile floor, contractor saved some time and $$$ by tiling over the old tile

So far, I've been really happy that we went with IKEA. Once you get the hang of it and understand the little quirks, their 3D planner can be addictive. It's been my version of playing Candy Crush this winter. All the hundreds of parts that make up these IKEA cabinets were delivered in about a week so you can't beat the quick turnaround on IKEA. They're actually having a 15% to 20% off kitchen sale through the end of April which Adam and I plan on taking advantage of in a few weeks.

IKEA cabinets are like building LEGO kits without any written instructions. You get stacks and stacks of parts rather than completed cabinets. Fortunately, my contractor was happy and willing to work with IKEA so "everything is awesome!"

Kitchen Renovation Adventures...here we go

Adam and I have talked about renovating our kitchen for almost as long as we've lived in our lovely condo. We absolutely love almost everything about our home except for our kitchen. I don't want to malign our hardworking little kitchen with all its modern conveniences like running water, dishwasher, gas stove, etc. and its nice little touches like working drawers and granite countertops, but it's rather small and lacking in storage for the two of us. We're often bumping into each other and we have way too much kitchen stuff. We've taken to storing our appliances and other things up on top of our cabinets. It's not only unsightly, but dangerous if something falls off the top of the cabinet and say hits me on the head. We also love having people over so having a more functional kitchen would be super awesome.

Our kitchen renovation plans are so big, we're actually annexing our dining room. [Insert current events reference to Crimea.] The kitchen will be one big combined room with lots of cabinets, new appliances and loads more storage. I'm super excited about getting a double oven so I can bake 2X as much. Yay! Adam is excited about a new bottom freezer fridge where he doesn't have to bend over to find things in the fridge. We're aiming to start early April and hopefully we'll be done in 2-3 months. Wish us luck and invite us over for dinner since we'll be dining on Hot Pockets for a few months. For now, I leave you with our most frequently asked question.

Q: Ummm...I hear you two aren't the most "handy." How much "work" will you guys be doing?

A: Great question! We're totally not handy so we've decided to outsource. We're feeling pretty good this decision for the following reasons:

1. The economy. Hiring a contractor will boost GDP whereas doing the work yourself does not boost GDP officially. We aim to boost the GDP by less than 0.00000000000000000329%.

2. Comparative advantage! If we all stick to what we're comparatively better at, economic theory tells us we'll have higher utility.

3. Absolute advantage! Turns out Adam and I are really bad at being handy and our contractor absolutely has not only comparative advantage, he has an absolute advantage over our terrible skills so therefore we will really be much much better off outsourcing.