98 boxes

Today our new kitchen cabinets were delivered. We're really doing this.

IKEA in East Palo Alto might want to improve the delivery process a little bit. When we ordered the cabinets 2 weeks ago, we chose a delivery window of 8-12 in the morning. Last Wednesday I received a call from Excel, the delivery company that everything is at the warehouse, and they will deliver it on Monday (today). "We will call you on Saturday, to let you know the exact delivery window". ok. cool, that's service I thought.

By Saturday afternoon I did not get a call. I call IKEA, get connected a few times, and eventually a really friendly lady explains, "oh, yes Sir, you will receive a call tonight between 7:30 and 9:30 after they put together the route". ok, fine.

No call.

I called them again on Sunday, "oh, you haven't received a call, because they plan the route today, so we will call you tonight between 7:30 and 9:30". ok. fine.

At 8:30 they call me. "Hello Sir, we will deliver your kitchen between 8am and 12pm tomorrow morning." - uh, could you give me an idea when they'll show up, are we earlier or later in the schedule? - "I don't know SIr, that's really up to the driver, but we can call you half an hour before they get there. Would you like us to do that?" - sure.

Of course, this morning they called while I was at work in the shower.

An IKEA kitches comes in A LOT of boxes. 98 to be exact. Patricia spent a good part of the afternoon checking that all the pieces in the delivery manifest actually showed up.

I spent a couple hours in the garage in the evening sorting the boxes into neat stacks. Each stack represents the major parts of one cabinet. I hope this will make building the cabinets less painful. We'll see how that works out...