Our kitchen experience
We just finished our full kitchen redo. We are very happy with the results, and the experience was very smooth aside from a hiccup with the counter templating.
We started with an in-home design session in February. It's free with the fee credited back, so we wanted to get accurate measurements. We really had no idea what the options were so it was very helpful to get us started. She told us about the sale coming in March, so we decided to wait for that, which ended up being really helpful because we made some changes along the way.
We did an in-store planning session a few weeks later, and he had some good suggestions for some changes. A big one was switching to a corner cabinet, but he was very insistent that meant we couldn't use a regular range hood (recirculating) because the door would hit is. So he switched the design to an in cabinet hood, which we really didn't like because there's no storage space in the cabinet. I did some measuring and even made a template of a hood with tapered corners and brought it to the store and put it against one of the mock ups and was very confident it would work. (It does.) Being in-store was very helpful to pick out the cabinet hardware and the countertop being able to see them in person.
We did a final in-store session on the day the sale started to finalize it and make the purchase. We were afraid if we waited the installation scheduling would get backed up. We had an issue with the counter purchase (it's done separately from the cabinets) not giving the 10% off sale price. We ended up having to pay full price then go to returns to get the 10% credited back. We used the Projekt card to get the 2 years interest free deal. We had to pay the cabinet installers separately so couldn't use it for that.
We hired a contractor to do everything that IKEA doesn't do - the demo and drywall prep, floor, backsplash, and plumbing. We scheduled the counter install to start April 6 and everything started out perfectly: everything arrived on-time, the contractor did the demo and prep the week before, and the installation went well. Then the countertop templater came and said the cabinets weren't level so he couldn't do it. The cabinet guy came back and fixed it.
This is where the hiccup came in. The counter people said they had to wait for IKEA to clear it in their portal before they could reschedule the templating. But they never actually called IKEA to get it done. I finally called IKEA and it was taken care of in an hour. Then it was several more days for the new appt. It ended up being a 12 day delay. In the meantime the contractor finished the floor.
It was less than two weeks to get the counter installed, which was quicker than we expected. That was this Monday. We also got a nice surprise that the estimate was high so we got a $600 refund. The installation went well, and the contractor came the next day to connect the sink, faucet, and dishwasher. They finished the backsplash yesterday (Friday) and we're done! Five weeks from demo to completion.
It was very helpful living 15 minutes from the store so we could make multiple trips to see things in person. We had a hard time picking out the backsplash tile and it was nice to be able to put it next to the countertop sample. And we ended up with a bunch of stuff to return, which we got $350 back for, and we had a few things to pick up.
We didn't realize how the family points work, so that was a nice surprise. We ended up with over $300 worth of rewards we've been using.