2008, kitchen, ikea fiasco

okay, 2008, we're back at! no more time off for the holidays, now we have to finish this project that we call home. we decided to try and get the kitchen done, since we're using it, and it would be really nice to have a finished kitchen to use for the next few months, while we work on the rest of the apartment. we ordered ikea cabinets in november, they came in early december, and this weekend we started to put them together....only to quickly learn that they sent us three wrong ones! argh.

the first pic is thabo pretending to read the instructions that come with the cabinets. don't be fooled. behind him is the temporary kitchen we'd set up with old cabinets. the new ones are skinnier, to allow more space in an already tight galley kitchen.

so, not to be swayed, and with a weekend ahead of us, thabo and i decided the best option would be to get out to the ikea store as early as possible, since we couldn't get anyone from ikea to answer our calls on friday night. next morning we got up early and took the FREE IKEA BUS from port authority station directly to ikea in new jersey. no kidding, they provide a free bus to and fro for cheap-minded-but-design-oriented people like us to buy their products and whisk them (and us) back to nyc.

here's thabo expressing his feelings of wonder and amazement at standing in a bus line on saturday morning in port authority (which is quite possibly one of the ugliest structures in new york). note the glazed look in his eye...

the bottom pic shows him much happier, comfortably seated on a free bus ride. ikea is directly across the freeway from newark airport, which led to a lot of conversation between us as to whether it would be possible to utilize the ikea bus as free airport shuttle of sorts.

anyway, i forgot to take pictures of ikea and the outside of the bus, so you'll just have to dream... we got the cabinets but forgot to buy the shelves that go in them. dang. thankfully, once i got ikea on the phone to discuss the wrong order, they credited us for the cabinets they sent, and told us to just keep them. so now we have three cabinets we can put somewhere else. nice ending to ikea saga.