Not Good....Not Good at ALL!

My beloved and I made a hajj to IKEA yesterday. We rented a van and headed down with the intention of buying a new dining room table and chairs, a bunch of bookcases, something upon which to place the t.v. and various entertainment-related equipment, and maybe even a small couch and a couple of chairs. We also had a bunch of kitchen things we needed to return: several shelves that we found we had no use for, a set of drawer fronts that we didn't need (we miscounted) and one of the two door fronts that lives under the sink had gotten some water on it and had already started to delaminate - we wanted to exchange that one for another.

The returning part went well until we got to the bumpy door. The girl who was working that return desk started out by giving me a gentle hard time, saying that they can't accept returns or exchanges unless the item in quesiton is in its original packaging, blah, blah, and I pointed out that a) we have no original packaging for this item as it was already installed and b) these things are guaranteed against defects like the one this particular door is exhibiting and it's unreasonable for the company to expect consumers to keep EVERY SINGLE BOX to an entire kitchen suite. It was at this point that she stopped and said "Wait a minute - this is a Kelsebo door, right?"

"Yes.." I said, cautiously. "Is that important?"

"Yeah, they've put a 'stop sale' order on this style. There's a problem with them."

Oh, dear God.

It turns out that the company itself has noticed some manufacturing defects; namely, the lovely corners - which was one of the details that sold us on these particular doors - are having trouble staying together. Consequently, they've stopped selling them.

Now, you need to understand that this entire exchange at the returns desk happened while my husband was downstairs parking the van. When he appeared at my side, the first word I said to him was "BREATHE." He turned an alarming shade of paste and did the mental calculations of just how many doors with pretty corners we actually have in our kitchen (and how many hinges and handles he's going to have to take off and replace).

The girls (we had plural girls now; the woman in the next desk over saw our alarm and consternation and jumped in, trying to be helpful) explained to us that all we had to do (pfft! ALL we had to do!) was go upstairs to kitchens and pick out and purchase new doors - it didn't matter WHICH doors, either, they explained; even if the doors we chose were more expensive than the doors we currently have - and then bring our old doors back for a full credit on the new ones. I, not so kindly, pointed out that we don't have the original boxes for any of those doors, either, but they said that, in this case, that won't be a problem. Resigned to the idea that we were going to have to change the look of our kitchen before it was ever fully installed, we made our way up to kitchens.

The department manager, a Frenchman named Frederick from whom we bought our original kitchen, wasn't going to be in until after two, but we were able to get some more hopeful information from Ivy, a lovely woman who took pity on us. She explained that the company is not actually DISCONTINUING the door style we have; they're simply re-designing and re-tooling how the problem corners go together and will start selling them again when they've got it all worked out. We were thrilled to hear this because, really, we were crushed at the idea of having to choose different doors. I'm sure that we could have settled on another style and been happy with it, but not yesterday. Yesterday, we were angry and frustrated and overwhelmed at the idea of having to replace every door in our kitchen.

SO, the story continues. We are going to keep our kitchen together until Frederick calls us to say that the doors are being sold again, at which point we'll take them all off, unscrew the hinges and handles and make another trip to the store to get their replacements. We are going to be missing the one under-sink door because the return girl took it back but, because of the stop-sale order, couldn't replace it for us. We bought our bookcases and dining room table and chairs, but we didn't get a couch - the decision-making mechanisms were a little jammed by the kitchen door trauma we'd suffered earlier.