Mission Organization (Ikea Sale) & HVAC

So this past weekend, Ikea had a super sale on their Markor furniture at 50% off. Since I have started working from home, the need to super organize my little tiny office/scrapbook room has become a necessity (as has David’s office)… hence the Ikea sale. A lot of scrapbookers get the Expedit cubby shelves, as I almost had to as well. The problem is that they are not made of wood and I guess I am kind-of a snob like that because I want whatever it is that I get to last. Anyway, this was not an easy task to get what I wanted.

THE STORY: I showed up on Saturday for the sale at 10:10 a.m. (they open at 10). Holy Carumba, the place was packed! So I hurried to where they keep the sheves on the warehouse floor only to see a line of people with coupons in hand. Come to find out that you have to go upstairs to the showroom to get the coupons for the product. Luckily some woman handed me one coupon for the wide shelves because she didn’t need it. So I hurry upstairs (and if you’ve ever been to Ikea you know how big their showroom is so getting there and back is no easy task), only to find that they have already given out all of the coupons for the cubby shelves and the wide bookcases which we needed for David’s office to do the built-ins for our library. I was pissed! Somehow I needed three more wide shelves and my cubbies (mind you that it was only two products per person and I was also waiting for David to fly in and drive to meet me so we could each get two). So I wait downstairs to get my one lonely shelf. Then I walked over to where the Expedit ones are at and figured I had to have something, so they would have to do. David finally showed up and I decided to ask the guy controlling the traffic where they were handing out the products if anyone had changed their mind and turned any in (although I had already asked about a dozen times). Guess what? He handed me a coupon for my cubby shelves! Whoo-hooooo!!!! He also told us that when people changed their minds, they were sending them back upstairs to where they were handing them out in the showroom. So I leave David with the stuff (because you can’t bring those huge boxes on carts upstairs), and I ran up… and guess what else? I got two coupons for the wide shelves and she had more in her hand. So I run down to meet David and tell him to run up (mind you he has no clue about how to get around Ikea), and he got one of their last two coupons. We were psyched! Let me tell you, these poor people were probably so sick of me because I kept asking if anyone had extra coupons… but the lesson is that PERSISTANCE & DETERMINATION WIN OUT! We ended up getting my cubby shelves for $140 (normally $280) and we got David’s four shelves for $80 a piece (normally $160). We put them together and they look awesome. A little work still has to go into them to make them look like built-ins, but we’ll figure that out. At least for now we have some storage in there and they don’t look bad as freestanding shelves. They also need some decorating since they look a little bare in the picture above, but it is a work in progress.

And to top it all off, our HVAC is being installed as we speak! It’s a hybrid system (heat pump and gas) that we accidentally saved an additional $3000 on because the guy screwed up the quote… we’re paying $7600 for the furnace and AC because they were having a sale where you got the furnace half off and money off the AC unit. We were supposed to save $3,000 and we’re ending up saving $6,000 due to the mix up. Not too bad (I’ll take a $13,000 system at the $7600 price tag). AND it’s super efficient and we’ll qualify for the home efficiency credit next year on our taxes. I can’t wait to sleep tonight in comfort.