finalizations

After finalizing the design of our kitchen, it was time to pay for it. Since everything "kitchen" is 20% off, we picked up a few other things to organize the drawers and buckets for garbage, recycling, and compost (our house came with a huge compost bin that's nicely hidden in our backyard so we thought we better get a bucket specifically for compost otherwise we'll never use it). You only get one 20% off coupon so we took advantage.

Eric and Katshia are comparing the list from Artisan to IKEA's, making sure everything matches and is correct. I'm so glad we had Artisan design and install our kitchen, with IKEA you can only customize things to a certain extent. But Artisan knows how work with IKEA's product and customized things to fit specifically for our kitchen. I didn't think we'd need any customization's in our kitchen and didn't want anything custom because that usually means more money. But we have a funky area by the door that needed a custom cabinet and we also wanted custom open shelf boxes. Surprisingly, neither of these custom built items cost us very much at all. Artisan knows that we chose IKEA because of the quality and price. So they that into consideration with all of their customers and made things work with our budget. They were a dream to work with. 

Before we paid, there was one last thing we needed to take care of....the countertops. We were still unsure of the color we wanted for the countertop. 

 

From the beginning, we knew the exact cabinets and handles we wanted. We didn't create a design board for our kitchen but we looked at hundreds of pictures on Pinterest and Houzz so the design board was in our head. Eric and I have almost the exact same taste so between our mental design board, the selection that IKEA offers, and Artisan, designing the kitchen was a breeze.

Choosing the color for the countertop was the hardest part of this whole process. We've always dreamed of having quartz countertops (with little or no speckles or pattern) so we just needed to narrow it down to color. It's especially hard to decide when: 

1. you have a vision of the color you want but they don't have it 

2. when you have a budget you want to keep and the countertops you want aren't in that budget. 

At first, we didn't love the colors of the selection at IKEA so we picked a different one from the showroom at Aspen Countertops (the same place that supplies IKEA with their countertops) but at the last minute (before we paid) we decided it wasn't the right color. So we decided to choose IKEA's selection instead.

I'd love an all white kitchen with white or marble looking countertops. White walls/kitchens are really in right now and I'm seeing it everywhere on Pinterest. But since the layout in our home is so open with the living, dining and kitchen all in one room, I don't want the space to feel lopsided with all white on one side and color on the other. I think that having a crisp, all-white space on one side of the room will make the living space feel more dirty/cluttered. The kitchen needs contrast so we narrowed it down to two colors: sterling on the left and pewter on the right.

I loved pewter because it's gray and not too dark or heavy. But it has a brown undertone and when put next to the color of our walls, it looked brown. But when put next to something else it looked gray. I didn't know what a whole slab would look like and I didn't want to take the chance of it looking brown. We don't want an ounce of brown (except for wood) in our kitchen so we went with sterling on the left. At first I thought it was a little dark, but now I love, love the color and think it'll mesh nicely with our furniture and wall color.

The kitchen staff at IKEA is very knowledgeable, and they always say anyone can help you with your kitchen, it doesn't have to be the same salesperson. But you get attached to the person who helped you the first time and understands your situation so luckily Katshia was always there when we went and helped us with every step of the way. Overall, a great experience. And I feel like the customer service at IKEA and Artisan was much better than Lowes. 

Before we left IKEA, we needed to stop by the delivery section to drop off our paperwork and tell them Artisan was going to pick up our order. She pointed to a stack of boxes and said it was already picked out and ready to be picked up for tomorrow. All those boxes (minus the chairs which aren't ours) is our kitchen. Wow, they work fast. Those are a lot of boxes and again, so glad we don't have to sort it all and having missing or extra pieces. Believe us, we've heard stories of it takes weeks to a month for someone to install their own IKEA kitchen. Artisan even comes out and has to re-do or finish kitchens that people have already started. The extra cost of installation will be worth every penny.