Hi Nora New, the kitchen planner that came out was Jenny I think and the contractor I ended up using was Michael Early construction. He is on houzz, just search under pros, you can see his previous projects. I'm not sure he's still a designated Ikea installer still, but I'm sure he can tell you. What I heard was that Ikea grossly underestimated the demand and that they were having major out of stock issues and therefore projects being delayed. Not sure what the situation is now. I also had good experience at the kitchen department in San Diego, they were really helpful. BUT this was my experience, I don't know anyone else personally who's gone through Ikea so I can only tell you my own experience. I have not used Ikea for bathrooms, my kitchen was the last project that I was dreading to start, I had already done bathrooms with other contractors. ikea installer vs. outside contractors, I think it's your personal choice. There are a few contractors that don't like to work on Ikea cabinets so I think you just have to do your research. I'm happy with the result. Good luck to you and let me know if you have any more questions. also there's another thread started by Marcia Dorherty (I think) that has a lot of detail about Ikea kitchens, check that out, it might be helpful.

Everyone has given really good suggestions and the best one I think you should look at is walking through your kitchen and deciding 2 things: 1) What do I need to change and 2) What would I like to change. Take a full week and write down your routine. Decide what irritates you. What would you like to have. What do you need to have. Do this before you start pulling Houzz pictures or get inspiration. This process will help you with locking in the basics before it gets corrupted by the pretty pictures. I was forced into remodeling from full gut because of a kitchen leak/flood. I had no money and no budget planned for it. From my experience, so far, you can do a remodeling with much lower than what people/KD tells you if you use creativity and are willing to compromise and stick to a budget religiously. Knowing that insurance will not pay enough to repair my house, I set aside $25K in savings for the extraneous and some upgrades. This is a hard budget with no wiggle room. This amount was also meant to cover shortfall in the insurance, my deductible of $5K and any contingencies. That contingency is critical and ate up most of my entire budget. So far, I've had to repipe my entire house. It costs my neighbors $25K for their repiping. Mine will be $10K because I did a lot of research, interviewed neighbors out of the neighborhood, got recommendations and then got quotes. I only asked for 2 quotes but from the top specialists. My contractor is the company that most of the GCs in the areas use but I don't have to pay the upcharge and the GC percentage that other people paid. I had compromises such as getting a BS rangetop instead of full range. So far, I've been able to squeak out most of my wants list by a lot of research and negotiations. Even without planning time, I'm still able to buy the replacement appliances at up to 50% off retail while getting brand new items. I would recommend a spreadsheet and construction chart to plan your remodel. It helped me to account for every single item that needed to be done and plugged in costs. Every time something extra came up, I plugged it in and then cut from other areas so that my bottom line does not change. The forced budgeting actually made my remodel plan much better than if I had had unlimited funds. I also saved money by acting as my own GC for the cabinets, flooring and big jobs and using a GC only for the electrical and plumbing. In fact, two KDs that I interviewed was trying to sell me on using their cabinet source and had bad mouthed my chosen custom cabinet maker. They finally admitted using that cabinet maker for their own house and luxury clients. Since I was considered a budget or middle of the road client, they were trying to sell a standard line. Their quote was 75% more than my direct quote and had inferior products. The one thing that you don't want to compromise on is quality. Use fully licensed, experienced people and make sure that you are fully permitted and in code. This may mean that you have to wait to get things done. I had to wait almost 2 months for my repipe because the contractor was that busy.

Not hiding, Diane, but I'm afraid you'd have a long wait for MY Spring flush :-D I might cheat and show a few Autumn rose pictures though. Many thanks for introducing this funny and educational thread. What a great idea, Jasmine; I'm looking forward to all the garden tours, which should get me through my 'winter blues', although I'm ashamed to admit to those, considering my mild climate. Baby Austin is so lovely, and just the size rose I've room left for, after this year's roses arrive. Jim, the rose motels,as Patty called them, look great....still working on a way to hibernate my remaining herbaceous peony :) Melodye. ps. all ideas gratefully received re peony. M

This one is just for U.S. residents, but we plan to do more of these when we are able. Currently, the products on Houzz primarily only ship to U.S. with a small percentage available to Canada, so for this particular one, it made sense to limit eligibility based on that.