London Living: London Flat

Shane and I almost have our flat completely furnished! It definitely has not been easy, but our flat slowly but surely is starting to feel a little bit more like home.

Furniture isn't exactly cheap anywhere but it is far from cheap in the U.K. Even the 'discount' furniture stores are insanely priced, so we resorted to IKEA. My parents were more than generous and purchased our bedroom furniture for us for Christmas! We definitely couldn't have gotten our flat put together as quickly as we did without their help. Thanks Mom & Dad!

While IKEA's furniture is much more affordable, especially when you are furnishing a whole flat, the assembly, delivery service, customer service, picking service, etc. are less than ideal. Rather than dwell on my experience with IKEA, I'll highlight some of my favorite moment's below.

If you order online, delivery takes anywhere from one to four weeks. If you go in-store, they will deliver next day. The 'closest' IKEA store ending up costing us 40 pounds in a round trip journey - zone 3 tube and a cab. Shane decided one trip was enough.
IKEA delivery is supposed to call an hour before they deliver in the five hour time slot they provide. They called me at work telling me they would be two hours and then showed up 45 minutes later. I was already on my way to the tube, thinking I had left in more than enough time, and had to plead with them to wait 20 minutes. As I was rushing to get home, our neighbor got home and let them into our building - IKEA dropped everything in the hallway. It took me 45 minutes to move it all inside.
IKEA has a 90 day return policy on their mattresses (amazing!) but they ask that you sleep on the mattress for a month before you return it. After 35 minutes on the phone with customer service, I convinced them that the more days I slept on the mattress, the more I would dislike it. I explained to them that I was American and regardless of the comfort, a 14 centimeter thick foam mattress was too thin for me. (I didn't look at the dimension before I ordered - measurement fail #1).
IKEA's return policy on everything but mattresses is a nightmare. If you order online for delivery, IKEA will not come pick up your return item. They will only do this for mattresses. Not only will they not come pick up your returned item but if your return item is a bed they will not take back the bed slats (approx. 30% of the cost). I ordered the wrong sized bed (measurement fail #2). This measurement fail I blame on inaccurate information about the mattress left in the flat. We were told it was a double, I ordered a UK double - logically. The mattress left in the flat was in fact a European double, which is larger than a UK double and to my surprise does not fit a UK double bed. This fiasco ended up with me a tears, four bed frames in our flat and a hatred for centimeters.
Assembly. It's fair to say I assembled the majority of the furniture. Shane told me I was better at it than him. I was, but I think he was just saying that to encourage me to keep building. Shane was extremely helpful in pushing pieces of wood together when I wasn't strong enough, and I was better at following instructions and filling in all the individual screws.

Despite the difficulties, we are happy with how our flat has turned out. We still need some photos on the walls, and I would love to paint, but for now we are taking a spending break.

Here is some photo's of our flat as it looks today: