Trials and Tribulations of Finding a Crib

So a couple of months ago we found found a set at IKEA with a crib, dresser with a changing table attachment, toy box, bookshelf... pretty much everything. It was highly rated by the baby bargain book we got, it was pretty cheap... best of both worlds right? Yeah, that's what everybody else thought too.

First, we were waiting until we moved to pick it up, thinking Christine's dad could help up pick it up when he was here to help us move. Of course by then we were only able to get the dresser (without the changing table attachment), the toy box, and a bookshelf. They told us that the crib and changing table attachment were both out of stock but should be back within a week or two.

Well, we kept checking, and they kept telling us a week or two every time. We were checking their website for inventory status for every store in the nation, thinking maybe we could have the pieces shipped - they were all out. When I called in to check the status one time, the girl said she was amazed that they were all out of stock, not just this crib, but all their cribs. She said that she had heard that some people were having problems getting cribs even at Target, Babies R Us, etc. What is this, some kind of baby boom??? And on the same call we were told that the changing table attachment had been discontinued. We figured we could get by since the dresser should be big enough.

Based on IKEA's complete lack of cribs, we decided to go get a crib at Target that we liked. It didn't match the set that we had, but it was nice and we figured we better have something! :) We figured that we could wait to put it together for a while to see if we could get the one we wanted from IKEA.

So after weeks of calling IKEA to check their status, Christine noticed that the crib was available online! Of course with their shipping costs, the $160 crib would be $300... We were kind of debating what to do, so I called IKEA again to find out if they would be back in stores. They told me that for some reason they were going to be supplied to our store later than most of the others, not until August 25th!

I was looking at some of the inventories for other stores and found that the Orlando store had it. Kind of half joking I called Christine at work to see if anyone in her family would be in Orlando anytime soon (they live in Bradenton). At the same time I looked to see how much it would cost to ship it ourselves if we could get one that way and it would only be about $40. That's a little more reasonable...

As it turned out, Christine's sister, Jackie, and her boyfriend, Brett, were going to Orlando to turn in his apartment keys that weekend. Not only that but they were planning on going to IKEA while they were there! Perfect! So we made arrangements for them to pick up the crib and ship it to us.

That weekend Jackie called Christine to make sure she was getting the right crib and said, "I saw all the stuff you got. The dresser, the changing table, the bookshelf..." Christine said, "What? We didn't get the changing table, they said they were discontinued!" So all of a sudden things are looking great! They picked up the crib and the changing table attachment, we emailed them FedEx shipping labels, and we should have both pieces Tuesday. Things worked out pretty well, we just had to pay a little extra for shipping, and we'll have to take the other crib back to Target.

Pretty nice, right? Well, on Friday Christine went to check the status of another piece of furniture that has been out of stock and just for fun checked on the crib. It's in stock now, of course. :P So we could have had it by now and not paid the extra shipping. Guess they meant July 25th??

Oh well, at lease we managed to get the changing table attachment out of it...