7 On Your Side helps couple with Ikea kitchen problems

BERKELEY, Calif. (KGO) -- We previously told you earlier about a Berkeley couple who took on the daunting task of building an entire kitchen from products from Ikea.

They seemed to run into trouble right away because it was mind boggling. The two brave do-it-yourselfers faced a mountain of boxes with hundreds of parts.

The last time 7 On Your Side's Michael Finney saw Thea Sizemore her kitchen was in boxes on the floor. "It's hard to believe, but it will be a kitchen," she said.

She and her husband bought the kitchen from Ikea, so you know what that means. "With Ikea it's like you know it's assemble," Thea said.

But before they even started there was a catch. "I got like 90 percent of the kitchen and then there's this other 10 percent," Thea said.

Key pieces were missing and impossible to get. "To build Ikea, you have to have the whole, like you can't just have some of the parts," Thea said.

So she contacted 7 On Your Side who got Ikea to dig up those missing pieces. And now their kitchen was a done deal, right? "Obviously we have a lot of work to do," Thea said.

Actually getting the parts was only the beginning. Thea worked on finding the pieces that matched the diagram to build one of the cabinets. "And I hate reading manuals," she said.

Then, 20 minutes later, a cabinet started to take shape. "I think it's going to be a kitchen," she said.

Her husband Patrick worked on making drawers, while Thea began installing pieces and the construction zone began to transform. "That's the hardest is like organizing the parts," Thea said.

There are setbacks like when Patrick built the wrong sized cabinet. "I walked into the room and I'm like 'oh no that's the cabinet we don't need,"' Thea said.

So Patrick had to start over again. "We're still married, it all worked out," Thea said.

After weeks of assembly required aggravation the big reward came when they finished building the kitchen.

Thea says assembling an entire kitchen isn't for everyone, but in the end it's pretty satisfying. "I can't believe it's real," she said.

All that hard work saved the couple a lot of money. The whole kitchen ended up costing them $4,200, which is a fraction of a contractor's price.

If you try this, Thea says make sure you have good tools, a lot of patience and maybe a marriage counselor to get through those rough patches.