7 On Your Side steps in when couple's Ikea project goes awry

BERKELEY, Calif. (KGO) -- People who have bought furniture that requires assembly know it can be frustrating. For a Berkeley couple, it became impossible.

This couple tackled what very few would ever try, piecing together an entire kitchen. They had hundreds of parts to figure out and as if that's not ambitious enough, it turned out, they needed even more.

A stack of boxes in Thea Sizemore's gutted house really is a kitchen, or, it will be. It came from Ikea, and there's a little assembly required.

Sizemore thinks of it as a life-size jigsaw puzzle. She and her husband planned to put it together. But before they even started they ran into a hitch.

"I got like 90 percent of the kitchen and then there is this other 10 percent," Sizemore said.

Key pieces were missing, out of stock, and impossible to get.

"To build Ikea you have to have the whole, like you can't just have some of the parts," Sizemore said.

Ikea told her to keep calling the store to see if the parts came in. They didn't.

"We have our deadline with our contractor, when they want to start, so I'm a little frenzied," Sizemore said.

There was no way to order parts either. After months of waiting, Sizemore came to 7 On Your Side and we contacted Ikea and someone listened.

Ikea finally sent the missing pieces, saying the kitchen set is a new product and sales have boomed. A spokesperson said the Ikea store in Emeryville did make Thea Sizemore aware of the stock situation. She was only charged for parts that were available and the remaining pieces were sent free of charge.

"I'm so appreciative. I mean I can't even believe the response was like literally night and day," Sizemore said.

Now that everything is here, the rest is easy right.

"Seems like I got a lot of stuff here, but we'll see what, you know, it turns into," she said.

Hopefully it turns into a kitchen. Sizemore and her husband are still putting the pieces together and promise they'll let us see it when it's complete.