This post was a bit too painful for me to make three weeks ago when this actually happened…but I guess time has dulled the pain a bit.

My wonderful husband bought me 120 multi-colored tulips for Valentine’s Day and our house was just filled with them. I actually had a buy a couple of vases because I didn’t have anything I could put them all in. So we ended up buying two large glass vases…and I still had to use a couple pitchers later on for the tulips. They were absolutely gorgeous but eventually the day comes when you have to dispose of the fresh flowers and clean out the vases. That day was a Friday…February 22nd, 2008.

I was standing by the kitchen sink with my hands in one of the new vases, washing out all the flower gunk and thinking how incredibly heavy the vase was. It’s about 14 inches tall and 8-10 inches round with a short pedestal on the bottom. It’s some of the thickest glass I’ve ever seen, sorta like lead glass. As I was washing the vase, it slipped out of my hands and fell about an inch into the sink.

My first thought was, “Oh no, I just broke my new vase!” But I picked it up and examined it and there were no cracks, chips or marks anywhere on it. Then I looked down into the sink and saw it…

The picture doesn’t do it justice but our IKEA Dömsjo sink cracked like nothing I’ve ever seen before. If you click on the photo you can see it much better. The noticeable crack/chip in the middle is where the vase actually hit the bottom of the sink. What you can’t see is that the right side of this crack (which is actually towards the wall where the faucet is mounted – I took the photo from the side of the sink so you could see it best) extends all the way to the back of the sink where it’s molded upward. The crack going to the left basically wraps around the edge of the sink and carries almost all the way up to join the first crack I described. So I basically managed to break out the bottom of the sink with this vase.

I was NOT amused and after doing a bit of research on google, I found that IKEA actually pulled this sink from the market in the US for a while because of shoddy construction. I didn’t find anyone over here complaining about the sink breaking but some did say that the ceramic isn’t very high quality and they had problems with staining and so on. That I have noticed a bit but with a good cleaner I’ve never had any trouble making the sink white again and have otherwise just loved the sink.

So what now? Well, I’m going to beg Stefan to call IKEA and try to work some of his magic with them and see if we can’t get it exchanged at their expense. And if not, I guess we’ll just be investing the 200 euros ourselves to get a new one. The counter is already fit for this sink as well as the cabinet underneath so getting a different one in hopes that it would hold up better would just be more frustration than it’s worth. And I will certainly be a LOT more careful with the new sink and think twice about what I’m cleaning in there and how I’m holding it.

Not really sure when we’ll get around to this now but maybe I can get Stefan to call the lovely customer service people in the next couple of weeks. In store for us this weekend is finally adjusting the closet rods in our extra room and moving around the shelving in the built in closets. We also need to finally shave down the corners of the shelves where the electrician laid the satellite cables which caused the shelves to no longer fit. At the moment we can’t see the couches in there because they are piled up with all sorts of things so we have our work cut out for us. And we’re planning to clean out our closets in general and eliminate some of the clothes we haven’t worn since we moved to Germany 7 years ago…spring cleaning at its best!

Have a great weekend!!