I think you will find folks with both reasonable long term and short term Ikea kitchens on here are pretty happy with them. They come with a 25 year warranty, the hardware (hinges, drawer mechanisms) is slightly modified Blum hardware, the 3\4 particle board construction is low VOC. Here in Canada frameless construction is the norm and the use of particleboard is standard and there are good arguments that particleboard is better for frameless construction (it has less tendency to expand or contract - with no frame this is important - and the uniform finish is ideal for the adherence of the melamine or veneer covering). I just picked mine up this weekend so I haven't even put my first cabinet together yet so I can't vouch for their quality.

I think around construction you have to decide what you want\need and tune out the rest. Consumer Reports always derides particleboard construction but then concedes that Ikea performs very well in their tests. Ikea only uses particleboard so the construction of the product is designed around the properties of that material.

Love ours!

We have only had our Ikea cabinets for a few months now, but so far, I'm impressed. The price could not be beaten, the soft close hardware is terrific, and although our doors are not wood (they do have wood options), they are Heavy - (I feared that they would be lightweight and flimsy - but they are exactly the opposite!). Plus, the mounting system is fantastic - DH installed everything himself and it was pretty easy (the hardest part was making adjustments to accommodate for our uneven walls).

This was my question too at one time and I think you are going to find lovers and haters period . . no in betweeners and unless you find a bunch of people that have had these cabinets for a long period of time, you may not really know the true answer.

I am only speaking about the white cab styles. I'm not sure about the long run even with the 25 yr warranty, what if that style is discontinued? But if you put them in and they are cheap (or reasonable is a better word) enough and they fall apart years (not months) later, what are you really out especially if you love them?

I was and still am in love with the Ikea Lidi door, especially the mullion glass door. My Ikea price just for the cabs was about $1,800, my other cab quotes ranged from $7,000 to $15,000. I have a very tiny kitchen and a tinier budget. DH said if you like them, get them, and if they have to be replaced in 5 years so be it. I seriously considered it but did not get them for a few reasons:

1 - they don't come in 3 inch increments and I felt like I was left with a lot of fillers in my tiny kitchen and had a hard time coming up with a layout that I really liked;
2 - I was considering a corner sink which can be done but with a lot of customization as they don't have a true corner sink cab;
3 - they have a recommended installer in my area . . . they wanted almost $4,000 to put together and hang the cabs and plug back in my appliances. . no plumbing, electrical, just put the cabs together and hang them. I have a very small kitchen . . . .
4 - there is a house for sale in my neighborhood, built in the late 1800s, and they put in an Ikea white kitchen, not Lidi, another style, and it looked so awful. Now, I have seen photos of many beautiful kitchens with Ikea cabs that are just gorgeous so I don't know what went wrong here. It looked like a cheap quick freshen up job in a totally wrong style for this very beautiful home (I like all things old) and certainly not for the long haul.
5 - Since I was replacing thermofoil cabs that peeled in my kitchen and are particle board based, I chose to go with all plywood.

OTOH, the kitchens on display in the store have held up well considering how many people traipse through them on a weekly basis so that has to tell you something, right?

Finally I have read that a lot of people get Ikea boxes because they are reasonably priced and then customize the doors and some have spent less doing this than just getting the entire Ikea cab although I don't see how that can be.

I probably haven't helped you but I don't think I would have been disappointed had I gone with the Lidi door . . I still love the style.

Good luck.

We have a birch/red combo--love it! When we move to our retirement home, we will do IKEA again--have been very happy--full pullouts are great. We have gotten so many compliments!

all the pro's and con's described above are accurate. To be more accurate, I'll add that "OSB" is probably a good term to use in web searching if you want to know about the physical properties of this wood product (often called particleboard or chipboard). It performs just as well as plywood in many tests, outperforms plywood in some tests, and so on.

Using Ikea as your source for buying boxes is a good strategy.
Using Ikea as your source for buying drawers is a good strategy.
Drawers that are either
= shallow or "deep" (high height).
= on sliders / glides that are either short or long ("deep" in one sense of the word).

Cabinet boxes Base cabinets. And drawers.

The drawers I'm referring to are the hardware and not the front panel.
To be cheapskate and or optimize-y, one may then customize from this point on.

The drawers are the hardware and not the front panel.
Although you SEE the front panel in photos, this is not the big thing about Ikea's value proposition.
Yes, you many also find good value in some or all of the front panels that Ikea offers.
An, you may gush one way or another about beauty.

But the big positive thing about Ikea is the box, and the drawer hardware, and the fact that the drawer is Sold To You As a Kit, Ready To Assemble, at a price that reflects all the savings inherent in their assembling the kit in advance and packaging it.

To redundate, I'll say that the drawers are sold as unadorned trays and sliders, onto which one screws clips onto ANY drawer front, and that one then attacher the clips to the drawer tray. This makes you a drawer. Or, in better English, this makes a drawer (for you) and it makes you into a drawer manufacturer, painlessly and unconsciously. Congratulations you now deserve congratulations for manufacturing original things.

In my kitchen, I put 15" high drawer fronts onto the Ikea deep drawers. No one had ever done this before.

--

Furthermore, know this: Blum.com has a line of expensive drawers. These are the drawers that Ikea sells. Hint. Hint hint. If you wish to study the two companies' product offerings, you will discover that Ikea has made a long term deal for Blum to let them have a complete line of Blum products, without calling it a Blum product. For the most part, the two companies' products are interchangeable. Over the years and decades it seems that Ikea has gotten the right to make a few modifications. Not a big deal. But, if you ever come face to face with a specialist in Blum products, he would be able to run circles around you if you maintain that Ikea drawers are compatible with Blum. But this is just so that he may maintain that he is a valuable cog in the big wheel of the economy. You could bypass your local kitchen maker man (and not suffer not a whit.) Or, you could have a local kitchen person make anything by using Ikea stuff as a starting point.

The clips used to attach drawer fronts are the same, whether it's an Ikea drawer or a Blum drawer. (Of the Blum product line that corresponds to Ikea's.)

You have the option to go the expensive route at any time.

For my upper cabinets, I bought massively expensive "Blum Aventos HF" upswing hinge mechanisms, and I snap-clipped Ikea 15" by 30" opaque glass cabinet door fronts onto the Blum hinges, no questions asked. Worked like a charm. All designed to be 100% compatible.

Since Ikea and Blum are privately owned companies, it would not surprise me if one day I were to read in some report somewhere that they are owned by one and the same private holding entity.

Executive Summary:
For base cabinet drawers, Ikea sells you a prefabricated kit in a single bag, as a single purchase. Other kitchen people sell you Blum parts and then charge you for cutting a wood panel, to make a drawer bottom and a drawer back panel, so you pay a lot for Blum parts, the wood panel cutting work, and the assembly work. I did a bit of both in my kitchen. There is nothing wrong with using Blum parts for the small fraction of your kitchen that needs a different size from the Ikea options.

Hth

We have had ours for over two years and so far, so good! ;)

Love Love LOVE the drawers!

(We did custom doors with the IKEA system and very happy)

I used 2 ikea 12" deep upper wall cabinets to make a banquette bench seat (inspired by an ikea display). We used it daily for about 7 years and never had a problem. In fact, I plan to use it in my garage after our kitchen renovation.

OT-I really like what some ikea fans have done to the ikea wood countertops.

I used Ikea (Adel birch doors) in a remodel about 5 years ago. I moved out and converted the house to a rental last summer. The cabinets are sturdy and well-built, were easy for me to diy, and so far, are still in perfect, good as new condition. I have had no quality issues with them at all. I doubt that I will use them in my current remodel; not because of any problems or concerns with quality, but simply because sizes and styles are a bit limited (I want a 42" sink cab which they don't have; I've fallen in love with the idea of walnut if I decide I can afford it, etc). IMO, those two things are the only downsides to their line, quality is not a problem. And the price of course is great.

I'm planning to use Ikea cabinets as much as I can in my planned kitchen remodel. The window/sink wall will be close to perfect: 175 inches of cabinets in a 175-inch space. What's not working for me is the island; I want to do 18" deep drawers, and Ikea only sells them in 12" or 24" sizes. These will have to be custom.

I'm not crazy about the wood door styles and so am going to have custom doors made in walnut for the lowers.

I'm guessing I'll be able to save $15,000-$20,000 on the kitchen cabinets. I'll know more when my bids come in over the next couple of weeks.

By the way, Ikea sells granite and quartz counters. With the 20% off sale, the installed prices are quite reasonable.

Our Ikea kitchen has been installed for about two years now. So far, it has held up magnificently. The drawers work as well as they did on day one and show no signs of fatigue. The finish on the drawers/door fronts has held up well (Nexus yellow-brown). The only problem spot we have had was as a result of a leaking skylight. Our island has Ikea end panels. I put a glue-on/iron-on facing on the side that abuts the floor, but was unable to get a perfect enough seal to keep water from wicking into it (from the skylight-formed puddle). So we have some discoloration on one corner of the panel where it sits on the floor.

However, I'll say that I KNEW this could be a problem when I made the decision to go ahead with it. Frankly, it could be a problem with any wood material used in that application. But additional quartz for the gable end was not in the budget, so I went with the panel.

I'm using IKEA cabinets in my garage for tools, and in my laundry room for all those smelling cleaning products.

We've had our IKEA Ramsjo cabinets for several months now, and we love them. We also bought our Caesarstone countertop through them, as well as our knobs and pulls, all during a 20% off sale.
There are many kitchens much more impressive than ours, but for us, this was a huge step up from what we had.
As an exmaple, our original kitchen had the dishwasher shoehorned in next to the sink, and the counter didn't extend all the way over it. So the previous owner just nailed a 2" block of wood to the end of the counter, ran a piece of paneling down the side, painted it all and called it a day. (Ever see the website: There, I Fixed It--it should have been featured there.) Anyway, we lived with it like that for 14 years, with the original 1961 Formica, black hole corner cabinet, etc. We saved and finally took the plunge, and it is all we could have hoped for, and I would recommend IKEA cabinets and their great storage items. (Love the pot lid rack!)

We have ours for approx a year and just love them. We went with Applad in white and those were exactly the look we were after. They have held up wonderfully for a fraction of the price. I love all the soft close drawers and doors and how easy they are to clean inside and out.
Our initial cab bid was $35k for custom cabs, not installed (same white front slab style).
Then we tried HD, Lowes and other discount stores and the same layout was $17k at each, uninstalled.
Then, thanks to the great people at GW, we decided to look at Ikea. Our entire cab order, with assembly/installation was just over $8,500, split evenly between cab purchase and assembly and installation by their recommended people.
To give you an idea,
we have 7 base cabs, 6 drawer banks & the sink cab, with only 1 "small" one of 18", the rest are 30-36".
we used 6 wall cabs for the back part of our island, 36" each
we have the deep wall cabs over our fridge and freezer, 30" each
we have a tall double oven cab, a tall cleaning close cab and a tall pullout pantry
we have end panels and the entire back of our peninsula and 1 tall cab in cover panels.
So, you can see we have a lot of cabs in our kitchen and our cost was well below $10k including the installation and assembly. No other company can touch that.
At the time we bought our kitchen, they had a deal on counters for 40% off, so we got top of the line Corian for the cost of laminate anywhere else.
I have to say, we had an issue with the delivery company when they only delivered half our order. Ikea was generous in making it right and a manager even drove a few items a half hour from the store to get us the last things we needed.

I should clarify... of the 7 base cabs, 6 of them are drawer banks.

Jerseygirl have you decided on Ikea? I know it's a bit late but chiming in with my two cents. We've had our Ikea cabinets for a year now and LOVE LOVE LOVE them. We get so many compliments and most are shocked they are Ikea because they seem custom. We did quite a few mod's and Ikea was great to work with and even took back (for a full refund) a few cabinets that we had put together but changed our mind about the size after.

Here are a few pics:
The custom island we built with base cabinets:

We still need to add crown molding, backsplash and a few other things:

slush - beautiful job! Which cab fronts are those?

For those of you who have done IKEA cabs with IKEA fronts, are you up for posting pictures?

Perhaps start a new thread, or does such a thread exist and I just can't find it?

Thanks all for sharing your experience!
BT

Thanks BalTra! They are the Adel White (which is actually off-white)

On of my fav things about the ikea cabinets was all the inexpensive organizational goodies. Hope it's okay to post a few more pictures...don't want to take over the thread!

My baking drawer:

ALL my pots and pans fit in them including the huge stock pot:

And this was one of the mods my hubby did. He purchased the spice pull-out online, and we just used one of the "oven door fronts" from Ikea. Didn't even have to cut anything.

Slush1422 - Is that a rev-a-shelf or hafele spice pull out? If not, what is it, what is the width, and where did you purchase it? Did you mean you used an oven drawer front for it? Its very clever. And, great pictures. Thanks for the info.

Love your kitchen slush! What is on your island? Is that the Ramsjo black-brown? I am considering Adel off white for my perimeter and the Ramsjo for my island.

We put Ikea cabs and laminate counters in our last house around 2004-2005 and stay there til 2011 so about 6 years. Never an issue with the cabinets, DIYed them with FIL, did some modifying with his help.

The laminate countertops were not the best, the started to delaminate around the sink and dishwasher and the edge strips got lots of chips in them.

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avidchef - yes it's a Wall Filler from Rev-A-Shelf. We ended up finding it at the link below.

And saved a ton! We bought the oven drawer front to match the Adel White. The oven drawer front is a TINY bit shorter than the rest of the cabinets but you can't really tell. Another option would be to use one of the trim pieces (but you would have at least one end that wasn't "finished").

Here is a link that might be useful: Rev-A-Shelf 6

slush1422 - Just wanted to compliment your kitchen! It looks Lovely!! (We're using Adel White too, and if it turns out looking anywhere near as nice as yours, I will be thrilled!)

thirdkitchenremodel - yes it is Ramsjo black-brown. We used 6 cabinets to build the island and I LOVE having all the extra storage!

I was bummed the bases didn't come in matching black/brown but now that's its been almost a year it doesn't bother me at all anymore and you can't tell they are closed.

Here is our second trash/recycle pullout on the island:

Your kitchen is GORGEOUS btw! I'm linking the post for when we built the island and added the supports for our huge, heavy quartzite.

Thanks bellajourney! Can't wait to see yours. It was crazy with all the boxes in our living room but so worth the money we saved.

Here is a link that might be useful: Island and Counter Balance install (no corbels)

We're in the process of installing an Ikea kitchen (Ramsjo white doors) and so far are happy with the quality. To be honest, the hardware (full extension drawers, soft close drawers/doors) feels nicer than what's in my parents' kitchen (they're in a high-end home built in the 90s).

If there's a weakness, it's that the cabinet backs do feel as though they're on the flimsy side (the back is just a thin sheet of...not sure, melamine over cardboard?), and I've seen reports from a number of people who reinforce the backs, which apparently adds substantial rigidity. I will say that we haven't felt a need to do that for our installation, and everything seems to be working/holding together just fine so far.

If you have tricky dimensions that make it hard to get cabinet runs spanning full walls, it might be worth looking into Barker Cabinets. They're local to me (Portland, OR), and they do custom RTA cabinets with dimensions that can be specced to the quarter-inch. We didn't use them for our kitchen, as we found out about them after we had already purchased Ikea cabinets, but their pricing is competitive with Ikea, so definitely worth checking out if you have awkward dimensions.

Here is a link that might be useful: Barker RTA Cabinets

The only function of the back, according to the ikeafans folks, is to help to keep the cabinet fairly square till it's installed. Reinforcing it wouldn't accomplish anything useful.

We had an IKEA kitchen in our last home, which was a turn of the century Victorian in San Francisco. The style was too modern for the architecture of the home, but the cabinets held up really well and generally I was pleased with IKEA kitchens.

slush thanks for your pictures and the details you posted. I have a question about your spice pullout. I get that you used a stock door and a purchased pullout unit, but how did you create the cabinet itself? Did you just use the sides of the cabinets next to it as the base?

I installed my Ikea kitchen over 6 years ago and have absolutely no regrets. I'm just about to start working on a new project (total fixer upper again) hence my return to the forum. You can see pictures of the kitchen and also the Ikea master bathroom cabs in the virtual tour below.

We just sold our house for close to $2million and I think most would agree that the kitchen isn't the poor relative in the picture as some people predicted it would be.

BTW These are nexus black/brown doors.

I plan to do another Ikea Kitchen but may do custom doors this time. If you're up for a bit of creativity you can make the cabinets work for most floor plans despite the limited sizes. I customized for the microwave, the oven cabinet and a bunch of other areas and I spent 5-6K total for kitchen, laundry and master bathroom cabinetry (master has built-ins that you can't see in addition to the ones you can). Installation is straight-forward although the tall cabinets can be very heavy. We changed out edge banding on ours for stained teak but I don't think I'd even bother doing that again.

Here is a link that might be useful: IKEA cabs Virtual Tour

annkathryn - yes we just made sure to leave enough space for the rev-a-shelf to fit in between two cabinets.

Don't buy ikea kitchens...I've been waiting months for 5 pieces to finish the kitchen...they keep apologizing but never do nothing for you and expect me to run back and forth to fix there mistakes...sent the wrong pieces as well and I have to bring everything back after paying for them to deliver and it's complete bs.

They all have the same answer obviously scripted about how sorry they are and it's the manufacturer that's the problem yet they are still selling the kitchens. Just beware if you pay all this money and to not have a finished kitchen. Product is good but beware.

Did you buy Akurum or Sektion? Personally, I would never have purchased Akurum so close to the end of that cabinet line as no new items are going to be produced and I would have been worried about your very scenario happening. If you bought Sektion, I think they under-estimated the demand. One of the reasons their pricing is so low is because the stores are self-serve. If you wanted a more thorough and complete level-of-service you should have purchased elsewhere. I do agree with you that you should not have to pay for shipping costs if the wrong items were sent. Did you talk to someone about a refund for that? I dunno what their policy is for that situation.

We had furniture delivered and put together by IKEA - any pieces that were wrong - there were a couple - they went back and replaced and came back to finish. We didn't have to do anything.

I have Ikea white cabinets and they are awful. They have been in the house for 7 years. They are so matte that they stain and if you scrub too hard the paint comes off. The paint chips off easily anyway. Dirt gets stuck in crevices and under the doors. You have to remove the doors to clean some places. Poor quality! They now need to either be replaced or painted.

@giamarietate - Ikea sells a range of cabinet fronts with different styles and finishes and price ranges. Many people here have posted that their Ikea cabinets still look like new after 10 years. You may very well have one of the cheapest and, therefore probably one of the worst finishes. But that's doesn't mean all Ikea ones are bad or poor quality.

We are on our second IKEA kitchen. The first was birch and shiny red and looked fantastic. When we retired to Florida we were so lucky to be only a few minutes from an IKEA. This time we did white--love it. The medium shiny grade (I forgot the name already) but it looks marvelous and the quality is great. Since we now have no basement, we did an entire storage wall in the kitchen but used a birch cabinet for contrast. It is fabulous--my favorite thing we did in the remodeling. Many pullouts and drawers. There was a bit of space left on either end so we put in the small open shelves, stacking them for cookbooks. Also, we used the same white kitchen cabinets when we redid the master bath. Love IKEA cabinets.

They look great but I never got the full kitchen...been waiting over 10 weeks so far. There customer service is what's lacking but I can tell by the same answer from every representative, a scripted reply. I will be on 2016's new kitchen line soon . I just want a form of retribution or just an actual finished kitchen lol.