The list of loves really is much longer than hates. The pantry cabs are my very favorite!

Here is a shot with the corner cab - you can see how if it had been any different size it wouldn't have worked with the sink and the window.

We did not get the new house and will likely stay here for another year or so but we did install an IKEA kitchen. We are both very happy with this kitchen, so much so that the next one we do will be IKEA as well. DH is very impressed with the quality and amazed at the price. We love the Blum full extension, soft close drawer guides – something we would not have chosen for our custom cabinets due to the cost. We also love the wonderful help from IKEAFans.com. With their help, we have made modifications to our cabinets to get exactly what we want – such as my pullout drawers below my sink for trash and recycling. IKEA also has a free kitchen design program that we used to design our kitchen. If you are considering IKEA – you should check it out.
If you are looking for a good quality at a great price, IKEA is hard to beat. :-)

Hate would be too strong a word, but I sure wish they had a black door style that fit my country kitchen. Since I want a black island, I'm going to paint tidaholm doors/drawers to build my island (wrapping the sides in bead board). Not Ikea's fault, I knew going in that they didn't have what I wanted and I'd have to either spend more money getting someone else to do it for me or spend my time to get it.

I second or third the ikeafans website suggestion. There are some really helpful and creative people there. They will help with layout, purchase and assembly. And there are some great modications there too.

Catherine

Catherine

The limits on sizes and door fronts for cabinets do create their own set of challenges! However, there are a lot of creative soultions. I am also a huge fan of the IKEAfans.com website, and have found endless assistance with modifications and such over there. With regard to door fronts, many are suitable for multiple looks, if you pay attention to details regarding hardware, backsplash, etc. In addition, I have heard of folks purchasing door fronts from custom places, or Scherr's.

(An aside to justnotmartha: Adel white is thermofoil, and cannot be painted, at least I don't think so. You might have more luck if you painted Adel birch, which is the same shape, but a wood finish instead of thermofoil. Hope that helps!)

Haras, good luck to you! Are you planning a remodel, or just considering one?

Take care,
Emmie

About how much did the cost of installation increase the cost of your kitchen? (Double?)

Emmie - we have adel birch now and they have a pretty slick thermofoil finish - I don't think they would take to paint either. We would likely do the tidaholm as I believe they are true wood. What countertop are you doing on your adel white?

I know a lot of folks install and assemble on their own, and have done a great job. I also know a few people who have used installers, either a GC or a certified installer. I would say the cost of assembly and installation varies due to the situation and person doing the work. Installers may charge a fee per cabinet, or for an overall project.

If you stop by on the fansite, be sure to say hi!

Also, be aware that if you pay for the items in kitchens, they will start pulling your order- we waited over 2 hours to get ours when we probably killed that much time between kitchens and checkout the first time.

I'd like to do my own drawer fronts and doors, using some non-standard choices, like 2 different wood tones, and pierced copper insets.

But making all the boxes sounds a lot like drudgery, plus since I hope to be in by Christmas, probably not really realistic.

So if I bought from Ikea, I could go with a cheap door and replace them as time allows...

I'm a good furniture builder, just not a fast one. Wouldn't have any trouble making fillers if I ended up an inch or two short, or dressing them up a bit, or installing them.

There's no Ikea in Montana, I'd have to go to Seattle or Draper, Utah. I'd probably do that so as to see them in person before committing. Would either buy them there and Uhaul them home, or online and have them shipped, depending on costs and availability.

So my questions would be:
Basicly, I'm looking for very sturdy build and funcionality, with aesthetics I can upgrade later: Does Ikea sound like a good fit?
How good are the Blum slides? Which of the blum lines are they, or are they specific to Ikea? Do the doors have them too, or would I need to add them later?

Also, IKEA will ship to you.

(Q1.) Ikea cabs - definitely sturdy build and very functional *IF* you build them that way. You can also do a lousy job assembling the cabinet if you don't do a good job and the cabinet will be correspondingly lousy. But measure, make sure you're square when you're building them, use glue in the joints, use and tighten the fasteners as required, and you'll have a *really* solid cabinet.

(Q2.) How good are the blum slides? As good as they get. IKEA uses the Tandem slides and overall, the tandembox drawer-and-glide set. This is stamped right on the glides. While these are *the* tandems, I believe there is something about where the holes are stamped that are peculiar to ikea, although I'm not sure about that. I've also heard that because the US gets (got?) their cabinets from Europe, that the tandem-box slides have the standard Europe mounting holes whereas the tandems sold here have holes standarized for US conventions. But can't confirm. But otherwise, definitely tandemboxes and hence tandem slides.

Q3. Doors have blum hinges too but not sure about which ones any more - I think they are the mid-line.

Wobble? I find that very hard to believe.

My husband put our IKEA cabinets together and does not stop commenting on how solid they are. He means it - he didn't want to go with IKEA. We moved in to this house two years ago and planned a huge addition/renovation of our small, ugly, not very functional kitchen. After two years of planning I was burnt out. One night I spent a couple of hours using the IKEA planner, went and ordered the cabinets the next day. So we were going to do something high end, and now we're both really happy with the IKEA instead. Ours don't wobble, nor are they flimsy.

crl - I also am planning STAT White w/ a black island. Ikea will have Brown/black cabinets in our style by the end of the year. They are VERY dark brown so they look black. I don't start tear out until the end of January so they said to order the brown/black island cabinets as they are sure they will be available for when I will need them mid Feb.

cocontom - I also found it difficult dealing with the local IKEA only because I am a "Here is what I want. Lay it out and let me know what cost I'm looking at" kind of person. Since Ikea is designed for DIY (SO NOT ME!-Largely due to lack of time)this was a challenge. HOWEVER - they did set me up with a recommended certified IKEA "designer" (for lack of a better word). The designer (Inside Job Services - out of Atlanta) did the entire layout, list of items I would need to purchase, cost, suggestions etc. They charged a flat fee of $75 and know the Ikea products WAY more than I could ever hope too! They will come to your home for measurements if needed (although I live too far away I sent my design to them with measurements from the KD)as well as meet you at the store to walk through everything if needed. SO worth the $75 expense! We are still working together on a few revisions. They are VERY patient, understanding, quick and thorough.

So, that's my $.02 and I personally can't wait for my new Ikea kitchen!!

This can be EASILY solved with some edge tape - it's just something to keep in mind. You might want to make sure you can find easily matching edge tape in your wood of choice.

My Abstrakt white cabinets are currently in my basement waiting to be put together. I can't wait!! Ikea cabinets are an awesome deal!

Most of us "IKEANs" have granite counters. Yes, you can use top cabs as bottom cabs - I think Fairegold did that - Fairegold?

You can mix and match as much you wish!

luvnola, thanks for the tip on the dark door/drawer fronts. Are you talking about Nexus black-brown? If I recall correctly, they are a slab front door, so not quite the look I have in mind. Though they are really gorgeous. Also, Ikea has been promising they would be available again for months and months now. I think there are some people at Ikeafans who have been without drawer and door fronts for quite some time so I'd be a little afraid of them not really being available when promised.

We've started on our island project. I sanded, primed and painted Tidaholm drawer and door fronts. I also painted bun feet, beadboard and trim pieces. I used Benjamin Moore's new Aura paint, which I love. DH assembled cabinet boxes and installed bun feet and a temporary butcherblock top (we're getting a copper top done eventually). We've got the drawers in, but still need to put the door up and get the beadboard on. I will attempt posting a picture once we're done (still might take a while--DH is working a lot of hours). I'm pleased with the results so far.

I do not think our Ikea cabinets wobble nor do they seem flimsy. In fact, they seem really sturdy and well-built to me. DH agrees and he's a bit of snob when it comes to such things.

Catherine

Catherine

If the cabinet itself sways - it just wasn't assembled correctly, inadequate tightening or inadequate use of fasteners. While the cabinet components are good, the nature of the assembly also governs how good a product you get - just the nature of the self-assembly world.

Yes right now you can get the black/brown doors in Nexus, but my understanding is that they will soon have the black/brown in Stat as well as Adel. And, THANKS so much for the heads up on the delay. I may wait until the end of the year before ordering to confirm the black/brown doors.

Your island sound GORGEOUS!! Can't wait to see photos!!

bayla reno, for design help, I really really recommend www.ikeafans.com Just take a stab at a design on the Ikea planner (download from Ikea--only for PCs though) and post it. The wonderful people at Ikeafans will help you for free. My kitchen is designed by people over there and I think it's great.

Catherine
Catherine

Once we got the legs fixed and leveled and the island in position, we realized that anchoring the island to the floor cleat wasn't really necessary. The three connected cabinets are HEAVY, and they rested in position just fine. I'm happy that we anchored it though, as I have a 1.75" butcher block countertop with a 13" overhang that will seat my three young kids. There will certainly be times when all three of the monkeys will be hanging from the overhang at the same time, and the three of them might just be heavy enough to topple it.

We had another wacky problem with the install of the base cabinets that you might want to be aware of. It was caused by my not-so-great carpenter's inattention. The perimeter countertops are made of stainless steel wrapped around a plywood core. He installed the core first, then he spewed caulk on top of the core and slid the stainless over the core. Great in theory, but it didn't come out as nicely as it should have.

The problem was caused, specifically, by the fact that he sunk the screws from the top of, and through, the core down into the cabinet top frames (rather than up through the cabinet top frame from the interior of the cabinet). First of all, this was dumb because now the stainless is covering all the screw heads and we cannot remove the counters without destroying the cabinets. But the install defect was that he did not check to see that the screws pulled the cabinet frames all the way up to the underside of the core before he glued the stainless to the top of the core. Sure enough, I noticed after he "completed" the install that the screws in the front and center of the sink and cooktop cabinets (with the false top drawer fronts) actually pushed the cabinet top frame down, which caused the cabinet top to bow and the false drawer fronts to droop in the center.

He fixed the one that bowed the worst by sawing out the exposed segment of the screw. He actually did nothing about the other, other than to tell me that I could fix it myself by adjusting the false drawer faces. Needless to say, that carpenter has never been back.

We have some other issues with the install, especially our schmucky ex-plumbers gas cooktop install. The a**hole actually brought the gas line up from the basement into the very front of the 18" base cabinet adjacent to the cooktop cabinet, snaked a flexible line to the upper back of same and then went through the upper rear of that cabinet to attach the line to the cooktop. He did this, of course, after I told him that he should snake the line back through the dead space behind the toekick. (He had to come up in that spot because the rear of these base cabinets rested over a cantilever bump-out beyond the house's foundation.)

Despite these glitches and a few others, we are absolutely thrilled with our Ikea cabinets (Lidingo)from a use perspective. We love having the 4 deep 36" drawers in our island right across from our dishwasher. We keep all the dishes there. In fact, we do not have a single plate or bowl in a wall cabinet and never will again (so we don't need a 15" deep wall cabinet).

With regard to hiring an Ikea-certified installer to design your kitchen, it's a great way to start, but I urge you to become familiar with the entire Akrum product line and tweak the design yourself. We made several key changes from the initial design.

Oh yeah, be sure to post your design on ikeafans.com. I did, and I'm glad of it. Based on the great free advice I received there, I wisely moved my dishwasher away from the corner cabinet to the far side of the sink, where, when the dishwasher door is open, it does not block access from the sink to the other leg of our "L."

One more thing that we love about our island: We put the 15" base cabinet on the end closest to the refrigerator and the sit-down area of the kitchen and made it a pull-out garbage drawer. We use it all the time, both to throw out garbage in your hand at that end of the kitchen and to scrape crumbs and scraps off of the island-top right into the garbage (did not want a cut-out for scrap disposal). It accommodates both a 13 gal. container for garbage and a 3 gal. container for recycles. EXCELLENT!

Could someone try it, see if its a fluke on my system? I emailed the company, but they referred me to my 'local' Ikea, only 2 states away...

HTH,
Catherine

I did have to place the order in person at the store. Talking through the order with my Ikean really helped. Also www.ikeafans.com was in valuable.

Catherine

My contractor has previously installed Ikea cabinets and highly recommends them. He did an install with a lot of customized cabinets, upper cabs used as base cabs, pullouts in the plinth, all kinds of stuff. Even used them to build a matching media center across from the kitchen.

I will post pictures of the finished project, hopefully in a couple of weeks.

Will appreciate some advice from those beautiful IKEA kitchen owners?
Also, i would like to install a builtin microwave 30inch by 17 5/8" hi in the hi cabinet pantry. Im not sure this can be customed by IKEA cabinet Has anyone installed that on IKEA before?
million thnx,

I used a 30inch wide single oven cabinet (this is a high cabinet--kind of like a pantry cabinet) for an advantium, which is about the same size as most built-in microwaves. It works great. I have four drawers underneath (two deep, two shallow) and a spacious cabinet above. If you visit the ikeafans website, you can find various possible configurations for a variety of cabinets. Even though Ikea cabinets are not custom, they are very customizable.

Catherine

Cheers
pickles

Emailing the company wasn't a success, and I really don't want to drive to Utah [from Montana] just to gather this sort of basic info.

Here's my question du jour: for those of you with the Fagerland doors, how are they holding up? These are the pine ones, right?

I would suggest at least one trip to IKEA to see and feel the cabinets you're planning for your kitchen remodel. At that point, you could order them in the store and have it shipped to you, or you can order through IKEA direct.

And any cabs that aren't modded have a *25*-year warranty, btw. Try to find that anywhere else. You won't. They're not just any type of particleboard, they're built to the most stringent specs (environmental as well as quality) of any particleboard in the world. They're weighted to take more per shelf than you could probably ever load them down with.

(just had a wild thought: I wonder if the solid-wood shelves in PAX could be adapted for AKURUM??! -- We're doing our master in PAX (also a well-built line) and we have some very nice solid wood pieces that sit on the same pegs the AKURUM shelves do--it would be more expensive to buy them and cut them to fit but maybe even better wrt weight--would have to check the specs, though--but the look would be *fabulous*. DUH--I can be the first guinea pig for this--we are already planning to cut down one KOMPLEMENT shelf (the PAX fittings line) for a 24" deep kitchen pantry that's going in our closet lineup--I'll report back if anyone's interested on how that goes--although we're not planning to put 75 pounds of china on that shelf, rather clothes, so the weight stress wouldn't be as great as in the kitchen...but still, I'll check specs and find out if anyone wants)

Per below, the max load on a 19x23" shelf ($15) is 59.5 lbs. The max load on a *39* x 23 shelf ($25) is 121 lbs! They're pretty tough, in other words. And the upgrade in looks would be really worth it...hmmm...now I'm thinking about re-fitting the kitchen shelves...

At this point, the only thing I wish I had done differently was to NOT spend $100 at HD for the "measuring fee" when I was considering Kraftmaid.

If Ikea does not make the glass doors in a size that works, you could look at doors from another source. Many people have done that, but I never investigated it so I'm not of any help with that route.

Maybe there's a third option too, but I'm not thinking of it at the moment. I'd go ask on Ikeafans.

On ordering, I ordered long-distance by e-mailing the Ikea Woodbridge store. I was living on the West Coast at the time, but the kitchen remodel was happening in our new house in NoVa. Delivery from the store was less than delivery through Ikea direct. If you are not close enough to a store for that to be an option or you prefer dealing with Ikea direct, you can call Ikea direct and talk with the kitchen people. I know you can fax an order in to them, I do not know about e-mailing. Lots and lots of help is available on ikeafans to find out what sizes/finishes are available and get the item numbers and put together a draft order.

Catherine

Mike_67 -- we have a microwave and wall oven together in the tall cabinet, just waiting for the micro trim kit to come.

My husband has assembled and installed everything, we are really pleased with how it is going. We need some filler pieces and are waiting for some doors/cover panels (waiting for backordered items has really been the only drawback to IKEA). I love the pull-out pantry (between fridge and oven). And I love being able to have a kitchen we like this much for this cost.

BTW...I was watching Tyler Florence on the Food Network yesterday and I thought his kitchen looked awesome. Did a search and found out his cabs are IKEA. Here's the link.

We will put filler pieces on either side of the wine/cubby thing that is on top of the fridge, to close in those gaps.

Having the birch effect interior choice was one of things that really made me seriously consider IKEA.

The hutch is just base cabs with stacked wall units on top - they are 15" glass doors stacked on the outer unit with 12" cabs beside them and then the plate rack. The plate rack is IKEA - painted the same as the island.

Funny - when I was designing the kitchen - I knew every cab width and dimension - now I had to go and measure them!.

Hope I am not too late in answering your questions. if you have any more questions - let me know.

Oh yes - my neighbour built the hood and I painted it - it is just mdf. I also painted the crown molding and the baseboards because I had my base cabs up a bit as we are all tall here. I will say that the butcher block area between the stove and fridge is lowered for cutting - and I love that space.

The hangup might be getting the builder to match the Ikea doors-- probably not too big a deal if you go with white, but for the wood doors matching the materials and finishes could be quite a job.

It's possible that they'd have doors that could be made to work, or perhaps the builder could cut down the doors to fit.

Have you registered with Ikeafans yet? It's a fairly large community of people who can offer a lot of first hand info on making Ikea cabs work for you. I *think* Ikea owns it, and they ask for an uncomfortable [for me] amount of personal info, but they do know of what they speak.

Also, I was trying to figure this one out -- I want to do 36" deep drawers, but the largest size I could see on the ikea website was 24" for the blum deep drawers.

I'm afraid this could be really complicated to try to make the ikea boxes work, and I'm not sure I'm up to the challenge!

You can also order with either blum metabox, which I have now and love, or tandembox, which is even better. So the only potential weak link I see to the system would be how the panels attatch to each other. If they seemed flimsey at that point, I'd add some reinforcement, maybe add a few screws...

The cabinets, hardware and doors all have a 10 year warranty.

Cabinet boxes - Birch effect
Doors/drawers - Kalsebo
Floor - Tundra maple laminate

I purchased cabinet boxes, doors and drawers for just under 3K and put them together myself. Purchased and installed Ikea laminate flooring for under 500. Ordered Livingstone countertop installed with integrated double sink, under 3K, (coming end of month). www.livingstonesurfaces.com

Ikeafans on ikeafans.com provided exceptional help along the way. Labor so far consisted of 4 sons (demo), just had to feed them, and handyman for drywall patching and help to install cabinet boxes. Still going, but progress pics below...

Old Kitchen

Demo

Painting and underlayment for flooring

Flooring done by me

First cabinet hung

Removed old outside exhaust (I don't cook much)

Doors and drawers mostly done - leveling still to do

Have to fill my 8 inch gap with a modification

Need counter depth fridge