Check out this topic from a week ago 'Ikea Kitchen ... Would You Do It Again'
I hope it helps you.

Here is a link that might be useful: Would You Do It Again

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This post was edited by Confire on Fri, Nov 30, 12 at 23:01

The last kitchen we did was supposed to be our forever house and we put in an Ikea kitchen. Absolutely loved it. Work unexpectedly required a cross country move and we sold that forever house. (And got lots of positive feedback on the kitchen in a house that was in the $750,000 price range, so not a starter home.)

We just bought again and plan to stay in this place for the long haul. I plan to put Ikea cabinets in when we remodel the kitchen.

Absolutely! When we did our first kitchen we thought we would be in that house always so it took me a year to plan it with the closest Ikea a 6 hour drive away. But it was worth it and we had a gorgeous birch and Abstrakt red large kitchen. We moved this year and the Ikea is a 10 minute drive and we designed the new kitchen in less than a month to take advantage of the August sale. This time we are doing white cabinets and also bought most of the appliances at Ikea. We are slower this time around but know it will be wonderful again. We have been very happy with the cabinets and we are able to get the very contemporary look we like at a very good price.

We are putting our Ikea kitchen into our forever home. Our home is in the mid-500's. We love the look of the cabinets, we didn't find many contemporary looks at a reasonable price when we looked around.

Our cabinets are up, the counters came in today, and we are loving it so much.

Yes, this is my forever home (or at least 20years until kids are in college) and we just put in Ikea Ramsjo brown/black (base) and Ramsjo white for hood/peninsula (and in familyroom hutch and mudroom lockers).

I love it for the value: I got great cabinets w/ great FINISHED wood doors that I could modify (we cut down the depth and height of several cabinets to make the hutch and appliance garage and mudroom lockers), leaving 30% of the budget to splurge on radiant floor heating in 3 rooms, and 2 huge slabs of gorgeous Danby marble!

We got it in July's kitchen sale w/ 20% off.
Good and bad: we bought a LOT of stuff in July (and just started installing last week), and hopefully we didn't overbuy because now we can't return them.

But for me, Ikea is in a league of its own.
I would go w/ Ikea or custom cabinets but nothing in between. I didn't find the quality of big boxes/Kraftmaid worth their cost.

Good luck,
Amanda

we are in the process of building our new home right now. We just went to Ikea and purchased the cabinets for the December 15% off sale. we bought the cabs and fronts for the laundry, mud room, and using kitchen cab design for the master bathroom. However for the kitchen, they do not have a door style we truely love and color, as well as the beautiful wood doors you find from custom cabinets or even big box stores. However we love the function of the cabs, the drawers, and interior options. So we got the boxes, drawers, inserts, etc and will go with custom cherry fronts and veneered end panels stained a super dark color. However all counters, appliances, hardware and everything else will be from elsewhere.
Hundreds of people go through Ikea stores every day. Most of those people play with the kitchens. All kitchens in the several different stores I have been in work and function flawless. I can go in any home depot, lowes, etc and a good 50% of their display cabs have sagging doors, rubbing drawers, cracked boxes, etc. This should tell you something. Too many people think a good cabinet has to be custom with plywood sides, dovetail drawers, on and on. This is not true, IMO. For us, the added costs are certainly not worth it. Our savings on the cabinets pay for the quartzite counters. Especially since I think the quality is on par or better then what big box stores sell.

I don't believe in forever homes (as you see above...people don't stay in them forever) so I can't necessarily answer to that, but in my "for a long time because we have invested a lot and will invest too much by the time it's over to sell at a reasonable price" home we just put in a very small IKEA kitchen in our gardeners cottage.

There were a few reasons to go IKEA. Lowes and Homedespot didn't have a selection worth even considering in their ready made cabinets. I had very very very few inches and feet to play with and having options was very important to me.

Secondly while this is not the "forever" kitchen for the cottage (it's an 1890's cottage and will eventually be a museaum likely...see why above LOL) we wanted a kitchen that had a comfortable feel in an 1890's cottage. White wood, tin backsplash, white appliances....soft and somewhat cottagey (if that's a word). IKEA fit the bill there as well and with additional doors I was able to get an all wood look kitchen.

The options for inside the cabinets are better than the boxes you get at the big box stores by far. Given we had literally a six foot wall and a five foot wall, we needed these cabinets to really sing in the work space. Super efficiency is normally expensive....IKEA is not.

Thirdly...what number am I on? we were able to pick up a gorgeous wood counter top for next to nothing. My contractor softened up the edges, but other than that it was perfect as is. It flows so well with the antique pine pantry!

We acheived a very vintage feel kitchen space in a tiny cottage for less than two grand installed (including the range, sink, faucet, fridge micro and hood). I could not have done that through the big box stores and I would have had to paint the cabinets as I wanted that look for the cottage.

Its an adorable little kitchen and our renter (a sweet 21 year old student) loves it. She expected basically a cheap big box cabinet or two stuck on the wall...which I would have had to do with the big box cabs....they just didn't offer enough variety. Instead I have a kitchen that isn't forever...but it's for a dang long time anyhoo!

Forever? We hope so, but who knows. DH and I purchased a home that's in a great location, is affordable for the long term, and has some aging-in-place features. We have no plans to ever move again. We remodeled the kitchen using mostly Ikea boxes, with a couple of Sherr's cabinets thrown in the mix. If we ever get tired of the cabinets we can easily swap out the door/drawer fronts, assuming Ikea is still around with their standard sizes in 20 years or so.

huango you can return almost anything to Ikea, even open boxes. I've seen assembled cabinets in their as-is area. You'll get store credit if after 90 days.

Here is a link that might be useful: Ikea Abstrakt + custom walnut

I'd love to see pics of these kitchen. Do you folks have links to your IKEA kitchens, or can you post some here?

Here's the long link to mine.

Here is a link that might be useful: Vsalz kitchen

Well, we DID it. It was a complete whip checking out of there, but we decided to go with the Ikea bases and put Scherr doors on the front. We saved so much we barely reached the minimum level for the 10% discount and didn't come close to the 15%.

I'm kind of glad to be done with the obsession over cabinet research. Now on to color (we are having the Scherr doors painted some white color) and counter obsession!