Ikea cabinets

We made the choice to purchase our cabinets from Ikea. We went at the end of January to investigate the cabinets and I found some that I liked. I really love that they seem high end, with the soft close feature on the cabinet doors and drawers. At the time we were told that the doors that I liked were in stock and that we could just come and pick them up when we were ready. We were also told that cover panels and the deco strip for the tops of the cabinets were optional. This proved to be false information as you shall see.

I enjoyed using Ikea's tool to design your kitchen on your computer. It calculates the price of each cabinet that you choose and you can select the options that you like. Try it. You'll like it.

I went on a Monday night to purchase our cabinets. They tell you to allow 3 hours to get everything ordered and pulled. As the person I was working with helped me with my order it quickly became evident that if your cabinets are going all the way to the ceiling then you do need the molding for above the cabinets so that there isn't a big gap between the top of your cabinet and the ceiling. Also, you do need the cover panels so that you don't have a gap between your cabinet and the wall. This only added a couple of hundred dollars to my total, but it was kind of irritating that we didn't know it up front. The thing that made me really mad was that they didn't have two of my base cabinets and three of my cabinet doors in stock! What??? I thought they were always in stock!!! I guess not always. The consultant handed me a book that said you should not rip out your kitchen until all of your cabinets have been ordered. Hmmm... that would have been nice to know before our kitchen was ripped out, but we were told differently. Later another sales person told me the same thing, that they normally are in stock.

Needless to say, when all was said and done I ended up having to get one of my base cabinets in a 12" size instead of 15" because we simply had to move ahead with our project. Irritating in the extreme. My base cabinet and doors finally came in a week and a half after I had placed my original order.

My dad was kind enough to bring his small truck to help me get all of the stuff home since Brian and his dad were working in the kitchen installing the floor. We loaded the back of my van and his truck. There are a lot of boxes when you're doing an Ikea kitchen.

Installation wasn't too bad. The cabinets are fairly easy to put together and the hinges went on super easily.

Probably the hardest part of the installation is hanging the metal bar that the upper cabinets hang on. You've got to position it right so that all of your cabinets hang in the right place. Once they were built it took Brian and his dad one night to hang the cabinets from the wall. It's a bit of a process.

If you're doing this work on your own you will probably need one very full day to get all of the cabinets built and installed. And you'll need some help. But they look great once they're installed!