Have You Done an IKEA Kitchen?

I can tell you that a lof of my colleague interior designers use them for their personal projects, but not on their professional ones. Why? because they are stylish and affordable. When the budget allows, designers use custom and semi custom cabinets always! When the budget does not allow (and designer don't make a lof of money), they are supper styling! However they are limited because they are prefab sizes. not all spaces are ideal for working with modular and prefab sizes. Sometimes people lose a lot of storage because perfab sizes are a bad match for their particular space.

My sister and her husband did an IKEA kitchen in their loft home about 4 years ago. They love the cabinetry, but the appliances haven't been that great. They had IKEA install.

My cousin and his wife just did one last fall. They love it, but did the install themselves, with the help of their 2 handy sons. It was a very labor intensive operation, but with 4 of them working on it wasn't terrible.

Yes. I actually bought used IKEA on craigslist. I remodeled a guest house and had to rid all the old stuff out and did not want to spend a fortune. The guys working said it was more work than normal (it was used and meant for another kitchen) but even thing looks wonderful. The people selling it were not totally honest. I noticed the year 2001, so not sure if it is that old. They claimed to have spent $10K (it looks likely with all the upgrades). I spend around $1000 and i had a lot of extra pieces so i put an office for myself. They also had the bathroom vanities with granite countertops. My renter loves it. The counters are some fact wood from IKEA. It is cute.

Yes! We flip houses every now and then, and use IKEA cabinetry in all of them. If you're even moderately handy, it's the way to go. They have a lot more options than most other cabinet places, and the quality is as good as you'd find anywhere else. For the lower cabinets, they have big drawers, which I love - makes the most of your storage space.

What I would recommend is that you go to IKEA when it's relatively quiet (during a weekday, if you can) and really spend some time in their model kitchens to see what you like. Take accurate measurements of your kitchen space before you go (including ceiling height), marking down where the plumbing is currently (assuming you don't want to move it). Have one of their kitchen designers help you. There are some little quirks to making sure you get everything you need (end panels and the like).

We redid our kitchen a last year.. It is smal 8 X10 no lie. We went to home depot to draw up a plan. We found one place to get our cabinets, and a different place to get our counter tops (we did granite). You can shop around and see what you like .

We did the work ourselves-mostly. My hubbys brother helped him put the cabinets in. And we hired a retired electrician for the electrical, we had to re do it because of the "fixing".

We gutted the orginal kitchen and started from scratch. I am not sure if you are simply replacing in the existing format or if you are gutting it and starting from scratch like us. We paid about 9K all together. The only thing we did not redo is the floor.. We are still trying to figure that out. :).

Make sure you like it! Thing about how long you want to keep it.. is this a house you plan on moving in 5-10 years? or is this going to be your home for 30 years..

Good lcuk

We are in the process of putting one in now. We're having IKEA do everything; the plan, the tear out, and the install. It's a great time because they are having their annual kitchen sale, 20% off is saving us over $2k. Keep in mind that the countertop price is installed, so that's a savings. The company they used to do the plan was wonderful, it was very easy. We are not buying IKEA appliances, I was concerned about reliability since I couldn't find many reviews. I bought our new slide in range on Appliance Connection and got a great price. We go buy our cabinets next week, I'm so excited!!

I haven't done an IKEA kitchen, but I've now lived with two. I think they perform very nicely, and can be made to hold a lot of stuff.

Good luck to you and yours,
F. B.

My sister has an Ikea Kitchen and bathroom.. Both have held up very well. The house was built in the '50's also. She has had the kitchen now for almost 10 years..

My friend's with Ikea kitchen are sort of Bleh about them. They're OK, not great.

I am thinking the cabinetry in a 1950's home is probably pretty solid? What about refinishing or painting? And just redoing the counter tops? Have you thought of keeping it retro?

I have GF who's home is turn of century, so about 100 yrs old and she has this very old, still working oven, stove huge box. It's so cool to see this piece of machinery still working and working well. She entertains a lot too.