Anyone have an Ikea Kitchen?? Enlighten me please! :)

[Lua]

Now that our wedding stuff is finally over and gifts have been recieved, DH and I have decided that we want to use the $ that we were given to completely re-do our kitchen.

We absolutely love Ikea's kitchen styles and to be honest, the price is bang on.

Being that we have a galley kitchen and this obviously isn't our layout at all, this is the style we're going with cabinet-wise, but with dark countertops and a dark slate floor:


Anyway, question to you SC'rs!

Do any of you have Ikea kitchens? if so, what do you like and not like about them? Are you still glad that you went with Ikea?

Has anyone installed an Ikea kitchen? was it fairly straight forward??? (we will be DIY'ing the project with our parents who are handy)

Basically any insight you guys can provide would me amazing. We're going to keep all of our current appliances/hood fan as they're still fairly new, so it's just the actual cupboards and counters that we're looking to purchase.

thanks in advance!

[RobynCD]

We have an Ikea kitchen...but it is currently sitting in our basement un-assembled. We took advantage of the kitchen event to get 15% back in gift cards...worked out to $800ish worth of gift cards. We are just slowly accumulating everything we need to do the rest of the kitchen, have cabinets, back splash, flooring, need countertop etc. We will be installing everything in August.

[Lua]

so it sounds like we'll both be doing our kitchens at the same time then! we're hoping to get started the first weekend in august (we're going to book the first week off of work)

[Sally888]

Bubs does

[travel-mum]

We installed our Ikea kitchen about 25 years ago. We built our house as we could afford it, so we installed our kitchen a bit at a time. I still love my kitchen after all these years, because it was custom-installed by my husband to my specifications. It wasn't a big job for us (after all we built the whole house). As long as you can build one of those do-it-yourself shelving units, you can probably do the cupboards. The hardest part was the plumbing, which is hard when it comes to fitting pipes and the taps. We even installed an under-the-counter dishwasher, and corner cupboards with rotating wire shelving. I have some with glass doors, which I love because it makes the kitchen look like it has china cabinets in it, as I have my best dishes showing through the glass. I also have glass doors on cupboards between my kitchen and dining room, with glass on both sides so you can look right through them. I have my best dishes in there too, so it looks like I have a china cabinet there also. I loved the fact that we could do the kitchen on our own schedule, and we saved about 50% of what it would have cost to have them installed by professionals. In fact, we saved so much building our house that we never had a mortgage. My husband and I built the house to a point where we just had finishing work to do, and then got a Line of Credit to build the rest. And now we just use the LOC to buy our cars, etc. so we only pay LOC interest rates and not car loan rates. It has saved us all around. Sorry to go off topic, but I say that anything you can do to lower costs and pay your mortgage off faster is the smart canuck way!

[FallenPixels]

My co-worker does, she paid for it to be installed but it was still much cheaper than most kitchen places and it looks great. Her only complaint was she went with the high gloss one and she is forever cleaning it so she doesn't recommend that finish as most cleaners leave streaks etc

[itsjustmebub]

yep we do and it's great. haven't had a single problem. excellent quality

[anisa]

i am intrigued byu their kitchens, but the one thing that always makes me wonder is the quality of the 'insides'

are they sturdy??

[travel-mum]

Imagine one of those white shelves that you put together. Add a cupboard door and you know what they're like. They seem very sturdy and easy to clean.

[Lua]

thanks for the input so far everyone!!! i'm going to download their kitchen builder software tonight so i can start playing around with my design idea

[anisa]

Imagine one of those white shelves that you put together. Add a cupboard door and you know what they're like. They seem very sturdy and easy to clean.

my dad has had the same white Billy bookcases for 25 yrs!

thanks

[emmy3111]

I'm looking to install and IKEA kitchen next spring as well, so thank you for the post OP - very helpful

P.S. The kitchen planner is so fun - I've made several variations already...

[Jina]

We have an Ikea kitchen in the office. The cabinets are white with a glossy finish (easy to clean) and the countertop is white/light grey.
We've had them for about 2 years now and no problem so far. They took a while to install though.

[Jody22002]

I do and I have a galley kitchen as well. We installed it ourselves. My only complaint would be, just like another poster said, the high gloss cabinets. Mine are white and I am FOREVER wiping them down. We went with IKEA because of the price. When we bought this house 2 years ago, it was the only 4 bedroom available in this area of town. I wanted a big kitchen but I had to sacrifice so my kids could all have their own room. As soon as we lose a kid or two to adulthood, we plan on making our kitchen way bigger. IKEA fit in the budget. I am not doing white cabinets next time though.

[hollyquaiscer]

I am redoing the kitchen in the condo we bought and we are going to use an ikea kitchen. I talked to several cabinet installers and they all said basically the same thing. Ikea kitchens are one of the best built on the market, they last, the hardward if really good and there are lots of accessories you can choose. I am just waiting for a good sale (like the 15% gift card one from last year).