This is my mom’s new (95% ready) IKEA kitchen.
I built it myself. Well, with some help from my father in law.
My mom moved homes recently to live closer to her grandkids and her new home needed a whole new kitchen.
Since I was disappointed with my own expensive, but meh-quality custom kitchen built a few years ago and an IKEA store recently opened in my town, I decided to design and build mom’s kitchen myself, based on IKEA components.
Now that the build is finished, here’s a quick reflection.
Why?
Some years ago, I ordered a basic custom kitchen from a well known vendor and was a little disappointed. It wasn’t cheap, but the end result felt low quality.
Firstly, I felt that I would have ended up with a more usable kitchen, if I had spent more time and attention on designing it. The vendor did not share drawings outside the showroom due to “company policy” and at the end, we probably spent no more than 20–30mins actually designing it in the salon.
Secondly, the details of the cabinets — frames, panels, door hinges, soft close dampers felt cheap and probably were cheap — a few soft close mechanisms broke a couple of years in (conveniently after the warranty was over), a few of doors went out of alignment pretty soon, etc.
Thirdly, the mandatory vendor installation was like buying a German car — the initial price didn’t include a lot of the stuff we actually needed — so I had to shell out extra for installing a hob, connecting the tap to the existing water pipe, etc.
On top of that, for years afterwards, I was subconsciously annoyed over some minor stuff like slightly misaligned panels, shoddily screwed dishwasher brackets, wall screws that were screwed unaesthetically deep into the cabinet frames, etc.
So — this time, I thought — I’ll build it myself and buy from IKEA — they are the kings of cheap and cheerful.
How hard could it be :)?
Was it worth it?
For us it was worth it.
We saved a bunch of money, I gained some new experience and a sense of accomplishment and my mom ended up with a nice kitchen.
Your mileage may vary — see below.
IKEA furniture really is a lot cheaper.
The total cost was 2200EUR for the furniture plus ca 1500EUR for all the tech — fridge, hob, oven, dishwasher. All-in-all about 3600EUR. That includes all the ancillary bits —even the cutlery drawer insides, rubbish bins, etc.
I took an offer from a reasonably priced custom vendor and it would have been approx 2000EUR more expensive for the starter offer. I am absolutely sure we would not have gone with the starter offer, but would have added stuff (and cost) to it.
Building yourself is a whole process
Building the kitchen furniture is a whole journey — which depending on your mindset can be an awesome DIY project or a DIWhy nightmare.
I had a lot of free time to build it and enjoyed the feeling of accomplishment. But it’s definitely not for everyone. Trying to cram a kitchen build into the evenings of an already busy life can make it frustrating and a long process. Having to buy a bunch of new tools may eliminate the price gains. Having to walk by some of your building mistakes for years afterwards can be annoying.
IKEA’s quality is completely OK
If you mention that you’re installing an IKEA kitchen, some people make a weird face. However — the components are completely on par with the “normal” kitchen vendors, the mechanisms like hinges, drawer railings, soft close dampers, etc are all decent quality, the price is really low.
So — the quality of the furniture is OK.
Learnings
An hour spent on designing and parts list can save you a day later
IKEA has a handy kitchen planner that allows you to spec you the layout of your room and plan the whole kitchen — furniture, looks, ancillary details like handles and panels, etc.
For the big stuff — overall measurements and cabinets, doors, hinges, etc — the planner is bang on — everything was absolutely correct.
But — for the smaller add-on details, the kitchen planner had a bunch of hiccups:
- somehow we ended up with 2 less cabinet legs than necessary — another trip to IKEA
- we should have bought one more rail to hang the cabinets on — the length of the existing rail pieces was enough, but we had to piece together the hanging rail from 3 pieces — not ideal
- the parts list contained a separate sink drain connection, but the sink itself already contained a drain connection in the package — so we ended up with two
- one panel was supposed to be a drawer face, but was actually a hinged door — so I had to re-order the correct part myself
- etc
After you finish planning and before you order, spend some time going through the product details for cupboard legs, railings, plinth boards, etc to make sure you got it right.
Verify the appliance dimensions
You might think that all appliances have standard installation requirements, but no. It’s a messy world of “Bosch dishwashers have a max height 1cm shorter than the worktop height” and “IKEA has a weird 80cm panel length that is too long for most normal dishwashers”.
Dishwashers reach different worktop heights and use different length front panels, integrated fridge-freezers require different height door panels that may not look visually aligned with the rest of you cabinetry. Hobs require different amount of space underneath. Does the dishwasher water hose reach the fitting? Is the breaker amperage large enough for the hob?
If you’re going for third party appliances — which you might want to, since they’re cheaper and have more features than IKEA branded — be super careful to verify the appliance dimensions, installation requirements and covering panel dimensions.
I ended up with a diswasher that did not accept a standard size panel that IKEA provided — turned out OK, but needed a little hack.
Plan for the non-IKEA components
There’s a small bunch of stuff you need on top of what IKEA sells you — screws and wall plugs to hang the railing that holds the cabinets, terminal block for electrical connections, sealant paste for the sink, connection ring for the ventilation tube, etc.
Think through all connections — electric, ventilation, installing the hob and devices, etc. How do you connect every item to your wall, your electrical system, your ventilation pipes, etc.
I ended up wasting time with a number of one-off visits to my hardware store for just one thing — I ran out of wall plugs, I didn’t have a terminal block, couldn’t connect my ventilation pipe, etc.
Plan your tools
You need a surprising amount of tools for even a simple kitchen build. I did make a basic plan, but still ended up wasting time driving back and forth between my home and the building site to fetch random missing tools like electricity tester, a wood cutting blade for my jigsaw, etc.
Think through the process, especially again the non-IKEA stuff — electrical connections, ventilation connections, sealing the worktop edges, etc. And plan for these tools, too.
Don’t start your build until you have all structural elements
Our local IKEA in Estonia is a franchise operation — they mostly sell online, they don’t have their own showroom nor warehouse. Therefore — we had to order the kitchen furniture in several different orders and the deliveries spanned over several weeks.
So — at one point, I had 80% of the cabinets and most of the door panels. I was keen to start building, so I did.
But this is a mistake — you need all the structural details to be able to build smoothly and continuously.
So — if you’re missing any wall-hanging rails, cabinet frames, other structural details like the ventilation unit or dish-drying rack that is integrated into a cabinet, worktop, panels that go between cabinets — do yourself a favour and don’t start building yet. NB! An integrated dishwasher is a structural element, too. You can’t align the cupboards well without it.
I could not align my cabinets on the wall, since one was missing from the middle. I could not hang the upper railing, since the fridge cabinet that would set the height marker was not delivered yet. And so forth.
Assemble and install in the correct order
- Measure and install the wall railings where you hang the cabinets on
- Assemble cabinet frames and hang cabinets, but don’t fix to railing
(plus any panelling that goes between cabinets) - Align and fix the cabinet frames to the rails
- Measure, cut the openings and assemble the worktop
- Install the sink and the appliances + water and electrical connections
- Assemble and install drawers, shelves, doors & hinges
- Finishing touches — fit the baseboard, align doors and drawers, seal between the worktop edges and wall
Since I started the build before I had all the structural elements, I had a lot of back-and forth — I had a bunch of drawers and doors assembled before I could align the cabinets, I had to remove panels and drawers and doors to fit the appliances, etc.
This slowed me down — I was assembling and then disassembling and then assembling again.
YouTube is your friend
IKEA’s assembly instructions are very good for assembling this one particular piece that you have in front of you.
But — you don’t really get instructions about which order you should do the installation in, how to cut and fit custom panels, etc. How exactly do you install that integrated fridge into the cabinet, etc.
Thankfully — there’s a lot of good instruction videos in YouTube. I spent probably less than an hour in YouTube and it probably saved me 10x the same time in wasted work.
Enjoy the process
If something goes wrong — you can fix it. If you break something — each individual piece is really cheap, so getting a new one doesn’t really break your budget. If the kitchen needs upgrades in the future — you’ll find it easy to do.
For me — it was about 3–4 full working days to assemble.. that spanned over 2 weeks due to missing parts, starting to build too early.
I could do my next IKEA kitchen in 2 working days :).
Good luck!
