I'm thinking of installing kitchen units from IKEA in a house that we're currently renovating.
I'd be very interested to hear the opinion of anyone who's had experience of this, whether good / bad / indifferent, and also any comparison with other low-ish cost kitchen suppliers.
Anything I should look out for etc - all hints and tips welcomed!
I have Googled, but most of the posts seem to be from a year or three ago...
Many thanks in advance
I have fitted three DIY kitchens, one from MFI, one from Magnet and the latest from IKEA. All three are budget kitchens, although the Magnet units were comparatively expensive.
The IKEA units were by far the best constructed of the three, and I would happily choose them again.
I've installed two IKEA kitchens, and found them excellent. Also use the units (modified) to do a bathroom, as they were much cheaper and higher quality than bathroom units. Everything lines up properly. All the bits are separately available if you need extra bits to make up custom items. IKEA inset s/s sinks had much nicer low profile edge than others I found, and because the public can't rumage through the stock, they don't come with dents and bashes. (I had previously found one in B&Q I wanted, but every one in stock was damaged.)
The most annoying part is having to go to a store to buy the parts, although there are some companies near store which will do that for you and deliver.
I've not used any IKEA worktops, partly due to difficulty in getting them home, and partly because I already found something else I wanted to use.
You need to be aware there's no space for services behind cupboards -- the backs are flush with the wall. Run services at skirting level behind cupboards.
So is my experience.
I dislike Ikea, and think some of their products are deliberately designed not to last. However I bought some Ikea Varde kitchen units and they are very solid and extremely easy to assemble - I found no particular shortcomings with them.
It's a good idea to check the items very carefully before the checkout
- Ikea customer returns is the lowest place on earth and you spend a long, long time there before your number comes up.
i'm still in the process of finishing my ikea kitchen off, just the little odds and sods to do now that seem to take for ever.
we went for the cheapest cabinet fronts, harlig white, so were spending about £35-£40 per cabinet, very easy to put together,
i really like the concept that you can get the frame unit, then the door, drawers if wanted, and any internal fittings seperately to make it just how you want it, we got a couple of the corner wall cabinets, but couldetn afford the ones with the carosells in them, so just got the 5 quid pack of shelves for now, will get the £30 quid carosells later when we have more spare dosh.
The hinges are great, took me a while to figure out there really werent any missing screws, the hinges fit into the holes and clamp in place by flipping the cover bit over, ingenius, and they then clip onto the cabinet plates, and can be released with a push on the locks at anytime if needed, then the adjusters, 2 screws, the back one moves the hinge in and out paralell with the frame side, much better than the usual undoo the screw, pull out then lock it design, other screw moves the hinge in and out to level the door.
we got the ikea worktop, the largest length just fitted into our nissan micra, had to put the passengers seat down, and the boot wouldent quite close, but we did it, sam had to sit on the cabinets in the back tho :)
went for the plinths, 2 quid for a pack of 4 legs is great, ok they are plastic, but havent broken with me standing on the cabinets, they are said to take 125 kilos each leg,
the plinths have a slot on the back, which you push in the fitting that come with the legs, then you just clip the plinths over the legs with the fittings, dunno if that's the normal way of fitting the plinths or not, but it's bloody easy to do, and they van be removed in seconds if you ever need to get under the cabinets.
We couldent be happier with our kitchen, compared to the s**te that was in this place before, it's a million times better, i'd deffo fit another one,
we looked at all the big sheds kitchens, but they wanted far too much for inflexiable crap, we just wanted a bog standard white kitchen, cheap as possible but customizable.
As Andrew pointed out, there is NO space behind the back of the cabinets for anything like pipes or plugs and sockets.
I have been looking for reasonably priced oversized worktops for ages to use with their cabinets. Also the build quality is very high for their price.
that is true, but 5 seconds with a jig saw sorted that out for me.
I install/build sh*t loads of flatpack.
Limited experience of kitchen units, and I get customers to order direct, for me to install - so I don't have any experience of their delivery system, but my overall opinion of IKEA flat pack is that it is absolutely superb, very well made, very well designed & really simple to install.
IME the best flatpack on the market, streets ahead of the rest.
Don't even mention Argos...
Swimbo wants all that sliding in and out crap. It goes right to the back, so nothing poking into the cabinets.
Well if you invest in a saw and a plug cutter for the hinges, you can make a kitchen cabinet yourself.
Draw slides, hinges and so on are all widely available.
Kitchen units are just a convenient way of buying them with some free ultra naff quality chipboard thrown in.
The budget carcase range I kike best us Hygena QA - Currys used to do them.
A small cut above MFI/Magnet utter crap, and not as expensive IIRC as Ikea, which are awkward shape with the 'no backs' policy.
I've dome about ten IKEA kitchens.
They are the best value middle market kitchens , IMHO.
Logistics are a slight problem unless you have an empty van.
Ther worktops are however too narrow, these need to be sourced elsewhere, This will allow you to fit the kitchen in a real building. IKEA ones are
600, so if the walls are out you'll need 616 or even 650. Besides which more overhang looks and works better.You will need to make sure all the 'services' are in the plinth space as the units go right back to the wall.
The sinks are OK, the trap European-one-size-fits-the-whole-continent is a joke. The hole in the sink take a standard basket strainer anyway. The taps are not good, the water comes out crooked. However the fixing kit (FIXA ATLANT?) contains a couple of useful tools a samll pipe cutter (works on microbore) and a punch/die set to make 35mm whole in sinks, which if you need it is good value. You can take back what's left over as well.
In message , Andrew Gabriel writes
If you live in England or Wales then it looks like you order kitchens online now.
As many have said, their construction seems among the best. Although it's irritating to have to pick up. I think that's better than waiting forever for a delivery and taking time off work, only to find it's incomplete and having to go through the whole cycle again. The trick (I think) with getting them from Ikea is to go along on a mid-week evening when they're quieter, rather than having to mix it with the weekend crowds.
The business about the base units going all the way back may present some fitting challenges but, once they're installed, they have much more capacity. Watch out for the worktops though, as the units are deeper overall. The wall units are also deeper: When I did my kitchen / utility a couple of years ago, I managed to get the same internal volume as I had before with fewer units, creating space for other purposes.
The big thing to watch out for is all the little goodies that you can end up getting in Ikea, that push the overall spend up while you're not looking......
Beware the carousel fitting if you have pipes running along the back. There ain't a lot of leeway
Mine are Hygena ready assembled carcasses, I think they are good. They were from MFI.
I've got one which was installed for me by their recommended fitters. The quality of the kitchen is superb. We had a custom laminate made, with a wood edging, which looks really good too.
My only complaint was against the fitters. We designed the kitchen on line and went for the "full service". So their recommended fitters turned up to check the installation. Between their visit and the final order the price of both the labour and materials went up by about =A3400. The fitters added something like =A370 for "fixings" (which were already included in our original quote), wanted to charge for Part P and Corgi (even though we specifically said someone else was doing the appliance installations), and changed our design (unnecessarily and without asking us). In the end it all came right - the fitters dropped the "fixings" charge when we told them that we had reported them to Ikea for that, as well as reinstating the design back the way that we wanted it and dropping the Part P and Corgi charges, but not before delaying the whole thing by a fortnight and causing the actual kitchen order to be significantly delayed.
In the end I think it would have been cheaper to get our own fitters in, but the chippie that was doing the rest of our extension work didn't want to do the kitchen so quoted us more than the Ikea lot.
As I say, kitchen is excellent though.
Matt
IME MFI stuff is not bad quality for the price but MFI is a really sh*t company to deal with. God help you if anything goes wrong.
We had one and while the construction and materials were good the design didn't leave much room behind for existing pipes. Quite a bit of pipe rework was required to get it all to fit in the 2 inch gap. Three inches would have meant the job was finished two days sooner and I wouldn't have been as upset whilst doing it.
though as others have said the cupboards were lovely and spacious as a result :)
Which since no one can ever find anything more than 300mm inside a cupboard, is a complete and literal waste of space.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.