Setting Up an IKEA Kitchen

This home owner wanted to renovate her kitchen but she had a tight budget.  She was able to afford to renovate the kitchen layout by going with IKEA cabinets.  She opened up a wall and moved the refrigerator to a different wall to have a better work triangle.  We worked with the IKEA Kitchen Planner to come up with the best design to fit the new space and which cabinets worked best.

She is an avid cook and has every gadget imaginable so cabinet space was the premium concern.  The original 1970s cabinets were still in place along with soffits all around.  To provide the extra cabinet space, she removed the soffits, so she could have the tall 40″ wall cabinets.

When we moved the refrigerator the idea was to have a built-in look with a pantry pull-out and top cabinet.

We made some modifications that allowed more cabinet space.  Blind corner cabinets take up a lot of space so we cut one down to 45 inches.  A normal blind corner cabinet has a 21 inch door, but after cutting it down, we used an 18 inch door, shown below, which was great since we were able to fit an 18″ cabinet with pullouts next to it rather than a 12″ cabinet with just shelves.  We did have to find an aftermarket blind corner cabinet organizer since the standard IKEA one was too big.  We chose the Omega National Blind Corner Caddy and it can hold quite a lot of kitchen gadgets.

      

      

One wall that had the sink and dishwasher had 5″ of room at the end of the dishwasher to have it line up correctly with the wall cabinets.  I didn’t want to use several small fillers since that was a waste of space but IKEA doesn’t have any cabinets smaller than 12 inches.  We decided upon a 3″ rev-a-shelf base pullout to be installed next to the dishwasher cover panel which helps support the counter-top.  The front panel is a 6 inch drawer front that was cut to fit.

  

The owner wanted a bar top opposite her slide-in oven that would be in the living room.  We took two 36″ wide 40″ tall wall cabinets and added legs to make them the new bar.

I can’t say enough great things about IKEA’s cabinet interior organizers, soft close doors and hinge and drawer hardware.  Everything is top notch and easy to put together along with looking fantastic. Then we purchased, assembled, and installed all the cabinets as well as all interior pullouts.  IKEA has done a great job with their interior pullouts that make organizing a kitchen much easier, especially considering their prices.