Don't have an answer for you however, I can attest to the quality and great styling of the Linear series of cabinets from Room and Board. We've been loyal R and B customers for years and have the Linear series of cabinets, armoires, shelves, etc. in our family room and master bedroom. Great quality and love the style and think a sideboard in the Linear series would look wonderful in a dining room.

1. Particle board is the norm in Europe - selecting plywood is generally seen as overkill. When my GC initially raised concerns for the sink cabinet I looked him in the eye and joked that he obviously didn't have faith in his plumber, because I trusted that I was going to be supplied with a non-leaking sink . . . he saw the point. (My Sister-in-law had US-made particle board cabinets in her kitchen, 30 years ago, and they're still fine, incidentally) 2. Ikea cabinets have a 25 year guarantee. They increased this from 15 years a long time ago, when they realised it really IS that good. 3. As someone said above, not all particle board is the same. I have particle board bookcases elsewhere, and in no way are they as good as my kitchen cabinets. 4. I echo the point about insisting your GC watches the video. Mine, who was initially doubtful about Ikea, did, and when it became clear that I had completely researched it, he was happy. In fact, if a question came up during installation, he'd ask me "what do the people at Ikeafans say?". 5. My Ikea cabinets cost $2600. The quote for custom cabinetry was $18,000. No contest . . . . 6. If I had an endless budget, I'd STILL do Ikea, because I'm so impressed by the whole system. 7. It's worth paying for the order to be delivered. You get 24 hours to check it all over and alert them to anything missing. 8. Use Ikeafans.com - it's an incredible resource of people like us, who have used Ikea cabinets and really understand the process.

Beth, It's very common for the refrigerator to not require more than about 1" of clearances on top and back, but check your model's requirements to avoid emotional arguments like previous posts recommend. But, if you want, you might play the "age" card. Things have changed and the refrigerators are more efficient these days with more insulation around them to keep stuff inside cool. With older refrigerators, if you didn't provide enough ventilation, the heat generated would simply seep right back into the coolspace inside. But, with more insulation of today's refrigerators, it takes much longer for the exhaust heat to seep back inside, hence you don't need as much ventilation as the older models. I put our unit in a wall cavity with top cabinets with 1" top clearances even though the specifications called for 1/2" clearance. Don't compromise on this - they do make them so you don't need unsightly wide gaps for ventilation. They use less energy and don't require near as much heat exchange as the older models. Plus, they are quieter when you can minimize these gaps. Here is another example (not our kitchen, but our refrigerator) of how they minimize these spaces in a freestanding refrigerator. -DH of gsc

Usually, but not always, both lowes and HD will meet a price you found on the internet if you bring it in. The layout you do in the ikea kitchen designer doesn't generally include fillers, or matching color end panels (called cover panels). Or decorative trim like crown or light rail. You buy cover panels for all exposed ends. The cover panels are in the designer, but you need to add it to the appropriate cabinets. If you want a door panel, you buy a full height door for a 24" or 12" cabinet. The designer not let you select this piece but your ikean order clerk can. Because they are frameless, you might need to start a run with a small filler - called a starter molding - if the side of the cabinet is against a wall. This insures that your doors and drawers won't hit the wall. The kitchen design price list also includes toe kick covers, countertop and hardware unless you specify not to on each cabinet. Things like hinges, drawers, wire pull outs or shelves show up as separately priced items. Refrigerator enclosures can be made from oven side panels. If you don't like their door styles, you can buy the doors, cover panels, moldings and toe kicks from another company. We bought our doors from scherrs as have many others. The doors took about two weeks to make and ship. For the doors and drawer fronts and a decorative end, we paid about three hundred dollars more than ikea would have charged for the doors and drawers, but we got all solid wood, mitered cherry doors and drawer fronts. We bought the doors finished, but not stained. We added some fillers from a local source. You can also design up your kitchen in the ikea designer or any other way you'd like, but get scherrs to make better quality cabinets for you. The thing with going that way is you can customize the width, height or depth of any cabinet and/or get special pieces made or fancy trim. We had scherrs cabinets in the kitchen that was destroyed and I loved them. They used to be about 1/3 less than Kraftmaid. We ended up doing the blended ikea=scherrs because ikea is less than 30 minutes away and I didn't want to wait even an extra month to special order.