I noticed that no one has responded to this. I don't know that I can be of much help. I am also putting in an Ikea kitchen in a couple of months. I also wanted white painted Shaker style doors and drawers and considered Barkers or Scherrs. But I realized that it would probably be close to doubling the cost of the Ikea kitchen, and I have a limited budget.

I decided would rather put that money towards a Quartz countertop. I also need new appliances. I am going with Adel doors and drawers. I've seen them at Ikea, as well as tons of Adel kitchen pics online.

I think getting a local person to paint may not get you the same finish as you would get from a factory-finish (including Scherrs, etc) that uses the stronger chemical finishes.

I have friends who had pricey semi-custom cabinets built and painted, and they got a few chips in the paint after 6 months.

The Ikea Adel style is definitely not a painted-wood look, but I'm good with it.

Good luck!

Bonnie

Thanks Bonnie! I appreciate your input. I'm surprised no one else has responded as I know others here have done this. A quick Google came up with the list below, but I don't know how "fresh" this is, nor do I know anything about these companies. You mentioned Bakers? I tried to Google them, but didn't find anything.

Also - we did IKEA Adel in our last kitchen and were very happy with it - so I'm sure you will be too. We did the Medium Brown on the kitchen side of the room and the off white on the office side of the room - so I am familiar with both. They were beautiful and held up well in a busy household. This new house will likely be my forever home and I have always been drawn to the OTK, so that is my goal :-)

We loved IKEA so much though that we want to use the boxes and hardware throughout the house. We currently have them installed for the hall linen closet, the bathroom closet, and the cabinets in the laundry room - all of which I need doors and drawer fronts for!

Semi-handmade
Scherr's
Advantage
Cabinetnow
MapleCraftUSA

It's Barkers (http://www.barkercabinets.com/).

Barkers and Scherrs seem to be the most popular doors/drawers for Ikea on GW.

I'll be selling my place in the next year or so, so it doesn't make sense to put a ton of money into the kitchen. I'll get to enjoy it for a while before I move on (buying down now that my kids are on their own).

I'm glad to hear you've liked Ikea. I'm excited to get going on it, but waiting for their kitchen sale in March. Meanwhile looking at appliances and countertops and sinks (oh my!)

Bonnie

I didn't answer originally because we're still waiting for our doors to arrive from Scherr's....so I have nothing concrete to tell you about, plus I wasn't totally sure what your question was. :)

Anyway, we're doing Shaker style door covers that they are painting. I can tell you that the painting is what is costing us quite a bit more - if you are using one of these companies, I'd be more likely to look at the wood doors if saving money is of prime concern. That said, I was set on a white color, but not their Extra White default color. I paid extra for custom, and I paid extra for them to paint it. I could have ordered them not painted, or painted with two coats of primer. However, I read too many stories about DIY paint eventually coming off and my family is not easy on cabinets. The extra investment is worth it to save me from yelling at them every time they touch the cabinets.

What I loved about the company was that I could send them my design straight from Ikea and they set up the order - they are used to working with Ikea base cabs and were easy to deal with. One thing we didn't do is get end panels, fridge panels or the back of the peninsula panels so there are definitely some things we're doing ourselves - those bigger pieces like the fridge and peninsula panels made the shipping and cost per SF REALLY go up. I hope we're doing the right thing but as the guy at Scherr's said to me, if it doesn't work we can always order them after the fact.

Again, they aren't coming for a few more weeks so I can't comment outside of the decision/ordering process. In the end, I'm not sure the cost will be *that* much cheaper than ordering from Lowe's, especially when you add in our time, but we'll save a couple of thousand.

Barker has SW Dover White, 2 coats primer, 2 coats paint.

love to dream - if you don't mind sharing - I would love to know how much your Ikea cabinets cost, and how much the Scherr's doors/drawers cost.

Only if you're comfortable sharing that info, of course.

Bonnie

I don't mind sharing, Bonnie - reading what others did really helped us make decisions and it's better to compare apples to apples.

We paid about $3.5k for the Ikea bases - got them on the 15% off sale in the fall but since we didn't buy the fronts we didn't spend enough to qualify for that discount and only received 10% (still nice). That included buying some of the organizing stuff for the interiors but did not include hardware. Then we made a measuring mistake and had to return an upper and lower to get 3 different bases and didn't get the 10% off those. Anyway, all together it was around that price.

With Scherr's, we're spending about $4k. Again, this is without the end panels. If we had gotten those, plus a cover panel for the back of our peninsula and around the fridge (not the front, but around it), that would have added another $2k. Again, it was extra shipping for those huge pieces plus with Scherr's you pay per sq ft for the painting, regardless of whether it's wood, MDF, styled or slab. We thought we could definitely DIY a slab MDF for those areas - even paint them with the non-professional paint (just using the same color in the residential grade) and they would be okay since they are really just for show and won't be "used" like doors and drawers are - for much less than that.

So, total it's around $7.5k. For some perspective, our cheapest quote outside of that was $10,300 (installed) for the Shenandoah line at Lowe's. Two custom quotes I got were in the $14-16k range. We'll spend another $500 or so on the end panels and to fill in some glass doors so I'm guessing $8k total, without any labor costs.

We are going this route on our new home. We are doing dark stain cabinets, so I am ordering unfinished maple or cherry doors and drawer fronts. I do a lot of wood working and have auto spray equipment, so finishing them will be no big deal. The unfinished cherry doors is costing around the same as doors from Ikea. For the end panels, I will order a sheet of veneer and simply veneer the end of their boxes, then stain to match. I will also make a custom (hack) microwave full cabinet box, in which case I will need to add some hardware frame and box veneering. Staining it all with the doors will give it a custom look while saving the cost on boxes and getting the nice Ikea drawers/organization.

I am no help either because we are using the IKEA Ramsjo doors in red-brown. However, I've read a lot about Scherr's, and we even contacted them for a custom quote before settling on the IKEA doors. I think I also read of someone who had gotten custom doors from Evans Cabinets. If I didn't read it here on GW, it must have been on IKEAFans...did you try searching there?

Good luck!

Thanks - lovestodream. That confirms that getting the custom doors/drawers would have been out of my budget. I agonized over it for a while, but now I'm good with it.

Would love to see pics when you get them all installed!

Bonnie

No problem, Bonnie. I've agonized over EVERYTHING with our kitchen but once I make the decision, I have to let it go. Not everyone here can have the $100k kitchens that make us all drool. I'm learning to pick my battles.