Now you're hooked, ccoombs1, I'm right there with ya! I've been trying to convince my sister-in-law to come with me. It's a three hour drive but well worth it!

lol...my daughter wants to go back next month!! But with gas prices like they are, it's an $80 trip. Once my cabinets are delivered, I'll be going back because they have the drawer pulls I want for my kitchen plus tons of other great stuff. WELL worth the drive!!

Cindy

I'm so glad our IKEA is only 30 minutes away, but it still feels like a huge trek. For some reason when I come out of there I'm completely exhausted! I highly recommmend taking your time and taking a break in their amazingly good and cheap cafe in the middle to re-fuel.

Good suggestion, caligirl. I'm always exhausted by the time I'm checking out -- and then I get hungry smelling the cinnamon rolls in the checkout line! I'm going to have to find an IKEA-savvy person to come w/ me to order kitchen stuff, though, because my husband has a very low shopping threshold. He says it sucks the energy right out of him. We live near two IKEAs, and are probably 45 minutes away from either one in good traffic (though in bad traffic, who knows...Wash DC area).

We did have a great experience with some of the shelving units we bought a couple of years ago. My husband was very impressed with how easily and sturdily they went together. And given the costs of cabinets we've been seeing, I think we might be headed toward IKEA cabs.

The only thing that bothers me about ikea cabs is that they don't have edge banding for the boxes available to match the doors and drawers. Other than that, I love Ikea kitchens. I'm pretty sure that's the direction I will be going. Just wish I could get those nice yellow-brown cabs without having white or birch frames poking through. Harumph.

I wonder if maybe paint that is made for plastic might be a good solution for the lighter colored edge banding? If you were to use some darker brown paint on that edge, it would not show at all.

Sarchlos -- Check out ikeafans.com (the kitchen-elements forum). Search for edge banding and there's quite a bit of information about replacing the edge banding with closer matches to the door colors.

We just bought our first two boxes for our soon-to-be IKEA kitchen (demo starts next Monday!!). We're putting the boxes together ourselves, with the install -- and other work -- done by a contractor so we wanted to see how hard the putting-together part was. Even with IKEA's strange stick-figure directions (no words) we put the 2nd box together in 15 minutes. Now it feels like we're actually making progress (that and the Sharpie marks the contractor's been making all over the existing kitchen!).

We decided on IKEA cabs in order to upgrade other things -- it looks like we're going to manage soapstone counters!! Pretty exciting and I think the IKEA cabinets will be fine -- we were quite pleased with how sturdy are (and how non-cheesey the birch "effect" interiors are).

sw in austin, I'm glad to hear the boxes aren't that horrible to assemble. I've been assuming we'd hire someone to do the assembly and installation, but maybe we do the assembly and let him install, and save ourselves some more cash. Can't wait to see our sample Scherr's doors next week. I hope they look nice.

Have you had trouble with ordering and receiving all the correct parts? I've heard that can be a pain and require numerous return trips to IKEA to sort out.

Caligirl --

Assembly of the boxes is no problem. The biggest problem for us is going to be where to keep the assembled boxes while we wait for them to be installed. We figure it will take about 4 hours to do the remaining 13 boxes. Assembling them ourselves is saving $500 or so and we like the idea of having that personal investment but we're bringing in the professionals for the install.

I haven't actually placed my final order but when I went in last week the IKEAn prepared a draft order, which listed everything by cabinet, that is, under a heading for each cabinet each individual part is listed. I brought that home and checked it against an Excel spreadsheet I'd prepared and found some things that need to be changed on the order (we're doing a few mods, inspired by ikeafans; creating an 18-inch base pull-out, for example). I will use that spreadsheet to check the individual parts/boxes as we receive them (evidently we have to go to the store  about a 25-minute drive from our house  take possession of the boxes and then walk them over on a cart to the Home Delivery counter. Then I guess we check them again when they get to our house).

I'm very interested to hear about your experience with Scherr's. I thought about going that route for the doors but decided I was okay with the Tidaholm style (a sort of Shaker look in light oak). I don't absolutely love the doors but the price is right. If I don't like them in a few years maybe I'll change them out.

I'll post again after we've actually made our order.

Thanks for the info on your process! I guess I need to set up an excel spreadsheet. I also need it because the IKEA planner doesn't allow you to organize a kitchen without doors, so I have to set up an order sheet manually. This whole thing is pretty complex. I'm finding it quite daunting myself, like another part-time job actually and I already have a job, two kids and we're remodeling our whole house so I can't spend my life on the kitchen alone.

I like the Tidaholm doors too and almost went that route, but I decided that even though we're trying to save money, I needed to stay true to my vision of a white cottage style kitchen, so I'm planning a white shaker style door.

I think that building your own boxes kind of puts your own heart into the thing too. When you look at it, it's almost like a DIY, but without having a lot of skill! When I was at the house today though, there seemed to be materials and saw horses from one end of the house to the other, and we don't have a garage, so I'm really not sure where we're going to put the boxes either without the subs complaining about them. Trickier and trickier.

I'm not positive that all IKEAs do their ordering the same way (our store is in Round Rock, Texas, just north of Austin); I've read on ikeafans that some stores create draft orders that aren't organized by cabinet. But at our store, I think it would have been easy for them to create a draft order without the doors or drawer fronts (since those are just one or two part numbers listed under each individual cabinet). So as long as you know the description of each cabinet (like B3D18, which is the 3-drawer 18-inch base cabinet) as it is listed in the IKEA kitchen catalog (and know if there are parts you might not need, like the 15-inch base cabinet we'll use for tray storage and thus doesn't need shelves) you'll be fine doing the ordering.

I'd be glad to send you the Excel spreadsheet I set up if that would help.

We have also gone with Ikea for our kitchen and nothing could be simpler. Easy to assemble and if you want to save money just as easy to install and we have 11,000.00 worth of cabs-a big kitchen. You can find oodles of edgebanding at a place like Richilieu but I think the yellow-brown faces for example look great with the white boxes if you tend towards a more modern look. As for the draft order- just ask the Ikean to write up your order by cabinet. Our first order wasn't done this way and it was a nightmare. I went back and had them redraft it and they were happy to do it. If you want lots of good advise and help with modifictions go to Ikeafans websit-fabulous!!!!

Also, we used our GC to assemble the cabinets, but in retrospect I'd do that part of it myself. It's REALLY easy, satisfying, and that way you're a bit more careful. Good luck!

If you want to add/change the edgebanding, this place has a bunch of colors in PVC or wood (finished or unfinished).

Here is a link that might be useful: fastcap

Reading this is making me curious what Ikea cabinets would cost for my home. Can someone give me a range of what they cost?

We're doing 15 boxes -- 8 base and 5 wall -- with Tidaholm doors/drawers (which is not the most expensive but is at the top end). We are excluding some things (legs and plinth/toe kick) which our contractor will build on site). We are not using any of the tall cabinets (pantries/wall oven), which are more expensive. Our total cost (unassembled/uninstalled) is about $3600, including full-extension drawers and soft close doors/drawers (this compares to a quote for $9,500 for almost the same thing from KraftMade). We will do assembly ourselves (saving about $500) and have the contractor install.

The main drawback is lack of choice in door style (which can be overcome with the use of doors from some place like Scherr's) and the limited range of sizes in some of the cab boxes. Our kitchen was fairly straight-forward so the lack of customization wasn't a problem and we were willing to go with a door style we weren't absolutely in love with in order to upgrade appliances and counter material.

Of course none of it is installed yet but I think we'll be happy.

14 linear feet of base cabinets (4 sets of all drawer cabinets, 1 pull out drawer cabinet, 1 pull out trash cabinet, sink cabinet)
7 linear feet of upper cabinets (30" tall, 5 glass fronted cabinets with glass shelves)
88" high cabinet, with 2 deep drawers, oven shelf, microwave shelf, 18" cabinet at the top
88" high fridge cabinet, with 18" cabinet at the top
All with integrated handles, dampers for all drawers and doors, fully extending drawers.

$5,100 for top of range cabinet style from IKEA.

sw in austin, why are you having your GC do the legs and toe kick? Just curious since I'm always second-guessing myself on this stuff. I HAVE visited IKEAfans a lot, but it's such a hard site to find stuff on, and I seem to get lost.

If I can figure out where to put the cabs as we take a few weekends to build them, I think we'll go that route.

50 linear feet of lowers (included 88"wall oven cab, fridge cab and 88" pantry) and 40 ft of uppers, with all the lovely hardware-$11,000.00 CD for 2nd most expensive Ikea door style. By the way customization of cabinets is easy if you can use and have access to a few power tools.
Price range is $79-$169 CDN/linear foot (uppers included).

*I have 27.5 ft. of base cabinets including 10 sets of drawer or pull-out units, 6 of them are the 30 and 36" drawers units.

*In addition are 3-88" tall units, a 30" for the oven, a 15", and 24" pantry with pull out shelves.

I have 8'9" of upper cabinets including 2 glass horizontal cabinets with lighted glass shelves.

All of this cost approx. $7,000 in Adel MB with the soft close features for both drawers and doors. When I picked it up they asked if we were planning two kitchens!! That made my day, cause this kitchen will have everything I imagined and then some!!

Caligirl -- It was really the contractor's call on the legs/toe kick. He's installed other IKEA kitchens and said he thought building a base for each cabinet (just a MDF or plywood open-topped box) would be sturdier and he thought a painted toekick ( attached to the base) would also be sturdier and more attractive (he didn't like the ones IKEA does that snap on to the legs). He said it wouldn't cost anymore and I agreed. We've done a much larger project with this contractor and I trust his judgement.

I notice everyone else uses linear feet of cabinets as a cost reference. Our kitchen is small: only 17 feet of base cabinets and about 12 of uppers. No glass doors, mostly 3-drawer bases. For $3,600.

I'm feeling a little cabinet deprived reading about these much larger spaces!! We will have another 3 feet of non-IKEA upper and lowers though.

I like the idea of custom toe-kicks, but my GC wants nothing to do with the IKEA kitchen (bit prima donna) and so I really only have my IKEA installer who as far as I know just puts the thing together, no modifications or embellishments. I'm going to talk the finish carpenter into a hood box if I can though! Still also unclear about how my undermount apronfront sink will go though because the IKEA installer hasn't done one. Eeek. I've been sending him stuff from IKEAfans to get him up to speed.

Without my drawings at hand, I think I have about 18 LF of base cabs and 8 LF of uppers plus a tall pantry and an over-the fridge cabinet for around $2,600 (just boxes).