IKEA is almost junk grade, but better than doing nothing. The particle board wood/finish blisters if just the smallest amount of water hits them.

We know this by experience. I just installed a new sink and the faucet was leaking a little and I quickly turned off the valve, but the wood blistered where the water hit it even though I had wiped it dry right away.

I think they are good for uppers, but would stay away from sink cabs or lowers.

Do an Ikea cabinet search on this forum. Many people have asked about Ikea cabinets over the years and opinions vary. On balance I think more people like them than don't.

I'm one of the ones who feel that their cabs are terrific. Have had some for ten years -- no wear, no water damage, no problems.

rc

Ikea is rated very high by Consumer Reports as well.

We've been using our IKEA kitchen for a little more than two years and are still quite pleased with our decision. We're not particularly careful with the cabinets or about water and we've had no issues of any kind. Certainly no bubbling or peeling. And that's with two definitely not careful teenagers using the kitchen every day.

I have Yorktowne in my current kitchen and master bath. They were installed 10 years ago and still look new. There are different grades, and I believe I have the middle grade. I'd use them again.

any chipboard may be damaged by water so i wouldn't take one person's experience with water as a conclusion that company X is worse than company Y.

Thank you all for your feedback! I will certainly do a search for IKEA on this forum. I did a search for Yorktowne prior to posting and only got back a few results.
The Yorktowne that was quoted to us was from the "Simplicity" line. I am guessing that that's their low end line.
Has anyone heard about IKEA's 25 year warranty? That is, if something goes wrong with one of their cabinets, how hard is it to exercise the warranty and replace the cabinet?
Also, from the Real Estate value perspective - do people automatically look down on IKEA?
To be honest, I love IKEA style and easy availability (vs. Yorktowne is 4 weeks) so if I could, I'd definitely go with it but I also don't want to buy something that is not going to hold up or negatively impact the value of our home.

Thank you!

Yorktown is a framed cabinet (no frameless available) with 3 levels of quality.

Platinum= Plywood box with veneer interiors. Finished ends must be ordered to match and can be flush finished upon request. Drawer boxes have undermount full extension slides soft close.

Gold & silver share the same box, furniture core w/ melamine interiors. The sides of the cabinet are finished in melamine, so you can often get away with not having to order veneer finished sides. (flush finished is available if you request it) The only difference between gold/silver is the drawer box construction and slides.

(Note that you can get Gold box with upgrade to Platinum drawers...)

The doorstyles are either full overlay or standard overlay. Each door style is available as either/or, but the name and drawer head style changes accordingly so it can be confusing.

Yorktown pricing is determined by the quality line (platinum, gold, silver) and the doorstyle that you have selected doorstyle. Simplicity is a recessed panel door with a slab drawer, full overlay, then the wood species determines the price group. Cherry 14, Quartersawn oak 16, Maple 9.

Just as a note, the Silver line used to only be avail with a handful of doorstyles/colors. This past year, they are permitting you to order from all samples/colors, but there is an upcharge.

Also Silver drawer boxes are awful, upgrade to either gold or platinum- it is worth it.

My church installed Yorktown in one of the parsonages. The light oak wood was not matched well, so I would go with a mid tone stain. Also if the drawer heads are slab, it does not look as nice in a 3 drawer base, try and get them to add in for 5 piece deeper drawer heads.

Thank you very much for the details!
I wonder how much the price will jump once I upgrade to "Gold".
How do these compare to Costco cabinets as far as quality and price?

As a real estate agent, I can say I don't think just about anyone knows what brand cabinet they are getting until they move in. People will check out appliances and all sorts of other things, but rarely look for a logo on cabinets.

I don't think many IKEA kitchens look like "IKEA kitchens". They get personalized such as any other cabinet line with counters, backsplashes, floors, etc...

I just installed (last weekend an IKEA DOmsjo sink & cab) and this quote is absolutely NOT true:

"No water is going to bother them unless through an unfinished edge. However anyone contemplating a leaky sink should merely caulk the interior corners of their sink cabinet with silicone and can then stop worrying."

The IKEA faucet was leaking and I quickly shut off the water valve and wiped up the water with paper towels. Where the droplets hit the back and sides of the interior panels, the finish blistered where ever there was a water droplet. There were no open seams, these were surface blisters.

We have had Adel cabinets for 6 yrs, but they are uppers or base cabs away from water. It took all of about 15 seconds to get water blisters in the new sink cab.

They look good and as mentioned, the hardware is nice, but are pure JUNK where contact with water is concerned.

Kurtg, you should bring back your cabinet to IKEA, they will gladly exchange it, what happened to you is unexpected with an IKEA cabinet.

That being said I've had and I've seen many IKEA kitchen cabinets, some of them 20 years old, and I've yet to see one with a damaged finish.

The sink cab is probably the one most prone to damage and the most difficult to replace/return. I'd have to disconnect all the plumbing and remove the sink. I'll live with the blisters but will no longer sing IKEA praise and let others know what they might be in store for too.

The bare sink cab is all of what $20-$30??? I've got close to 10x that in plumbing (difficult install due to space constraints). I doubt they'd even take a drilled/cut cabinet, but how else would one get the pipes & drain installed.

I really think they ought to offer a more moisture resistent sink cab than the 15 sec self degrading one we got.

kurtg is experiencing the same pain that many first timers feel when their chipboard gets water in it.

It happens to any other chipboard too.
The phenomenon is not specific to the one named company.

Conclusion: it happens, in general.

As an experiment I just went and poured water on the inside of my Ikea sink cabinet and left it for 30 minutes. It wiped up with no blistering, discoloration, or mark of any kind. If your cabinet did this in a matter of seconds I highly suspect that there was a defect in the finish and I would return the cabinet to the store. My experience is that they take back many items for many different reasons and are very easy to talk to in the return department.

If you leave water on bare wood of any kind (plywood, boards, particleboard) it will warp. That is why we put finishes on them.

kurtg,

I'm sorry you had a problem with the Ikea box. I've examined these boxes very carefully (the birch colored ones--I bought in November '09) and have found the coatings to be extremely durable. I tried scratching one hard with the tip of a wallboard screw and they are sharp. Couldn't do it. I noticed when drilling into them that the surface is so hard, and has some depth, that it cracks slightly around the drill hole.

When my sink was installed there was some very small leakage at the drain, and for a while I was unaware that it was making some newspaper placed there wet on top of the Ikea surface. It was like that for at least a day and caused no problem.

It seems to me that yours was clearly defective. I don't know how it could not have stood up to a few drops of water if it wasn't. Of course it could also be that suppliers and quality vary from time to time.

Everyone, thank you so much for your feedback! Its really helpful!!!
1. I am going to spill lots of water on the new IKEA cabinet to test its resistance prior to installation :)
2. Is it possible to buy IKEA cabinets everywhere except the sink base cabinet? Maybe I can match the color and buy an IKEA door to combine it with a Xyz cabinet? Has anyone done that?

Thank you!

1. great.
2. yes.

A.)
You can also do a little bit of work to seal the edges, if you cut any part of it.
Cutting it anywhere opens the inside (sealed by the "edge banding" when it's new and uncut), and the inside is the material which can be affected by water.

B.)
If you put water into any of the screw holes prior to screwing it together, you can already predict that this will not be a good thing to do.

C.)
You could seal the screw holes too, if you wanted to be really thorough...
ETc.

Taking this one step farther...
I removed the bottom panel entirely, in my base cabinet.
Any drips will go straight to the tiled floor and be visible on my tiled floor.
The bottom panel is not necessary.
I have drawers under my sink.

If water drips from the sink drain pipe, I can see it on the drawer "floor" which is also melamine sealed like the cabinets.

HTH

Dear Davidro1,

Thank you for your advice! Sounds like a great idea. For novices like us, we don't even know what to use as a sealant. What do you recommend?

Thank you!

Other people who know wood can say more.
I'd be happy trying any silicone caulk.

The water v. cabinet issue has lots of people talk about it, but you kinda have to experience it to see the difference.

Full disclosure - I have had some sizable leaks in two different brands of cabinets, including a valve break. Neither were ikea. I have ikea now. This was a monetary decision made after a lot of discussion. We modified all of the base cabinets by adding additional structural parts. I am prepared to ditch the sink cabinets if it becomes necessary and right on to kurtg that a sink base is the one place where the cost of actually doing any replacement completely overwhelms the value you can recover from the warranty.

Some of the other things said above? Edge banding is for visual appearance, not a moisture barrier. Unless you are very fortunate, and the glue fills every millimeter of seam, it will not keep out water. YMMV on seams from an original manufacturer.

Most cabinet plywood can beat up most particle board for moisture resistance. This is particularly true of ikea where one minute of water exposure to a cut edge is enough to cause deformation. The caulk idea expressed above is cute, but not really practical where pipes enter the bottom of the cabinet. Plus when almost every edge on the entire cabinet is a cut edge, its pretty difficult to make this work.

So, how do I know it deforms? Because I tried it. A couple of those trials were yesterday on a cabinet part purchased within the last month. Dunk for a minute, wet sponge sitting on the surface and a decently long dunking of an end. I also tried other materials - like mdf, another companies particle board, hdf and two different types of cabinet plywood with differing cores.

Ikea particle board was easily the worst at absorption and deformation. Hdf was easily the best at shape retention - no deformation even after 24 hours of immersion. In decending order of goodness: hdf, osb core cabinet plywood, mdf, home depot type veneer ply, other makers particle board and well behind that, ikea particle board.

I will say that water sitting on just the coated surface - the really damp sponge test - took a long time to penetrate something over 10 hours. Water will penetrate all melamine coatings eventually. The problem isn't the coating - its what's inside of the coating. The particle board will tolerant no moisture.

This isn't special to ikea. Other brands that use particle board cabinet bottoms (like one of the kinds I had) can also deform from standing water or continually being exposed to water or cleaning chemicals. The amount of time needed for deforming and the results depend on quality of the coating and the quality of the particle board. If you get a good long dunk, expect ikea to be destroyed.

The low density fiberboard back is another weak spot. It has a very thin coating that is easily damaged. How easy? Piece of blue tape or slight bending or slide across a counter face down kinda easy. Will disintegrate on exposure to water. Intended as a dust back. It isn't structural - low density fiberboard has no structure.

One of the famous weird things that gets said is the cabinet back will stop the cabinet from racking. It's laughable - the concept that this very soft stuff nailed into particle board - that can be pushed back out or bent by any small child - would be capable of structure. It's much more likely the racking will pull the nails out.

Also from above, ikea base cabinets have two sides, a bottom and two puny cross pieces. The larger the cabinet, the weaker it is (even with the back attached). I very much doubt the bottom can be removed and the cabinet still has the same structure.

They (being cabinet companies) used to sell, and some still do sell, a sink front that was framed - the actual sink cabinet was then built in place. But that was before big sinks and wide cabinets. Some of the large sinks and some of the countertop materials need some decent support up top.

It can happen, but relying on just the two small mdf cross pieces with one fastener per end into a side piece held up only by cabinet connectors doesn't sound likely of being able to provide it. Mdf isn't known for its wonderful structural qualities either.

Wow, this is an eyeopener, thanks!!!
How can I buy a sink base cabinet from " hdf, osb core cabinet plywood" etc... while buying everything else from IKEA? Are there cabinet maker companies that you recommend?
How do I match the "non-IKEA" sink base cabinet to IKEA cabinets (color, type, style)?

Thank you!!!!

This discussion is moving beyond the initial question comparing two companies' products.

To get all the cabinets square, and to ensure they didn't move an iota from there, I screwed them all together with long strips of flat metal that I got from a metal shop. This is part of the total picture, but I hope it is enough to explain succinctly how it came to be that I was able to remove the bottoms of all the cabinets. I also removed the MDF cross pieces. I also removed the cabinet back (low density fiberboard); in fact I never bothered installing it. HOWEVER, don't copy anything here unless you are comfortable with all this and more, on your own. I refrain from posting "hey, you can just keep the sides with the predrilled holes" because then I would be giving very incomplete picture to the multitudes who need to see photos and videos and even then are not confident. It would just open a can of worms.

The above post asks how to buy " .... " hdf, osb core cabinet plywood" ... while buying everything else from IKEA? ... How do I match the "non-IKEA" ... to IKEA cabinets..."

This opens a whole new can of worms.

If you want to replace that box with another box, OK, I can see that is a valid query.
An upgrade box, made of material that is more suited to being dimensionally stable when H2O gets into it.
This is the query.
This won't make it less rotty, or less smelly, if it gets water in it.
Please note that the swelling of an MDF box where water penetrates it does not make the box perform less well.
It's still a box.
It shows where water entered it.
Of course I don't like that either.

The sides hold the drawer glides.
Millions of people are comfortable with an Ikea box for their sink and faucet,
even when they have a "floor" in their cabinet.
A cabinet floor will get wet inevitably, sooner or later.
I think that far in the future someone will resolve this never ending concern by devising METAL sides for the drawer glides to clip into, and WITHOUT any "floor" needed.
To connect the metal sides and act as a distance separator, a piece of metal will do.
To ensure "square" also, metal is good.
Today, cabinet sides made of a wood product are Fine, A-OK, not bad at all.

HTH

Thank you so much for the details!
I'm going to forward your advice to my carpenter as this is definitely beyond my scope :) I definitely understand what you are saying, I just won't be able to implement it on my own. I'll try my best to get the carpenter to follow your advice!
In general, I think the advice I've been getting from this website is much more valuable than any one person (my contractor, carpenter or friend) has provided!

Thank you again!!!

I found an error in my explanation.
" .... replace that box with another box...
An upgrade box, made of material that is more suited to being dimensionally stable when H2O gets into it. ...."
This is not quite right.
Although MDF swells, it is one of the best materials for remaining stable in the dimensions you want a box to be stable in (height, depth, width), while plywood warps.
Just FYI.
Perhaps TMI.
I'm sure there is a lot more that other people can add.

Just another $.02. We recently installed an Ikea kitchen after living for 12 years with the particle board kitchen that was there when we bought the house, and we had young kids. Never a problem, and the Ikea boards are thicker than those and hold a screw better. Once the sink and plumbing is installed and checked I'm not sure I understand why water should get in that cabinet--ever!

The stability of the Ikea boxes, I think, depends on their being screwed securely to the walls and to each other--much more so than on the fiberboard backs and particle board sticks on top. I think they are there merely to hold the whole thing in place and square so that they can be installed properly.

Nevertheless I strengthened my 36" sink cabinet with a 34.5" iron rod supplied by Ikea for their 36" 4 drawer cabinet. The cost was just a couple of bucks and very easily done. The quartz counter installer was happy to see that. A 35" sink went in there.

Some people like to build a kitchen that will last 100 years. I think of 20 or so years.

Water gets in because the plumbing breaks. Over time, a drain can crack, faucets or turn off valves need replacement, copper pipes develop pin holes, components can wiggle loose, disposer break or the dishwasher hoses can leak.

Or bottles of cleaning products fall over. I did not expect condensate from ikea's fireclay sink to drip inside of the cabinet, but yet it does if I dump more than a few ice cubes in. Any of these can happen regardless of how well the cabinet is put together or how good your installer was.

Roughly, I expect any maker's assembled cabinet not to wiggle. I think that's a fair expectation. You're thinking that the life span of the cabinets is the warranty period and I agree that I have a different expectation - like I'd be ecstatic if they turned 10...

All particle board isn't the same. Ikea uses pretty terrible particle board and when it gets wet for even a short period, it deforms. When it deforms near an edge, it affects the structure and longevity of the cabinet. This is the area that the fastners are using to hold the cabinet together.

I would expect a sink cabinet to get wet eventually. I would expect a sink cabinet to be attached to only one side because of the dishwasher. I expect drips on the front of the sink cabinet and the occasional inside spill. And now, I expect condensate to occasionally drip inside.

So, what can you do when you're choosing ikea because of the cost - like we needed to?

Try to protect the edges of the bottom, sides and back of the sink cabinet from water. Paint the raw edges of the pieces with a fast drying sanding sealer, followed by a good paint or marine varnish or acrylic coating BEFORE assembly. Assemble when the applied finish is just barely dry to the touch. Repeat the paint job on any cut areas from fitting around pipes.

After construction and cabinet installation, you could try the caulk - might work, couldn't hurt.

Be on guard for interior cabinet spills and use a plastic liner. That way most minor spills or minor drips will have a chance to dry without coming into contact with the cabinet coating.

I have experience with Yorktowne--painted maple (Gold or Platinum line--don't remember). We put them in the kitchen at our previous house, and lived with them for about two years before we moved. Admittedly not a long time to test them out, but we are rather hard on things (two rough kids, big dog, etc.). I was impressed with the cabinets from delivery through use. Zero complaints.

My sister-in-law has Yorktowne white laminate throughout her 12-year-old house, and another friend has Yorktowne cherry cabinets in her 6-year-old kitchen. No complaints from either.

I don't have much IKEA experience. We considered them for our previous remodel but the Yorktowne just felt more substantial and I liked the finishes better. Plus I liked that they were made somewhat locally for us.

We are planning a remodel for the home we're in now, and I'm fairly certain we'll go with Yorktowne again.

Do you think some "contact" paper applied to the bottom and continued up the sides and back would help?
I am also thinking a cookie sheet type tray for the bottom that had a lip would also help contain and small or slow leaks, should they occur.
BTW - while in the planning stages a while back, I bought some alarms that are supposed to warn if there is a leak, that were made for areas that aren't readily visible. You are supposed to use them under your sink and dw, and in the laundry room. They were fairly cheap and could avert a crisis if they work as advertised.

Wow, wonderful suggestions - thank you for all of your feedback!
A friend just mentioned to me that after a long search, she decided to purchase Costco kitchen cabinets. I'm going to create a new post to reflect the subject.
AAAAAhhhhhh, soooo much to consider when choosing a kitchen! Who knew? :)