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IKEA/Scherrs toe kick question

8 years ago

For those of you who did or are considering doing IKEA cabinets with custom painted doors/fronts (e.g. Semihandmade, Scherr's), what are you doing for toe kick? IKEA's toe kick is now all plastic, so can't paint well.

What to do? Leave the leg levelers bare? Buy some lumber or plywood strips and paint them? What size?Adding quarter round or cove base?

Featured Answer

Lisa

8 years ago

Yes, you can get toe kicks, side panels, deco strips, etc. from Scherr's. We are not getting toe kicks from them, because we are thinking they will be easy enough to do ourselves.

Comments (15)

andreepostel
8 years ago
what did you end up doing with your toe kicks?
red_argyle
Original Author
8 years ago
last modified: 8 years ago
I ended up going to a lumber yard to buy 5.5"-tall pieces of poplar (3/8" thick and 12' long) and will have to scribe them down to use as the toekick (will just have to be super-careful about not damaging the varnish finish when cutting, but that was going to be true for all the oversized panels and filler pieces anyway). Haven't decided if we'll try to build some L brackets to attach the toekick, or use the IKEA plastic toekick and try to glue the wood on the front of them.
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Mine was initially left without - just piece of black metal down there. I asked the carpenter who was doing the cabinet installation about it and he made a piece for it and attached with velcro. He had to adjust it slightly after installation because the door kind of hit the toe kick piece when you opened the DW and dislodged it a bit. Once that was done it's been fine and in place for nearly five years now.
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Mindy- just doing my kitchen (2021) & thought of doing stainless at base of island. Found your post - what did you end up doing & if SS using? I am like you - don't want scratches showing, cheap look etc. I need 11 foot long x 4 1/2 inches tall. Not finding anything that long, so concerned about the sight of a seam where the 2 pieces meet, also need to bend at corner on both ends of island. Found some stick on & they will send sample. Ikea nothing, & will check the SS tornado listed above. Thanks!
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I don't care HOW it looks, kitchens without recessed toe kicks are a royal pain in the back. I'm serious. I'm 5' 2" and have LONG arms for my height and I ALWAYS run up against the toe kicks if they're flush. I would have to rip those puppies out and do it right. I actually cook in my kitchen. There is absolutely no reason why having "flush" toe kicks would "allow" you to have deeper drawers. The cabinets are the exact same size regardless. I have 15" deep drawers in my standard 24" cabinets - for whatever bizarre reason. They just cheaped out on the drawers for some odd reason. They are made of good quality hardwood and they still slide utterly smoothly on their all-wood tracks. I doubt I could even get that quality of hardwood any more to even consider making new drawers though I was thinking about it hard last night, LOL! At any rate if someone got "deeper drawers", you just got deeper drawers. Either that, or someone got deeper cabinets that allowed deeper drawers. Toe kicks set-in or flush had nothing to do with it. Ikea does it because their current crop of cabinets are hideous and cheap and USian humans don't much like the legs they like to use in the EU instead of toe kicks. So the toe kicks are either set further out to clear the legs behind them, or they have to do that so you don't see whatever RubeGoldbergian devices they have to use to support the MDF cabinet bottoms. Personally if there is space under my cabinets (which there is, under all cabinets) I want to be able to run a dust mop under there and I'd rather the legs, but whatever. The thought of years of dustbunnies building up under there is shuddersome. I'm replacing the bottoms of the extremely well built solid oak built-ins in my 60 yo home and the filth under there is frightening. But one way or another, flush toe kicks are extremely inconvenient when you actually are trying to do real work in front of them.
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sheloveslayouts
8 years ago
red - I remember your kitchen. Please post an update and your experience with Ikea. We'd love to see and learn from your experience.
red_argyle
Original Author
8 years ago
hey benjesbridge!

yes, i will for sure. it's definitely been a learning experience :-)

i really appreciate you and others who have provided ideas and input.
S Hill
8 years ago
I'm planning to do a couple hidden toekick drawers. Great idea for cookie sheets, etc! http://www.instructables.com/id/Ikea-kitchen-toekick-drawer/
dcustode
8 years ago
I thought these companies provided toe kicks and side panels too. I'm pretty sure semi handmade does.
PRO
Springer Boyd
6 years ago
Interested. How did this turn out? As I recall, the ikea clips just fit into a kerf in the toe kick, no?
S Hill
6 years ago
I ended up using IKEA toe kicks for my white cabinets ( scherr fronts) ... you really can't tell and the IKEA ones are so simple to install. My island as it is on a wooden base frame we used wood trim pieces from Home Depot.
Lisa
6 years ago
We did the same as S Half. We were going to buy wooden toe kicks and paint them and install ourselves, but decided to try an Ikea toe kick first. It looked fine and was so much easier to install by clipping them on to the legs.

Our floor was extremely uneven and we had to trim them a bit but it was still much less work than making them ourselves. And it was cheaper than ordering from Scherr's.

The color is not a 100% perfect match but because of shadows/light you would never notice the difference.
PRO
Springer Boyd
6 years ago
I am doing a custom front for IKEA (not through any company that does this) but doing it myself through my own door mfr.) The colours are too different to use IKEA stuff, however I'm inclined to use their clip system and paint their toe, or pin / glue my painted toe to the surface.
S Hill
6 years ago
There are some plastic primers that allow you to paint plastics with regular paint. I bet you could use those to paint the ikea toe kicks. The ikea toe kicks are stupid easy to install. If your custom fronts are similar in color to the ikea toe kicks, you probably won't even need to do that as they are pretty obscured by shadow. I used the white and side by side they don't match my cabinets but installed you would never know.
PRO
Springer Boyd
6 years ago
Thanks. That's how we painted the cab faces. I might just do that.
drmagda
5 years ago
What did you do? I have my cabinets somewhat higher than the normal standard (0.5") and the island is blue.....So I cannot use the IKEA ones..
red_argyle
Original Author
2 years ago
Hi drmagda,

So this is very late for an answer but in case it's useful to you/others: we glued the painted wood to the ikea plastic toekick with a heavy-duty adhesive, then clipped them on to the cabinet legs, and it worked out quite well!

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