Wow! I was so impressed with my cubby idea in my soon to be revealed kitchen. Think I'll slink back down to my bsmt lair. You win. Seriously, I am going to send this to my gc and "see if it is not too late to do this" in my kitchen. If he has a heart attack, do I still owe the last payment? I'd love to see the serious pix of your kitchen as well. I am sure I will love those as much as the great big toy! It is a very pretty kitchen from what I could see of the video ;)

Understand that if you only had Blum to look at, you would be farther ahead. Blum is the source of all things Ikea-ey in terms of Ikea's kitchen base cabinets, the Blum drawers that Ikea sells, and the drawer heights that ARE available to you when you merely install the raw un-doored drawer that you get when you buy an Ikea (Blum) drawer. Drawer fronts are a different animal. The 3 sizes of Ikea drawers are not Blum-determined, Blum-decided, Blum-dictated. They are not Blum-ey. They are an ikea internal marketing committee decision. They are a bad choice for YOU but they are a good choice for the ikea marketing person who has to justify to the rest of ikea what to manufacture ship stock track and promote. If you were "ikea" you would sell a reduced set like this too. Do not buy these sizes. Unless they suit you. Looking in Blum brochures and catalogs you may begin to see images of these OTHER size options you have. Call Blum. See Blum web site. Act as if Blum were the only source. Then, use Ikea as a dumb hardware store that gives dumb advice but has the item you'll buy. In an ikea store, look underneath to see the overhang created when the three ikea standard size drawer fronts get clipped onto the Blum drawer. Then, look at the exact opposite: the aluminum internal drawer front (another ikea option). unixisgoodforyou, it's fine to limit yourself to the 32mm spacing of the predrilled holes on thecabinet side. This spacing corresponds to the spacing that Blum drawers use. ((Again, consult Blum not ikea)). If you wanted to put a batch of the shallowest-possible drawers inside one cabinet, the middle ones would be about 3.5" in height. Call Blum and ask about this; it's not an Ikea question. Whether or not this will mean that your highest one will be 3.5"h or 3.75" or whatever will depend on details that you will see when you purchase a single "rraw" drawer and play with it. Also, it might depend on your countertop, or on the wood bracing inside the cabinet (which I removed, in my case, because the flat steel countertop frame is my cross-bracing). Only Blum is Blum. No ikea employee is ever going to know as much as a Blum employee. Do not think about Ikea. Pretend Ikea does not exist; plan everything as though Blum were the only thing. At the last minute go buy the drawers at Ikea. End of story. Here is an example of an ikea hardware search: rationell+deep = Blum drawers and ikea drawer front (if you want a "front" of that height. http://www.ikea.com/us/en/search/?query=rationell%2Bdeep In the ikea search engine, i used keywords : rationell+deep Here is the SHALLOW internal drawer front. It goes onto any M height Blum drawer (of the Tandembox type) which you might purchase from any other source of M height Tandembox by Blum. http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/40132391 Tandembox is roughly from pages 200 to 350 of the Blum bible. Tandembox drawers come in heights N, M, B, K, etc. It is more efficient to buy one Ikea drawer instead of reading catalogs. There do exist some differences between some of the Blum Tandembox products and the Ikea version of Blum Tandembox. It might be good to know these differences. But it is not important yet. Now you are at the stage where you are planning height(s). There are no differences in terms of drawer heights or slider mechanisms. In the unadorned "raw" drawer. A "raw" drawer purchased at Ikea is a kit containing many Blum parts and no other parts from any other company. Onto a drawer you can attach ANY size drawer front, made by anyone.It could overhang or it could be sized "just right". When you buy the drawer at Ikea, it comes with the attaching clips that will hold a drawer front onto it. It's a kit. When you order Blum parts from any supplier of Blum parts, you can order these clips separately. There are millions of these clips available for free in the "As-Is" section of Ikea because the clips are unnecessary when you attach the internal drawer front. Here is a link that might be useful: SHALLOW internal drawer front that goes onto a Blum M

We just ordered our fronts from Scherr's last week. (Their website is terrible, but I've only heard good things about them, and I've been pleased with dealing with them so far.) You can order a finished sample door from them. If you are considering them, order a sample door right away. That is my only complaint, the samples take a while to receive, especially if you want to see it finished. We are getting a Shaker style door/drawers in soft maple. 19 doors, 19 drawer fronts, cover panels, and deco strips. The total cost is going to be $8000. The unfinished fronts are actually very similar in price to buying doors from Ikea. Finishing the doors in white is going to be $3500+ of the price and shipping/packaging is about $1000 of the price. The lead time right now is about 7 weeks I think. (Again, the finishing is the part that makes things slower and more expensive.) Our finished sample door looked great though, so we are hoping it is worth it.

If you're staining then it's not that big an issue finishing in California. If you're painting then out of state is better. I had very frank conversations with cabinet makers/companies. The honest ones admit that even with the top quality finishing that they can do, you will need to refinish your doors in 5 years if painted. I got stained from Conestoga and it it looks fine. Just ask IKEA for the details on the doors that matches your cabinets. They can print out the door dimensions then copy that. As far as hinges, IKEA put their hinges boring slightly different I think. I'm not sure. I simply had the hinges bored for B cup and use Blum hinges. If you're doing shaker doors, you can get B cup. I used my own dimensions for the custom doors/drawer fronts as I fully customized every single drawer location so I could not use the IKEA measurements.