We're building a new house ("Oh, wonderful!" - "Oh, what a nightmare!"). We haven't absolutely finalized much yet; we have a floor plan that we're mostly happy with, but could still be tweaked based on exact layouts for kitchen and other areas, but in part that depends on which cabinets we go with.

I really love Ikea -- in theory. I love the efficiency, functionality, flexibility; the ability to add or update parts & fittings; the general hack-ability; and for much of their stuff, I even like the esthetics -- or the ease of making it look better -- though I admit the kitchen cabinets have only a very few doors/drawers I'd even consider. But hey, you can go third party for that! Or even go cheap, and get better later!

But to be sure the real-life experience lived up to the in-theory, we got one base cabinet and one wall cabinet to put in our current kitchen (where the portable dishwasher was before it died). And I like everything okay, or can fix it to be okay (deep drawers without solid sides? yikes!), except the smell.

We've had the cabinets installed for just about a year now, and while the base one seems okay, the wall cabinet still has a distinct odor of MDF (wood-chemical-ish), to the point where I smell it every time I open the cabinet door and we can't keep saltines or cereal in that cabinet without them absorbing the smell & tasting off/stale pretty quickly. I've even put some of those charcoal-odor-absorber things in there, and it hasn't helped. And while I'm particularly sensitive to smells and chemicals (asthma), even my husband has noticed this and isn't thrilled.

Needless to say, this is making me re-think Ikea.

Has anyone else had similar experience? Or done a kitchen in the past year, and can tell me if this is common or anomalous?

We used the white cabinet carcasses and the really cheap (HÄGGEBY) doors for our test -- either could be the culprit, and while I'd think it must be the carcass since it has so much naked MDF inside all the drill holes, I don't remember noticing it for the first month before we got back to Ikea to get the correct size doors. Since the doors I'd really like are the Ringhult, but that strains the budget, we might end up with HÄGGEBY as a second choice at least for a couple of years -- so anyone with experience of either of these is especially valuable.

I'm also concerned about this in the PAX wardrobes that we'd planned instead of closets -- I HATE inaccessible / inefficient closet space, and not only do the PAX have no return walls / inaccessible corners, and no thick 2x4 stud walls wasting space, but the carcasses ARE the basis for your closet organizer so you don't have to buy more interior-wall-stuff for your closet. But now I'm wondering about smell in those -- very bad to have smelly clothes, and very bad to have poor indoor air quality where you sleep. Any experiences?

-- Harriet