Aaaargh I hate the IKEA kitchen planner with the fiery passion of a thousand suns!

[shovetheholly]

It took me 30 minutes just to log in. I now have three washing machines which refuse to move or to be deleted. I am unable to find corner cupboards that can also fit a sink.

Now losing the will to live. Has anyone managed to use this successfully?!? Is it better just to pay someone else to do it?

[mandy214]

I think it can depend on your computer and the software you have. I found doing it at work was so much easier than trying to do it on my laptop at home. I did have occasion to stop myself throwing the laptop out of the window on quite a few evenings.

Also, some IKEA stores have terminals you can use which are an absolute dream to use if you can bring yourself to visit a store ! If you can go in the day, in the week, you might not lose the will to live !

[Walnutpie]

They charge 50 quid to send someone round to your house. I'm thinking it would be worth it, if said person accurately measures and sits down with you with the planner and draws it up for you.

[Lollipopgirl8]

Plus I think the 50 pounds comes off the price if you order.. Every little helps

[shovetheholly]

mandy - thank you! I don't mind spending an evening going to a store when it's quiet and trying that out.

walnut - a person coming to my house would be amazing! Has anyone used this service? Is it any good?

This is a really basic question, but please bear with me because I have never done a kitchen before. Can you get people who do kitchen designing but not fitting, who would not be from Ikea? Would there be advantages in having someone like that over the Ikea rep? Is it expensive?

[Walnutpie]

Habitat come out too and do a free design consultation. Obviously bearing in mind only their own units.

But I hear that actually getting a kitchen designer is where you get the genuinely creative ideas from, things you hadn't thought of. Idk how much they cost, I wondered too.

I also wondered about uploading a plan onto Houzz and asking for design ideas.

[starsinyourpies]

Also to get ideas go to a fancy place that has units of the same width as ikea and get them to do you a layout, then steal the ideas and buy cheaper kitchen. This radically improved our kitchen plan!

[Walnutpie]

What fancy place did you use, stars?

[shovetheholly]

YYY stars - I would love to know too. That is one smart thinkin' plan!

[mandy214]

There is a MNetter on here who designs kitchens too - can't remember her name off the top of my head but if you look back through some of the kitchen layout or kitchen design threads, she might be there!

[VeryPunny]

We planned our IKEA kitchen using their online tool thingy. It was a bit of a mare at times, but the beefier your computer, the easier it is.

However, the in store planning people were brilliant - we turned up with our plan pretty much done, but we saw loads of other people turn up with pretty much just the measurements and the planner walked them through it.

[OnePlanOnHouzz]

I think you might mean me ?!

[Lambzig]

I share your pain, I spent four or five hours on Saturday swearing at the planner. Its also really difficult to change handles etc afterwards and I am stuffed if I can find whatever mechanism you can use to lose the drawer handles.

It was all done and now my builder tells me that they changed a couple of the measurements of the pillars which means that I need to redo the flipping thing.

[mandy214]

I did OnePlan Sorry I forgot your name

[OnePlanOnHouzz]

No worries ! thanks for the shout !

[MsSampson]

I couldn't get it to work on Internet Explorer. I think it worked marginally better on Firefox, but yes, it's not particularly user friendly, and I feel your plan!

Isn't there some generic US based software that allows you to do room planning? Not sure it would work for fitted kitchens mind you.

[MsSampson]

Feel your pain...

[MsSampson]

Sketch Up, that's what I was thinking of. Have read about it on several blogs, but never used it.

[BovrilonToast]

I nearly posted this exact thing yesterday. It's driving me crazy. I need a kitchen planner.

[didireallysaythat]

I hate the ikea kitchen planner with a passion that burns deep inside. It is the work of the devil. But faced with the alternative being the 2 hours drive to ikea on a Saturday morning with two kids and a disinterested dh, I may have to suck it up. Baa humbug.

[BovrilonToast]

Does anyone know if you can get the ikea planners to come to you without going in to a store to arrange it?

[Walnutpie]

Bovril I'm currently organising it online. On their kitchen pages there's a ' if you'd like a visit click here' link, which leads to contact, and they've just sent me an online form to fill in, with my deets for them to prepare for their visit.

[shovetheholly]

I am soooo glad I'm no the only one. I am going to get someone to come to my house and do it for me, because otherwise I will have to buy a new computer, as I am almost certainly going to throw the current one through the window in a rage.

[BovrilonToast]

Brilliant Walnut- I've been searching for that everywhere!

[TheUnwillingNarcheska]

shove are you near an Ikea? Have you an idea of the type of units you want?

I had one fitted 2 years ago (old Faktum kitchen not Metod) and had larder base units so I can access stuff at the back of the cupboard easily.

[ChishandFips33]

We had the £50 guy out (arranged over the phone) - worth every penny! Offered advice on all sorts of things :-)

We then went in store and tweaked the final design (those guys were priceless too!) it was printed and sent to the warehouse to be picked - we were much more confident that all the 'unseen' things had been accounted for like filler panels etc than if we'd done it ourselves

An overall great experience - would do it again