IKEA ......kitchens?

[triplets]

Hi.........am wanting to update my old pine kitchen. Went to Wickes today and was shocked at the cost of quote! With installation it came out at almost £9000, it is not a huge kitchen! My lovely best friend who lives 100s miles away has told me to look at IKEA kitchens, she has an Ikea kitchen which they fitted themselves. We cant do that as my dh has cancer. The prices look amazing, my nearest store is 2 hours away, so am very interested as £9000 is way out of budget. Are IKEA as good as I`m told? Would love to hear from you if you have experience of using Ikea please. Thank you.

Mixed views.

I have an ikea kitchen. It was a bargain to buy (although we had our own builders in to fit it). Seems good quality, relatively easy to fit, had an independent granite fitter put our work surface on top. I love the fact that I can just buy a whole load of new doors and change the look of my kitchen.

Their pick and select service is dreadful though, waste of £15. And they had a lot of things out of stock so we had to keep going back to get them, annoyingly.

It was very happy with the nice guy from Wickes, liked the product. Its just the price! I am abit wary about trying to design and organize it ourselves. Just wish the Ikea store was nearer so I could see their units, really can`t tell from the website. Thanks for your reply :)

Try a local kitchen store as well as Ikea.

Our ikea kitchen is bejng delivered today. I'll let you known how it is in a few weeks time when the builders (our own) have made it.

Good luck Judy, did you buy a complete kitchen or just the carcass?

It's the whole thing, although some appliances are from eBay. The process includes knocking down half a wall.

We have a baby and a preschooler. And a dog. I've just gone back to work. Terrified!

We had an IKEA kitchen in 2003 and it's fine - solid and still going well with no problems. The fully extending drawers are excellent quality. We did have ours fitted by a great joiner, which probably helps. The doors are easy to change, though - you can do it yourself honestly.

Spend the money on the interior fittings: drawer dividers, plinth drawers, larder cab - it really makes the difference.

I had an Ikea kitchen fitted a couple of months ago and we love it

We have grey gloss doors and some white gloss doors. We went with Ikea because the internal fixtures and fittings were a bargain compared to other companies (I trawled them all, B&Q, Wickes, Homebase, independents etc)

I have pull out larder cupboards for base cabinets meaning I don't have to try and get something out from the back of the cupboard over stuff at the front. I have dividers in the drawers for plates/bowls etc, their cutlery trays are a few quid and fit perfectly.

The only thing is, my Ikea is 2 minutes down the road and I am good at research. Even though I have planned kitchens in the past, I ran through my design with the Ikea kitchen person in the store, and we ordered it through the store as they give you £100 gift card for every £1k you spend. So we got £300 and used this to cover internal fittings.

I didn't get everything from Ikea, I got their cabinets and their extractor as it was built in. The sink, tap, worktops, dishwasher fridge freezer, oven, hob, built in microwave, instant hot water tap etc were all bought elsewhere, I just checked the dimensions on Ikea's appliances and bought Whirlpool equivalents as I wanted a streamlined no buttons protruding kitchen.

My kitchen is 6m long and only 2.5m wide, so we put units down one long wall, across the bottom and have some horizontal wall cabinets on the other long side above a breakfast bar. The total cost from Ikea was £3500. Kitchen fitter charged me £1500 and the appliances range from a cheapy £250 Beko integrated dishwasher to £850 induction hob

We spent money where we wanted to. The only thing I would say is the white gloss shows every join, so if you have that deco strip under your cabinets it will show a line where they go round the corner etc. The grey gloss doesn't show it.

Personally if Ikea was that far away for me I would be looking to spend a day there talking to the kitchen staff. You can plan your kitchen in store on their computers and they can help you.

We had our kitchen ordered and delivered, there were about 5 items missing, they were noticed by the staff (all scanned as it goes onto the truck and as it comes off) those missing items were delivered 4 days later.

Maybe there's flexibility on the Wickes price because all in all that'd be less hassle with your husband being so unwell.

Or look for an ex display.

In my last house I had an Ikea Adel kitchen that I fitted myself (with my handy brother). I loved it, designed it at home and then went in to order it. My brother did the awkward bits but if you had a builder you trusted, I don't think it takes too long to fit a kitchen. It took us about three weeks because I had to completely gut and replaster our old kitchen and could only work in the evenings and weekends.

We're putting a white gloss kitchen into the new house (with some grey gloss units too). I don't like deco strip anyway, and I'm deffs not going to use it now. Going to have a wall of floor to ceiling cupboards instead...

I've had two, current and previous house. Big thing I noticed in current house (much smaller) is that they don't allow space at the back of cupboards for pipes and wiring. First house, I had space for extra deep work tops so units were set off the wall. Not a problem there.

Quality is good enough. This one is 5 years old and doesn't look it. Easy to replace the odd shelf that has got water damaged by a leaky sink

Excellent for silent door and drawer stoppers. Well worth the few pounds extra. I also have oven and hob. All fine

HTH

Well all looking very positive, thank you :)
I do need it to be quick and stress free.
I have three quotes coming this w/end from three recommended local fitters, that will help me make up my mind where I go from there.
Thanks everyone

Oh yes, remember to get your utilities run at floor level or have bigger work tops so you can run pipes behind the units.

Love my ikea kitchen : picture on my profile

the utilities / worktops story is bilge put about by lazy fitters

basically plumbing pipes need to run below plinth height and then up into the right units : and competent kitchen fitter will cope : if they do not, pick another one

design the whole thing online - down to the drawer fittings
and get it delivered

all my appliances came from Southern domestics in Woolston (graded stock)
sinks and taps were ikea
worktops were from a specialist bamboo supplier

Fabulous kitchen! What is bamboo worktops?

I think if you order your kitchen for home delivery then they will wait until the order is complete (if you ask them to ) before they deliver - so (in theory) it should all come in one delivery... Especially as you are 2 hours away ! I have planned loads of ikea kitchens for people and not heard any complaints about the product, I have some ikea tall kitchen cabinets in a bedroom (as wardobes) that I fitted myself and they are pretty good !
The price for installation could be reduced if you assembled the carcasses yourselves ( if you felt up to it ) can be quite fun ?!
The main daunting thing is that to make just one complete cabinet there seems to be so many boxes - so for a complete kitchen you can imagine !! There's hundreds of boxes !! So a good fitter is really worth it !!!
:-)

I was quite lucky in that I have an Ikea just down the road, so I bought my last kitchen in bits and pieces, which made it less terrifying! Quite a bit of mine came from bargain corner too as they were selling off drawers one week!

Re utilities and no service gap behind Ikea cabinets, I would rather have the deeper cabinets.

As the entire kitchen was gutted anyway and we had full access to the walls it is hardly difficult to move pipework especially with plastic push fit plumbing pipes.

The back and base of the sink cabinet is half gone to allow you to route pipework in.

I have 2 tall larder units, one with individual pull out drawers and the other houses a built in microwave. Between these larder units I have an american fridge freezer. I turned a 92cm high wall cabinet on its side to fit over the american style fridge freezer.

I flipping love my kitchen.

Uploaded pics onto my profile page so you should be able to see it.

Oh pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease come and do mine, it is fabulous! So far I can`t find a fitter that's interested. Going to Howdens tomorrow to look at their kitchens, its trade only though.

We are all a very helpful lot on here, if you give us your kitchen plan by wickes we can all have a tinker with it

If you put the dimensions on I am sure I can Ikea it for you.

Mine was a kitchen extension so I had planned it for 3 years but actually cracked on with researching it for about a year. That was every component part of it and could I find it cheaper elsewhere, making sure all the finishes matched, ie matching the tap with the sink etc.

I actually love doing the research side, I am a SAHM with 2 children in school so I have a lot of time on my hands.

Ikea have a new kitchen range coming out in the Uk in feb (if you look at the Denmark website they are already selling it) They will be dicontinuing the current styles but you can still get replacements for the next two years...this does mean they are more likely to have massive sales in the next coming months.

I was going to suggest Howdens but I see you are going there anyway.

If you have a fitter/carpenter/builder in mind they can get a price for you as, like you said, its trade only.

DP said they will come in cheaper than Wickes.

Triplets
www.worktop-express.co.uk/wood_worktops/bamboo_worktops.html