Could you talk me through the process of planning, buying and fitting an Ikea kitchen?

[bryte]

We've decided to go for an Ikea kitchen and spend the bulk of our budget on worktops, tiles and flooring. It's going to be installed into an extended kitchen, so we won't be ready to fit it until around the end of August. I've so far planned it myself using their kitchen planner, plus we've been in the store to look.

How far in advance of fitting would you suggest we order the kitchen? How does the whole process work? When will they be able to give me an estimate for fitting the kitchen? Is it worth paying to have a kitchen designer go over my plans, or does someone do that when we order it? Do we have to visit the shop to order the kitchen? Do they deliver?

I'm sure the answer to these questions are somewhere on their website but your insight is useful. If someone has answered all these questions in another thread in the past, point me to it please.

We did an IKEA kitchen 2 years ago.

We had someone we know fit it with DH so I couldn't tell you about fitting costs or standard - but from what I hear it's very variable, so if you know anyone who could do it yourself it might be simpler to go with them.

I spent a LOT of time online looking at kitchens and we also went round the room cupboard by cupboard deciding what we needed storage for and where it would all go.

I also posted my design on here and got lots of useful feedback.

I did pay a kitchen designer to draw me up some plans, but after 11 plans, gave up with them, because they couldn't come up with what I wanted. We did the plans ourselves and are very happy with them - there's nothing I'd change except perhaps a bit more under-cupboard lighting.

You can check the stock online at IKEA before you go, I was incredibly lucky and went with a friend on a weekday in July and everything was in stock, we did 2 trips to the car (we have a big car!) and loaded it all up and brought it home that day.

I did have to go back to exchange a couple of doors and to buy some more interior fittings, but didn't do TOO many trips as we are an hour away from our nearest IKEA.

I think you have to visit to order, we went in once with the DH to talk our initial plans through with their designers (go early so you don't have to queue) and to choose which style we wanted.

Then I finalised the plans online and went back, and you go up to counter with your plan, go over it one last time (they made really useful suggestions about number of knobs/handles etc.) with the staff and then they put it all in the system.

Some of the things you have to go round and collect yourself (this takes ages) and others you go to a special counter to collect.

If you do your design online you can already see the list of all the components you need and check the stock yourself.

In the end, if you have to go back for a door, it won't hold up the fitting process (but a whole cupboard would iyswim).

This is what I would do:
Measure kitchen. Go to IKEA, get them to plan kitchen. Take every bit of information/cupboard measurement you can home. Re-plan kitchen whilst actually standing in it. A combination of you being in the room, and the IKEA planners should give you a good result, but I wouldn't rely on just one.

Find a kitchen fitter/general purpose plumber/carpenter (we found ours from a supermarket business card display and saw one he'd done in a house near us). Get them to fit kitchen, together with any electrical work/tiling etc you need, or else you'll have to organise two trades to come in.

Build the cupboard carcasses etc yourself to save time and money if you need to.

This is a great thread, we are planning the same in a couple of years.
I have heard that IKEA kitchens are very good, but to spend our money on good work tops, taps and knobs/ handles.

We bought the tap and the worktop elsewhere but have found their handles fine, but then we are in France and I don't find the choice of handles v. inspiring here, IKEA's were the nicest.

In the UK there is more choice I think.

Oh yes, agreed about getting tap elsewhere. Worktops were fine but I would buy a bit more than you need, and some spare end panels for the cupboards, and if you have a good chippy they should be able to do a really good 'fitted' finish with that.

The inside-cupbaord storage bits from IKEA are excellent, so I would budget plenty of that in.

I am in the process of doing this.

I've been told that 99% of items are there ready for you to take home if you have van etc, otherwise you have to have it delivered (for a cost of upto 75 but they said it's usually less) - I went in on a Monday, had it been ordered there and then it would have been delivered on the Friday.

However, anything which is not a stock item (so their Personlig worktops / upstands / island unit work top) have a lead in time of 4-6 weeks as they're made to order. This is true even if you're having their off the shelf worktops but you're having them personalised somehow (sink cut out etc). My DH is fitting it so I can't help you with that, but would suggest as others have said that you get local recommendations for a joiner / carpenter.

So I agree that you probably need to build in some time for little changes :

1. Take measurements precisely. Use the 3D planner to get an idea of what you want.
2. Make an appointment (there is a central phone number on the website) - we have 2 IKEAs quite local and they don't take weekend appointments at all, the weekends are apparently just spent answering questions / dealing with people who are tweeking quotes. If you want someone to sit with you and check your design then you need a weekday / evening appointment. You can just turn up (I did this last week), they booked me in for a slot 45 minutes later (so you probably will have quite a wait). I'd done a full design and it still took the planner about 1.5hrs to go through it all and to log it onto the system.
3. Once you've done that, you have a 3D design, a complete item list and a quote. I'm at this stage now. Just in the process of checking that we'll have the storage we want, just actually going through it in our existing kitchen to check we've not missed any obstacles / issues etc.
4. We will then have to go back to tweek the quote and then actually order it.

Had an Ikea kitchen fitted this year. Heard bad things about their worktops and sinks: bought our own sink but went with their made to order worktop. It's terrible and we are about to try and get it replaced.
Our last worktop was very cheap and lasted 17 years so I don't think it's us.

We did a kitchen extension last year and installed an Ikea kitchen. I planned it, went into the store, went over the plans with an Ikea person, they were very helpful.

They double checked stuff like how much plinth I needed etc and we ordered through the store because they had an offer on for every £1000 spent you got £100 gift card. We used that gift card of £300 to buy interior fittings such as drawers, cutlery trays, and drawer dividers etc

We had it delivered and about 4 items were missing. Ikea rang me two days later and arranged delivery of the missing items. But we ordered it 4 weeks early and had an independent fitter fit the kitchen.

You need a lot of space to stash it all and it has to be laid flat so it doesn't warp. And it is heavy, we had 2 larder units and my god the frames were horrifically heavy. We re-arranged it all into piles of base units, wall units, doors, interior fittings such as baskets and drawers.

The most important thing is the A4 receipt which tells you the cupboard you bought (numbered on the plan) and what components go with it. We referred back to this quite a lot, like when we were trying to find the filler panel that went under the oven when it was the same size as the drawer fronts.

Am posting a picture of my kitchen, although long and narrow it is amazing and I genuinely skip down it because it makes me happy.

3D planned mine, then ordered in store. Definitely book an appointment as we didn't and had to hang around for ages til a staff member was free. I As other poster said took about an hour for her to check everything was correct. Bought my worktop elsewhere as 6 week wait otherwise. Also bought nicer handles locally. IKEA delivered for £60 I think (22 miles from shop), & our builder fitted it.

Thanks everyone.

If I want the kitchen to be delivered in August, when should I order it?

You can't really order it in advance (apart from worktops), it doesn't work like that.

You'll have to go to the store and get what's in stock and then wait for the rest to come in.

Do you have somewhere to keep all the boxes?

Will it be a major nightmare if you have to wait a couple of times for something to come back into stock?

we've just completed ours. we drew up our own plans booked an appointment and took them in, even with knowing what we wanted we still spent two hours going through everything.
ours was delivered within 3 weeks and I would deffo recommend delivery rather than collection from store. Kitchem deliveries go from their peterborough warehouse and they have a really good method of putting your order together so we had no missing items.

We purchased worktops, tap and handles separately.

Those people who have purchased worktops etc separately (especially if you have the new METOD cabinets). Can I ask where you purchased worktops from separately?

The depth of the IKEA worktops is 63.5cm which I think is due to the fact that the cabinets stick out from the wall slightly further than standard cabinets. The big DIY warehouses (and a couple of independents that I've looked at) just offer 60/61cm depth which wouldn't work.

We're going for stone worktop and it will be cut from a piece that is over 70 something cm wide.

People who have bought other handles - where did you buy them from?

I got mine from worktop express and got breakfast bar size.

for handles I went to catches and latches. ..really cheap but good quality

I ordered mine in January and had it delivered in February - they will offer you the closest delivery date, but you can put them back by a few weeks if you're nice to them. We had no missing items and delivery was 70, which was well worth it to me, compared to hiring a van and lugging it all around myself. I've fitted three now and a utility room, and fricking love them. I also hear good things about the Metod wall hanging system, which is the one thing I find very difficult and scary (to the point where I haven't actually done our wall cupboards yet). I used their solid wood worktops, which are fine and very DIYable if you hire a hard core jigsaw, an electric plane and buy a good drill bit. I planned obsessively, over and over again and we still ended up changing things during the installation (seriously, I had 17 different versions of my kitchen plan). I think fitting cover panels and filler strips is the hardest bit, and if you're not a confident DIYer, then get a joiner to do the worktops and filler panels/cover panels. But the rest of it is just a case of go slow and refer to the notes a lot. I actually rather like their handles, but I bought the taps elsewhere. It's four months later and they're still happily taking back the extra bits we've decided we didn't need, like spare plinth and extra cover panels/hinges/handles.