Hi I have just had the grey bodbyn fitted! It's a tiny dark kitchen that looks on to an old yard. We may move from this house in a couple of years, but kitchen had damp issues and thought we may as well redo now and get the use of it. The fact that it's not our 'forever home' led us to choose all Ikea appliances, oven etc, despite having heard rumblings about the oven not being the greatest. But we did want to do a good job all the same. Honestly, maybe it's because our one was half broken, but oven and hob are fantastic. I am really pleased with all the door knobs and so on, and the benefit is that it does all match in a sleek way.
I would REALLY recommend the home visit from a designer. It's refundable, so if you're definitely going to get a kitchen from there, there's nothing to lose. But obviously they are not as invested as you are in your own kitchen, so what seemed to work well for us was 1) planning what we wanted 2) getting kitchen planner out to ensure it would all work 3) went to ikea and a woman there went through it all with me and did add a small amount of inexpensive improvements. Dishwasher (we have the narrow one, but we didn't have one at all before!) is very good, better than the old bosch we had in previous house.
I was dying to get either patterned floor tiles or terracotta floor tiles (fired earth hexagonal ones) which I think would look lovely with this kitchen (after much pinterest perving) but they are expensive to buy, to fit and seal, plus the thought of having anything that likes to absorb water in this dampish room scared me, so we got very cheap topps tiles ceramic ones - clays cotto - and laid them on the diagonal. It looks surprisingly good, I have had a lot of praise for them from visitors which surprised me slightly.
Def go for the under cupboard lighting on upper cupboards. We also have the glass fronted unit - got the lighting in there, looks fab. Again since we are leaving soonish we got - sorry - very boring cream metro tiles for splash back as quite blah and neutral and cheap but would have loved something like fired earth bahia or menara. However, again they look great.
Shocked how great the new kitchen is - like you, so used to 'making do'. It would really influence me to get an ikea kitchen even in my dream house, though perhaps with naice appliances/tiles/worktops etc.