Has anyone fitted an Ikea kitchen themselves?

[fanjolina]

Due to lots of unforeseen costs we are running over budget with our house renovation. One area we are looking to cut costs on is to fit the Ikea kitchen ourselves, rather than have their fitters or our builders do it.

I know their cabinets can be tricky to get straight due to not having the "channels" in the back. However it is going against a newly constructed - and therefore hopefully straight! - wall.

Has anyone got experience of fitting an Ikea kitchen themselves? How much of a challenge was it? And would you recommend it as a way to save money? (it will save us approx 1000 pounds).

Yes, we have done it ! And I would do it again. We did, admittedly, have help from a friend who is a joiner which was invaluable when we ran into trouble due to the fact that the full height IKEA cabinet could not take the weight of our posh Bosch oven and microwave without bowing, LOL. Not so funny at the time, but with the help of steel brace everything worked fine. This was 8 years ago, and the kitchen is still in use although not by us as we moved in the meantime.

IMO, IKEA kitchens are good value for money, but they are what they are: cheap. You get what you pay for, which for us was perfect at the time. Like you, we had just come out the other side of a house renovation (total rebuild after interior gutting) and money was v tight. It was a great kitchen, not built to last forever, but looked good, worked, was not that difficult to fit.

Depending how advanced your DIY skills are, help from somebody with experience may be a good thing.
It is worthwhile checking out what local kitchen fitters would charge as the IKEA fitters can be disproportionately dear.

We did, easy-peasy. Looks fine as still visit the flat where it is occasionally. Ours was galley style so two runs of units on opposite sides of the room therefore making fitting the worktop very easy - I wouldn't try to fit a corner worktop myself. Invest in a very long spirit-level for the rest of it.

Thanks a lot for your replies. We are fairly competent at DIY, so hopefully we can install it sufficiently well. Also, we are having the worktop measured and made to size and the company are installing it - so opefully that will hide any issues!

My DH fitted an ikea kitchen in our last flat. Wasn't too hard.

Dh fitted ours and planned how the kitchen would be. It took him a long time but was worth it as the entire kitchen units cost £1200 and fitted into our car so we bought it in one trip to Ikea.

An architect we know said if you can't afford a decent fitted kitchen get a free standing one from Ikea as they are actually pretty good quality, better than a cheap fitted kitchen which can look shoddy.

DH has fitted 2 Ikea kitchen in places we've lived in previously. It was really straightforward we just paid a carpenter to fit the worktop at the end to ensure a great finish and to save any problems with cutting the holes for the sink, hob etc. As they fit flush to the walls, what we did with the 2nd kitchen was order the slightly wider worktop which meant the cabinets could be positioned away from the wall leaving space for all the wiring and pipes but it depends how much floor space you have. Would definitely fit another one. Good luck.

Are you getting an Ikea sink too? If you are, you'll need to bear in mind that the sizing of the plumming is different. We found out (rather late in the day) that you need special fittings for the existing pipes to make them compatable with the metric measurements of the Ikea sink.

Other than that though, it was fine. Was a lot less than £1000 worth of stress, so I reckon you should go for it.

kitchen fitting is not as hard as it looks, we've had one fitted by dh, and one fitted by a supposed professional fitter, dh's was far better!

ikea kitchens are no harder to fit than any other cabinets. all our pipework is at skirting level to allow the units to go flush to the wall.

Thanks for all your feedback. We will definitely fit it ourselves to save money. We are not getting an Ikea sink - and it was a good tip to fit the units a bit out from the wall, as we can get our worktop cut to size around them.

Oh, am please now. Finally we are able to save money somewhere on our budget!!

We fitted an ikea kitchen ourselves and it took a bit of working out (how to deal with our bumpy sloping floor for one thing). You may already know this but if you buy an Ikea sink the plumbing supplied with it is not compatible with UK standard sizes (at least it wasn't when we put one in our previous flat 8 years ago).

Opps, sorry, missed that bit.