Is this an IKEA kitchen? Which one is it? I get asked this a lot. The answer is “yes” and “no”. Everything that you see is either bespoke or purchased seperately. What’s underneath is IKEA. The entire kitchen is built on IKEA carcasses, which makes it incredibly flexible and also helps to save the pennies too. I decided to write this blog post to share with you how we designed and created our kitchen, and how much it cost (the kitchen only – not the build) to help you decide if you want to do something similar.
Before we started our house renovation and kitchen extension I actually hadn’t given the kitchen much thought. Which is odd considering it is so important. Instead I was focused on getting our plans for the extension off the ground and finding a good builder. What I did have were two requirements for the kitchen – it needed to be modern and it needed to be black.
It was during the first meeting with our builder when we were scoping up the project who suggested using IKEA carcasses and building a bespoke kitchen around that. And, that is exactly what we did with the carcasses coming from IKEA, the door and drawers created by our builder’s joiner, the appliances from AO and the worktop from Rock and Co. To be honest I was a little nervous at first about doing it this way – getting the carcasses from one place, the doors from our builder, the worktop from somewhere else, and all the appliances from another retailer. But with careful planning it’s fine, and here’s how we did it…..
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Once we had the plans back from our architect we knew where the kitchen would be positioned in the room, we knew roughly how much space we had for the island, and roughly where the appliances would be located. All of this helps to determine the kitchen layout, give or take a few changes and measurements. Do bear in mind that when doing a kitchen extension you are essentially working with a blank canvas or something that doesn’t actually exist yet so there are likely to be changes as the build progresses.
Our next step was to take the architects plans and turn them into a kitchen plan. We headed off to IKEA who created a plan for us based on IKEA supplying the entire kitchen including appliances and doors fronts (which is how they work during the planning stage). I think that they thought I was a bit mad when I explained we would only be buying the carcasses and the rest we would sort out ourserlves. But that’s ok, the beauty of IKEA is that you only buy the bits you need.
The side wall of the existing kitchen and the kitchen extension is where the main kitchen units are located, and we have a run of eight units here. Each unit is a standard 600mm wide and we were lucky to just about squeeze in the eight units that I wanted. This is made up of the following…
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The total height of the kitchen extension is 2560mm and I wanted the kitchen units to run as close to the ceiling as possible. From the plan we knew that we needed tall units and IKEA supply tall units in either 2000mm or 2200mm high, which didn’t quite work alone for our ceiling height. To get around this we opted for the METOD 2000mm tall cupboards and placed the METOD 400mm cupboards on top. The kitchen is tall, and I can’t really reach the very top cupboards, but it needed to be this tall to work and fill the height of the extension.
The IKEA Metod system is really flexible, so don’t be afraid to think slightly outside the box and consider stacking the METOD carcasses to create the extra height should you need it.
One of things to consider is that IKEA cupboards do not have a service void, but personally I didn’t find this to be a problem. This is because the back of the cupboards have slot for the pipes to run out and then these ran underneath the carcasses. We also have a void of 400mm deep behind the walled kitchen area which became known as the “Brexit” cupboard during the build, and I think that this space helps with the pipework etc. In fact a lot of our services in general run inside this gap. The only cupboard that our builders had to hack into was the boiler cupboard to fit around all the pipework and the underfloor heating manifold, it is slightly messy, but it’s a boiler cupboard that we are not looking inside every single day so I’m ok with it.
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The size and positioning of the kitchen island was one of those decisions that I took a long time over, it had to be right. I wanted it to be as big as possible but also not to be overpowering for the space, allowing us to have room for a dining table the other side. Working this out with a shell of a room was really tricky, so my advice here would be to mark it out on the floor with chalk. I wanted the island to be 1200mm wide and 2400mm long, but I also needed 1000mm for the gap between the island and the opposite units, and then 2500mm the other side for a table. Luckily we just about have this space available so we went for a 1200mm x 2460mm kitchen island in the end.
All the door, drawer fronts and red wine rack were bespoke made by our builder’s joiner as part of our entire project. Each one is professionally sprayed MDF in a colour match of Farrow and Ball Off Black, with 20% sheen, and they are really nice doors, although I am slave to keeping them clean.
We pretty much had free reign of what the doors looked like and I really wanted a simple door, ideally handleless on push catches, to create a clean and simple lined look. We did have to compromise on the doors to the appliances that needed a cut out handle due to weight of the door, and we were advised to have a cut-out handle on the larder cupboard door due to its size and it needed to be opened all the time.
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The island drawers have J groove handles running full width of the drawer, again creating a clean and simple look to the island unit.
One of the best things about IKEA METOD kitchens are all of the storage options that are available once the kitchen is fitted. The storage options are not something that you add to your overall kitchen order, instead these are items that you pick yourself from the showroom or the warehouse.
To decide on what we needed for the drawers I first worked out what each drawer would be used for. Here’s what we have in the island….
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As you know anything that you buy from IKEA arrives in flatpack boxes, so be prepared for hundreds of boxes to arrive and so much cardboard! We must have had about 200 boxes turn up, plus thousands of other bits like hinges and drawer runners, and I still have loads of these left over. Because we were living at home during our renovation obviously space was really tight so it was a matter of ordering the kitchen only when we needed it delivering. The delivery only took about 5 working days from order which is great.
I also had to think about the appliances and making sure that these arrived pretty much at the same time as well. All of our appliances came from AO, making it really easy to set the delivery date.
Our builders put together all the carcasses and installed them into the kitchen. My one tip here is to make sure that they have the plan, talk them through the plan, give them the order list from IKEA so that they can check what is what and where it is going. Also make sure that you check the delivery yourself against the original order list. Sounds simple, but when there are hundreds of boxes and a building site, it can get quite complex.
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I’m guessing that this is the bit that you’ve been waiting for or the part that you’ve scrolled down to find. Here’s a breakdown of what we spent on the kitchen. These costs are JUST FOR THE KITCHEN, and do not include any costs for the extension, flooring, bi-fold doors, lighting etc….
On top this there was the installation cost which was wrapped up in our extension cost, but I think that it was about £2, 000.00. The overall cost of the kitchen could have been cheaper by choosing a different worktop and cheaper appliances, or going with a different kitchen supplier, or it could have been more expensive. It’s totally up to you how much you want to spend and what you want to have in your kitchen. We wanted
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