How IKEA kitchen will drive you crazy (part II)

BACKGROUND: HOW IKEA KITCHEN WILL DRIVE YOU CRAZY (PART I)

The time finally came to install the IKEA kitchen cabinets. As if IKEA did not present its own challenges, I decided to combine two cabinet fronts: VOXTORP (walnut effect) and RINGHULT (high gloss white) which made it even more complex.

According to my contractor, most custom kitchen cabinets already come preassembled. With IKEA, you do the assembly yourself. Duh! I guess, you know that, right? What you may not realize is how long it will to take to assemble all kitchen cabinets. 

If you have any experience with IKEA furniture, you should have an idea how the assembly works. I have put together a lot of IKEA furniture and it generally takes about 1-2 hours to assemble something of average complexity. Now, multiply that time by 20-30 (in my case, it was about 20 cabinets) and that just gives you the assembled cabinets. Then you need to install them.

I have not taken taken any part in the installation effort, so no idea how that worked. One day I came into the house and the kitchen cabinets were there waiting for the countertops and appliances. There were a few setbacks on the way, though. 

SETBACK #1: DECO STRIPS/MOLDINGS

You can use IKEA kitchen cabinets with deco strips/moldings or without them. I think deco strips are a must because they hide undercabinet lighting and whatever you may need to put on top of the cabinets (e.g. lining). But there is a caveat: you can attach moldings to the cabinets via a wide or a narrow side (compare the top and bottom parts of the cabinet in the picture below). 

Deco strip/molding

I wanted the moldings to be attached by the wide side (making them look narrow, like at the top of the cabinet in the picture above). But I did not tell my contractor about that, and since he could not read my mind, he did it the other way. My fault, but it had to be redone.

SETBACK #2: CONNECTING DECO STRIPS

Because I have the tall cabinets in VOXTORP (walnut effect) installed next to  the wall cabinets in RINGHULT (high gloss white), we had to figure out how to join the two colors of deco strips. This time my contractor explicitly asked me about my preference and I said I did not care. Well, once he connected them at 90 degrees, I started to care because it did not quite look right. Connecting them at 45 degrees seemed like it would look better, so strike #2 (my fault again) and that had to be redone, too. 

SETBACK #3: BLACK AND WHITE

Here is something IKEA absolutely should but does not tell you: if you buy dark cabinet faces (any darker color), you will have a problem. You see, in the good-ol' days, IKEA sold both white and dark cabinets. Now all IKEA SEKTION cabinets are white. So if you choose dark-colored doors, like VOXTORP (walnut effect), you will see white coming through.

How do you address this? Basically, there are two options:

1. Use side panels (they extend a bit to the front giving some shade and hiding most of the white), or
2. Install filler pieces flush with the door fronts (essentially, achieving the same effect as side panels).

Option #2 is more wallet friendly, but you need to know how to do this. We did not and ended up with this:

My contractor said that this is how filler pieces normally get installed. Which is true. And fine assuming that filler pieces are the same color as the cabinets (and doors). But it looks bad if they are not. I did not like it.

I considered a number of options from painting the edges of the cabinets to laminating them, but good people at Houzz suggested to add another filler piece (we actually used deco strips instead of fillers) in front of already installed ones to extend them a bit further. Ideally, the filler (deco strip) would be attached to scrap wood (no sense to pay $$$ for fillers that you do not see), but it was too late, so I bought extra deco strips and my contractor glued them to the existing ones making it look a bit better.

I still have the white color looking through in the corner cabinet and through the tall cabinet doors, but I can live with it for now and if it bothers me, I will get to it later.

While on the topic, I just want to mention that some people report succcess using FastEdge Peel-And-Stick Edge Banding, so it may be an option, as well:

SETBACK #4: FILLER PIECES

Because the cut edges of the filler pieces are not perfect, in custom cabinets, they are normally hidden behind moldings or scribes. Unfortunately, IKEA does not sell these (why, IKEA? why?). I'm thinking of buying unpainted pieces at Lowe's along with a stain sample of similar color, painting them and just gluing them in the corners where the filler pieces are attached to the walls (I will post an update if this works or does not work out). It would be nice to get similar pieces in high gloss white (for the RINGHULT fronts), so need to ask around where I can find them.

SETBACK #5: UNDERCABINET LIGHTING

After IKEA discontinued the under-cabinet lighting option I was planning to use, I could not figure out how to do it before the cabinets got installed. Now I know (and I already bought the parts), but this is something I will do later when I have time. I will post about this when I'm done (it took me a while to come up with a cheap and reliable solution and I think it may help someone).

SEE ALSO:

• HOW NOT TO INSTALL AN OVER-THE-RANGE MICROWAVE OVEN

NEXT: A CASE AGAINST IKEA APPLIANCES

PREVIOUS: DRYWALLED

FIRST: INTRODUCTION