Not Terribly Happy with Ikea - Updated.

tesuhoha

mignon wrote: »

You run the plinth [which runs all the way along the bottom of the cabs] round the side, or did I misunderstand?



I can understand WHY the kitchen planner suggested this, but it is silly, for one, it's a huge waste of money, and two, it will leave a gap between the two cabinets, ideally you wouldn't do this.



We fitted our own Ikea Kitchen after discovering most fitters hate them, but honestly, having never done it before, it was a total doddle and looks great, much better than my brothers kitchen which was fully designed planned and fitted by one company. The control you get is great, and the finished product is brilliant. There seems to have been bad advice from the kitchen planner on this one which is a real shame. As I mentioned, I would've used end panels trimmed down, therefore using less and not having to put them between each cabinet.

Right, if you look at the drawing done by keystone (the 2nd one is correct) you will see where the extractor fan is going to go. We are having a chimney extractor so that area will not be as it is in keystone's drawing but will be open hence the need for end panels on the inside of the top units. Therefore in order for it all to line up it is necessary to put the panels each side of the oven housing unit. My husband has actually cut one in half and used it for each side because we will only see the front of it. This has already been done and does not look odd.

I am not sure what else you mean about cutting them but we need them to go from top to bottom of the tall units to cover the walls of the opening and they need line up correctly. The kitchen island will have no panels. As for not using them in proper kitchen showrooms, we have seen one displayed with panels in Ikea, Lakeside due to a similar kitchen arrangement to ours.

tesuhoha

Oh and you are right about the plinth. the panels line up with the unit and then there are legs underneath which will be covered by plinth.

mignon_2

ok, so if the top units are open, you will need the cover panels there (this is similar to my kitchen,but I have a range cooker between the two lower cabs so no need to connect them)

I meant on the long cabinets (tall) do the panels go top to bottom there? If it is done now there is no point in worrying about it, but I was surprised...I found that if you follow their instructions to a Tee (and don't deviate at all!!) it works really well.

keystone

OK lets try and clear this up once and for all as regards the Ikea product primarily for tlh858.

Ikea decor panels are no more than 10/12mm thick. For the sake of argument lets say they are 12. The design is that they screw to the outside of the carcass.

So, going back to my pic, the RHS tall cab has to have a decor panel on its LH side so that there is no exposed carcass between the wall cab and the worktop. The decor panels for the tall cab are sized to go top to bottom of the cab excluding the feet.

Now the OP fits a 600 wall cab against the tall cabs decor panel and a 600 base against it too. The wall cab also has to have a decor panel on its LHS because of the gap into which the chimney will be installed.

The wall cab to the left of the chimney also requires a decor panel again so that the carcass is covered. The chimney is a nats under 600mm so the gap between the physical edges of the two wall cabs is 600mm plus two decor - for the sake of argument lets say thats 624mm.

If the oven housing is installed butted up to the RH 600 base unit it will not now be central under the chimney by a factor of one decor panel. If its done that way and the second base unit is installed butted up to the oven housing there will be a gap between it and the LH tall cabinet equivalent to 2 decor panels.

If, however, the LH base unit is butted up to the LH tall cab you will be left with trying to fit a 600 oven housing into a 624mm space so there will be a 12mm gap either side of the oven housing when its central under the chimney.

You know as well as I that the installation should line up top to bottom so that doors align with doors and cabs with cabs.

The only way to deal with these gaps, as I have already suggested, is to cut a wall cab decor panel in half lengthways (paying for one panel not two) and fit these between the oven housing and the base cabs either side.

Hope that clears it up.

Cheers

tesuhoha

With regard to your last paragraph that is exactly what he has done. Its all fitted now minus the doors and he's working on the island. The chimney extractor fits a treat..

Will try to post a photo once finished in a few weeks time. (We will have to wait for the work surface to be delivered)

mignon_2

Good luck! I hope you enjoy when its all done!

jamja

Our kitchen is the same as the diagram posted, but with a tall unit on one side only, and base units and a sink continuing on the other. Because it was asymmetric we missed out the decor panels around the oven but we do have then on the cupboards around the extractor fan and on the tall unit. Yes, we are off by 24ish mm, but its okay, If we had tall units on both sides we would have had to put in panels around the oven I suppose. We found our kitchen fine to install despite having very uneven walls. The unlevel floor cause a bit of concern as we had the ajustable legs completely up at one end of the run of cupboards and completely down at the other, and achieved a visually acceptable but far from level worktop. If it was truely level it would look odd as nothing else in the room is!!!

rob768

Cheap kitchens and staff who are denser than their chipboard, there are MANY great independent stores to buy a quality kitchen from for less, your IKEA kitchen is guaranteed for 25yrs, but will look old and tired in 3yrs.
Sadly people never visit them, there is a huge amount of knowledge missing, which is just basic information to hand to a customer.

keystone

Rob old son - you sound as though you have an axe to grind.

Cheers

tesuhoha

A bit of an update here.

Well, my husband had almost finished fitting the kitchen. He had fitted all the units, done the electrics, fitted the extractor, microwave and dishwasher. The last unit to go in was the fridge freezer. The doors were fitted and assembled, the fridge freezer was unpacked and all he had to do was switch it on and put it in place and he discovered that the doors did not fit the fridge freezer.

We had seen two different kitchen planners on subsequent weeks who put the plan of the kitchen together with us. We bought the tallest Ikea kitchen cabinets and ordered the 70/30 fridge freezer that they sell but they did not tell us that there is no door combination that goes with that particular fridge and unit.

So we have spent the last week agonising about what we are going to do about it. We phoned Ikea and they were very apologetic about selling it to us but they could suggest nothing apart from we have a smaller unit in there which is not very helpful considering that all the other units on that wall are the tall ones. My husband said that the tall unit was fitted and not coming out.

If we are talking about fridge freezers the only thing which would fit was their 50/50 model but we did not buy that for a reason. We are a family of 4 adults and that model is too small. Our present fridge freezer is always full to the max and that is a freestanding Bosch one.

Therefore the only solutions were either to find something that fits or to take out the floor of the unit and place a freestanding fridge freezer in there. We quite liked the second idea but unfortunately my husband had not fitted the kitchen to allow for this and the freestanding one would have stuck out from the line of the units which would have completely destroyed the look we had gone for when we decided on the kitchen layout. We tried to find a fridge freezer which was only 55/60cm depth but there weren't many to choose from and the ones we found had the same problem of being too small for our use.

Therefore after much deliberating and agonising we have decided to put a freezer in the extreme left hand lower unit below the microwave and a larder fridge in the unit where the fridge freezer was going. This will mean we can have the 195cm door and a panel above, which will look better. I will lose the cupboard below the microwave but it seems to be the only solution. It will also cost us a lot more. The 195cm door does not fit any fridge freezer door and there is an overlap above but we will have a shelf there.

This seems a serious fault with the design of Ikea kitchen units but we are not going to complain. They have apologised and are going to compensate us.

Its annoying though because its held up the kitchen and it cannot be finished until the new door and fridge and freezer are delivered.