Ikea kitchen vs plumbing

dr0ck

Hi guys,

So me and my wife went for a cheapest option for our new kitchen and decided to buy it from IKEA. As a lot of you already know (based on other similar threads in this forum) the IKEA kitchen cabinets do not have room at the back for plumbing. Because of this we had an IKEA contractor to come do the measurements and suggests what to do about plumbing. His idea was to push all the units away from the wall by 10cm (the space enough for the plumbing to stay untouched) and than get a wider, non-standard worktop to cover the extra space. To give you a better idea: our kitchen will be a standard U-shaped with the plumbing running only along one of the walls and that is the only wall were the worktop would be wider. Also the work that would need to be done to adjust the plumbing would need to be really extensive and we cannot afford that atm.

So few questions:
1. Since the kitchen will be U-shaped, won't it look wierd if one of the sides will have a wider worktop?
2. Apparently IKEA doesn't produce non-standard panel covers. This means that if we are going to have a wider worktop we would need to get a standard 60cm panel cover for the last cabinet and than add another 10cm to it. This way however we are going to get a visible line. As a remedy, we though of possibility of using a worktop as a cover panel. Do you think it is a good idea?
3. As far as I know all the cabinets are hanged to a wall. Is this a requirement though? How are we going to hang the cabinets if they are going to be 10cm away from the wall, is it possible?



I would appreciate any input. Thanks in advance!

Regards,
dr0ck

dori2o

Other than the option dicussed by the guy from Ikea there are a couple of other, simpler ideas.

1, install the plumbing as low as possible so that it would be below the bottom of the units, then you won‘t see it. The pipes can then be brought up from underneath by cutting access through the bottom of the unit.

2, install a false back in the units. this can easily be done by having hardboard/plywood etc cut to size and nailing/screwing/glueing a batten to each side of the cabinet to support the false back. (this is what a neighbour of ours did and despite the xtra work it loks fine.

The oher option is to leave the plumbing as it is and notch out the cabinet as you would if it had a reveal at the back.

System

Bizarre that their own fitter would suggest using a nonstandard work top! The normal solution is to have pluming at the back or under units as required and notch them if necessary

BoxerfanUK

Personally I don't like the false back idea to hide plumbing. When I fitted my Kitchen I removed the false backs and notched and amended the units to fit. I prefer to have access to the plumbing if I need it. If you hide it all behind false backs and have to rip the units out if ever there was a problem with the plumbing that's a hassle.

squeeks

We had a similar problem. To fill the gap we used a length of pelmet. We have curved units so it matches the doors and looks okay.

dr0ck

Hey guys,

Thank you very much for your replies. I think we will stick with the idea of having the 10cm distance between the wall and cabinets. What about making a false back, but perhaps with the access to the pipes as well? Essentially a half false back so it would serve as a support but do not cover the pipes entirely (just thinking out loud here)

The thing is we are not so sure still what we should do about the wall panel that will have a gap. Do you know if there are other places where we could get a simple wall panel that would match Bodbyn off-white? Maybe other companies? As I am not sure about the idea of having a worktop serving as a side panel.

@squeeks: I am not sure if I understand how you achieved this using pelmet, would you mind to elaborate please?

Kind regards,
dr0ck