Sunday, May 31, 2015

The Ikea Kitchen

An Ikea kitchen is innovative, well-designed, inexpensive, effective, and attractive. But it teeters on the edge of chintzy. It is vital to control the myriad details to avoid a bad impression for buyers.

I wasn't very impressed, for example, with the ODENSVIK vanity sink. The GODMORGON high-gloss red vanity cabinet (shown at right, above) is ok, but the sinks are too shallow with too little usable space around the sink. But I think the "black-brown" LAXARBY cabinets work well in the dining room (I'll need a light-colored table).
LAXARBY has a subtle molding to it. Upper door with glass shown.

LAXARBY base cabinet door/drawer front. High-gloss gray RINGHULT to the right.
In the kitchen itself, I chose RINGHULT fronts in high-gloss gray for the base and high-gloss white for the uppers. It's a nice look, but it's the most expensive doors that Ikea sells. RINGHULT is 188% of the price of BJORKET, a nice, clean, Shaker maple-ish design.
BJORKET door detail
Maybe we could do the kitchen in BJORKET, with the more refined LAXARBY in the dining room. (LAXARBY is 126% of BJORKET.) We're talking about, very roughly, $1,300 less for BJORKET than RINGHULT.

Ikea sells Caesarstone. Two colors I like are each $59/SF, templated, delivered and installed. Based on Home Depot and Lowe's, I budgeted $75/SF.
"Ocean Foam" (like Vanilla Bean ice cream) adjacent to BJORKET cabinet door

"Nougat" has larger aggregate. It's about as bright as Ocean Foam, but I messed with the exposure to show the stuff mixed in with white.
I also particularly like Ikea's solution for corners. I'm planning one on either side of the range.
The shelves pivot independently and are not attached to the door, so neither has to swing out. The cabinet doors shown here, by the way, are BJORKET.

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