Kitchen Remodel

Saturday after my Grandma's birthday lunch Sara and I started doing a little more research on our future kitchen remodel. We have been wanting to replace our kitchen cabinets for quite some time now and with a happy tax return in our bank we are ready to move forward.

I did a TON of research on cabinets.  What type of wood is best, what is the standard, different brands, custom, stock, flat pack... I even considered building the cabinets myself.  But Sara would be happy to report that I will not be building them myself.  I guess we both just want something that looks good when it's done! :)  So after getting quotes from Lowes, Home Depot, Parr Cabinet, Ikea, a small local cabinet shop, and another cabinet shop that ships from china, we pretty much decided that if this project was going to happen, the only place within our budget was Ikea.

This was a scary thought for me because I kinda consider ikea furniture to be like target furniture.  And if you have ever been in our house you've seen our coffee table from target and well.... lets just say you can't put your feet up on it without fear of the thing collapsing.  So naturally, I did a whole bunch MORE research on Ikea cabinets.  To my surprise, they had great reviews.  Consumer reports actually did a review of kitchen cabinets and rated Ikea cabinets #3.  Home Depot & lowes "Kraftmade" line was ranked #7 and they were more expensive.  So we decided to give it a shot.

Saturday we headed out to Ikea to finalize our kitchen design.  After we did that and got a good price for our kitchen we decided to buy one cabinet and bring it home, put it together, and see if we still like it.  Then we could either take it back or keep it and buy the rest.  Here's the install process:

One 18" 4 Drawer Base Cabinet in Boxes:

Gotta love the cartoon ikea instructions:

Sara's getting excited!:

The 18" cabinet all together sitting in the kitchen for our review:

Here's a video of the awesome 'slow close' drawer sliders in action:

After building this cabinet and placing it in our kitchen we have decided that we like it.  The construction is solid and the hardware is top notch!  With an Ikea kitchen we are going to get all the little "add-on" type stuff that we wouldn't get with the other guys.  I'll have to scan our design and post it up here so you can see what it will look like when we're done.  

What do you think?  Are we crazy?