Please recommend your IKEA kitchen designer and installer

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:PP here, no personal experience with IKD but I read their blog in detail when I was designing my kitchen and i found it to be very helpful. Ikea has a lot of idiosyncratic things.

I did my kitchen in 2019 and ended up hiring a contractor who was really experienced with Ikea and had fantastic design intuition. He came up with a design that was a million times better than what the Ikea in-store designer suggested. I also saw a professional kitchen and bath store designer who actually put together 7 different options in CAD for me, but they still were not nearly as good as his solution. I won't even mention another contractor I saw who suggested taking a chunk out of my dining room for the fridge...

A lot of what my contractor said echoed the IKD tips. I have unusual layout issues in my kitchen, it wasn't a perfect rectangle suited to a U-shape layout, hence I can say one design ended up being far superior. If you have a very easy layout you will probably get a good design from lots of sources. (BTW the actual work installing the kitchen didn't go well and the quality was subpar. That's why I won't recommend him.)

After you put your plan into the Ikea software, take it to the store to have the employee check it, at that time you can ask her to manually remove all the doors from the design if you plan to use Semihandmade or something like that. It's safer to have them do that than do that yourself.

My tips for you: disregard this work triangle BS, you only need the sink to be close to the cooktop. The fridge can be anywhere in the kitchen. It's actually better for it to be somewhere else so other people can access it without disturbing the cook.

Also, if you have one solid wall to work with, you can put the fridge on a wall of floor to ceiling cabinets - meaning no countertops - which both gives you tons of pantry space and is more visually pleasing.

Put your downlights all around but close to your cabinets (6-12 inches away from the cabinet doors) instead of in a grid pattern. And put a strong spotlight type downlight over the sink.

OP here. Great advice!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Joseph Armond has a FB page. He is an amazing ikea installer local to the DC area. Quick and a perfectionist. I wouldn’t use anyone else.


“IKEA USA kitchen installation” is the FB group

Did you use him?

[Anonymous]

INEX put in a beautiful IKEA kitchen for us back in 2013, and it looked good as new when we sold last year. They made excellent use of the space and added molding to the top of the cabinets for a finished look. Check recent reviews on Checkbook as the founder has now retired.

[Anonymous]

Joseph Amond is not a perfectionist. Not even close.

[Anonymous]

PP if you have other suggestions besides Joseph Amond please share. I've searched this sub and recs for good IKEA kitchen installers (and good contractors to oversee) are few and far between or several years old. Really appreciate any insights!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Joseph Amond is not a perfectionist. Not even close.

Can you elaborate? Or suggest an alternative?

[Anonymous]

It’s extremely hard to find good contractors for ikea kitchens because the system is idiosyncratic and the profit margins are lower. You may need to find someone who hasn’t done it before but is willing to learn.

[Anonymous]

There are a few companies that make higher quality fronts to ikea cabinets too just fyi

[Anonymous]

Myself. It wasn't hard.

[Anonymous]

[quote=Anonymous]It’s extremely hard to find good contractors for ikea kitchens because the system is idiosyncratic and the profit margins are lower. You may need to find someone who hasn’t done it before but is willing to learn.[/quote]

Also it’s more labor than a traditional kitchen

[Anonymous]

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It’s extremely hard to find good contractors for ikea kitchens because the system is idiosyncratic and the profit margins are lower. You may need to find someone who hasn’t done it before but is willing to learn.[/quote]

Also it’s more labor than a traditional kitchen[/quote]

+1

It's a great system in theory, but if you want to do a quality install, it can be extremely difficult to get the cabinets to line up. You can mount the rail perfectly flat/level and for some unknown reason one cabinet sticks out further than the others or sits at a weird angle. Most people end up getting frustrated and just screw them together instead of fixing the problem.