Kitchen Makeover

Why hello there! I can't believe I'm doing this post on the new blog, and I'm not going to lie... I'm a little nervous about it. Just because I had my last blog, 'My Kind of Simple' for about 5 years, starting out with the name, 'Mrs. Kimberly Smith'. I think I'm a little nervous simply because there is no real reason for me to start a completely different blog. I am just ready to change things up, and I really want to see if I can get this to be a place where I have a lot of different people contributing to this blog and website. Anyways, a little more about that later, but for now, I am so excited to share our completed IKEA kitchen with you all and share the details of how it came together.

To begin with, I'd like to share some pictures of what it looked like before. From the pictures, it looks like a lot of things were pretty cosmetic, and we actually weren't even planning on redoing the kitchen for a while for that reason. At one point I think we were even planning on simply repainting the cabinets, changing out some of the fixtures and hardware, and getting new appliances. But when we moved in, my husband and I quickly came to the agreement that if we were going to do a bigger project right away, the kitchen was what should be done first.

The dark countertops and cabinets, and outdated appliances weren't our favorite, but as we began living in and using this kitchen we realized we were sorely lacking in space for storage. The only pantry we had was the hallway 'coat closet' and a lot of the cupboards were hard to reach into and the drawers falling out. Not only that, but we began to see even if we wanted to just paint the cabinets and fix them up, either way the countertops needed to be replaced. They were peeling, but even more than that, they were sinking in towards the wall.

Needless to say, the kitchen was at the top of our list at that point.

When we finally decided we were going to redo our kitchen, our first thought was Home Depot. We had already bought a new light fixture and faucet through them as well as completed a flooring project through them. We quickly realized that we wouldn't be able to afford it though. So we then went into exploration of Lowes. We really loved Lowe's display floor and it felt like it was going to be a lot cheaper than Home Depot. But after a four hour consultation in store we discovered it was still going to be out of our budget.

We were feeling a little discouraged that we would have to make do with the kitchen and lack of storage for a while longer when we remembered my brother and sister in law mentioning that they were going to look into getting IKEA to do their kitchen. So, we thought we may as well give it a shot. We went down to IKEA and took a look around the showroom and loved what we were seeing. We sat down at the kitchen designer station and spoke with an employee. She informed us of how it works if you choose to do a kitchen through them and told us we could pay for an in home consultation with a designer and if we went with them it would come back to us in the final cost. We decided to do it!

The designer was very detailed and was easily able to check everything off on our list of what we wanted. Our biggest hurdle was maximizing storage as we were really lacking on space. She incorporated a pantry into the design and the fun pull outs and hidden drawers that we loved. What was amazing was the price of everything, even WITH the quartz countertops we wanted was still half of the base price of JUST cabinets at any of the other places we were looking. It felt like a no brainer and we decided to move forward with IKEA.

The one thing we didn't take into consideration was that the General Contractor was going to be a separate cost, and a very significant one. I think we kind of thought that was included in the installation fee through Traemand. So things did end up being more than we thought, but still less than what anything else would have been, especially for everything we choose.

So how it works, because I've been asked a lot of questions on this, is you go through IKEA to place the initial order of all the supplies. You can use "their" designer, or you can do it with their user friendly design tool online. You then can choose to install yourself or higher someone on your own or use their installers, through Traemand, who I believe the designer was a part of as well. They will then refer you to a General Contractor or you can use one of your own who will help with the logistics of everything such as plumbing, electric, and so on.

When you get your final bid from IKEA it includes everything. From countertops, install fee, delivery fee, cabinets, and everything else. The only things not included is the GC fee, so be sure to accommodate at least $5000 extra on top of that bid and then maybe a little more for anything unexpected. The GC fee includes, their fee, anything you would pay for electric, plumbing, drywall, and so on. We luckily only had one unexpected item pop up, pricey as it may have been, it had to be done regardless, which was our electrical panel.

It was about a month start to finish for everything. Overall, we are very happy with our IKEA kitchen and the space is so much better used! We are so happy we went with the glass uppers because it makes it feel so much bigger. We love the under cabinet lighting, the hidden drawers, our trash drawer, and all the inserts that fit so perfectly. But I think I love the most that our microwave is off the counter, the island and counter overhang is bigger, and our pantry. I LOVE our pantry!

It was a great experience, not perfect, but still great. We are so happy with our decision to use IKEA and a few touches from other places. I'll be sure to link as much as I can, and please feel free to ask if you have any questions!