Ikea kitchens are awesome...
As with almost all Ikea products, the most awesome feature of an Ikea kitchen is their value in design and function for the price.
Drawers
Ikea cabinets come with Blum hinges, metal drawers, drawer glides and other hardware. This German manufacturer has been making these products for decades. They are in use all over the world in high-end cabinetry. Can you open a drawer in these cabinets to admire the warm glow and craftsmanship of a dovetailed wooden box?
No, you can't. But I can't afford those dovetails and wasn't planning to leave my drawers open, any how. These metal boxes are durable and practical.
Particle Board
Some people think that Ikea cabinets (and their other furniture) are crap because the boxes (top, bottom, sides) and shelves are made of particle board and not plywood. Now, hold on! There are quality grades for particle board and for plywood. A decent quality of either material will make a plenty-strong box with plenty of screw-holding ability. I will spare you the dusty details. For me, it's a fair trade-off for the price. In fact, if I were building a modern kitchen with glossy, flat doors, I'd buy everything from Ikea, including the doors.
Doors
Except, as I mentioned in another post, I love wood. I love it this much:
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| I spent last summer on my front porch, refinishing my interior doors. |
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| Totally worth it! |
I cannot love Ikea's wooden doors because they are crappy wooden doors. The solid wood is not solid enough; the veneers over the door panels and all other panels are remarkably thin. And the finishes are not good. Trust me. It's hard to see in photos, but what they do to wood and wood products is roughly equivalent to what McDonald's does to chicken.
I understand that most people would be happy with these. Ikea has designed doors which are homogeneous, reasonably sturdy and (above all) easy to manufacture and sell in ginormous quantities.That is their specialty. Hey Ikea, you big, wicked smart, good-looking Swede! Well done!
I just can't put these crappy doors in my house. I'm after more of a heritage-breed, free-range kind of a bird.
Alternative Doors
Happily, I found others of my kind: people who both wanted and did not want an Ikea kitchen. It turns out that lots of companies cater to us by making high-quality doors to fit Ikea cabinet boxes. Just a few names here:
After weeks of fevered web surfing, emails and a couple of phone calls, I bought sample doors from Scherr's and loved them. Of course, this is going to cost more than going with those ginormously mass produced Ikea doors, but not all that much more. And it will still save money over any cabinets available at the big box stores.
Next post: how and why that saved money has been spent on "just a few" custom cabinets from Scherr's.
