The Joys of an Ikea Kitchen

This was the kitchen, a lovely view of the side of the house next door, that's gotta go, also a door leading to an old outside pantry that has to go. in fact lets rip it out and start again.




Nice fiberboard false ceiling covering up the 9 foot plaster and lath ceiling










This was the only room that we found any insulation in







You can see by this shot that the window at one time was a lot bigger, I suspect that this was before the next door house was built.



Top left is what remained of an old chimney going to a pot belly stove



We changed the doorway opening to make it wider, and as it was a bearing wall put in a 2X10 header to replace to 2X4



This is the worst part of the house for level, the kitchen floor is out by over 2 inches, made for an interesting time trying to install and level cabinets.



The base cabinets took no time to build, here you can see the old doorway and window have been closed off.



We installed a cork tile floating floor, it snaps together and in a square room would have been a breeze however a square peg in a round hole never goes as easy as one hopes, in the end it ended up looking great.



Laying out the upper cabinets took some time to ensure level but with the Ikea rail system all went quite well.



We had a couple of mishaps with the wrong doors being shipped but otherwise a fun install to do.











We were hoping to have a solid surface counter top and Karen had picked a very nice undermount sink, plans changed due to being in Rupert and nobody seems to do solid surface. This required sourcing out a different sink from Vancouver (Nothing interesting in Rupert) and planning out for a tile counter top.



The counter top tile that we ended up with







Backsplash tiling in progress

We choose a large 12X18 metallic copper tile along with a brushed stainless front edging, came out very nice, I only had one tile sink on me so all in all not a bad tile countertop, We were lucky to have a friend going to Vancouver and he picked up the tiles on his way back to Rupert (Thanks Bruce) He also picked up the backsplash tiles for us.

What must be one of the worlds heaviest pantry units, also a challenge to install as nothing is level or square. We ended up with the local Orthopedic Surgeon, Rod, and Bob all helping and offering advise. In the end I separated the 2 units and made it look like one while keeping them level and square. Ikea needs to provide better legs for these units, way too much weight for such a heavy unit.



In cabinet and under cabinet low voltage lighting wired to 4 transformers in the basement makes the work surface shine.

The cup handles were fun to install, only messed up in the beginning and had to order 2 new drawer fronts as I choose the wrong location for the handles, all is good now. Why is it that after you struggle to lay this sort of thing out you find a jig that would have made this so easy..

The backsplash tiles are a 5X13 ivory colour with scored lines at every 1.25" space. A very cool looking tile until you install them and then it looks like one big wall of tile, it seemed a shame to loose the effect but went up very well. I used an epoxy based grout that does not require any sealing, perfect for a kitchen. The under cabinet lighting will all be concealed when finished.

We are almost finished in the kitchen, just a couple of items to complete, touch up some paint and then ready to fire up the new self cleaning gas stove.