If you know one…

… you probably know them all.

I mean assembling the Ikea Faktum kitchen cabinets. Whether they are tall or wide, whether they stand on the floor or hang on the wall. It’s all the same affair. At the end of the weekend, it took me 15 minutes to assemble one. The first one probably twice that time. Another 15 minutes go into drilling the holes for the handles into the doors and attaching them. And the final 15 minutes go assembling the drawers and attaching the sliding mechanism to the cabinets.

We have selected a massive birch door in whitewash paint finish. Hard to believe, but even after an extensive search in various regular and premium kitchen stores, that one was the nicest massive door we could find. We bought all the extras you can think off at Ikea that make the doors and drawers close smoothly. And even so, the total price for cabinets, doors and drawers comes only to 3010 Euro. Wisely spent money I’d say.

The fridge/freezer combo is integrated behind the two doors that are attached permanently together. The other appliances are made from stainless steel. Still missing from the picture is the 90 cm ventilation fan above the stove in the corner and the induction stove itself. And the total for all this stuff is 2700 Euro.

So, what went wrong (and there is always something going wrong)?

The assembly of the cabinet went wrong because I followed the instructions of the cabinet but not the instructions of the Domsjö porcelain sink. Also going wrong was the assembly of the tall cabinet in which the integrated fridge/freezer combo is standing. The tall version of this fridge/freezer combination with a separate door for the freezer is some 180 cm high. They offer this version with the 217 cm cabinets, but not for 233 cabinets. Hence, I had to build my own setup with the 233 cm cabinets. And as it goes, I was too lazy to cut the back board to the shorter measure and that concept took revenge when I tried to push the fridge in. The third learning exercise worthwhile mentioning was the assembly of the stove cabinet that stands diagonally in the corner. The Ikea stuff said that the drawers should open when you add one 12 mm cover board to each side of the stove cabinet.  It’s a close call, but that simply doesn’t work. There are 2 mm missing on both sides, at least. So, I had to take everything out, squeeze the cabinets on the long side tighter together (the dish washer leaves some 10 mm tolerance to play with) and attach 18 mm boards on each sides of the stove cabinet. Naturally, I didn’t have such extra 18mm boards, so I the two shelves for the wall cabinet were re-purposed to solve the problem.

Still to be done are the table tops, the cover boards on the floor, and the crown molding on the top of the cabinets. And there are the lamps and power outlets above the table tops, the ventilation fan, the door for the dishwasher, the water tab, and so on. Plenty to do still. But we got a big step forward.

And it is true, Ikea stuff comes is small boxes. This are all the kitchen cabinets, the doors, the drawers, and the sink (missing are the appliances).