[kvdnberg]

If you're going to use BEHANDLA on one of those little FIRA cases, put it on the OUTSIDE only and leave the drawers in as you go. I covered everything and had the drawers out, covered all of the drawers too and guess what, the drawers didn't fit properly anymore... . That's one more for the bin!

[clg7067]

I finally got my two wall cabinets for my laundry room, but I still learned some valuable lessons.

1. Double check the order before you leave the kitchens department. Especially, when it's a newly openned store. The default boxes for white doors were the birch color, not white.

2. Drill the holes for the cabinet attachers before assembing cabinets. I ended up drilling in the side panels as high and low as my drill could reach because I forgot about this. I would have rather used the highest and lowest shelf holes.

3. Don't install the hinges backwards. Oops - Why don't these hinges hook on right? LOL! I managed to pull them out of the cabinets without harming anything and flipped them around.

Carole
Cincinnati, Ohio

[C.B]

I did my kitchen last summer, and this week is the tear-out and install of my mom's kitchen. Experience is a cruel instructor - test first, lesson later.

1. No matter what, be extra nice to your spouse while working on someone else's house -- even if it is your mother.
2. It usually takes several trips to get all the pieces. Don't bring kids with you. Flooring takes up nearly as much room as a kitchen.
3. Use masking tape for all cutting and drilling of finished surfaces. Practice on scrap first.
4. Use any and all power tools that make life easier - table saws, chop saws, nailers, drills, etc. Who is Ikea fooling in those silly assembly pictures?
5. For complex cabinets (B4D36), get all the pieces in one pile, find each instruction booklet, read it, and do it right the first time! Sure it sounds simple, but we all know what I'm talking about.
6. Assemble the big cabinets in the room where they'll be installed. Sometimes they don't fit through doors after being assembled! Or so I hear.
7. Planned schedule vs reality. Take your schedule (# of days), multiply by 3, add 1. This rule is true for most projects, kitchen or otherwise.

[schwim]

If you take as long as I do to remodel a kitchen(4 months), then don't freak out when your sink refuses to drain when you finally get it installed. The atrophied buildup collapses in the waste lines and requires some snaking.



thanks,
json

[dalbrough]

Great thread.

My advice - remember to eat....hubs and I would work right thru lunch, dinner etc and then the grumps would set it and I could feel myself getting frustrated - I know it sounds funny but I ended up setting an alarm on my cell phone to remind us to stop and grab something to eat.....you get so focused on the job at hand you forget.....

I became OCD with the parts and labeled every box and hinge etc that went with every cab. made it so much easier when it came time to find all the parts.

If anything is missing check somewhere else - for example - hubs was mad that the metal bar didnt come with the 36" inch sink cab - only to find it in the sink box - he was amazed at the thought and organization Ikea has with their parts.

always order extra plinth and cover planels - you can always return.....

You dont always have to have everything decided right at order time - we changed our minds with the handles once the cabs were installed.

As much as the kids want to help it is so much easier to have them away when assembling cab's - they confused me with their offer to help and getting parts etc....

We kept the film strip on the Adel White cover panels until they were installed.

Figure out your under cabinet lighting before the cab's go on the wall - we did not go with Ikea under cab lighting and thank goodness we looked into it when we did.

Think about electrical outlets and where your coffee maker etc is going to live- make sure you have an outlet near by and not after it is done and backsplash is up.

Have to people to help upright cab's and uppers - those suckers are heavy.

Make sure you use strong screws to secure the rail to the wall.

clean as you go - makes it so much easier....

There will be tons and tons of left over cardboard after assembly - thank goodness our recycling pick up was a few days later - the garbage guy just about feel over when he saw the pile.

The drawer info on the instructions is/was wrong - i put the drawer fronts on upside down and was panicing about the gap.

Check here if something does not fit or you do not understand the instructions - usally easier to figure it out completely instead of trying to undo a mistake.

Don't panic - it all works out....I freaked out when i realized the double dosj. sink would not work with the granite small backsplash i had originally ordered - went with plan B and I think it looked better in the end...

It is all worth it in the end.....There is truly something truly amazing to stand back when your first guests come by and are amazed at your kitchen....

and you get to be smug and say "I did it myself" - that is priceless.....

My Mom's kitchen in the house I sold is one of the things I am most proud of that I did myself......and the help of Ikea fans....

[jlab]

Check yourself before screwing in the hinges. If they are in the wrong side, or backwards, it is very hard to get the little plastic bit out of the holes. So they may break. And you may be sitting here waiting for a delivery of new hinges from Ikea direct. And it feels like it is taking forever....

If you are at the end of your installation, and you're tired, you may think it's a good idea to use the pneumatic nailer to attach the doors to the back of your peninsula, because it'll "only take a sec". It's so quick, in fact, it may take 5 nails before you realize they are shooting right through the front of your beautiful, BIG, and $87 Lidingo door.

Cats are curious.

Re: Fess Up!! Lessons Learned During Installation 

They will likely jump up on your brand new countertop to make sure everything smells right. Make sure the tung oil on your counter is dry, or you will be sanding off faint little paw prints before applying the next coat. Also, kitty will be sleeping on the deck that night.

[EDanforth]

Originally Posted by greenmush

When you place your cabinet order, the Ikean usually prints out a list of all the parts that go together with each cabinet....be sure to have that handy, and if you have the room, the time, and the OCD nature like myself, you can stack together all the pieces for each cabinet (or at least the major pieces...not necessarily hinges and hardware). Or go crazy with a Sharpie and write on the box or the plastic wrapping which pieces belong to which cabinet so that you don't forget.

I did NOT do this the first time I did a kitchen (working on #2 right now) and it was insane. I had boxes all over the house (it was a very small house) and it was nearly impossible to find all the parts you needed when you needed them. THIS TIME I went through everything, figured out what order I was putting the cabinets in and labeled them consecutively. So far so good. It sounds really OCD, but it makes your life and the lives of your helpers SOOOOO much easier!

[glaecia]

Originally Posted by scrappy25

One tip that has been helpful-separate the types of hardware for each cabinet into an ice cube tray- count out each type, and make sure that you have the right number. If you finish and you have leftovers, you know that you missed something.

Another- you can get a 6 pack of rubber interlocking mats (2x2 feet each) at Sam's club for about $20. It makes a wonderful base for cabinet assembly, and will save your knees.

You can also go to Amazing.com and but those heavy mover's blankets for $5 each. They 72" x 80" -- big and great for this application! Here's the link:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0000AX6NE/ref=ord_cart_shr?%5Fencoding=UTF8&m=AF8EGQ3KRZQB6&v=glance

[katielynn7]

This post helped me a lot!!! When our errors came in were drilling the door handles and then installing the hinges.. Make sure you are very careful and push the plastic piece in all the way before drilling the screws. We were in too much of a hurry and would just place it in there and start drilling, but you really need to make sure the plastic pieces are all the way in the holes.

Our kitchen install went very well. We faxed the order in, checked it, drove 4 hours to get the cabinets double checked the order while we were in the store and everything was correct. We picked 1 day to put all the cabinets together and the next weekend to put them in. We did all the door handle drilling and door installation on another separate day and even put the organizers into the drawers and any other IKEA interior fittings.

We started by separating the order according to cabinet in our garage and placed them in the order they would be installed (top, left to right, then bottom left to right). We even alphabetized the boxes according to cabinet and had a diagram. it seems very meticulous but saved lots of stress. We knew exactly what everything was and it was so much easier to put it together in the end. We had family help and they were a little thrown off by using a suspension rail, but we insisted to do it the way it was made and everything turned out great!!

We remembered all the parts for the legs, which is something I took from this. Used a 2 X 4 instead of the ledger than comes with the kick board. The IKEA Ledger board is very flimsy and broke when we dropped it.

We also learned to loosen bolts on the cabinet door part of the hinge to get it to fasten into the cabinet piece. Sometimes getting it to snap on was frustrating. We fastening one peice to the cabinet and the other to the door and snapped them together. Worked really well, one person held the door and the other snapped the hinge or messed with the bolt a bit to get it to snap and then messed with the bolts again to level the doors. That was rather frustrating but just take your time and have someone stand back and look. There are going to be cracks between the doors! it's normal!

Now it looks great! I will post some photos on my Gallery. P.S. My cats also laid in the drawers accept our drawers didn't have fronts yet.

[Artsy]

I learned after installing a couple of drawer fronts upside down, that a simple phone call to the local Ikea got me someone who instructed me that sticking a screw driver into the top of the side rail assembly and simply twisting would release everything so that I could start over.

And last night during assembly of a Malm drawer, thinking that the side pieces had been drilled incorrectly, I suddenly understood why some of the pieces had a blue dot on the end. Still no understanding of why the left side piece would be different from the right side piece in location of cam locks, but dresser is all assembled now.