[mkgarland]

Hello! I have been scouring this site for the past two days just trying to soak up as much information as possible. I love it!

Ok, so here's my predicatament. My husband and I just bought a house that we will close on in March. We are currently renting and our lease isnt up until April. So we are quite excited that we have an entire month to get the house ready. The kitchen is in poor shape from the house being a prior rental and because it's old. Some of the cabinets have some water damage as well. So we are wanting to completely replace them with IKEA cabinets/countertops. I absolutely love IKEA's kitchens and even before buying a house that needed work, I always said I would love to do an IKEA kitchen.

So I have so many questions! The floor in the kitchen is a very old DIRTY laminate. There are a couple of spots that have been torn, but it's in places that will probably get covered up. My husband and I aren't really handymen but we have the help of two men who are. Plus, we have the desire to want to learn. What I want to know is:

We have a budget of about $7,000 for the entire kitchen. We have already bought all new appliances. So what we would like to buy is cabinets, countertops, and flooring. Is this even possible? I do not have the measurements yet but I will be getting them tonight. How difficult is it to do IKEA's laminate/tile flooring? Is it a job we can do ourselves? I would like to do the entire floor so I don't have to worry about it later if I ever want to change the floorplan. We are completely prepared to work hard on this. This forum has made me feel more confident about being able to assemble and install the cabinets. I just haven't been able to find out much about the floors and countertops. Has anyone done this themselves? I really don't know which flooring I like best yet. Please give me any insight you may have. I'll update with the square footage and measurements later tonight. Thanks so much!

[torrus]

Subject to knowing the measurments I would say that $7000 for cabinets/countertops/flooring should be enough...but let's look at the plan.
My limited experience with laminate flooring suggests that there are better floors out there than IKEA...no question about cabinets being the way to go, and countertop selection will depend on your layout.

[yankeelawyer]

I agree; you should be able to do it for 7K. I would do butcher block counters; they are reasonably priced and look really nice if sealed with Tung oil (I like Waterlox),

You can get an idea of pricing for cabs on the Ikea website (their gallery pics show prices for various layouts). Also, if you do your own plan using the planner, thre is an icon to click for an itemized list of all the cabs you selected and the total price.

For flooring, you might check out lumber liquidators if you have one near you; they have some very, very reasonably priced wood flooring; I would go with that over a laminate, personally, and it might even be less expensive.

If you need a sink and/or faucet, check out overstock.com

[fondatfancy]

What is underneath the old laminate? This may affect your choice of flooring.

Whatever you do I would recommend you take up the old laminate and redo the floor completely. It is better to spend the money on the floor becasue you can always add more cobinets etc later when you have the money.

If you have a concrete subfloor then Ceramic tiles can work out cheaper than laminate, and are certainly harder wearing.