Discuss Ikea Quality - Five Years Later on IKEAFANS.com. We're Personalizing the IKEA Experience. Ikea Quality - Five Years Later - Are you new to the IKEA concept? Want to find out what the excitement is all about? Do you have an IKEA Spotting to report? Read on!.
Everybody knows the proverb about the cobbler's childern having the worst shoes. Our verison is that the Certified IKEA Kitchen Installer's kitchen has the most misaligned doors and drawers! When we installed our own IKEA kitchen five years ago, we were in a rush to get it finished (I'm sure no one else has this problem!). Therefore, I never really spent the time to get the doors and drawers properly aligned.
Fast forward four years later and our business is now installing IKEA kitchens for other people. I align the doors/drawers perfectly everytime but still haven't done ours. DW has been very patient so I finally did it today.
I decided while I am going around, let's see how the kitchen has held up. BTW, this ain't no "just for show" kitchen. We seriously use it for cooking. The door style is Adel (Birch and MB) with a island of stainless steel.
I was amazed at what I found. Out of 19 cabinets (5 wall, 14 base), I found two issues. The first was in a 30" wall cabinets loaded with hardcover cookbooks. The shelves were bowing in the middle 1/8" off level. Not bad for probably 60 lbs of books.
The second was one 18" drawer front appears to have warped 1/16" from top to bottom. 99% of people would have never noticed the warp but I was on hands and knees and I am quite picky. I am not sure how to explain this since the material is not solid wood.
Furthermore, I actually weighed the contents of a 30" deep drawer. It was filled with pottery plates and bowls which weighed 80 lbs. This is our main storage for all our plates and bowls. We must open this drawer at least a dozen times a day...hmm..carry the two...22,000 times . Still as smooth as the day we installed it.
So for people wondering about IKEA quality...have no fear.
Everything has held up really well expect for the control panel and butons on the Bosch dishwasher. I had to replace those because the letters and finish wore out. Parts ran almost $150 with me providing free labor.
That is a lot of weight in those drawers. I guess once we load them, we tend to forget the good job they do.
My sister has the same issue with her Bosch. However, she still hasn't changed it. I believe Bosch changed that a bit as she indicates the lettering in mine won't rub off like hers did. I hope that's true.
Wow, you're right- the lettering on "delicate/econo" on my Bosch has a stripe missing down the middle, which is pretty funny as that button has never been pressed!
Thank you so much for the long-term review! This will help lots of people in their decision-making process. Is your kitchen the one in the picture you added to the gallery? Nice combining of doorstyles!
Gloria
Gloria, I haven't put our kitchen in the gallery yet. We did use Adel Birch, MB and the Stainless in our kitchen.
We are Certified Ikea Installers in Massachusetts so the photos in the gallaries are of customer's kitchens. I am in the middle of organizing all my photos for uploading to our website, I'll pick some nice ones and load them here also.
That sounds like you were lucky or I'm unlucky, I purchased Adel doors in white, 30 of them in all sizes and everyone is warped to some extent, the worst being 6mm out, 4 of the doors have been changed once and the new ones are warped. I don't know which way to turn as I had a hard job getting them changed in the first place, I had to write to the chief executive to get that sorted. I've only had the kitchen 1 year so I dread to think what they are going to like in the next 4 years.
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Ikea Quality - Five Years Later
. Still as smooth as the day we installed it.
