Our IKEA Kitchen Reno

Just weeks away from baby’s arrival, we decided to take on a massive kitchen renovation to make more room for our little one. On today’s post, I’m sharing our full story – from cabinets to cost.

I guess you could say it all started when we started realizing our previous kitchen just didn’t have the space to fit the extra bottles and accessories our baby needed. Not only that, when we first moved into our condo 5 years ago, the only “sprucing” up we did in the kitchen was resanding, painting our kitchen cupboards and doing the backsplash. Fast forward 4 years later, the particle board was beginning to dip, grease had eroded some of the cupboards and the doors were never really installed properly. Needless to say, it wasn’t terrible but it definitely needed to be updated.

We called several contractors over the past months to get quotes for a kitchen renovation. This was the list we gave them…

• New cupboards
• New sink
• New countertop

The quotes we were receiving were absolutely outrageous. We were quoted anywhere from 25k – 30k and this didn’t include demolition. We couldn’t understand how a small condo-sized kitchen was going to cost us over 20k, we had it in our heads that it would cost no more than 15k and that was our maximum budget.

We decided it was time to pay a visit to IKEA and see if they could do better. IKEA handles things a bit differently. First, you have to come to them with your kitchen measurements. So Kevin (def. not me) measured the entire kitchen, then signed onto their kitchen renovation site and started playing around with various kitchen layouts. We also went into the store to see what they had in terms of cupboards and countertops. After we played around with the sizes, we booked our appointment with an IKEA Kitchen Consultant. They helped us clean up a few corners and made recommendations to maximize our space. They don’t offer custom sizing since we wanted to build cupboards in behind the bar but they could be the full width of a cupboard they offered. Our consultant said you’d have to cut those cupboards yourself to fit – which Kev felt he could do.

After tallying up all of our items, we ended up only purchasing the cupboards from them since we felt their hardware and countertops were a bit too pricey and, to be honest, we weren’t a fan of their collection.

Timing

In total, it took us 16 days to renovate the entire kitchen. Here’s a breakdown of what we did over the past two weeks:

• Day 1 & 2: Demolition
• Day 3: Built the tracks for the top shelves and started building the cabinets
• Day 4 & 5: Top cabinets were slowly being installed
• Day 6 & 7: Top cabinets and cupboards almost all installed and all bottom cabinets were built. We also started looking at options for hardware and placed our order
• Day 8: All cabinets and cupboards were installed. We ended up using the same manufacturer that cut a few custom pieces for our coffee and side tables, located in Mississauga. We picked out the Quartz we wanted for our countertops and gave them our measurements. They said it would take one day to install since they had the Quartz in stock.
• Day 9 – 14: Ordered under-mounted sink from Home Depot and sent it to the countertop company so they could cut the countertop perfectly to it. Purchased faucet from Leon’s and finished cutting all the trim and began to paint some areas that were damaged.
• Day 15: Countertops were installed, plumber hooked up the sink and our dishwasher to the pipes. We finally had a working kitchen!!
• Day 16: Installed new hardware and new light

 

Our Hardware

Wayfair had some amazing selections and we decided to go with the Amerock 5 1/16″ Centre Bar Pulls  in Champagne Gold.

 

Light Fixture

For the light fixture, we wanted something more mid-century and the previous pot lights we had before weren’t giving off enough light in our condo. We decided to go with Wayfair’s Illuminate Vintage Mid-Century 5-light semi flush mount light – we also liked the fact that it was matte black which matched our new faucet and appliances.

 

Price Breakdown

We received a lot of questions on how much all of this cost. Our budget was 12k – 15k and I’m happy to say we were able to renovate our entire kitchen for less than 7k. Here’s a breakdown of the costs:

• IKEA cupboards: $2,600 (this did not include installation, only the parts. Installation, if we wanted to, was going to be another $2,800 (not including demolition) but they wouldn’t have been able to start until the end of October – too close to baby’s arrival)
• Quartz countertop with install: $2,800 we picked a higher quality quartz countertop, there are several grades and cuts
• Wayfair Hardware: $150 
• Wayfair Light Fixture: $250
• Sink: $350
• Faucet: $280

Total = $6,430

Overall Experience

I’ll be honest, I was very nervous when we started this renovation process. Not only was I in my third trimester, but we had not yet finished our nursery and I felt like instead of preparing for baby, we were disorganizing ourselves and creating chaos. Also, being pregnant and being around harsh chemicals was something else I wasn’t too happy about. I had to leave before Kevin began working on the kitchen and come back later at night so he had time to air out the place. Also, regardless of being pregnant, when you live in a 1,000 sq. foot space and your kitchen is about a quarter of that, it’s difficult to live in the mess. After going through it all, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. Most of the hard work was covered in the first week (a huge thank you to family) and I saw the progress being made every day which helped the stress. We had no hiccups along the way, no delays in hardware, cabinetry, or countertop and nothing major ever set us back a day. We were fortunate and overall very happy with the final product.

Our experience with IKEA was easy and effortless. Kevin found it easy to follow the instructions and if we were to rely on one of their contractors to build the kitchen for us, it would be easier (just not as fast).

If you have any additional questions, feel free to reach out!