You and that Dang Kitchen! (pt 1)

The cabinet door where the white trashcan is never got installed. I've been staring at an empty hole for the past 8 months :(

 Yes, friends, I’m re-redoing my kitchen. Before you panic, it’s not really a re-do, rather it’s more of an upgrade. If you’ll remember Last year when I was designing my dream kitchen, my vision was surpassing my budget so I had to cut back on a lot things. Well, it’s a new year so now I can get what I want!

I only had two drawers in the kitchen. This one was pretty organized.

As mentioned before, I love IKEA for many reasons. When it comes to my kitchen, I love the IKEA cabinet system (now called SEKTION) because you can retrofit it whenever you feel the need for a change without doing a major overhaul. IKEA offers an incredibly versatile kitchen system that includes doors and organizational drawers. Instead of having to rip everything out, all I needed to do was pop off the doors and install the pull out drawers that I wanted.

I like the idea of having drawers in the kitchen because things get lost in the back of the cabinet. I also won’t have to bend over and reach in to find what I’m looking for. The drawers pull out to their full length, so I can see everything. IKEA also makes special boxes, food containers, and baskets that precisely fit into the drawers so not only are they functional, they’re pretty too.

This drawer is not so organized.

I actually started designing the upgrade a few months back. IKEA’s kitchen planner tool is a lifesaver for control-freak people like me who need to know  every detail up front. I just logged in, pulled up my saved kitchen plan from last year, added and subtracted the pieces I wanted, and was able to pull up a price list right there. So easy!

This was a first attempt at the layout. It's pretty close to the final result.

I was able to play with the cabinets until I got the right combination. The larger door on the bottom right ended up becoming two pull out drawers.

The product list

Of course, I had to take another trip to the store. I sat with another kitchen planner who was incredibly helpful, switching out some of the drawers for a better fit, or recommending some other helpful changes. I ended up purchasing 10 drawers.   I was able to pay for my stuff and pick up all the pieces about 20 minutes later. I just didn’t realize there would be SO. MANY. BOXES.

I tried to layout everything according to which cabinets they belonged to. It doesn't look like it but there are nearly 25 individual boxes here. The trunk of my car was full!

The assembly and installation is simple from a conceptual standpoint, but because I was doing this by myself, it probably took three times as long as it should have. It took about 15 minutes just to unload all the boxes out of the car. Then I laid everything out in the basement (the only empty area left in the house), went over my checklist to make sure everything was there, and then got to work. Check out the time-lapse video below of me assembling the first three drawers.

The checklist make sure I have all my pieces before I start assembling

My plan was to take a full day to assemble the drawers, install the tracks into the cabinets, and then put the drawers into the cabinets. I wish I’d known how labor intensive the work would be!

Many times during the process, I ended up being "IKEA Assembly Struggle Guy"
But it got easier with each piece!

The first interior pull out is installed.

I was running the boxes and drawers up and down the stairs from the basement up to the kitchen. I got cuts on my fingers from the edges of the tracks because I wasn’t being careful. Some of the screws weren’t fitting into the pre-drilled holes that easily so I had to hand tighten them. In order to do that, I had to contort myself in awkward positions to reach into the cabinets. After assembling 6 and only installing 5 drawers, I was wiped out. The next day I woke up sore and felt as if I’d had a good workout!

I’m still in the middle of the installation and assembly process since I let the weekend go by without finishing, but stay tuned for the next post to see how it all turned out.

I love that I won't have to reach in the back of the cabinet anymore

Interior drawers done! I just need to put the door back on. This is 1 of 2 cabinets that will have a door. The rest will have pull out drawers.

My favorite drawer so far. It's so deep and can hold a lot of tall items.

All done! Now I just need to put on the drawer pulls (that's another story)

Pardon the junk. Everything had to come out of the cabinets so I could install the new pull outs.
Can't wait to finish the rest! 

Thanks for reading!