Cover Panels to Match Your Custom Ikea Kitchen on the CHEAP

We have received quite a few emails asking about cover panels for the exposed sides of Ikea boxes.

There are a couple of ways to go about covering up those white boxes -

1. Once your kitchen is complete, measure the exposed sides of the Ikea boxes and order cabinet doors from Barker of the appropriate size. This gives you the option to match the cover panel to your door style or you can order plank doors to match.
2. Buy furniture grade plywood to match your new doors and cut it to size on a table saw.

We opted for option 2 because we wanted a plank style cover panel and buying furniture grade plywood saved some serious $$$. A quick look through Ikea's website shows they use 1/2 inch stock for their cover panels.

Stock Ikea Bjorket Cover Panel

 
For those of you looking for white cover panels, your job is pretty easy. Just head on over to your favorite big box store and pick up some half inch MDF and paint to match your doors. If you are taking advantage of the other wood species offered by Barker Doors sourcing some nice 1/2 inch furniture grade plywood is not too difficult. Head on over to Home Depot Pro Desk and ask them to special order PureBond plywood in your selected species. It might help if you print THIS out for the sales associate or give them the Special Order SKU: 226-917 and Vendor Number: 60069126. Note: PureBond is available as a special order from most Home Depot locations, but if you cannot order it in your state, search for a wholesale distributor.

PureBond plywood was about $90 a sheet in alder when ordered it and matches the alder Barker uses perfectly!

Once you have the plywood cut to size and finished to match your cabinet doors, you are ready to edge band the exposed cut edge to make your new cover panel look like a solid piece of wood. The best way to do this is to use FastCap FastEdge peel & stick edge banding. This stuff is awesome and is way easier to use than the iron on stuff. FastCap sells their edge banding in finished and unfinished real wood veneer, and in a PVC variety to match real wood.

I highly recommend using the PVC variety because it is sooooo much easier to apply. They have 41 different colors in PVC and they will ship you a sample wheel for free. It can be ordered here. We started with the wood veneer edge banding tape and had such rough edges that we grudgingly switched to the PVC stuff. The funny thing was the American Maple PVC color matched our alder cabinets better than the real alder edge banding!

You Tube was helpful to learn how to apply the FastCap edge banding:

Source

Once your cover panels are edge banded and finished to match the cabinet doors they are ready to be attached to the Ikea cabinet boxes. I did this the same way Ikea suggests - by using a 1-inch screw and attaching the cover panel to the box by screwing from inside the box into the cover panel. A few clamps make this process a lot easier!

Installed Custom Ikea Cover Panel

We are Finally Getting Around to Our Back Splash!

Our kitchen renovation has been in progress for longer than we like to admit. I catch a serious case of procrastination when one of my projects looks OK and becomes usable. I need a good kick in the butt to get around to the finishing touches.

We have hesitated completing all the posts about our kitchen renovation because we want some jaw dropping "after renovation" pictures to share. We are finally getting around to the marble back splash and being able to finally enjoy all of our hard work on the remodel!

Jenn and I have been tiling all weekend long, about 20 hours, to get to the point in the picture you see above. I swear Jenn is going to kill me if I ever tell her I'll probably have a project done by the time she gets home from work on Friday again! Getting straight lines on a crooked wall with 3x6 subway tiles is a lot harder than I thought.

We chose marble subway tile from Lowe's that costs $6 a square foot. The problem with this tile is the color variation is huge. To find the 70 boxes of white tile to match the counter top we needed we had to look through 5-600 boxes of tile. That was a lot of trips to Lowe's all over the city before we could even start. All the rummaging through tile worked out though because our other option was $20 sf online which would have put us at $1500 for our back splash instead of $500 we spent at Lowe's.

Picture of the tile we selected from the Lowe's website showing the color variation if the tile is not sorted.

I started the project on Friday with the help of my parents by pulling the range, removing the cover panels from the cabinet sides, and covering the countertops with cardboard. My dad had a the good idea to draw vertical lines marking the start of each row of tile to make sure we kept the pattern consistent and to account for the wall which was 7/8 of an inch out of square from top to bottom. We marked our first vertical line one tile width away from the most out of square section of the wall then marked two more vertical lines at 1/3 a tile width and 2/3 a tile width. This way we didn't have any small slivers of tiles to get to the edge of our crooked walls.

 Once we got the lines drawn we got to tiling. We started to notice the tiles were going on the wall much much darker than anticipated. I read the details on the Mapei Type I mastic a Lowe's associate had recommended and noticed: "not for natural stone". So we sadly stripped our first three rows of tile, cleaned them, and made a second trip to Lowe's for Mapei Premium Mortar for Tile and Stone. This one had a green top, was $50 for a 3 gallon bucket, and said it was specifically for stone. But based on the day's earlier debacle, we thought it would be a good idea to call the manufacturer to confirm we had the right stuff.

A Mapei representative was super easy to get on the phone by the way. After some disclaimers about what the Marble Institute of America recommends, the rep said he has been laying tile for a long time and said if it were him, he would not use the Premium Mortar for Tile and Stone. He said he was holding a dried sample of it at his desk and though it says it is white in color, it really dries a beige shade that could affect the color of the marble. He recommended we use Mapei Large Tile and Stone Mortar in white.

The mortar works best when mixed 4 parts mortar to 1 1/4 parts water.

It looks like we have another day or two of tiling next weekend, then grout and sealer. The thin set behind the tile is still wet so the tile should dry much whiter than in the pictures in the post. Fingers crossed. We can't wait to share our "after" photos with y'all!

Immediately after grouting   

How to Poly Cabinet Doors - The Right Way

Finishing cabinet doors is pretty straight forward but there is a lot of bad advice out there. In our kitchen we liked the look of natural wood so we decided to coat our doors with polyurethane to protect them from spills and scrapes.

Hinges for Barker Doors on IKEA Sektion

In case you missed it, check out our previous post on combining IKEA Sektion cabinet boxes and Baker doors HERE. This post is meant to explain why the hinges recommended in our last post work so you can order your hinges and doors with confidence.

Recall from the last post that we used Blum's Clip Top Blumotion hinge and hinge plate

• Blum Hinge - 73B3550
• Hinge Plate -  174H7100E

     (build.com is super cheap for the hinges w/ free shipping and we get a small commission)

to connect our custom Barker cabinet doors to the IKEA Sektion cabinet boxes. Since IKEA cabinets are frameless (aka European style) with full overlay doors, we started searching for the correct hinge by focusing on Blum hinges specifically for frameless cabinets.

Traditional Cabinets have a Face Frame - Euro Cabinets are Frameless

Ikea Sektion Cabinets with Barker Doors

When we decided on using Ikea cabinet boxes with Barker Doors there were a lot of questions:

• Is it even possible to use Barker doors with Ikea cabinets?
• Can we use Ikea's blum hinges?
• What size doors should we order?

Choosing Cabinets: the Perfect Kitchen for 50% Off!

If you checked out Jenn's the last post, you know we were looking for a shaker cabinets in white with butcher block counters or natural wood shaker cabinet with white stone counters. Shaker doors meant pretty much every brand of cabinet was open to us. I decided to compare Shenadoah cabinets from Lowes, Barker cabinets, and Ikea cabinets.

Kitchen Dreaming

When we remodeled our first kitchen in the condo, the decisions we had to make were fairly easy. Once we had the layout, the rest of the design decisions were governed by one thing - the budget. A small, two bedroom apartment surrounded by rentals didn't warrant high end finishes. It was a simple money in, money out equation. We didn't want to put more into the kitchen than we were going to get out. So it was pretty easy to rule out things like expensive hardware and natural stone counter tops.

Think you have a bad kitchen?

I don't know how people used to cook when our grandparents were young. I mean, I understand this kitchen:

But that is not what we were left with when we purchased our home. The listing for our house highlighted that we were getting an "Eat in kitchen!"



Upon closer inspection, you may realize this small space is has two doorways, a window, and a charming split staircase to the second level. Where is the counter space? The range? A sink? Right behind the photographer:

That's a 7x7 space housing an original 1950's range and double washboard sink. What could we do with an awkward 11x11 room with another 7x7 room added on the end of it? 

Lets start out with our list of wants for the space:

• Dishwasher (not named Ross)
• A half bathroom - our only bathroom is on the second floor... and looks like the kitchen
• A pantry - we have been keeping food in that wall cabinet you see to the right.
• Counter space - our kitchen has about 18 inches
• Lots and lots of cabinets!
• A design that works well for entertaining 

We took our measurements and thoroughly stumped the kitchen designer at Lowes. After working with her, we became very aware that our charming double staircase needed to become a single staircase... We loaded the measurements into Ikea's kitchen planner and here is what we finally came up with on version 407 of the kitchen planner:

Floor Plan

Looking at it from the dining room

Looking at it from the 11x11 room

Having a design that is both easy to cook in and great for entertaining isn't easy because you have to give the cook room to work and company space to congregate. What we decided on was making the smaller area of the kitchen the main food prep and cooking area. With the addition of a prep sink and pullout waste bin, the smaller portion of the kitchen can handle some serious cooking! This area of the kitchen is complete with:

• A 36-inch Range

• 18-inch prep sink with pullout waste bin

• 7 feet of counter space!

• Easy access to the Pantry and Refrigerator

The location of the dishwasher and main cleanup sink away from the the prep/cooking area works great for us. It is really nice to be able to move dirty dishes completely out of the prep space when you are cooking and best yet, someone can load the dishwasher or hand-wash pots and pans while another person is cooking.

The location of the powder room off the kitchen was a necessary evil. We played at moving the powder room in other locations but there were too many existing doors and windows to squeeze it in anywhere else. Luckily, in our neighborhood with century old homes, powder rooms are often off the kitchen so it doesn't seem strange.

Room for work and fun

The flow from the main living area and dining room makes the kitchen a central gathering area. Friends and family can hang out in the larger section of the kitchen during parties without getting in the way, and we managed to tick off all the points on our wants list!

Look out for our next post: Coming up with what we wanted the kitchen to actually look like. Colors, what brand of cabinet, door style, counter tops; the kind of decisions people spend moths on Houzz agonizing over, and that little problem of budget.