DIY // OUR KITCHEN PLAN + LAYOUT

As you might have seen on Instagram, we had our IKEA kitchen planner over a couple of weeks ago to help us find a kitchen layout that would work for the awkward space. It took us five hours to make it work, but we found a solution!

As you can see in the before photos below, the 1970’s kitchen used to be super tight and very closed off.

In our demo process, we removed the non-load bearing wall.

And we had a contractor friend cut out a pass through in our load bearing wall (adding a header).

The new room layout isn’t the most ideal ever, but it is SO much more open, and we can definitely work with it.

diy ikea kitchen layout before photos

As a recap, we plan on covering every single bit of exposed wall with classic white subway tiles. It’s gonna take ages, but it’ll be so worth it! So the new room will be so bright.

And here are the brushed brass finishes we’re going with….my very fave part!

We went with a huge white IKEA apron sink. We really wanted one open basin, but decided to go with the bigger, double basin one. I researched a ton of one basin porcelain sinks online, and the ones I wanted were at least $1,000. This $300 IKEA one should work. I hope we don’t regret it. I have a difficult time keeping them sparkling white, but I will do my very best.  🙂

diy ikea kitchen layout

We LOVE marble, but know we’d ruin it in a week, so we decided to go with the gorgeous IKEA Caesarstone in Frosty Carrina (super close to a marble look). It looks so good against our white subway tile grey cabinets!

Caesarstone in Frosty Carrina

We decided on gray Sektion cabinets. the room is so full of light (thanks to 4 windows and a skylight) that it can handle the gray. The white subway walls also help with the brightness.

Anyone wanna see the rough IKEA plans? We made a handful of cabinet changes since this drawing was created (no microwave cabinet in island any longer, switched to 40″ tall upper cabinets, and switched around a few lower cabinet drawer setups), but this definitely gives the idea.

View from above (not including the right hand side bump out cabinetry.

diy ikea kitchen layout

 

View looking at the sink and fridge area. As you can see, we did a more gallery style here (different from the original layout). We’re moving the new gas range to the island instead of along the wall where it used to be. This really opens the room up, and created a much better working triangle.

diy ikea kitchen layout

We didn’t do any upper cabinets to the left and right of the sink. We’re going to do two sets of DIY raw wood open shelving for our bowls, cups, etc. I’m so excited about that part!

We were going to have a built in microwave in the island, but changed our minds, so the open cabinet that you see in the island will just be another regular cabinet. Lots of extra storage!

Here are more views. I am so excited that we upgraded to 40″ tall upper cabinets (not shown here). I love that custom look! We’ll also have lighting in the glass cabinet and underneath the uppers onto the countertops.

diy ikea kitchen layout

diy ikea kitchen layout

diy ikea kitchen layout

The backless slide in gas range will be in the island, and where you see the closed wall ahead is actually open space (the wall we removed). We are only equipped for electric right now, but Ted has a co-worker who is experienced in creating/moving gas lines, and he offered to help us for free. Score!!

We have reversed our current upstairs dining and sitting room setup so that the dining room is now in the “pass through window room” and the secondary sitting room will be open to the new kitchen. We mostly use our main lower level living room, but having this other seating room adjoining the kitchen will be very nice for dinnertime prep and homework, etc.

diy ikea kitchen layout

And here is a row of cabinets that will be in our “bump out” skylight/sun room addition. We’ll put our trash, recycling, and dog food in here.

diy ikea kitchen layout

diy ikea kitchen layout before photosFrom the 1970s kitchen layout we added 2 extra sections of cabinetry and an island, so our storage space will greatly improve. We’ve talked about converting our unused screened in porch off of the kitchen to a complete walk in pantry in the next year or two. If that does end up happening I’ll be very excited.

Everything will be delivered in the next few days (196 boxes they said…yikes!), and from there we’ll set the install date (we paid extra for someone else to install for us…I’m so excited we’re not DIYing that part!). That will take 1-2 days.

And if anyone is curious, the entire kitchen including the quartz caeserstone (@$89/sq. ft for 47 sq, feet) was right around $10-11k (And as an added bonus we got an extra $1,000 back on an IKEA gift card). Sooo much better than the $40k quote we got from another big box kitchen retailer. We paid with cash, and be proud that we did a lot of the work ourselves. Win, win, HUGE savings, and big improvement for this older house!

In case you haven’t seen IKEA kitchens…IKEA cabinets are also very durable and come with  25 year warranty. We are very impressed.

PS. We will be ripping up the parquet wood flooring and adding new wood flooring throughout the entire house. We have to build some more savings back up before that part gets here though. 🙂

What do ya think? anyone else have an IKEA kitchen that you love? I wanna hear all about it.

xoxo
Audrey

6 thoughts on “DIY // OUR KITCHEN PLAN + LAYOUT”

  1. The Concetto line from Caesarstone is absolutely gorgeous. Recommended just the other week to someone looking for marble but wanted something that wouldn’t get chipped and etched within a week. How are the countertops holding up for you?

    I would love to get high-res versions of your before shots and a couple after shots of the remodel to feature on our Caesarstone Countertops Tampa page. I’m sure it turned out great if this remodel is anything like the others on your site.

    Keep up the great work. Love your blog!!!

  2. Wow, I didn’t know IKEA cabinets came with that kind of warranty. Very impressive that you were able to accomplish so much on such a reasonable budget!

  3. By doing it yourself you saved a good 30% of the $40,000 estimated cost on labor alone. I was impressed with your $500 DIY project in a previous blog entry – you picked the right colors for the cabinets and the countertop and the tiles and you upped the resale value of your home a good $15,000 to $20,000 with your $500 investment! With this project you will see a good $35,000 increase to the value of your home. Nice job.

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