First of all, as I mentioned in the last post, I took some better pictures of our new kitchen.
I did remember to take the camera, but since we went to IKEA in my mom’s town, instead of where we live, while they had the kitchen, it was set up completely different so pretty much looks nothing like the one we saw at our IKEA. But still you might be able to get an idea of what it will look like.
We won’t have any of the top shelf ones, that’ll all be glass, but more about that later.
Of course we then customized just about everything in that kitchen.
To do this we needed an appointment in on of the IKEA offices. Not the little computers you see, when you get there, but an actual office (who knew they had those? 😉 )
Our appointment was at 2 pm, my mom was watching the kids, so we thought after we are done with the kitchen planning, we are going to go eat something at the IKEA restaurant and maybe pick up some new plates that go with the kitchen.
I mean, we got there at 2 pm people!
Turns out kitchen planning takes quite a bit longer than 2 or 3 hours. We were there till 7:45pm! That’s almost 6 hours!
We had to tell the person exactly what we wanted for each cupboard (shelves or drawers) we needed to tell her which handles (if any) which size the drawers should be (how wide and how tall each individual one should be). We had to pick out an oven, stove, dishwasher, sink (omg we could NOT agree on a sink of all things!), microwave, counter top (color, thickness,…) etc. etc.
And it’s not like you just sit there and tell her what you want, she actually shows you all around the store and explains the different pros and cons to each drawer, shelf, design,….. It was crazy. Very overwhelming but also very professional.
In the end we decided on a white high gloss kitchen, complete with high tech, self cleaning oven (I honestly love the oven it has so much stuff, it’s insane), newest model dishwasher, standard microwave, double sink, no fridge (we have our big huge one we’ll take with us), white high gloss counter top, induction stove extra large. ALL the cupboards you see have drawers, we decided completely against any selves. (With the only exception being the shelves on the very top). They all come out all the way (there was a big difference in price to the ones that open halfway or all the way, but we did decide on the more expensive ones after all, thinking it’ll be worth it) so nothing gets lost of forgotten in the back of a cupboard.
The wall hanging cupboards have are out of frosted glass and have indirect light (in each one).
Something new IKEA does is that from the outside you’ll only just see 2 drawers, but if you open each drawer up you can decide how many drawers you want to have inside. So you’ll have a very even appearance of the kitchen, but can actually have 5 or 6 drawers hidden inside. Pretty neat! (You will see just how that works in the following pictures).
We are pretty happy about the result of it and know that we’ll now have plenty of room in our kitchen. It’ll be about 21 square meters, so lots of room for all 5 of us to cook and bake together.
What came as a complete surprise to me is how involved my husband was in this. I figured he wouldn’t care much about the kitchen, but there he was having his mind set on certain pull out faucets, double sinks, certain sized drawers, frosted glass, … the whole deal. It was pretty impressive and so much fun to work together on this. We really had a fun day, even though the restaurant closed on us before we could eat. We were able to throw some plates in for the new kitchen (they are turquoise, just like certain decoration in the kitchen/living room (it’s all one big open room) will be, as well as 1 or two walls.
Now we can tell our architect what size he needs to make the kitchen so the one we planned will fit in – which is the whole reason we did it before we planned the house. (Blueprints are basically done, but we needed to know down to the millimeter how long each wall had to be).
Another quick heads up: Some of you might wonder why you can’t see a range hood over the stove. This is because our house has a ventilation system (“Lueftungsanlage mit Waeremerueckgewinnung”) that exchanges the air in the entire house constantly. So we don’t need a range hood.
So, here’s the result.
(The white wall doesn’t exist. Our house will not have a wall there, as it will be a huge open living room/kitchen area. Instead of the wall, we’ll have a living room there. The door you see leads to the pantry for all kids of food storage etc.). The lower white “cupboard” resembles our big fridge/freezer that we are taking with us. View over the island with the extra large induction stove. High tech oven and microwave are placed within the large cupboards. Drawers on the bottom, shelves on top (the cupboard on the left obviously also has a door, I just opened it so you can see the inside of it). Everything is a white high gloss finish which really doesn’t come out in the picture. Where it was possible we chose the handle free option. You have to push and the door just jumps open. When you close the drawers they silently close themselves.
View over the kitchen. Door leads to the pantry, white wall doesn’t exist (you’ll be looking into the living room instead). Island is all white, the pinkish part is a computer bug ;). 3 chairs for the kids to sit on and help me with cooking or for adults that come over for dinner. Around the walls we have quite a lot of working space as well. Think Christmas cookie baking with 3 kids. It’ll be needed 😉
IKEA Metod new drawer system. The open cupboard with the 3 drawers looks exactly like the one to the left of the corner. It all looks like it’s just two big drawers, when in reality it’s just hiding up to 8 drawers!. For this one we chose to have 3 drawers, but some are hiding 5 or 6. Deciding on this (how many drawers in which side do you want in which drawer) is what took the most time.
Another cupboard this time with 4 drawers. All the drawers will get different sub dividers, but those we needed to add when we figured out what we will put in which drawer. On the left you can see the double sink with the pull out faucet Chris picked out.
Full view of the kitchen. The hanging cupboards oven to the top by pushing on them. The are frosted glass. The empty spot on the lower left side (where the cupboards end) will have a huge glass double door leading to the backyard (for lots of light). This is why you can only see a tiny window (all the other windows in the house are floor-to-ceiling-windows). Door on the right is leading to the pantry.
View from the living room towards the kitchen. The lower left side will have a huge glass double door leading to the backyard. The cupboards in front of the chairs are also being used for storage. The kitchen is about 22 square meters big.
LOTS of interior stuff to pick form for each drawer.
You can even hide your trash cans 🙂
So yeah, we are pretty psyched about it 🙂 And are totally loving it. Both of us, not just me. I asked Chris if he wanted a smaller kitchen (since it is pretty big) and he said no way. Apparently he loves it too.
YAY!