Installing an IKEA Kitchen

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Materials/Spend

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TOTAL: £1,079.97(!!!)

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I always had in mind how I wanted to lay out my kitchen from the very beginning but it wasn’t until I got to the stage of actually buying my kitchen before I started measuring everything up.

There are obviously a lot of things to consider with regards to the size and layout of your kitchen, as well as the appliances you’ll need and how to place them. One cheap way to lay out your kitchen is to use IKEA’s METOD kitchen cabinets. They cost around £26 and come in both 400mm and 600mm widths and are 800mm high and 600mm deep. I tried to base my kitchen measurements around these sizings.

I decided to go for an L shape kitchen, as I feel as though that was the best way to save space in the van. For the length running up the side of the van, I simply used two 400mm wide METODs. For the cabinets running the width of the van, I bought a 600mm wide METOD and one of their corner units that measured 1280mm wide - 2x 600mm plus an 80mm rail splitting the two.

I had to trim these cabinets down but I was forced to use a 600mm METOD as the fridge I’m buying didn’t quite fit in a 400mm cabinet, so I trimmed it down to 430mm. I also trimmed the left side of the corner unit to be 400mm instead of 600mm as well.

Similarly, I didn’t quite have room down the length of the van for two METODs and so I had to reduce the depth of the bulkhead cabinets down to 500mm to give me 100mm more room.

I had initially intended to only use IKEA for the cabinets and then build my own drawers and cabinets myself, however I fell victim to IKEA’s convenience whilst I was there, after seeing a kitchen setup that used the exact same colour I was intending to use, so I ended up chucking more and more things in my basket until I realised I had bought the entire kitchen and spent way more money than I had planned.

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Installing the cabinets

James building my kitchen cabinets in the van

Before starting the cabinets, we first fixed a length of timber to the batons on my van wall, slightly lower than the height of the cabinets. We planned to use this to fasten the cabinets to once they were in place.

Next, we needed to trim down the depth and the width of the 600mm wide METOD and also the corner unit. Thanks to IKEA’s wonderfully detailed instructions, we worked out which specific pieces we would need to trim and then used a track saw to ensure that the cuts were as straight as possible.

In some cases, the section that was being cut included holes for fixing it to another section, so we made sure to use the off-cut that included the holes as a guide to re-drill them on the trimmed piece. We then assembled the cabinets as per the instructions. IKEA supply adjustable feet for the cabinets, so we fixed them in place and made sure they were all the same height before putting the cabinets in place in the van and fastening them straight to the baton that we had installed on the bulkhead wall using the screws provided.

Once the two adjusted cabinets were in place against the bulkhead, we just had to make the two 400mm METODs that didn’t need any adjusting and then fitted them in place in the van in the same way.

We made sure all the cabinets were flat and the same height, whilst also using a square bit of timber to make sure the cabinets were at a right-angle to each other. Because the van isn’t completely straight, the cabinets running the length of the van were slightly bowed, so once we got it at a right angle, there was a bit of space between the edge of one cabinet and the baton, so we simply packed it out with an off-cut of wood before screwing through it. We then fastened all the cabinets together with woodscrews.

Lastly, I bought two edge panels that are screwed to the two visible sides of the cabinets (at each end of the L shape). One needed to be adjusted again to 500mm wide, to match the adjusted depth, and then they’re simply wood-screwed into place from the inside of the cabinet.

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Fitting the worktop

A close up of the joint in my kitchen worktop

The next step was to fix the worktop in place on top of the cabinet. I bought a 2460mm long oak veneer worktop from IKEA. Veneer has an outer layer of oak wrapped around chipboard. This makes it much lighter and cheaper.

There are several different ways you can cut the worktop and it turns out the way we decided we definitely didn’t want to cut was the way we ended up cutting. We didn’t want to simply cut the worktop straight down the middle and then place the two pieces at a right angle because the edge of the worktop is rounded off. This means that you’re placing the freshly cut and sharp piece up against the rounded edge of the other piece so there is a slight gap. After we made our initial cut and sat the worktop in place, it actually looked really good so we stuck with it.

An alternative to this is to cut the worktop straight as before, but then cut what looks like a hockey stick down the length of the worktop that will be joined to the other piece, then cut the same shape on the end of the adjoining piece. This allows you to connect them at a right-angle but you’ve gotten rid of the rounded edge.

Another alternative is a miter cut where you cut both pieces at a 45degree angle, but we didn’t have enough worktop for this.

The last thing I did was to place masking tape on either side of the joint the full length and then ran a small bead of clear silicon down the gap.

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Cutting holes for appliances

We then had to cut holes for my sink, hob and tap. Very nerve racking stuff.

The sink didn’t come with any sort of template, so we placed some masking tape down where the sink was going to sit and measured it out with a tape measure. As it was a simple rectangle, we used the track saw to do as much of each of the four lengths as possible, then used a hand saw to finish off each corner.

For the tap, because the worktop was slightly too thick to screw the tap down from below, we cut a slightly bigger hole about half way through the thickness of the worktop from underneath and then from the top, cut the correctly sized hole all the way through.

Luckily the hob came with a template to cut to, so we didn’t have to measure it out manually. We did the same as before and cut the lengths with the track saw and finished off the corners with a hand saw.

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Fitting the sink

To fit the sink in place, I simply used some waterproof adhesive/sealant hybrid and ran a continuous bead around the edit of the hole in the worktop. I tried not to make the bead too thick otherwise it would burst out the edges of the rim of the sink once it was in place. It was then just a case of slowly dropping the sink into place.

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Fitting the tap

The tap takes both a hot and cold hose however, I’ll be using both hoses to supply cold water to the tap.

Both hoses simply screw into the bottom of the tap and then a thread pipe screws over the top.

The tap then sits in place with a rubber O-ring sandwiching the worktop from above and below and then you can fasten it in place from underneath with the nut provided.

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Fitting the hob

For the hob, once it was in place, it just had four screws for each corner that were fastened in from below, up into the hob.

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Assembling drawers and cabinet

The last thing to do was to assemble the drawers and cabinet. This was simply a case of following IKEA’s instructions again so I won’t insult you by typing out the manual, but it was very easy. I’d bloody expect it to be after spending all that money.

Once all the drawers were made, I attached the runners for each drawer inside the cabinets in the pre-drilled holes.

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If you have any questions at all, feel free to ping me an email or drop me a message on Instagram!

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Materials/Spend

Cabinets and Worktop

Drawers and Cupboards

Fittings