IKEA Kitchen Install Part Dos – Cabinet Assembly

If you are interested in reading part 1, it is here: IKEA Kitchen Install Part Uno – Planning Design

Next, we assemble the cabinets.  This takes time.  I do recommend using a drill with it set to low torque.  You will need a drill, rubber mallet, Phillips head screw driver, hammer.

One place where we messed up is we never compared our final purchase receipt with the online planning tool item list.  The guy that was helping us purchase accidentally deleted our order and had to manually enter it and there were many errors, which meant we ended up returning a few cabinets after we’d already assembled them.  :-/  IKEA was great though – they took them back no questions asked and gave us new ones which was a relief.  So make sure you double check everything before you start – this set us back a bit.

You’ll need a large clear space for assembly.  And you will want to assemble everything on a drop cloth or the cardboard boxes that they came in so that you don’t scratch up the finish of the cabinets during assembly.  The instructions are mostly picture instructions with no words.  So, just follow along with the pictures and lay everything out as shown.  I highly recommend following along with the instruction manual – if you don’t and try on your own you might regret it and have to redo because things need to be done in a certain progression.  Here’s some pictures of the assembly.  It was so easy we even had our daughters helping us.  But it does take time.

Lay the stuff out as pictured in the instructions:

We used a drill to put these in or it would take for-ever.  Set it to low torque so that you don’t do any damage.

Little tip on this one – don’t twist these cams too hard – they break easily.  I broke one and then we got an extra one luckily in a different package.  I took this as God’s intervention because I did pray for help after that.  And the next box had an extra (exactly what we needed – there were no extras in any of the other boxes – so awesome).

Hammer in the little teeny tiny nails in the back to keep the back of the cabinet in place.  Do make sure you have the white side facing the right way (inside the cabinet) because I imagine it would be impossible to get these nails out.  

Now, we had the cabinets assembled and we started getting stressed about actually installing them because life got busy and we’d been working on renovating this unit for longer than I care to admit.

So, I went back to IKEA to see about paying for installation and they don’t do the installation if you’ve already assembled the cabinets because they charge for assembly and installation per cabinet. It’s one price and they don’t reduce the price if you’ve already assembled the cabinets.

We thought it wouldn’t be worth it then to pay the huge price for installation when we’d already done so much of the work. We also figured it would be hard to find a contractor that is familiar with installing an IKEA kitchen since they are so new to the area so we realized we are completely on our own. Duh duh duh. No, literally we said, “Duh!” because we had no idea what we were doing (I should edit that to say I have no idea what I’m doing – Bryon is pretty handy). Time to google some stuff.

And there’s not much information on Google either. I’m not sure why – IKEA has been around for a while. Maybe we don’t even know how to Google right. :-p Saw some stuff in a different language but that wasn’t going to help.  So, our next post will be the Installation post. It’ll feel like a miracle when that is done. Praying heavily at this point.  We have to have it mostly done by December 12th because that’s when the flooring guys are coming to measure. We are making good progress.  Stay tuned. :-/

Read on for the rest of the install:

IKEA Kitchen Install Part Uno – Planning Design

IKEA Kitchen Install Part Dos – Assembly

IKEA Kitchen Install Part Tres- Cabinet Install

IKEA Kitchen Install Parto Quatro – Finishing Touches