IKEA kitchen makeover with custom IKEA hacks

Here's a kitchen we finished last month for a client who's not afraid to think outside the box! Working with our designer, they were able to come up with a totally unique looking kitchen that manages to blend modern features with classical elements to fit perfectly within the style of the home.

Modern IKEA kitchen with high-gloss white doors and brass pulls

The kitchen also features some really fun IKEA hacks like this workstation/appliance garage

Third-party pocket door hinge sliders for IKEA appliance garage

We used 3rd party pocket door hinges to allow the doors to open up and tuck out of the way along the sides of the cabinet. The workstation features a walnut butcherblock countertop, purchased from local hardwood supplier: Crosscut Hardwoods, and we made some matching walnut shelves to compliment.

With the doors closed, any clutter can be hidden away!

Another cool hack: toe-kick drawers like these, which are placed strategically around the kitchen for extra storage. We made these drawers by cutting down some base cabinets and installing stock IKEA shallow drawers. Since the drawers are only 21" deep, we were able to cut the cabinet back enough to align with the rest of the toe-kick. The only drawback to these toekick drawers is that we had to raise the cabinets up an extra inch to make them fit properly. This means that the finished counter top height is 37" instead of 36, but the customers weren't phased by this as they are fairly tall anyway.

And how about that brass toe-kick? Wacky, right?! This is made from special order 18g sheet metal which we cut to fit, and laminated to the toe kick using contact cement. Not only is this a striking visual element by itself, but using a contrasting color toe-kick like this almost makes the cabinets look like they're suspended.

Window seats like these are something we do quite often. We made these using 30x15x24" refrigerator cabinets from IKEA. In keeping with standard seat dimensions, we cut them back to a depth of 18" instead of 24".

Here we stacked a 30x80 pantry cabinet on top of the 30x15 fridge cabinet for storing shoes, coats and the kid's backpacks. To make it fill out the wall, we were left with 8" of extra space, so we decided to make use of it by cutting down a 15x80" pantry.

Right away after my first meeting with the client, and listening to her ideas for the kitchen, I knew this would be a fun project, and I wasn't disappointed! It's yet another project that we are proud to have been a part of!

To See more cool IKEA hacks, check out this post from last year: IKEA Hacks and Other Fun Stuff

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