For the full story, you'll read four posts. This one focuses on planning/ordering/delivery. Part 2 talks about cabinet assembly, part 3 focuses on the counter and appliances, and part 4 goes over finishing touches and storage.
Starting Conditions
Classic German apartments are often rented without a kitchen. As in, there's a room that's called the kitchen, but it's empty. In Berlin, this practice is slowly becoming less and less common, in part due to an increasingly international population. Even if the kitchen is rented empty, your management is required to put a stove and sink in upon request. Usually these are not great, but functional.
When we were searching for a place to live, we were in the fortunate situation of choosing between two similarly priced apartments in the same neighborhood, one with a kitchen and one without. This one (no kitchen) won because it's closer to transit, has a nicer bathtub, and because the kitchen - once installed - would be much better. As time goes on, the benefits of having a kitchen I designed far outweigh the benefits of a pre-done kitchen, and the time savings on transit is essential. Hooray!
We started with four walls, a backslash, and a few hookups. Here was the main wall:
And the view of the opposite corner:
As for hookups, here is what we have. A double tap of cold water, a single tap of hot water, a wastewater pipe, and a gas main:
We were also told that the wall with the backsplash was ok for drilling, while the other wall was not. Nearly all of the walls in this apartment are stone with a plaster finish. We asked the rental people what the wall was made of, but they did not know the English word, and the internet didn't agree to a translation. We should have pestered him about that, in hindsight.
Budget-wise, we had a few thousand Euros. I was initially putting it away to throw a nice wedding and invite all our friends and family. Instead, we got married with just immediate family and had some money to work with when we moved.
To IKEA
There was never another option. Why IKEA? Keep in mind that my German is barely functional, and David's is much better, but not great for complicated stuff. With IKEA, everything is online and standardized. If you wonder something, you can nearly always check the website and find specifications and instructions. We can then use google translate or look at the US or UK version. We also have an IKEA relatively close - 35 minutes on the tram. And we didn't have the financial resources or the local knowledge to hire people, so DIY was key.
So I took to IKEA's online kitchen planner. Here I should confess something - I had been making fake kitchens as sort of a hobby ever since I knew this might be an option. When it's not a real kitchen, it's abstract like The Sims or Tetris or something, and I like video games. I also like home improvement shows. Anyhow. This is a screenshot of what I thought was the final version of our kitchen:
It's a basic galley kitchen, with a washing machine (the kitchen is the only place with the hook-up for it), a gas range and an electric stove. I had the motif of the double panel drawer in the bottom, and on top we had open front cabinets. Why are the top cabinets so small? I found that we never used ours beyond the first and second shelves - or at least, not very efficiently. I also have a strong preference for under-counter drawers instead of cabinets - I don't like crouching to peer into the back of cabinets to search for things. In addition to this row of cabinets, I planned to put a shelving unit on the left end and our fridge and a table on the opposite wall.
We went to IKEA on our first weekend after we had access to our new apartment. We were planning to get all the kitchen stuff as well as our beds, desks, and a couch in one go, and get them delivered all together (IKEA delivery is much more affordable for large orders).
We hit the kitchen department first thing, and after logging in and bringing our plan up, we were directed to the english-speaking IKEA kitchen person (I think they all spoke enough for simple questions, but this was detailed). It turns out that our plan had some flaws.
It started with the oven+stove combo - it had to be right next to (but not in front of) the gas hookup. The gas hookup was under the sink cabinet, but the sink can't be right next to the stove. We solved this with a large cabinet under the sink - a 60cm-wide cabinet, with the sink (~40cm-wide) all the way to the right. That also meant no under-sink drawers because the gas can't be behind a drawer. I was very glad I'd measured exactly how far from the walls our hookups were.
We also had to remove the drawers on the very right end because they pushed the whole setup too far to the left, so our dishwasher hose wouldn't reach the sink. After making a few other minor swaps based on things we checked in store, we ended at the setup that we bought, which looks a lot like our kitchen today:
To buy this, we went through the inventory with our helper, and then (after a lunch and some other shopping) we placed our order and paid for everything to be delivered. If you are keeping track, appliance-wise, we got our dishwasher, oven, stove, and range hood from IKEA (and not our washing machine or fridge).
In Germany, IKEA doesn't accept credit cards - that put a nix on our paying directly with US accounts. It accepts direct debit from German accounts, but for various reasons, we ended up paying in literal cash for our kitchen. Literal cash. It was weird.
Delivery
We paid for IKEA delivery in part because we knew for sure they would carry it up our three flights of stairs. They carried everything up on their backs - even the super heavy kitchen counters (one guy carried both pieces on his back, while David and I could only really lift them together). I inventoried the whole thing and found nothing missing. I posted photos that day of the delivery in general, so here I'll just put one of our entire kitchen packed flat:
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