Kitchen Building 4: Details and Storage

This is part four (of four) in my series of posts on putting in an IKEA kitchen. Here are some links to part one, part two, and part three, in case you want to get the whole picture.

At the end of the last post, we'd finally gotten the basics of our kitchen done - Cabinets, counters, plumbing, and appliances. But if you walk into our kitchen, you'd probably notice more of the details and the other storage. I didn't take very many pictures when putting this in (or arranging it), so I'm just sharing some detail shots I took recently (right after our kitchen had been cleaned). This spans both little (but important) details and the basics of storing things in our kitchen.

The toe kick:
I didn't realize - until I was putting the kitchen together - that cabinets usually stand on legs that are hidden behind trim. That trim is the toe kick, and before I installed ours I had constant worries about things rolling under the cabinets and rotting down there. IKEA's toe kicks snap onto the legs. Ours looks like this:

The shelves:
The decision to do away with giant overhead cabinets meant that we didn't have much dish storage. There's still one cabinet of them - things that don't stack as neatly or look as uniform - but this is our main collection of dishes and glasses. These shelves are also from IKEA. They started as plan wood, and I spray-painted them kind of a silver-grey (it just looks white, I know) to match the kitchen better:

Using the wall as storage:
When I was shopping around for kitchen designs, I was always more excited about kitchens with open storage - things like overhead pot racks or easily-reachable spice racks. I just don't like digging for things, especially if I use them all the time. The solution I adopted is the bar - accompanied by a spice ledge:

You can see our four main pots as well as our cutting board right near our prep counter and range. Our knives are on a magnetic strip, which is a bit more cramped than I'd hoped, but still works well, and our favorite stir and flip utensils are right over the stove:

The only thing that's not quite right about those pictures is that it is so rare for all of those things to be clean and put away all at once. Our kitchen gets plenty of use, and we're not all that on top of cleaning it.

The bar, the hooks, the magnetic strip and the spice ledge are all IKEA kitchen accessories, and installing them was another long session with the borrowed hammer drill. But once the dust was cleared away, we were using it immediately.

Inside the Cabinets:
Since I've been focusing on the upper half, here's two of our five upper cabinets.  I've made liberal use of IKEA's little cabinet platforms and storage boxes - they happen to fit just about right. That's one of the convenient little perks of using the IKEA kitchen. And also, I think it's an integral part of their business plan to sell a kitchen and then continue making money on all the little extra things that make it work. Whatever, it works:

These are the under-counter details I'm excited about - the pull out trash cans, and the stacked hidden drawers. If I could, I would replace every under-counter cabinet ever with drawers.

 

Under the counter:
The shelves on the left (overflow storage) should have been a simple install, but were slightly too tall so we had to cut them down (I hope I don't have to use a hack saw again for a while). The cart on the right is adorable, and does a pretty good job of holding anything related to baking:

Corner table:
The final element (which was actually the first thing put together) is a counter-height table in the corner. Some people would fit a dining table for two in that nook, but David and I would prefer additional prep space and walking our food into another room to eat it. The chairs are for entertaining (guest seats while we cook) or for sitting while we prep (we typically stand, but it's great to have an option):

And that's the full tour. So far, it really works for us. After nearly one year, the wear and tear is minimal. I think I can list it all briefly: some of my imperfect grout is showing a bit of age, the little stick-on cabinet bumpers tend to wander from their places, the wall where we lean the cutting boards is showing some wear (I wish there was a backsplash there!), and the dishwasher once refused to turn off. Not bad for a budget kitchen!