Ikea Kitchens

[Kitchen Sink]

Has anyone ever used Ikea to have a new kitchen fitted, if so, what did you think of their service?  Do they do things like fitting the under-cabinet lighting and stuff or do you have to sort out an electrician for all of that? 

[We tried]

I love IKEA and think it's a great concept, but I tried and didn't have the best experience. What they did was to recommend a contractor who works exclusively with the IKEA products, and they came to my flat for consultation, to measure and locate pipes, drains, outlets, etc. and then suggest what needs to be purchased for the job. Then once we decide what we want, it's up to us to purchase the things from IKEA, have them delivered and then get the contractors back out to do the job. No electrical work or anything else was included, just the carpentry.

I found the contractors quick to respond, but I had a million questions that I was unsatisfied with their answers. Fitting a kitchen is not as easy as they make it out to be in the store and catalog - we had odd corners, unusual fixtures etc and the contractors weren't really coming up with solutions for us, more like telling us to look at the catalog and see what we think might work. I was sort of hoping for a little expert advice and got very little from them.

In the end we found a carpenter who did an all new custom built in kitchen, we told him what we wanted and he made it happen - pipes, fitting etc were his problems to solve instead of ours and in the end we paid him not too much more than what the whole IKEA experience would have cost. He used a separate electrician and plumber, but worked in tandem.