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Many of you have been on the journey with us throughout our own renovation over the past 2+ years. We’ve shared a lot on Instagram (@peachandpinehome) in our stories and posts and have appreciated all your love and feedback throughout the process! Surprisingly (at least to us) our blog post Our Kitchen Cabinets: An honest review of IKEA and Semihandmade has become one of our most visited web pages of all time. Crazy! But since that is the case, we wanted to do a little 2 year(ish) update here. So without further adieu…

OUR KITCHEN CABINETS: THE 2 YEAR UPDATE

So if you haven’t read the original post, maybe hop over there and give it a look before continuing. There are a lot of details there about pricing, process, layout, etc. What I want to do here is just expand on a couple things.

Things we love…

1. The cabinets themselves: We are really impressed with the quality and the durability…we haven’t had any issues with them

2. The soft-close feature: This is a high-end cabinet/drawer feature that Ikea makes possible at a ridiculously affordable price. It was awesome before we had a kid, and now it’s extra awesome.

3. Going with drawers for the lowers: this was a decision we wrestled with in the moment. We both had lower cabinets growing up, and the thought of doing all drawers as lowers was a bit scary. Now a year in, WE LOVE HAVING ALL DRAWERS. We keep our plates, bowls, pots, pans, utensils, baking sheets, hand towels, accessories, and even our trash can all in drawers, and it’s awesome. I feel like it helps us stay more organized and we are able to keep the drawers/cabinets as a whole much cleaner because of this.

4. Secret drawers: Not only do we have drawers, but we have drawers within the drawers. Woah, mind blown, right? We use these particularly in to spots that are really effective:

   1. Above our utensils, are more utensils. If you open our utensil drawer, you’ll see all the normal stuff…forks, knives, spoons, measuring cups, etc. But height-wise, that doesn’t really take up a lot of space right? Well that’s where the secret drawer comes in, because above that main utensil drawer is a second drawer of more “specialty” utensils! Stuff like pizza cutters, can openers, cheese shredders, etc. It’s just an extra layer of organization and making sure we are using all the space available to us. It’s great!

   2. The second place we use a secret drawer is for the dreaded junk drawer. Every home has a junk drawer. It’s just a thing. but I LOVE that ours is hidden. It’s a little out of sight out of mind, which also encourages me to throw away things I might normally put in there. But, of course, it’s always there when I need it, just waiting in its secret spot.

Things we would do differently…

Despite overall loving what we have going on in the kitchen two years later, there are a couple things that if we were to do it again we might do differently.

1. Buy the pre-finished Super Matte thermafoil fronts from Semihandmade. If you read our first post, you know that we were thrilled with our custom doors from Semihandmade. Well, we are still thrilled and would purchase again any day! In fact, we often recommend these to clients who are doing IKEA kitchens. BUT instead of buying the DIY option and painting ourselves, I think we would buy the pre-finished thermafoil fronts from Semihandmade. This is our second go-around at painting cabinets. It’s tough to get right and requires a lot of time, space, and patience. The pre-finished fronts from Semihandmade look great and are much simpler!

2. We touched on this in the first post, but make sure your measurements are spot on. There is a place in our kitchen where we could have gone with a wider drawer but mis-measured. It’s not a big deal at all, but the extra space would have been nice.

Another quick note – the Ikea Kitchen Planner software has really improved since we used it to plan our kitchen a couple of years ago! It’s a bit easier to use, a bit more comprehensive, and Ikea is always updating their inventory and improving their products.

So there you have it. We are still loving our Ikea Cabinets with Semihandmade fronts! For more tips, tricks, and general insights into the design and renovation world, sign up for our email list in the side bar and/or follow us on Instagram and Facebook.

Also, enjoy a few more pics of our kitchen!

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