IKEA kitchen planning from scratch - electrical appliances and various questions

Good evening,

I will be building my first single-family home in the middle of the year and would like to install an Ikea kitchen. In the past few days, I have dealt with the IKEA kitchen planner and today I also looked at the Ikea kitchens on site (Oldenburg). So far, so good...

At the moment, I imagine the kitchen as shown in my gallery (everything is not final yet, but pictures say more than words). I now have the following questions:

1.) Corner connections of the countertops? There is a simple 90-degree angle or the countertop connection (if I have read that correctly). If I now order, for example, a PERSÖNLIG countertop or a HAMMARP countertop, will they be cut exactly to size so that I can install the plates? I assume that the plates are then pulled together on the underside and the joint is sealed with silicone. Correct? We have a Makita plunge saw (SP6000), but cutting the 90° angle of a countertop with it - my dear...

2.) Appliances: Wow. This is not so easy at all. I basically need everything: dishwasher (dishwasher), oven, microwave, extractor hood, induction cooktop. If I have read the threads here correctly so far, the biggest complications are with the dishwasher, right? Currently, I have the Siemens SN66P082EU in mind, but also just because of the price/performance ratio. Is there an "overview" of suitable appliances or how do I best proceed?

3.) Measurements: As mentioned, this is a new build and I usually measure with a Bosch line laser at three different points. I would then double-check such a critical measurement with a tape measure. Does IKEA need the measurements to be accurate to the millimeter or should you always add a little extra? That might be difficult with my U-shaped kitchen...

4.) "Dropped" countertop: I have seen a few times now that thick countertops are led down at the carcass (no idea what it’s called). How can I depict that in the IKEA kitchen planner?

5.) Question about the kitchen planner: The program is extremely slow for me on three different computers (Firefox, Chrome, IE). Are there any important settings? The plug-in is installed.

6.) Discount promotions: Are there any somewhat "regular" discount promotions at IKEA for kitchens (e.g., at the end of the year, etc.)? There are always these 10%-voucher promotions. With a kitchen purchase of several thousand euros, that can definitely be worthwhile.

Thank you very much,
Moritz

I believe there will be various other questions in the coming weeks...

Hello,

I can't say anything about the planner because it does not run on Linux.

1) Personlig countertops are custom cut to size with the appropriate connectors.
If you want to see how to make a professional corner joint:
[YouTube:1pquezur]9TGBZHZ_SM8[/YouTube:1pquezur]

2) For the dishwasher, you have to pay attention to large capacity and Vario hinge with Siemens/Bosch/Neff. I once compiled a list in a thread, but it is already outdated. Since there is no filter option on the BSH pages, everyone should ask S, B, N for a complete list of models with these two features. Maybe they will improve their websites someday.
If the extractor hood is supposed to really do what you expect from it, the manufacturers are called Berbel, Gutmann, and Novy.

3) You commission the measurement at IKEA. Then you are on the safe side if something is wrong afterward.

6) There are no regular promotions. Last late summer, there was a promotion card worth €400 for Family members on kitchen purchases from €3500. Before that, there was a free dishwasher once. In one year (2015?) there was no promotion for kitchens at all.

Especially with large L- or U-shaped kitchens, I would always have a measurement taken, as otherwise there could be problems with the countertop. You will get credit for that anyway.

No. 4 is called (support) cheeks. They can be guided along the corpus for aesthetics or actually replace a part of the corpus, e.g., next to the dishwasher. I would definitely not use so many impractical corner cabinets. Better to have empty ("dead") corners and next to them cabinets with pull-outs that offer you much more storage space.

You want to install the kitchen yourself, right?

For me, the planner still works best under Chrome.

What immediately strikes me about your plan:

Is a panel planned on the left side next to the tall cabinet? Or is the wall stub still variable? That side looks planned up to the last millimeter to me. You should leave a bit of space there.

Otherwise, I agree with Nörgli and would do without all the corner cabinets.

Just a few ideas from me: The sink on the right by the wall (closer to the fridge), the hob where the sink is, and one or two more tall cabinets on the right wall.

For countertop corner joints, there are basically two options: Use standard countertops and place them edge to edge, meaning they are only connected by the screwed base cabinets. For countertops with rounded edges, you need the Fixa strips, but that’s certainly not everyone’s taste. Of course, the best option is a professional corner cut. I’m more a fan of first setting up the base cabinets in L- and U-shaped kitchens and then ordering the countertop made to measure afterwards. With Ikea, this procedure doesn’t quite match up with the delivery time; you don’t want to have a half-finished kitchen for weeks. But you will surely find a hardware store or a carpentry shop that can also work the corner cuts into the Ikea standard countertops (stock items). Some Hornbach hardware stores in southern Germany stock countertops from the Austrian manufacturer Kaindl with a depth of 63.5 cm as stock items sold by the meter, allowing you to simply order the countertop with corner cut to fit. Unfortunately, the selection of decors is not large (two decors in gray concrete look, I like it). I would also avoid the sink or cooktop area for corner cuts.

Regarding dishwashers, I would really buy an Ikea device or a BSH device (the IKEA expert maintains a thread with the list of compatible devices). Everything else will likely be a makeshift job that leads to frequent curses, even if some Ikea salespeople explain that with the article BEHÄPLIG you can also easily install non-Ikea devices. Even the assembly instructions for this article show how problematic the installation will be.

Lowered countertops as side panels is just an optical thing and in my opinion no longer the trend. However, I find this variant a very good solution if you end the kitchen row with a dishwasher, since countertops are better than the 12-15 mm thick cover panels.

Regarding corner panels (filler strips) in the kitchen planner: You can plan these in any width you want; every cabinet with doors should have at least a 4.5 cm distance to the wall so that the door can open a full 90°. Filler strips are not a special article; you take a narrow front and cut out the panels yourself (better to have this done at the hardware store). For smooth fronts without handle strips/wood grain/grooves (e.g. Veddinge) you can also take a 10x80 cm drawer front vertically and cut out suitable corner panels for base cabinets from it. For tall cabinets, you can also cut the filler strips from cover panels.