Problems with external devices, pass strips, and baseboards

Hello everyone,

I would be happy if you could help me with a few problems regarding an Ikea Metod kitchen.

I need a tall cabinet to accommodate a refrigerator with a niche height of 103 cm and a freezer with a niche height of 60 cm.

I have only found this one:

METOD
Tall cabinet for fridge/freezer, white, Sävedal white

It has doors with heights of 120 and 100 cm. Unfortunately, both are much too large for the appliances. I would have big gaps in the cabinet. Do you have a more suitable solution?

The refrigerator has fixed-door technology. At IKEA, everything is attached with an overlay door. Is it actually possible to convert the refrigerator to an overlay door? I am not sure if the too large door would be too heavy for the fridge hinges if I attach it as a fixed door directly to the refrigerator.

Another problem is the filler strips and plinths for the white Sävedal fronts. I simply cannot find them on the website. I cannot find filler strips at all and only plinths for other fronts. They must exist, right?

I am really grateful for any tip.

The matching baseboards and end panels are called "Förbättra". Just take a 200cm cabinet with a 120cm and 80cm door!

Which fronts do you use? With Ringhult, for example, you could have them cut to the desired height at a hardware store, and for white, they also had suitable high-gloss edging tape there. With Veddinge, there is still a lot in the Faktum reorder program available as Applad to order additionally. Otherwise, you could work your way up to the next higher front size using 10cm and 20cm high drawer fronts in 10cm increments, to avoid having too large unnecessary additional compartments behind the appliance fronts. Although admittedly, this is not to everyone’s taste and may not always fit the alignment of the kitchen gaps of the neighboring cabinets.

I would not try to convert a fixed door technique fridge to sliding door technique. There are too many details to consider, for example whether the fridge door may be drilled at all for the plastic rails and whether it is not too thick to allow the movement space for the sliding door rails.

Perhaps an IKEA kitchen or these cooling appliances are not the right fit for you. If you tailor special niche heights with these tips, please be careful to work with standard niche heights, where you can always install replacement appliances.

My personal solution for such a case would be: until the death of the fridge appliances that absolutely need to continue to be used, just leave the unused storage space and work with the next higher fronts, so that when replacing the appliances you can better utilize the niche heights. You can always find a few unnecessary things for these useless compartments, e.g., cake dome, additional baking trays, unnecessary accessories of kitchen appliances used at most once a year, etc.

So I would take a look in the device manual to see how heavy the door fronts are allowed to be. I don't think there will be a problem. I just checked with Miele, where a 13kg door is allowed for a 102cm refrigerator. The 120cm Sävedal weighs only 7kg.

Sorry for only getting back to you now, I'm right in the middle of moving stress.

Thank you very much for your tips.

If I take a 200 cm tall cabinet instead of the 220 cm one, I at least have a more suitable door for the freezer, but then I also have to use 60 cm wall cabinets instead of the 80 cm ones. That wouldn’t look so good again.

I took a look at the Förbettra fronts/ toe kicks. Unfortunately, the ivory white color doesn’t really match the white Sävedal fronts. So I would probably have to make something myself out of laminated chipboard. I find it a bit poor from Ikea that they don’t offer toe kicks and side panels that really match in color.

It’s a shame that you can’t simply convert the fixed door into a sliding door. I checked in the AEG refrigerator’s manual. Unfortunately, there is no information about the maximum weight the front can handle.

I will probably install the refrigerator at the bottom of the tall cabinet, above it a 40 cm microwave, and above that a 60 cm storage compartment. The freezer will then go into a normal 80 cm base cabinet.

A different problem has now come up with the choice of cabinets. For the oven, I wanted to use a built-in cabinet with a 20 cm drawer at the bottom. Unfortunately, on the German Ikea website I can only find one with a 10 cm panel on top and a 10 cm drawer front at the bottom.

Are the cabinets with the large drawer at the bottom no longer available?

Förbättra is available in ivory white AND "normal white"!