We DIY’ed a Custom IKEA Bar
How to use the DIY IKEA Kitchen Planner to customize your cabinets online:
I used their online kitchen planner – it is soo easy to use! You just input the room’s dimensions and any appliances, windows or doors…and drag and drop the cabinet boxes how you want them. Click here for a PDF of our plans, including every item we ordered.
For the wine boxes, those are actually 3 square media boxes (without cabinet fronts) stacked on top of each other, and Danny built the inserts with plywood and painted them to match. I go more into detail on this in another section below.
Once it’s all designed, it’s as easy as 1-2-3!
- Export the list to your cart and delete/add items as needed – they add random things like under-cabinet light strips that you may or may not want. We didn’t use those. I also took out the cabinet fronts, because we were using Semihandmade’s fronts. But don’t forget the little hole plugs if you want to hide the holes!
- Bring the shopping list to the cashier inside the furniture warehouse in IKEA. They will create an order for you.
- Check out with the slip they gave you, then go to the furniture pick-up area and someone will bring everything out! While you’re waiting, drive your car around to the parking stalls in front so you don’t have to haul everything too far.
Putting the cabinets together:
Tip for doing bulk IKEA cabinets: do each types of cabinets and drawers at the same time. We had four of the same cabinet boxes, so we laid all four of them out in a row and knocked those out. Then the drawers, then the wine boxes. It makes the process wayyy less painful.
We made the entire top section on the ground first and screwed it together, then lifted and raised it at the end.
Semihandmade custom cabinet fronts for IKEA:
Semihandmade’s fronts are pretty much the same material, they just look and feel much more ‘luxurious’ and are thicker (see photo below).
We kept the IKEA drawer fronts for the drawers that we put inside the cabinets.
We wanted glass fronts for the upper middle cabinets, so Semihandmade sent “glass ready” cabinets and I took them to a glass shop in Mesa that installed glass for $40 total!
DIY Wine Racks:
We did the racks ourselves because I got a $3,000 quote for them – apparently they’re a SUPER custom job! So we thought up this hack with square IKEA cabinets – we just didn’t order cabinet fronts for them and Danny make the cross racks himself with plywood.
Counters:
Do the counters as soon as humanly possible once you know the measurements, because fabrication takes a few weeks plus an extra week if you do a mitered edge. We also needed our counters to start on the top section, because the top rests on the countertops. So a lot depends on the counters being installed!
I found our slab at a scrapyard – it’s a calacutta quartz.
I also opted for a mitered edge to make the counter look thicker (remember the kitchen at the McCormick flip?). If you do this, it will take an extra week…so account for that.
How I organized the bar:
This thing gave us so much storage, we have a few empty drawers!
The bottom right two cabinets are for place settings, oils, and a junk drawer.
The bottom left two cabinets are mostly alcohol and alcohol-related supplies. I made sure the bottom drawer was thick enough to hold bottles, and there was enough space to fit a tall Costco-sized bottle.
