Ikea Kitchen Cost: What I Spent for a 9×12 Kitchen Remodel in 2022💵😃

Remodeling a kitchen is one of the most expensive home improvements any homeowner will take on, and knowing in advance what an Ikea kitchen remodel should, roughly, cost can help you avoid scams and predatory contractor estimates like the one I describe receiving later in this article.

In this article, I’ll share:

• An exact breakdown of what it cost to remodel my 9 x 12 foot gally-style kitchen using all ikea parts but independent labor and a little DIY,
• how to avoid predatory kitchen remodeling contractors preying on first-time homeowners who don’t know what a kitchen remodel should cost.
• 3 ways I cut costs on my Ikea kitchen remodel without sacrificing any quality on the finished kitchen
• 3 biggest expenses in my small Ikea kitchen remodel.

Keep reading to see my exact costs for remodeling a kitchen in early 2022 with Ikea cabinets and fixtures.

What I Spent: Cost Breakdown of my 9 x 12ft Ikea Kitchen Remodel

• Base cabinet one – 18 x 24 – three drawers $250
• base cabinet two, 18 x 24, shelves $110
• base cabinet three, 18 x 24, trash drawer pull out, $181
• base cabinet four, 20 x 24, sink cabinet, Ikea sink, amazon faucet, $412
• base cabinet five, 18 x 24, three drawers, $250
• base cabinet six, 18 x 24, three drawers one hidden, $243
• 2 wall cabinets, 15 x 40″, 2 x $168 = $336
• Range hood, $699
• New external vent installed, including duct, soffit, & labor: $535
• 2 large wall cabinets with glass doors, 36 x 40, 2 x $418 = $836
• wall cabinet, fridge upper, 36 x 20″, $247
• cabinet mounting hardware and toe kicks: $216
• Ikea cabinet cover panels and trim: $500
• lighting: $86
• drawer pulls and knobs from Amazon: $68
• new laminate floor and underlay: $1119
• ceasarstone Quartz countertop + installation (26 sq ft) $1,820
• materials for vertical paneling kitchen accent wall: $168.00
• Paint: $94
• Reclaimed wood for open shelves (see them here) $79
• Install new ice maker line $95
• Labor & Materials $6,900.00
  • inclusive of demolition & hauloff of old kitchen,
  • tile floor removal,
  • laminate floor installation,
  • wall reinforcement, drywal repair, & repainting,
  • cabinet installation,
  • building reclaimed wood open shelves,
  • installing accent wall,
  • installing range hood and constructing new vent
  • installing sink, and updating light fixtures.

Total Ikea Kitchen Cost for 2022 Remodel of a 9ft x 12ft Galley Style Kitchen (including professional demolition and professional installation):

$15,142.15

Ultimately, I ended up spending about $3000 on cabinets and various accessories, $1000 on a sink, faucet and IKEA’s most expensive range hood, another 1500 on lighting, drawer pulls (which are much cheaper and more varied at Amazon than IKEA), and flooring, and just under $2000 on white quartz countertops. I spent another $500 having the range hood ducted in (instead of recirculating air) and $100 to purchase century-old wood planks to use for the portions of open shelving.

Gutting the old kitchen, installing new flooring, installing the cabinets, adding an accent wall, and doing some small repairs that popped up landed my total labor and minor materials cost just under $7000, for a total cost of just over $15,000 for my IKEA kitchen remodel in January 2022.

I fully realize this article is fully dedicated to my experience with my recent Ikea kitchen remodel, but there are lots of options to consider out there when it comes to kitchen remodel work. So, here’s an article covering the cost breakdown of a more extensive Home Depot Kitchen remodel, which I hope you find to be a helpful read to give some comparison when getting ready to tackle your own remodel!

Here’s A cool VR Design Tool I Wish I Had – maybe next time 😍

How to Avoid Predatory Kitchen Remodeling Contractors🚫🙅‍♀️

How to Avoid Predatory Kitchen Remodeling Contractors

Now, I don’t know if you’ve had any home-improvement work done in 2022, but predatory pricing has exploded as contractors are backlogged and wide-eyed new homeowners take their first forays into home repair and improvement.

Explained to me by a contractor in-the-know, predatory pricing (known in the industry by the more crude term F. U. Pricing) is the price that a home repair company provides when they don’t want or need the work. It’s not based on the price of goods or labor, but a metric to find out how much of a sucker you are.

Unfortunately, it disproportionately affects first-time homeowners (which is a demographic that is disproportionately made up of people of color, immigrants, women, and other people who traditionally have struggled to access home ownership).

It’s out there- and unfortunately, predatory pricing is exactly what I got from the first company I contacted about my kitchen remodel, who told me, based on my photograph and without taking any measurements or visiting my home, that my kitchen renovation would be no less than $45,000. I laughed and did not return their email, but screenshot the exchange as a tutorial on how to spot predatory pricing.

Here’s the email, and then we’ll talk a little about the red flags:

How to spot predatory pricing on kitchen remodel cost estimates:

1. They don’t visit your home, measure, or ask questions before providing an estimate.
2. They refuse to answer reasonable questions
3. The contractor refuses, ignores, or ghosts you when you ask for an estimate with line items (i.e. an estimate including a rough idea of the categorical costs that contribute to the total kitchen remodel cost they’ve quoted)

3 ways I Saved Money on my Ikea Kitchen Remodel

Self Assembly of IKEA Cabinets

When I tell people I put together my own IKEA cabinets, they seem to treat me with an odd sort of admiration. Many people find the prospect daunting, but IKEA has invested millions of dollars in decades of research into selling flatpack cabinets with minimal returns – in other words, they’re actually really good at making easy to assemble kitchen cabinets. It took a lot of time and organization, which you can read about in my other articles on my IKEA kitchen remodel, but assembling my own cabinets saved me roughly $500-$800 in assembly costs.

Judicious Use of Open Shelving

Open shelving is an easy, modern, and on-trend way to save money remodeling a kitchen, and I took advantage of this money-saving trick. While I knew I wasn’t tidy enough to handle replacing all of my upper cabinets with open shelving, using open shelving to fill in the gaps between non-custom kitchen cabinets I purchased from IKEA was an affordable way to cut costs and avoid having to purchase custom cabinets and to keep my ikea kitchen cost down.

Keeping Appliances

Honestly, I’ve never really understood why most people replace all of their kitchen appliances at the same time they remodel their kitchen. All of my appliances were in good working order and were standardized sizes, so I kept them. If I had unusually large or small appliances that would be difficult to replace if the kitchen was built around them, I probably would have replaced appliances along with my kitchen remodel, but since I anticipate being able to replace these appliances with new appliances in the exact same dimensions, when the time comes, I kept my ikea kitchen cost down by keeping and reusing my old appliances.

4 Biggest Expenses in my Ikea Kitchen Remodel

The 3 biggest expenses that added to the cost of my IKEA kitchen remodel were somewhat optional, and items I could have done without to keep the cost of my IKEA kitchen remodel closer to $10,000. Here’s what those expenses were:

Professional Demolition & Installation : $$$$

By far, the biggest IKEA kitchen cost was choosing not to DIY this project. While I am self-identified DIY maven, even I know my limits- and when work moves into the realm of subflooring, soffits, plumbing, electrical, and hanging several-hundred-pound wood boxes high on a wall with just a couple screws- well, that’s my limit.

While I passed on IKEA’s all-inclusive installation service, I did hire an independent contractor to do the work described above. My only DIY participation in this Ikea kitchen remodel was partially assembling the cabinets.

If I had a few more tools, a higher tolerance for frustration, a more casual regard for the value of my own time, and a friend or partner to help with the heavy lifting, I likely could have kept my ikea kitchen cost under $7,500 by doing the remodel DIY-style.

Range Hood & Vent : $1200

I could have saved $1,200 by forgoing a range hood with an external event. Replacing my over the stove microwave with a recirculating vent with an ALLMÄNBILDAD range hood was a high priority for me because of the link demonstrated by research in recent years between worsening of asthma symptoms and cooking with gas stoves – especially gas stoves that aren’t vented to the outdoors.

For me, the $1200 spent on a range hood and vent that pulls air from the kitchen to the outdoors was an investment in my health, not just the aesthetic of the kitchen.

Flooring: $1500

I spent about $1500 on having perfectly good (but not to my taste) tile removed and hauled off and waterproof laminate floors installed in its place. While not strictly necessary and definitely an expense that I could have spared to keep the cost of my kitchen remodel under $10,000, I’d already had the flooring installed throughout both floors of the cottage, and in such a small home, it feels important to minimize the visual barrier of transitions such as those between different floor types.

Ceasarstone Quartz countertops: $1,820

If I had chosen a cheaper countertop material, I likely could have kept my IKEA kitchen remodel under $10,000, even with professional installation. The “white stone effect” quartz that I chose ended up being about $70 per square foot, inclusive of installation costs. With a closer eye on budget and a willingness to choose a less expensive countertop material, I likely could have kept the cost for the 26 square feet of countertop in my IKEA kitchen under $1000.

Knowing how much an IKEA kitchen remodel will cost turns out to be a little bit tricky. When I set out to figure out how much a remodel using Ikea cabinets and fixtures would cost, I didn’t anticipate that there would be quite so much variability in price between various IKEA lines!

Since IKEA has cabinets that range from lower-quality budget cabinets to solid mid-range options with luxury features, the cost of an IKEA kitchen can vary dramatically.

For me, since I knew that I would be saving money by buying my cabinets through IKEA, I let myself choose based on aesthetics rather than budget (which might not have been the case if I was going through a custom cabinet manufacturer where the upper end of the range would’ve been out of budget).

If I’m honest, I walked into my kitchen design appointment at IKEA already lusting after those forest green BODBYN cabinets, and it didn’t take much convincing by the kitchen designer on duty to convince me to purchase this line on the higher cost end of IKEA’s range.

One well-reviewed kitchen remodeling business in St. Louis quoted me $50,000 for my kitchen remodel, while another quoted me $14,000, and a few other estimates landed in the $20k-$30k range. While generally, I’m somebody who picks contractors and tradesmen whose estimates land squarely in the mid-range of estimates, in this case, I trusted the opinion of the person who recommended the contractor with the $14,000 estimate.

So I picked the lowest bid (even though I definitely expected to exceed it, and actually budgeted $20,000 as the total cost for my Ikea kitchen remodel)

Honestly, I’m extremely pleased by this $15,000 kitchen remodel. By pairing flatpack cabinets with custom shelving and keeping my old appliances, I was able to get absolutely everything I wanted in my kitchen remodel for a cost that came in at something like 75% less than the highest estimate for the job. I can’t imagine being more pleased by custom cabinets than I am by the high-end look I got in my kitchen by combining traditional lines with modern features and classic styling.

If you have questions about how to finance / pay for a kitchen remodel (like mine) here’s a helpful article that explores possible options / levers you can pull depending on your needs and specific circumstances. I hope it’s helpful 😀

Also, if you’re looking to potentially tackle a different kind of home remodel that is a lot less challenging and usually expensive – here’s a quick write-up on how to convert a spare room into a home theater!

Thanks for Reading!!!

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Reader Questions and Recommendations

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Ok Really – I’ll try to wrap this up now😂

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