How to keep motivated – and inspired – during your IKEA kitchen renovation

Keep your priorities straight and goals in mind during your IKEA kitchen renovation.

Let’s talk about the moment you decided you needed a new kitchen. Was it when you walked in the door for the first time and saw the worn countertops and dated cabinets? When your family grew? When you had people over and realized you needed more seating?

Now, let’s talk about everything you’ve decided you need since then. A waterfall countertop? A wet bar? A smart fridge? Kitchen renovation can be a slippery slope, and blowing the budget or experiencing severe renovation fatigue is often a direct result of homeowners losing sight of why they wanted a new kitchen in the first place.

Before designing your kitchen, let’s make sure everyone is on the same page—you, the members of your household, and, of course, your designer—by discussing your wants vs. needs. At IKD, we balance both, and that balance will keep you going while living in a construction zone and surviving on microwavable dinners.

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3 Questions that Balance Wants and Needs During an IKEA Kitchen Renovation

What motivated you to redesign your kitchen?

This is your why. Here are some of the most common reasons homeowners come to us for an IKEA kitchen redesign.

1. You don’t like the look of your kitchen.We often hear from new home buyers who know they want to gut the kitchen and give it a complete makeover from day one. We also have customers who have lived in their homes for twenty years and want an update. We give them stylish, long-lasting, affordable kitchen design solutions using IKEA products.
2. The layout doesn’t work.Nothing is more frustrating than working in a kitchen with no flow. It may be because you don’t have room to maneuver, lack storage or workspace, or the appliance locations don’t make sense. Alternatively, your kitchen worked just fine until something changed—the number of people in your home, the age of the people in your home, or your physical abilities. Customers turn to us because we maximize space and enhance accessibility.
3. Your kitchen sustained damage.Sometimes, a kitchen renovation is borne of necessity: a burst pipe, kitchen fire, or ceiling collapse. Some of our customers use these unfortunate events as an opportunity to give their kitchen a facelift.

What’s your why?

Write it down and put it up on your wall or bathroom mirror. Get specific. I can’t stand looking at that peeling cabinet veneer for another second. My partner and I want to be able to cook together. I’m tired of Tupperware avalanches every time I open a cabinet. This list is your motivation and will help you keep perspective during the construction stress.

What isn’t working in your current kitchen design?

It’s time for the fun part. Take everything you hate about your current kitchen design and decide how you would change it. Start with functionality. If you get too excited about creating a Pinterest-perfect kitchen, you may end up with a kitchen that’s perfect for Pinterest but not for you.

This list can include things like:

• More counterspace.
• Additional seating.
• Better organization.
• Better lighting.
• Room for two people to cook at the same time.
• Ditching the dusty storage area above the cabinets.

These functional needs become your kitchen design priorities. Your IKD designer will satisfy these requirements above all else because, without them, you’ll never feel completely comfortable in your kitchen.

What are your IKEA kitchen design style goals?

This is where you share your wildest dreams. Want to knock down a wall to make an open-concept kitchen? Add a pantry? Get a smart fridge? You’ll need to know details like appliance dimensions, plumbing location, etc., before we can talk about kitchen design and layout. Once you have those nailed down, we can design floor-to-ceiling cabinets with glass fronts and luxury interior organizers with third-party granite countertops and custom cabinet doors.

Or, you might get some quotes and determine your dream kitchen is out of reach.

That’s okay. You may not be able to visualize your kitchen working in its current size or configuration, but that’s why we’re here—to render a design that makes it easy to visualize a gorgeous, yet practical, kitchen.

Find inspiration photos, get to know color schemes, find trends you like, and know the trends you don’t like. This information will provide your designer with a style foundation.

Now, prioritize.

If you like the look of a kitchen island and it improves kitchen workflow, that’s a style goal that gets bumped to the top of the list. If you love Semihandmade’s shaker-style doors in Night Sky but don’t want to stretch your budget, that goes to the bottom—especially since our designers will be able to recommend the comparable IKEA alternative, AXSTAD doors in matte blue.

Lean on your IKD designer for this critical step.

Put it together, and what have you got? A bippity-boppity brand-new IKEA kitchen and zero regrets.

It’s important to love the way your new IKEA kitchen looks, but it’s also important you can afford it, survive the renovation, and live in it for the next twenty-odd years. It’s a balancing act, and IKD helps you find that balance by reminding you to keep perspective, prioritize, and remember your why.