Tuesday evening we pulled an almost-all-nighter to install the sink side cabinets. We booked an appointment with the plumber for Wednesday morning to hook up the sink, disposal, dishwasher, and ice maker, so we needed to have everything ready.
First we cleared everything out and started mounting cabinets. The AKURUM cabinets use an l-bracket in the top corner on each side, with a keyhole mount in the center of the bracket. The odds that the keyhole will actually line up with a wall stud are astronomical, so I used heavy duty toggle bolts mounted in the drywall. Each cabinet also came with two sets of screws that could be used to screw each cabinet to the one next to it, which I took advantage of.
Next we cut the countertop. We chose the IKEA NUMERÄR double sided counter, and used the white side up. It’s a standard eight foot span of laminate, so to fit on either side of the sink we had to make two cuts. We used a regular circular saw with a fine toothed saw blade good for cutting laminate and melamine without chewing the edges. We wrapped the cut area in painters tape beforehand and cut the counter bottom-side-up as extra precautions.
My cuts were pretty good, but not perfect. Thank God the sink sides rest on top of the counter pieces, to hide the imperfections.
The finished product, sans doors:
My overall impression of IKEA’s cabinets is not too bad. Though it’s nice that the material is 3/4″ thick, I’m still not a fan of pressed particle-board, I’d rather they at least be made of MDF. Though we picked up everything at the store (as opposed to delivery), we still had two boxes with bonked corners, that we had to return and exchange. The DOMSJÖ sink is porcelain, and as a result has a hairline imperfection or two, which I am undoubtedly going to obsess over.
Though my anxiety has been high during installation as everything seemed fragile, I have to admit that everything is rock solid when mounted. I would feel comfortable standing on the countertop with no problem, and with reviews online saying how well they stand up over the long haul, it looks like it was the right decision. I will say that the flipside of saving a lot of money is that installation is very labor intensive, and not for the faint of heart or the non-handy.