Our IKEA Akurum Cabinets: Base, Wall and Everything In Between
We did it. We ordered an IKEA kitchen. A truck showed up with roughly nine hundred flat boxes, and our split-level's upper level now looks like a cardboard fort. Here's everything we learned installing IKEA Akurum cabinets.
Akurum was IKEA's kitchen cabinet system for years. It's sturdy, affordable, and modular: one frame system, then you choose doors, drawers and hardware. (Heads up for anyone reading this later: IKEA replaced Akurum with the Sektion system in 2015, so Akurum parts are now mostly found secondhand. The install principles below still apply to Sektion.)
Planning: measure three times
We used IKEA's online kitchen planner, then printed it and taped the layout on the floor with painter's tape. Walking around the "kitchen" in tape caught two mistakes: a dishwasher door that would have hit the island, and a corner base cabinet that blocked a drawer.
Akurum base cabinets
- Find your high point. Floors in old houses are never level. Find the highest spot along the wall and set every base cabinet to that height with the adjustable legs.
- Connect cabinets to each other first, then to the wall. Clamping and screwing neighbors together keeps face frames flush.
- Cut sink cabinet backs before installing. It's much easier to trace pipe locations with the cabinet out.
Akurum wall cabinets and the suspension rail
This is the clever part. Akurum wall cabinets hang on a metal suspension rail screwed into the studs. The cabinet hardware hooks over the rail, and two adjustment screws let you fine-tune height and depth after it's hung.
- Mark a level line for the top of the rail. Measure from the floor, not the countertop.
- Screw the suspension rail hardware into every stud you can hit. Wall cabinets full of dishes are heavy.
- Hang each cabinet, then adjust until the doors line up perfectly. Then adjust again.
Fridge drawers, wine fridge and fillers
We left a 24" gap for an under-counter wine fridge and used IKEA filler panels around the full-size fridge. If you're thinking about fridge drawers in an IKEA kitchen, plan the panel and toe-kick details early. Appliance specs rarely match IKEA's standard heights.
Was it worth it?
Absolutely. Total cabinet cost was a fraction of custom, and the boxes feel solid. The trickiest part wasn't assembly, it was the house: out-of-square corners, wavy walls, and one mystery soffit. But that's a story for another post.
