what did you end up doing with your toe kicks?

I ended up going to a lumber yard to buy 5.5"-tall pieces of poplar (3/8" thick and 12' long) and will have to scribe them down to use as the toekick (will just have to be super-careful about not damaging the varnish finish when cutting, but that was going to be true for all the oversized panels and filler pieces anyway). Haven't decided if we'll try to build some L brackets to attach the toekick, or use the IKEA plastic toekick and try to glue the wood on the front of them.

red - I remember your kitchen. Please post an update and your experience with Ikea. We'd love to see and learn from your experience.

hey benjesbridge!

yes, i will for sure. it's definitely been a learning experience :-)

i really appreciate you and others who have provided ideas and input.

I'm planning to do a couple hidden toekick drawers. Great idea for cookie sheets, etc! http://www.instructables.com/id/Ikea-kitchen-toekick-drawer/

I thought these companies provided toe kicks and side panels too. I'm pretty sure semi handmade does.

Interested. How did this turn out? As I recall, the ikea clips just fit into a kerf in the toe kick, no?

We did the same as S Half. We were going to buy wooden toe kicks and paint them and install ourselves, but decided to try an Ikea toe kick first. It looked fine and was so much easier to install by clipping them on to the legs.

Our floor was extremely uneven and we had to trim them a bit but it was still much less work than making them ourselves. And it was cheaper than ordering from Scherr's.

The color is not a 100% perfect match but because of shadows/light you would never notice the difference.

I am doing a custom front for IKEA (not through any company that does this) but doing it myself through my own door mfr.) The colours are too different to use IKEA stuff, however I'm inclined to use their clip system and paint their toe, or pin / glue my painted toe to the surface.

There are some plastic primers that allow you to paint plastics with regular paint. I bet you could use those to paint the ikea toe kicks. The ikea toe kicks are stupid easy to install. If your custom fronts are similar in color to the ikea toe kicks, you probably won't even need to do that as they are pretty obscured by shadow. I used the white and side by side they don't match my cabinets but installed you would never know.

Thanks. That's how we painted the cab faces. I might just do that.

What did you do? I have my cabinets somewhat higher than the normal standard (0.5") and the island is blue.....So I cannot use the IKEA ones..

Hi drmagda,

So this is very late for an answer but in case it's useful to you/others: we glued the painted wood to the ikea plastic toekick with a heavy-duty adhesive, then clipped them on to the cabinet legs, and it worked out quite well!