I wanted to share a few Ikea kitchen tips/hacks in case they are helpful for others.

Anyone else have great ones to share? We've been living with our kitchen for 6 months or so now and I promise to post pictures soon.

- I LOVE our Semi-Handmade fronts and panels and can't say enough good things about them. Fantastic to work with and gorgeous. They look super high end. We did the continuous grain walnut and the wood is beautiful.

- There are 21" wide drawers, but only medium drawers. We did two drawer front cabinets all the way across and were able to fit another medium drawer inside as an internal drawer.

- We store trays, baking pans, etc above the fridge using the vertical organizers. it's perfect -- the cabinet is deep, everything fits, and its no longer wasted space. It's a fantastic solution.

- I've had mixed results with the glass drawer dividers. The clips inside have broken on a few.
- I adore the wood flatware/drawer dividers and we have them in almost all the low interior drawers. I love that they are modular and everyone thinks they are super high-end.

- We used the Vareira insert for spices in a low drawer and they are great. I bought a bunch of small matching glass jars and its very functional and easy to keep organized.

- This small Whirlpool microwave will fit inside an 18" wall cabinet. We drilled a few holes in the bottom of the cabinet for ventilation, but otherwise it just sits in a non-modified upper cabinet behind a door. It's small, but fits a coffee cup, popcorn, and medium-sized plates. And it's out of sight. http://www.amazon.com/Whirlpool-WMC20005YB-Black-Countertop-Microwave/dp/B005GSZB3M/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1452181318&sr=8-2&keywords=whirlpool+compact+microwave.

- Ikea has been great about returns. We've taken some stuff back, assembled, even as recently as last week. For kitchen stuff, we've generally gotten full price, even when things have been assembled or out of the package.

- You don't have to use the Ikea designer software. I had much better luck using graph paper, the hard copy buying guide, and an Excel spreadsheet. We brought in the Spreadsheet and a very helpful employee just entered the list of skus into the system. We then used the same spreadsheet as a delivery checklist. (We were missing a few things, so it is worth doing a check).

- The walnut butcher block countertops are nice. We didn't use them in the kitchen (rather in a basement), but they look great. Jury's out on long term durability.

- I find the interior pull out shelves to be less useful on the small width cabinets -- the mechanism takes up a lot of space and you lose storage because of it.

Hope this is helpful!

-K