I'd be interested in hearing about quality/longevity of the semihandmade foil doors/fronts.

Abpatel, I don’t know if we are doing diy or not... that’s actually my next question, ha!

Does anyone know if it’s better to do DIY or prefinished semihandmade fronts?

We we are probably doing all white, wondering if it would make touch ups easier down the line, or even a change in color if we want to mix it up.

@nosoccermom I agree. That was what turned us off, I don't want thermofoil and their "DIY" ones were outrageous for what you got.

The semihandmade supermatte shaker doors look very similar to the ikea cabinets. They are thermafoil, not painted. If you were going to go that route, you'd probably save a ton getting grimslov from ikea (creamy white) or the newer axstad (white) which isn't a true shaker, but close enough. I'm going the DIY and painted route - it is pricier and more work because you have to figure out a painter. Sherr's does offer an option to have them do the painting which makes things much easier, either the standard SW pure white or dover white or an upcharge for custom color. The lead time was just longer so I couldn't go that route.

Also I am definitely not an expert but to have the cabinets look nicer you'd probably want the painter to do a conversion varnish which I don't think touches up really well. But don't quote me on that!

I’m in the process of doing a quote comparing all of these options for a later information post. I would not want to do an custom thermofoil door when a conversion varnish wood is so easily available from other sources.

I don’t see the point of SemiHandmade for white cabinets since they do not provide a conversion varnish finish like Barkers, Scherrs, or Conestoga do. They only do a white thermofoil. Having a local cabinet maker provide a conversion varnish for third party doors is not cost effective unless they also produce the doors, so I’m getting a price for that too. I’ll delve into it more tomorrow, but I’ve already compared 6 pre assembled lines around the same price.

This blog might help you. I know this blogger couple uses Ikea cabinets and Semihandmade on all their cabinetry (and friend's projects) and rave about them....which was unpaid until this last year. Even still, they own them and said years later they are "like new" and they "wouldn't change a thing".

Great feedback - many thanks to everyone. it looks like DIY is the way to go, and I’ll look into conversion varnish. Will also def check that blog out!

If you are DIYing, look at this thread: https://www.houzz.com/discussions/barker-doors-vs-semihandmade-vs-scherrs-in-ikea-kitchen-results-dsvw-vd~5182903

I was just on the Semihandmade site, and all of the exquisite high end veneers are gone - rift cut teak, bamboo, African Mahogany, etc. Upgrading door fronts on Ikea boxes had been my plan, but now I'm back to square one. Hard to understand why a business would abandon the product on which their reputation was based.

Green Design:

"IKEA makes very very few cabinet sizes. There are no 21” cabinets."

Not true. no matter how many times you repeat it. And you've been told many times before. So you do know. No excuse.

Anyway, the OP said above, that she has a plan with minimal fillers only. So why this need to repeat the same old same old, which you know full well is not even the truth?

Semihandmade never really had high end veneers. They bought off the shelf plywood. Ok grade but I won't consider it high-end architectural grade. Some of us still have veneers for Ikea doors. Here's a few of the more than two hundred samples I have laying around.

@sunflowerbk what did you end up deciding and any pics for us? Thx!!

@Janie Gibbs-BRING SOPHIE BACK - did you do your own Ikea kitchen install or do you have a contractor here in NYC that you can recommend?

If you can’t do all DIY, and use only IKEA doors, then IKEA plus anything is not a good value. Other brands will be a better value. Labor is the biggest portion of any remodel. You have to provide that labor,consider it “fun”, and value it at zero, in order to “save” anything.

https://www.houzz.com/discussions/5647040/white-shaker-battle-ikea-vs-the-rest-of-the-cabinet-world

Rachel L 718-222-1830

If you want to consider doing your own assembly this vid is fun to watch.

Hello! To the original author, @sunflowerbk, I would love to know what you ended up going with and if you have any suggestions for someone looking to do this? We are hearing many mixed opinions; we installed an IKEA kitchen in 2007, but sold that home soon after and didn't get a chance to see how it "wore". We have bought again and need to keep within a 30k budget for a full gut, which will include removal of a wall between dining and kitchen. A design friend is encouraging us to 'not' do IKEA from a re-sale perspective, but I tend to disagree. I feel like as long as we stay classic with finishes, that should be fine for re-sale (which could be in 5-10 years). Any information about having cabinet fronts painted would be appreciated. I don't love the colors that are being offered at the moment from IKEA or Semihandmade. I'm looking to do the DIY shaker fronts and have them painted, but don't want this to add a huge amount to the budget. Thanks for any advice.

Also hoping to get some feedback on what the OP did. We just purchased all the shells of the Ikea cabinets and I'm in limbo between purchasing Ikea fronts vs semihandmade fronts. I want DIY shaker so I can have a sage green paint on the lowers, but maybe I should just stick with white Ikea to save $$$. They are the same thickness, but how about quality?

How about IKEA Bodarp gray-green doors on the base cabinets with white doors on wall cabinet?

I do like that color, but want a shaker style.

There's also the IKEA Bodbyn dark green.

It's been a while! So, after a bunch of research and doing virtual kitchen design appointments with the company IKEA uses, we decided to go with another brand that offered a lot of size options and that we didn't need to coordinate new fronts for. We have a decent amount of cabinetry and the company we used had lots sizes to make it work better (and basically look custom) and it just started getting a bit too complicated to plan through IKEA and semihandmade tbh.

Semihandmade is a great option, but not your only one. https://www.houzz.com/discussions/5182903/barker-doors-vs-semihandmade-vs-scherr-s-in-ikea-kitchen-results

Sunflowerbk, which company did you use? We’re in the thick of planning right now.

We ended up going with Scherr's fronts and Ikea boxes.

It’s stupid expensive for plastic wrapped junk anyway. You can get far better, and be cheaper by choosing something like Merillat.

There’s no reason to wait, or go through what Monica did. Plan your kitchen, order the cabinets, and order the fronts. You can install and use your kitchen whether you have the fronts and side panels or not.

First mistake. Thinking it’s easy to build and install a kitchen. Second mistake. Thinking a contractor should be one to do this. If you really know what you are doing you can make an IKEA kitchen with the right custom doors look way better than some crap product coming out of a high-volume corner cutting ”puppy mill” cabinet manufacturer like Merillat.

Read their reviews then read ikea’s. I know. I do this everyday.

Yup just pick items in stock at Ikea, you need cabinet boxes before you can install anything else like countertops. Kitchen is not very usable without cabinet boxes. Many ikeas have wait lists set up for their cabinet boxes and when some come into stock they let the next person on the waitlist know. If you want to do that and are prepared to cut what you can get down to size, go for it, I’d recommend waiting till the demand is not so high.

If I order my Ikea cabinets 8 weeks out, do you think I will get them in time?

Dicoe, no I do not think that that is enough time. I am still waiting for items to be in stock. And I have been ordering since February. Right now, depending on what you want, many bases and door fronts and drawers are out of stock. Of course I chose the blue Axstad and I’ll just never get these doors or drawers for many months, as a prediction....
I have even driven to several ikeas 3hours plus away to get some items. I’m a lunatic.

Has anyone looked into Mix-It Modern doors and drawer fronts for Ikea cabinets? They sell lacquered doors, but I can't get information on the type of lacquer process they use, which makes a big difference in how quickly a white door will turn yellow. I also can't get information on the density of their cores - they just say it's the same as Semihandmade. There's almost nothing online about Mix-It Modern doors. Thank you!

Neither Mix-it-modern nor Semihandmade makes their own doors. They re-sell doors from third party vendors (with a very few exceptions). We do the same but also make a lot of our doors ourselves that aren’t availble elsewhere. No one is making thier own lacquered doors. Not true all lacquered doors anyway. High gloss doors are going to be either acrlyic or UV factory (European) lacquered board that is then edgebaned with high-gloss PVC banding. Semihandmade sells thermofoil doors no lacquer. There are several sources we all have for high-gloss doors so won‘t comment on Mix-it-Modern except to say almost all of the photos they show on thier site are Not their own and taken from other companies cataloges.

GreenDesigns, you are either misinformed about Ikea sizes or willfully spreading misinformation. Either way, you sound like someone very invested in selling overpriced "real wood!" cabinetry. It's a dying industry and you sound a little desperate. I am designing my kitchen now, and can confirm that most of these sizes exist, including 21 and 36.

Not trying to defend anyone but before you comment on a two year old thread saying someone is misinformed you should have your own facts straight. Most of what was said is correct. ikea does not make 36” or 33” high wall cabinets 30” and 40” are their sizes. He is also correct about the other sizes. There is also no such thing as ”real wood” cabinets there are plywood boxes and some solid wood raised panel doors but not sure what people mean by real wood. And yes I work with ikea everyday.

AVOID SEMIHANDMADE!! Our kitchen remodel has been a nightmare because of them. Not only is the quality of their product extremely subpar, their customer service is rude.

Within two years, the cabinets' thermofoil (same style as in this post) started to bubble/peel away from the cabinets and while they replaced a few, more and more cabinets continue to do the same and now they don't want to deal with us. What guarantee is there that it wouldn't happen again with the new batch?? Not only that, we have to pay more money to have the replacements installed. The material on any cabinet near the stove/oven has melted as well!

Look up the one-star reviews on yelp, etc and you'll see that this is a recurring issue that they have not and do not seem interested in addressing.

My 12 yo son and I just did a small ikea kitchen. I paid him 20.00 per cabinet box and he whizzed through it. Ok, he did go to Montessori and is amazingly patient with good executive function but wow! He did it! He also did most of the drywall with a rotary drill... power tools make the job very attractive. If there was anything that didn't make sense, we gave it a night and came back to it. Always helped. My husband helped us hang the tracks to the wall and attaching the cabinet boxes to it and leveling was
 was definitely

Was definitely a job for 3 pairs of hands. Because it went so well, we are thinking of cancelling our custom cabinets for our Laundry room and having another go. Came here to learn more about semihandmade. I'm thinking they aren't worth the hassle if I can find doors I like from Ikea. Is that the general consensus?

Our doors are being delivered tomorrow. I'll know soon enough if it was worth it. The ordering process was smooth at least and our designer was good to work with and seemingly knowledgeable. We went with unfinished "diy" doors that we will have professionally painted. Came out to be marginally more money than Ikea doors but we're getting them painted the exact color and finish we want. All in all so far so good. I'll post an update if we run into any issues.

Their unpainted shaker doors are standard run-of-the-mill thin 1/4” MDF center panel with maple frame that they buy from a third party vendor and are available from any cabinet person in any part of the country. I doubt that having them professionally painted is only marginally more than Ikea doors. “Professionally painted“can have a lot of variables. SHM doesn’t make the thermofoil doors that people are complaining about above either but I’m suprised to here there are those kinds of problems. its one of the better companies that they and everyone else selling foil doors for Ikea buys from.

Jdesign, am I correct in inferring that the Northern Contours matte laminate doors are better-than-average in quality, based on your comment today?

If you are talking a themofoil then yes they are one of the biggest but there are a few others but apparently based on the comments there are some issues. because thats whos doors we talking about.

Our experience was fabulous, but we had room for the insane amount of boxes. We did not have a contractor. We measured our kitchen, designed with Ikea. Ikea gave us the plans, we ordered insides only, sent plans to Semi-handmade. Was short wait for the plan & costs to come back from Semi-handmade. Recall short time between shipments for both. We informed Ikea from start of our plan to use Semi-handmade & their installers did a fantastic job. Would do it again.

Has anyone used Plykea doors?
I like the Formica option.

Just did plykea and Kerf style in maple. ikea base cabinets. Custom uppers.

(backsplash not in yet)

I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND Semihandmade; I bought their cabinet doors almost 4 years ago for my kitchen and they started delaminating after about a year. Sometimes I get something akin to a papercut when I open and shut them because the back piece is separating from the front part of the face (see pic). They are also cracked at several locations on the corners . The last straw for me: the top part is bubbling up where the trim of the shaker meets the depressed part; hard to describe but it makes the top part of each corner look dirty because it casts a strange shadow. It seems like Semihandmade did not quality test this product at all. Even though it was cheap, I expected it to last at least 5 years, not 1 year. Such a waste of resources; I feel silly for not doing more research and just following the hype.

jdesign_gw I love that Plykea kitchen! Can you show more of it?

Mabeldingeldine, the doors are not Plykea. They are custom doors I made. That’s why I said Plykea and Kerf ”style”. I havn’t taken a lot of photos because the backsplash wasn’t finished. I will post more later when the client sends me finished photos.

ABSOLUTELY DO NOT BUY FROM SEMI HANDMADE UNLESS YOU WANT TO WAIT 3 MONTHS TO HAVE YOUR ORDER CANCELED WITHOUT CONSENT BY THEIR MAN CHILD OWNER WHILE THE ORDER IS SITTING AT A DOCK WAITING TO BE DELIVERED TO YOUR HOUSE!!!

I ordered from semi handmade in September and it is now December 20th. I received one door from my order yesterday and reached out to the company to let them know that the grain was going in a horizontal pattern and not a vertical as well as to express my disappointment that when mounted, you can see the white from the ikea cabinet. The doors I ordered were a dark color so this is a heavy contrast. I asked how I could return for a refund if the rest of the order looked this way.

First, they only addressed the white showing through the cabinet and never addressed the fact that the grain was in the wrong direction and would not tell me if the rest of the order was this way or if this was just a fluke. Instead, they just CANCELLED my order after I explicitly said that I did not want it cancelled.

I have been working on a kitchen remodel for 6 months. I ordered these cabinets 3 months ago. I am 7 months pregnant and want my kitchen done before I give birth. The order is still sitting at the dock in my town and I have asked the company repeatedly not to cancel it and let me see it first but they refuse.

Yes, they are going to send a refund but that is NOT what I asked for and they still have the chance to make this right and they refuse. Just look at the emails and how the owner spoke to me. I suffer from severe anxiety and depression and the way spoke to me and have handled this situation has thrown me into a level of stress that is not safe for pregnancy.

I have submitted this to the BBB but semi handmade still has the opportunity to make this right on their own and they refuse.

Ps - if you are ordering online just know that there WILL be white showing through and it is very noticeable with darker fronts. This does not show in their photos however they have assured me that this is the norm. their solution for the white showing through the cabinets is to put tape over the white part to match the cabinets.