TLDR: We ordered custom MDF painted doors and drawers fronts to fit the IKEA kitchen we installed ourselves. Some of them had chips and little defects upon reception. We've been living in the space for like 3 months and the doors and drawers are falling appart (lots of chips inside and out, bumps and bubbles in the paint, coffee stains, some panels are the wrong size...). The company said they would look into it, but has been silent since then... It is a problem with the product itself, the paint they used, or do we have unrealistic expectations?? TIA for your input.

Hi! My husband and I started renovating our kitchen mid-November 2019. We knew we wanted to go with IKEA, as we did most of the work ourselves, and the Sektion system is genius. But when we went to the store I was not satisfied with the options IKEA currently offers when it comes to cabinet doors and drawer fronts. I was set on a white shaker style and nothing could change my mind. I had high hopes about the new AXSTAD matte white, but it looked super cheap in person. I should add that the nearest IKEA store is more than 4 hours away from where we live, so we only had one shot at this. We decided to only order the cabinets, and research custom made doors and drawer fronts.

I've heard lots of good things about Semihandmade over the years, but it is an american compagny and we are in Canada. It would have been way over our budget to go this route. We found 2 canadian companies that were promissing, with 2 completely different products. One uses a 3D laminate finish, they charged us $10 for a ridiculously small sample and their "white" option was more of an off-white. The other one uses wood and MDF doors, and "highest quality paint". We already have a built-in media centre in our living room that my dad made for us last fall, it is painted BM OC-65 Chantilly Lace. We were able to get a full sample with the exact same color, free of charge! It looked fantastic. The quote they gave us was a bit over budget, even with the cheaper MDF option, but they gave us a discount, we were sold.

We were hoping to get our order ready by the end of the year, or beginning of January. The order got here the 3rd week of January. Everything was well protected. At this point, nothing could deter our enthousiasm. We started working on the cover panels first, they needed to be in place asap to get the template for the countertops (already rescheduled a few times because of the delay in the delivery). We then worked our way through the doors and drawers, and noticed a few chips in the paint here and there, mostly on the back so it wasn't too noticeable. One of the drawers had 3 big chips however. Then the bigger doors had defects on the corners, that are more visible. we noticed a few bumps and bubbles in the paint as well. We only installed half of the kitchen, and already I was very skeptical about the overall quality. My husband spends a lot of time in the kitchen, and he is quite messy. We also have 2 young kids, they are not exactly delicate with things. There were a few sleepless nights thinking about it. My husband e-mailed the compagny a couple weeks after with lots of pictures and a video, and voiced our concerns about the paint quality, that it seems very brittle and not suited for a kitchen. At that point, the kitchen was not even finished, some of the upper doors and cover panels were still sitting in our garage. They replided they would "look into it", and not much happened from there. He e-mailed them again twice, and I did as well last week, but to this day we are still waiting for an explanation...

I am well aware that we are currently facing a pandemic, and the situation is very exceptionnal. Most businesses are slowing down production, and have employees temporarily unemployed or working from home.

In the meantime, new chips in the paint appear weekly on our precious cabinet doors and drawer fronts. The drawers that get used the most all have chips inside and out. You can't take a plate or a knife without damaging them, it is ridiculous. Now, even the drawers we don't use so ofter have chips! We also discovered that the paint is scrapping off the side of one of the doors. There are coffee stains all over the two doors that are located underneath the coffee machine. Even bleach won't clean them.

We also discovered that 2 of the finishing panels were the wrong size, it was the last part to be done 2 weeks ago. They are redoing them free of charge and shipping asap, but no mention of the other issues we are facing.

We don't have any experience with that type of product and would love the community's input on the matter. Is the paint used defective? Is it more of a problem with the MDF doors compared to traditional wood (although our media unit is also made of MDF, we painted it ourselves and have zero problem with it, despite a rough toddler)? Do we have unrealistic expectations?? And most importantly, what can we expect to be done from this company to make things right?!

Anyway, lesson learned, if we had to do it all over again I would most definitely choose a laminate finish over paint, or even go with cheap IKEA cabinet doors for the time being.

Thnak you for reading this endless rant!

- A sleep-deprived mama of two.

PS: I attached a few pictures, we have a few dozens more just like these :/