#138: Was Ikea Not “Good Sufficient” For The Home’s

Installing Ikea cabinets in all three of our beach house kitchens invites the question: why did not we use them in our home’s kitchen in Richmond?! So this week we are diving into the answer, including what gave us pause about using Ikea back then, how it could’ve changed our final result, and what we’d choose if we had to select kitchen cabinets for our home today. Plus, we share how a plain outdoor project turned into a major plumbing issue at the duplex (yes, another one – the water curse lives on!) and why there was also an emergency call to an electrician one evening, you know, for balance.

You can also find this episode on your go-to podcast listening app, like Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, TuneIn Radio, Stitcher, and Spotify.

What is New

That is literally the text I sent Sherry when I realized one of the water shut off valves had been buried over at the duplex. You can see the exposed one in the foreground, and the other should’ve been about 4 feet in front of it, but I dug around for a while and… nada.
We consistently knew it was buried a bit deeper than the other, but you can see below how deeply it had been hidden when the folks were installing the pathway along the side of the house (it was around 4″ below the ground level once the path went in). You can also see how it was so close to the path that some of the plastic edging pieces in fact prevented someone from removing the cover.

I did not take any pictures while I was digging it out because I did not expect this to be a moment worth sharing with anyone… and then the water line broke. But the photo below shows some of the aftermath. You can see the box (aka “margarine tub”) took out from the hole in the background. The lid to it is set off to the right side.

And here is a detail of the break itself (at the bottom of the picture). It is not quite big, but it sure did release a lot of water quite swiftly! The pipe was not visible for hours until the water drained, leaving this lovely mud situation.

It is all fixed now and when the plumber reconnected it, he set everything a little higher so that one is level with the ground as well. So we will not have the issue of it getting hidden again – AND it is further away from the path, which was also an issue.

And if you’ve missed our previous water dramatics out in Cape Charles, you can catch up on it all here:
- Episode #59: The Renovation Rollercoaster That Brought Sherry to Tears – When we were told our beach house did not have a water line and it’d cost $10,000 (or more!!!) to add one.
- Episode #81: …And Then Our Pipes Froze – That one’s fairly self-explanatory. Alternate title: The Duplex Waterfall of 2018.
- Episode #97: What We Learned (And Saved) From Our Shopping Ban – This is when our duplex water meter was broken and leaking even though the house was gutted…
- Episode #110: And Then The Bathroom Began Flooding – Here is when we took out the baseboard and uncovered a leak in the beach house bathroom that had been there since it was rebuilt.

That is Embarassing

We are making plenty of big progress in the beach house backyard that we cannot wait to properly photograph and write a big ol’ journal post about, but for now, there is a peek at the lights on the sheds that gave us all that trouble.

We used the 11″ versionss on the sides of the shed (and on the back of the house) but got the larger 15″ ones for this area near the peak.
You cannot even see the dusk-to-dawn sensor in these pictures, but if you look on the website you will notice a little nub at the top of the shade on the backside.

Ikea Kitchens

If you want to read more about our kitchen renovation here at our Richmond home, check out these posts:
- Kitchen before & afters, including details on the cabinets we used (and a room schematic with measurements)
- The renovation process, including a look at the full gut job
- Devising a totally new kitchen layout
- 5 kitchen mistakes we made during the reno

And if you are looking for details on the projects where we have used Ikea cabinetry, here they are in order of completion:
Our laundry room in Richmond (pictured below) – where you can see how we relied on filler pieces to make it look wall-to-wall, as well as a piece on the bottom to disguise the under-cabinet lighting.
You can read specifically about installing those Ikea cabinets here. Like we say in the episode, these were the only 4 Ikea cabinets (3 uppers and 1 lower) we had ever installed before we began planning our kitchen. The door style here is called BODBYN.

Our bonus room built-ins in Richmond were our next Ikea project, using the same BODBYN cabinet fronts. We in fact shared this project on the journal before our kitchen remodel, because it came together faster… but the decision to use the local cabinet company for the kitchen was made far before we had this second go at Ikea cabinets for the bonus room. You can see how we created the bonus room built-ins in this post.

Our beach house kitchen in Cape Charles was our first actual kitchen project using Ikea cabinetry. You can see before & afters here, and read more about how we planned it and how we installed it in those posts. The cabinet door style here are called VEDDINGE.

And of course, simply this past winter we did both duplex kitchens in Cape Charles with Ikea cabinets again since we have grown to like them so much. The door style below is called ASKERSUND.

Wood Ikea Kitchen With Exposed Brick Chimney and Blue White Patterned Tile

And the blue cabinets in the other duplex kitchen below are called KALLARP. You can read all about those in this post we did with all of our pointers, tricks, & tools to install an Ikea kitchen yourself.

Pink Patterned Tile In Blue Kitchen With Exposed Brick Chimney

One last thing on the subject of kitchens. When Sherry mentioned an “appliance garage” as one of the more customized features in our kitchen, she was referring to this area that our cabinet installers were able to put together with stock doors and filler pieces to resemble a cabinet (notice how the cabinet has no back?). We use it to store a lot of our breakfast foods and large/frequently used appliances like the toaster and the crock pot. We simply leave it open when they are in use and close it to hide them the rest of the time.

We are Digging

If you are ready to jump back into our unofficial Creepy Murder Book Club, here are the two books I read over Spring Break: Watch Me Disappear by Janelle Brown and The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware.

Or if you could not get sufficient of Sherry’s “sexy fairy” recommendation of the Court of Thorns And Roses series, she’s now DEEP into Sarah Maas’ other series: Throne of Glass. As she mentioned in the episode, there is a prequel (The Assassin’s Blade) but she’s began with book one (“Throne of Glass“) and simply a couple of days ago has made it to book five!

If you are looking for something we have dug in a past episode, but do not remember which show notes to click into, here is a master list of everything we have been digging from all of our past episodes. You can also see all the books we have recommended on our Book Club page.

And lastly, a big thank you to Annie Selke for sponsoring this episode. Check it her latest collaboration with artist Laura Park at annieselke.com/YHL. And get 15% off your order with code YHL15.