Beautiful Kitchen for 63 Thousand Rubles with IKEA Furniture

We already told about how Alexandra and her husband did the renovation in a new apartment by themselves. Our heroes shared how to do a quick, clean and budget-friendly renovation. Plus, they gave important tips and mistakes to avoid.

Alexandra Solomakha - Blogger, Apartment Owner

About the start of the renovation:

The layout itself is very interesting, so-called "one-room plus". The total area is 31 m². One isolated room (11 m²) is occupied by our 7-year-old daughter, and the kitchen-living room (14 m²) is where we live with our husband and two dogs (French Bulldog and Mops). The ceiling height in the apartment is 2.5 meters.

The apartment was delivered with a renovation by the developer, but we redid everything ourselves except for the suspended ceilings. I must say that I regret this, because we could have added extra zoning using lighting.

All the design was created by ourselves without involving professionals. We did the renovation from scratch with our own hands. We pasted wallpapers for painting, so that if we wanted to change the look, we could simply repaint the walls instead of doing a major renovation. We laid the laminate ourselves, installed the baseboards, and tiled the wall with gypsum bricks.

About the kitchen-living room:

The developer's renovation was extremely poor in quality and very dark in color. By using wall colors, the arrangement of the laminate planks, and the countertop color, we managed to visually expand the space. All furniture in our apartment, except for the sofa, is from IKEA. We moved only the refrigerator and washing machine from our previous apartment.

We chose the METOD kitchen cabinet system with a wooden countertop. The cooktop and oven also came from IKEA. The cooktop has only two burners to save workspace, as the kitchen niche is just 2 meters wide.

The microwave oven is hidden inside one of the upper cabinets, which is very convenient even for average height and saves workspace on the countertop. The kitchen cabinet cost us 63 thousand rubles.

Kitchen cabinet composition:

• Horizontal wall-mounted cabinet 60/80 with two upward-opening doors. One of the doors hides the microwave. Perfect in height for us. The open cabinet door doesn't interfere with movement in the kitchen, and no one bumps their head on it.
• Wall-mounted cabinet 40/80. This is the only cabinet without an IKEA warranty due to its placement above the cooktop. We don't have an extractor hood, but no issues with the cabinet appeared in 1.5 years.
• Free-standing cabinet for the oven (METOD ME 60*80*80) with a drawer inside.
• Free-standing cabinet with two sliding drawers. This is a very convenient solution.
• Free-standing cabinet for the sink, also with two sliding drawers. The top drawer is not as deep as the bottom one, but it's very spacious.

The kitchen backsplash is tiled with white Kerama Marazzi tiles, and the grout is white. Many are surprised by the absence of an extractor hood on our kitchen, but I don’t see any problem with that: a 1.5-year experience using the kitchen shows that an extractor hood isn’t necessary. The cabinets didn't swell, nothing got salty or dirty. The cabinet lighting is also from IKEA.

The living room area is separated from the kitchen only by green wall strips, a purely decorative element. We didn’t install any partitions because there wasn’t enough space for that. The living room has only a wall-mounted TV, a sofa with a forward-retracting mechanism for daily sleeping, and the BESSTO storage system placed directly above the sofa. I should mention that it’s very comfortable to sleep and not scary at all. Posters hang over the sofa as decoration, which I change with seasonal updates to refresh the apartment.

Key tips:

• If you buy a new apartment, definitely think about soundproofing. We didn’t consider it and regret it now, as the noise level is terrible.
• Don’t forget that new buildings tend to move, walls can crack, and with them, your wallpapers may start to peel off. We didn’t reinforce the walls at that time, and as a result, we had wallpaper issues in two places. The laminate can also suffer from this, so don’t forget to leave maximum gaps from the walls when laying it.
• If you do a renovation by yourself, focus only on that task and don’t get distracted with other activities. Concentration helps avoid the most foolish mistakes that are impossible to fix later.
• If you want something and everyone says: “outdated,” “same as everyone,” “bland,” - don’t pay attention. This is your home, and you live in it, and it should be comfortable for you.