ᐅ After Moving In: Botched IKEA Kitchen in the Apartment

Hello everyone,
we have just moved in and bought the kitchen from the previous tenant – apparently it’s a Faktum model.

It’s completely messed up. We managed to fix a few things ourselves, but right now two issues are worrying us:

The kitchen is not properly leveled at all, so when cooking, liquids gather on one side of the stove. This problem also affects the tall cabinets.
Fortunately, the cabinets are not screwed together, and neither the dishwasher nor the oven is fixed in place.
So my question is: Can we level the kitchen by pulling out and adjusting the individual units, or do we have to remove the countertop?
I would really like to avoid that.

The front of the dishwasher door is damaged and somehow didn’t fit properly. The person who assembled the kitchen apparently sawed off the bottom of it (!).
Now the toe kick doesn’t fit underneath. How would you solve this? Should we just leave out the toe kick in the area of the dishwasher?

We managed to get the sink installed temporarily since a sealing ring had been installed incorrectly, which caused the drain to be too high and water (with dirt) to remain standing in the sink. After reassembling, we still had to fix several leaking spots.

The urgent question is about leveling the cabinets. If anyone has experience with this, I would be really grateful.

Best regards
Libby 🙂

Hello,

Regarding the vertical alignment: what kind of feet do you have, and how are they attached? Often, adjacent units share a single foot. Also, when pulling them out, feet made of plastic might break, or the mounting plates could tear off. Furthermore, the floor might not be perfectly level—pulling out, adjusting, and pushing back in doesn’t always result in perfectly horizontal cabinets.
I would recommend removing the baseboard first and then trying to adjust the feet (those with extended adjustment rods definitely have an advantage 🙂. If necessary, loosen the wall brackets of the cabinets (if present), and of course, the countertop must be adjustable in height as well.
Regarding the baseboard, it might be necessary to notch the top edge so the door can open smoothly alongside the cabinet front.

Regards,
IKEA-Freund

PS: Empty the cabinets and remove drawers beforehand; otherwise, everything will be too heavy.

Thanks, that already helps a lot. I don’t think adjacent cabinets share the same feet, but who really knows in the kitchen *facepalm*

One more question:

Is the dishwasher secured from above to the countertop, or from the side to the neighboring cabinets?

Hello,

I am only familiar with the side mounting on adjoining cabinets.

The attachment method and the number of legs should be easy to determine by taking a close look underneath the cabinets.

Best regards,
IKEA-Freund

If the kitchen cabinets are not screwed together as a single unit, the whole setup cannot be stable. As already recommended, I would unclip the baseboard panel and then adjust each cabinet individually to the same height using the leg adjustment, before screwing them together. Remove the oven and dishwasher during this process, as the dishwasher is probably not level either. I would consider buying a new dishwasher front panel, if it is still available for the Metod system and can be cut to size height-wise.

Please tell us the type of front panel and the exact model of your dishwasher.

First of all, I would remove any existing drawers and check all cabinets on the bottom of each carcass with a spirit level.