Thanks, They’re Semihandmade

In the world of kitchen renos, we were attempting to pull ours off on a shoestring and a prayer.

I stalked sales and clearance racks, I bought used appliances and inexpensive dupes of nicer items. I spent months hunting down the cheapest deals I could find.

But the one area I refused to skimp on were our cabinet faces and doors. Which has sort of turned into my general rule of thumb for each room we renovate in our home and that is this:

“Figure out what that one thing is, that one thing that is the most important to you and throw your pennies there.”

Because splurging on just that one more expensive item can help elevate all the budget choices around it.

So for me, in our kitchen, that was the cabinet faces. I wanted them to not only look high end, but feel high end. Which was a big reason I wasn’t sold on using Ikea cabinet boxes at first, since I just wasn’t a fan of the cabinet face options they had available.

Then I stumbled upon Semihandmade and everything changed.

Here was the best of both worlds, I could save money on the interior hardware and cabinet boxes themselves (which no one is really going to see anyway) by purchasing those from Ikea and then spend my money where it mattered, on the cabinet faces!

Here’s a few things to note about going through Semihandmade for your cabinet faces:

• If you don’t already know, Semihandmade specializes in creating high quality doors and cabinet wraps specifically for Ikea cabinets. In their own words, their goal is to “create a system around Ikea cabinets that offers handmade craftsmanship at a competitive price.”
• Semihandmade does have various sales events throughout the year which can help bring down the cost on your order. So if you aren’t in a rush, biding your time until the next sales event occurs can help you save a few dollars.
• You’ll need to have your kitchen laid out and ready
• You can either order your cabinet faces in one of the stock colors they carry, or have them mail you the unpainted faces for you (or your contractor) to paint yourself in your own custom color.
• You can either do the math and figure out all the items you will need for your kitchen on your own, or they have a handy service that will walk you through building your order step by step to ensure you have everything you need.
• You can also order custom size doors, panels, drawer fronts, etc as well, something you can’t get from Ikea. Which is great in case you end up needing any modified width cabinet boxes like we did in your kitchen.
• You will need to make sure you purchase matching panels, trim and filler boards when you place your order if you have any cabinets that will have their backs or sides exposed. Even if you are going with plain white fronts, the color and texture of your white Ikea cabinet boxes won’t match you doors and drawer fronts.

The entire process of working with them was incredibly easy from start to finish and I found the customer service experience to be far above par, going as far as to contact me and ensure one of the choices I had selected was going to be exactly what I wanted, to sending me two entirely new doors when a few of them arrived with a handful of imperfections.

After placing your order, your shipment will arrive on a giant pallet via delivery truck. Be aware that the delivery truck driver cannot do anything besides drop off your pallet. You will be responsible for getting the items inside or moving them wherever they need to be stored.

We decided to keep things classic and went with their “White Supermatte Shaker Doors & Drawers”. Which I loved because the white is a true bright crisp clean white. (Vs the Ikea “white” cabinet doors for instance which were more of an off white.) If you want to see a physical sample of the product and color before purchasing, the company can send you samples for a small fee.

Once you receive them, you’ll want to photograph everything at each stage of un-boxing the items in case of any damage to the packaging/items that will need to be reported. Semihandmade gives you 3 business days to report any damaged items. So you’ll want to open your order as soon as possible in case of any possible imperfections that will require replacement items to be sent.

After receiving my items, I couldn’t have been more thrilled with the overall look and quality. Each piece was crafted out of solid wood and finished to perfection, seamlessly and painlessly interfaced with all the Ikea cabinetry and hardware, and was incredibly easy to install.

The photos above are from about midway through our installation process.

I made sure to wrap some protective foam around any surfaces I thought might get bumped or scratched accidentally (like the edges of the refrigerator cabinet in particular) during the remainder of the construction process to ensure everything would stay protected and in pristine condition by the end of the install.

We also attached blue painters tape to all the doors and drawers to ensure we could still open and close them as needed until we were able to get the exterior hardware attached.

Youtube Edu

This video from Chris Loves Julia is probably the one that ultimately sold me on going with Ikea Cabinet and Semihandmade fronts! It has tons of great information and install tips that were so helpful during our install process.