Ikea Sektion Cabinets with Barker Doors

When we decided on using Ikea cabinet boxes with Barker Doors there were a lot of questions:

• Is it even possible to use Barker doors with Ikea cabinets?
• Can we use Ikea's blum hinges?
• What size doors should we order?

I called Barker cabinets and checked out the help forum to see if their doors can be use on Ikea Sektion. From the forum:

We can make any size door needed within reason. Our doors have been used on IKEA cabinet in the past, but we do not provide the sizing sort review for accuracy. For a better alternative to the IKEA cabinet, try our cabinet line at barkercabinets.com. It is better quality, much more custom, solid wood alternative, and the cost is usually only slightly higher than that of an IKEA cabinet. Just saying :) [Barker Forums]

Barker takes the CYA stance on the question. Fair enough, they don't want you ordering 1000's of dollars worth of cabinet doors on their advice and run into a problem.

We just had to bite the bullet and try it.

To use Barker doors on Ikea boxes you must:

• Order the doors in the right size.
• Order the correct hardware to attach the door to the Ikea Cabinet.
• Predrill holes on the Ikea box in the  right place to attach door to the cabinet.

Ordering Barker doors in Ikea door sizes:

This is pretty easy. Ikea doors are 1/8th inch smaller in Height and Width than the size of the Ikea cabinet.

For example:

The door on a 18x30 wall cabinet will be 17-7/8" x 29-7/8".
Ikea Grimslov Door

This is true for all the doors except the doors for the 37" corner cabinet (the one with the lazy susan)!

The measurements for the 37" corner cabinet doors are: 13-1/4" x 29-7/8"

Bjorket 37" Corner Cabinet Door

All that's left is to pick a style! Barker door styles.

Ordering the correct hardware:

The hinge and hinge plate to attach Barker doors to Ikea cabinet boxes are:

• Blum Hinge - 73B3550          
• Hinge Plate -  174H7100E

   (build.com has them on the cheap with free shipping and we get a small commission)    

If you want to know more about how we selected the right hinge hardware check out this post.

Where to predrill holes to attach Barker doors to Ikea Boxes:

Barker drills their hinge cups at 3-1/2 inches from the top and bottom of the cabinet door.

Barker Hinge Cup Locations

You can customize this but it is going to raise the cost of the door dramatically. To use the 3-1/2 inch hinge cup location, install the hinge plate so the center is of the hinge plate is 3-9/16" from the bottom or top of the cabinet (this is the 3-1/2 distance plus 1/16 for the reveal ).

Mark your center with a tape measure and a ruler, then use a Blum hinge plate guide to mark where you want to drill your holes.  The use a 5 mm bit to make your holes!

Hinge Mounting Template

Where to pre-drill to attach Barker drawer fronts:

The drill pattern for drawer fronts is a little tricky because the drawer alignment is not as adjustable as cabinet doors and getting everything to line up is a booger! To get the right drawer alignment, we ordered a spare Ikea Hageby drawer front for less than $10 to use as a template. Take your 5mm drill bit and drill all the way through the pre-drilled holes in the Ikea drawer. You can then line this drawer up on your barker drawer and drill through the Hageby drawer into your Barker drawer and you will have perfectly aligned holes for the Ikea mounting hardware.

Adding electrical tape helped the drawer stay together when drilled.

We found using a collar on the drill bit helped to make sure we didn't drill too deep and a few pieces of electrical tape on the Hageby drawer helped it stick to the Barker so it didn't move around while we were drilling.

Line the Hageby drawer front with the Barker front and make your holes.

Cover panels for the exposed sides of Ikea Boxes:

Ikea Sektion cabinet boxes only come in white or a dark wood color. Ikea sells cover panels to finish the sides of the boxes to match the doors. Custom doors means you need to have custom cover panels! Luckily, we found a way to do it on the cheap using furniture grade plywood. Check out the article HERE.

That's it! Once you have the drawer hardware installed, hinge plates mounted and hinges installed on the door, the doors and drawers will just "click" right in. By taking the time to figure out how to use Barker doors on the Ikea boxes we got the look we wanted for about $2000 ($1700 for the doors and $300 for hinges). That was much cheaper than the quotes I got from Scherrs ($3800) and Semihandmade ($4500)!

Coming up: Finishing cabinet doors. How to finish them and is it worth it to DIY?