We live in a ramshackle old place which we currently rent. Our landlords are perfectly nice but I reckon they did the place up on a budget. We have a galley kitchen full of white bog standard units. This meant the design was easy to do and seemed to work for them as they already had experience in property development. They units were installed by and odd job man type builder and were quite quick to put up (we saw the place before and after). For a bog standard kitchen you could pay less than £2000 at ikea easily.

As we're looking to buy I checked out Ikea's online kitchen design system. I found it ridiculously difficult to use: it's very difficult to put the items in place, find exactly what you need and what to put together. It also seems really difficult to find cupboards that let you use non-ikea appliances. This seems to apply to a lot of ikea items as a ploy to get you to buy only from them.

We have been using the kitchen for the last two years and the units have been pretty decent,
sturdy and easy to clean. Unfortunately the same can not be said of the sink and cooker. The cooker took a lot of getting used to as it seems to cook at about 20 degrees higher than it should. The icons for the hob have largely worn off after just basic normal cleaning and the metal parts tarnish easily. I think the sink is the worst though. On the first day we put a teaspoon in the sink and when it was removed a few hours later the sink around it had changed colour to metallic brown. Not a good start! I then tried to remove the mark with a very light touch of a mild scouring pad and a mountain of little scratches appeared! Two years later this isn't so noticeable but the sink looks like it's seen better days.

In summary I'd recommended this kitchen if you're on a major budget, have a good eye for design and computers and find a way of fitting other items with the units. If you want something that'll last for many years steer clear!