A cordless impact driver is your best friend.

Use torx fastners at your own risk. These come in so many sizes it's easy to use the wrong size driver and the bits BREAK! I switched to #2 philips after I had to replace two driver bits.

OTOH, Torx, used with the correct bit, almost never strip and are child's play to remove. Besides, I prefer Judaism over Christianity :)

Robertson's square drive screws are another good option.

I have a close friend who installs Ikea kitchens for a living.

All in all, he says the quality is good. People are happy with them and they are holding up over time.

The hardware, i.e. drawer glides, hinges, etc. are of very good quality.

Quick update-

Worked on this till about 9 at night yesterday, and I'm sold on the thought they've put into some of this. Took half the day to assemble the cabinets, but once that was done, actual installation was amazingly fast.

I have never dealt with such an easy to use upper cabinet mounting setup. Everything comes with your kitchen order, including pretty much all your fastners to do everything apart from screws to hold the rail to the wall.

You get this one big steel rail, which you affix to the wall. Each upper cabinet has two bolt points in the upper corners with steel brackets. You slide in these square metal tabs that hold the head of a bolt secure into the rail, and then you can fire the cabinets onto the wall with blinding speed.

The fabulous part of the design is you can loose mount the hanging cabinets so they can slide up and down the wall so you can play with the spacing, and the mounting system has like an inch of vertical play, so its unbelievably easy to level them out. Level one cabinet, bolt it down tight, and bolt all the others to that one cabinet with the included fastners.
It took me under an hour to hang 5 upper cabinets on two walls and level them out alone, it was that user friendly and that easy to thread a nut on the inside corners while holding them up

I've got all the upper and lower cabinets installed with counters already. The lowers are more traditionally mounted, but still fast with all the legs having predrilled mount areas, and requiring no screws, you just push the legs into the holes. Not a huge fan of the plastic legs, kinda fragile, but at least they give you a ton of the legs. So far so good though, today need to trim out all the gaps and toekicks, but its potentially possible I could get close to finishing the main install today, which amazes me

I made a bunch of mistakes assuming I already knew how to do something though, I had to take apart a couple cabinets and remount a few things earlier on, that taught me to read the install directions they provide since the modular system depends on you doing everything in a specific way.

here are some pics-

this is how the whole kitchen is delivered apart from the dishwasher-

http://i1217.photobucket.com/albums/...ps1d809d33.jpg

this is what the old kitchen looked like-

http://i1217.photobucket.com/albums/...ps2c90fbe8.jpg

here is the wall cabinet mounting bracket and sliding tabs-

http://i1217.photobucket.com/albums/...ps1f97c4e9.jpg

Here is how the new cabinets are shaping up so far-

http://i1217.photobucket.com/albums/...psb420e4fc.jpg
http://i1217.photobucket.com/albums/...ps8b323946.jpg

the plastic legs I don't like, but they seem to be pretty sturdy. I guess a plus side is they will never rot.
This is the "ADEL" trim kitchen, so the base version they sell. I could have sprung for more expensive legs as an option, but these should do fine

http://i1217.photobucket.com/albums/...ps6cc05971.jpg

My kitchen units also have plastic legs - but at the front and the back (not ikea)

They have been fine - so good I no longer notice them!

Wow that's nice! You went with the rail mounting system. Good job!

Looking good, JB!

Your "before" looks better than my "current." :o

man...
 

x2

That 'before' kitchen blows the doors off of what I have in my apartment.

I'm sad now.

That before pic is very generous, you can't see the cracked plate glass, warped shut series of doors, and rotting counter holding up a 200# iron sink that's getting wobbly, plus dingy cracked tile. Apart from some romantic hipsters into the 80 year old kichen with all it faults, every prospective tenant loved the apartment, hated the kitchen. Once its all sexified and the other rooms painted, it'll rent fast.

(Keeping the sink for some other project, and giving good glass doors away on craigslist. I wanted to reuse the sink, but that monster wasn't gonna fit with the higher counter)

Save that sink for me if it's half decent

Hate to say it but I'd give plenty for another old iron sink like that.

Add me to the waiting list for the old iron sink :P

That's a beautiful sink.

All I can say is, even if I owned a suitable truck, paying $100 to have someone else load their own truck, drive over and then hike up three flights of stairs with 92 boxes of cabinet materials would seem like a steal!

Good luck with the cabinets.