Ikea offered a nice modular kitchen in their program from end of 1990s and 2000s.
Unfortunately, they didn’t support it well. I assume it was too expensive to produce. Ikea also resorted to cheap technical solutions. For example, the 70cm wall cupboards that were available in variants with or without glas doors and in white or birch had a very poor solution to hold open the horizontal door. It was a damper that just had to fail eventually.
I replaced the damper multiple times and the replacements got quite expensive on eBay, since there were no original parts available. So, we gave up in the end: The new kitchen is in the early planning stage.
However, since I had some spare small Utrusta hinges (https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/utrusta-small-hinge-for-horizontal-door-white-90265736/) with some research I managed to replace the dampers. This is how the result looks like, before applying finishing touches:
The most difficult part of the story is that there are no mounting holes prepared to position the hinge correctly. See the red marks in the image below to find the positioning protrusions / bolts of the hinge. We need to drill two per holes per side at the correct positions using the correctly sized wood drill (only 3mm deep!).
Pick the correctly sized drill for the protrusions. Hint: Use the pre-drilled holes of the cabinet to double-check the drill size (size is 5 in Germany, whatever that is elsewhere…).
Procedure
WARNING: You should know how to drill. Apply common sense. Don’t hold me responsible, I am just describing my solution.
- Prepare a paper template (use thick paper) with two holes, one 32mm from the top and the other at 82mm from top, both 52mm from the front (see image below).
- Unmount the door by detaching the damper and the original hinges.
- Hold the template to the top left and top right inner side of the cupboard and punch-mark two holes (with the wood drill, for example).
- Drill a 3mm deep hole in each of the 4 punch-marks using a 5er wood drill. Do not apply too much pressure, you don’t want to drill a hole through the cabinet!
- Attach the Utrusta hinge by pushing the two protrusions on the side of the hinge into the holes. If you worked precisely, the hinge should already be supporting itself.
- From here on just follow the Utrusta mounting instructions.
And there you have it, this finally fixes the damper problem, works great with soft close and looks professional.
