Not exactly easy to deal with (Ikea Bedroom Furniture in general)

Member Name: george_lazenby

Product:	Ikea Bedroom Furniture in general
Date:	18/06/01 (2077 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Look nice, Flexible, (Relatively) Cheap

Disadvantages: Very hard to put together, Poor instructions

I have already complained at length about the problems of ordering furniture from Ikea in another review, so I will get down to the practicalities. We chose the Pax / Nexus system, and the advantage is that everything is within your control. You can have one of two different heights, and one of two different depths of wardrobe, and you can have a single width or double width wardrobes. You can fit small drawers at the bottom and have a glass and aluminium door, or full-length wooden ones. You pick the the handles. Moreover, the shape of the inside is entirely up to you – shelves, wire-mesh baskets, hanging rails and boxes can be chosen in a multiplicity of combinations.

If you’re the kind of person who doesn’t like making decisions, this is the worst possible thing, but to give them credit, Ikea’s Pax / Nexus system does mean that you can take a wall or area of a bedroom and tailor it to ensure you maximise the space. We were able to fit a double wardrobe each, with a single one in the middle with drawers and a glass door. NB drilling through the aluminium door takes a lot of patience if, like me, you’re new to DIY. It isn’t technically difficult – someone with decent maths needs to measure up the door and mark off where you need to drill for the handles you’ve bought. But you do need a decent drill and a willingness to take your time to make sure you don’t make a mess of it.

You go to Ikea with a firm idea of what you need, at least as far as the shell of the wardrobe is concerned. You need to know the wardrobe sizes, and probably what doors you want. The innards aren’t important, as all of them are fitted once the wardrobe has been assembled, so you can go as far as putting them into place before actually deciding what shelves, rails and so on you’re actually putting inside. For all my loathing of the Ikea experience, I can’t deny that this is a good thing. Go to the bedroom
section, order your bits (you can of course order the inside bits if you want), and then go to the warehouse to collect. To reiterate the complaint I made in my general Ikea opinion, you will have to wheel all the boxes through the checkouts, even if you’re having them delivered.

What you’ll have is a series of big boxes and plastic bags. You can’t – in my opinion – assemble these wardrobes single-handed, the panels and doors are too heavy. You should probably count out all the dowels and screws and pins, although we had everything we needed. Putting these things together is straightforward, but time-consuming, and a bit frustrating. Some of the instructions aren’t enormously helpful, and tell you to do some daft things. The hinges are essentially in two bits, the bit fixed to the door and the bit fixed to the frame, and they’re designed to come apart so you can take the doors off. However, they tell you to screw the frame half on with the door attached to it, which is bloody difficult. When you buy these things, and get to the door hanging stage, make sure you’re putting everything in the right place, and then put the hinges on in their two halves and snap the door on afterwards.

The scariest part – for us – was the bit where the frame had been put together, and had no back on. At this stage, the frame still seemed very wobbly and unstable, even though the back doesn’t seem to have much structural significance. However, once this was on, it did actually seem much more solid. With its contents and the doors on, the wardrobes actually seem quite stable.

In terms of how they work, I’m satisfied. They are pretty big and compared to the crap antiques I’ve had in the past, and the cheapo hanging rail I bought from Argos as a stopgap when we moved in, it does the job quite nicely. The problem with Ikea furniture is that the price comes at a price, if you know what I m
ean. It took several days of struggle to get everything together, and it wasn’t an enjoyable experience.

Summary: