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Comment by Beijinger | Hacker News Reader

There are tons of websites like this: https://ikeahackers.net/

I read, IKEA first wanted to have them closed down, but then they realized, it does not matter why someone buys their stuff, as long as they buy it.

I like Ikea. I lived in so many countries, and it is an excellent place to buy furniture if you have to. But I consider it "throw away" furniture. Quality is okay or soso and it is unlikely to survive several moves.

If you can afford and have a place for long term. Buy better stuff. Used quality furniture, even antique, can be incredibly cheap.

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IKEA furniture can hold up very well if you follow the instructions precisely and don't disassemble them (in most cases).

We have furniture from IKEA that we bought at least five years ago that still functions great. A mattress we got from them is absolutely stellar with a memory foam topper; all of our guests love it. I think our coffee table is ten years old now.

However, everything goes to hell once you try to take it apart. This is why our mattresses are not on IKEA bed frames. Taking them apart has ALWAYS weakened them significantly. (We use Thuma Japanese joinery bed frames, which are AMAZING for moving and very high quality).

Which is kind of moot when you're talking about high-quality furniture, as they are usually single pieces as well.

For what is worth, I had an IKEA kitchen for 12+ years, we disassembled it and gave it to some people that could reuse it, and it's still fine. OTOH my IKEA couch fell apart in half that time, but my wife fixed it up and it lasted until we renovated. We gave that away too.

IKEA has a wide range of products, some fall apart quickly, some last longer.

The finger jointed pine stuff is much more robust than the mdf or hardboard products.

IKEA does stuff not out of MDF and cardboard?

In case you're not just being sarcastic, stuff like Ivar.

https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/ivar-cabinet-pine-40033763/

Was a genuine question, thanks.

yes, the lingonberry drink they serve in the cafeteria. :)

actually they had some metal garage shelves that I thought would be ok.

They turned out to be SUPER flimsy and wobbly.

I think they optimize for shipping weight, which means 'solid' suffers.

Right, metal I know of, I just assumed they switched over to cheap materials in place of weed, so good to know.

Their dining tables are pretty much all solid pine.

generally for every thing (bed, chair, bookshelf, coffee table, etc) there's a solid wood version

I’ve heard their kitchens are far higher quality than the rest of their products. Why - not sure.

I've started wood-gluing together my IKEA and other flat-pack furniture to try and increase its usable life since - as you said - it's counterproductive to dis/re-assemble most of it anyways. I've not been at it long enough to claim effectiveness, but so far nothing has started to wobble.

This is the way.

Even the cheapest cardboard-filled IKEA units hold together much better when glued, and makes moving the units less stressful (no more "it's creaking / skewed when I pick it up").

Nothing like picking up a rectangular dresser to put in the truck and watch it morph into a parallelogram.

I do the same. I don’t plan to take it apart but wood glue is part of any woodworking shop and I don’t see why assembling Ikea should be qualitatively different. I want my assemblies to stay together, not vibrate, to feel sound. Gluing joints is fundamental.

Honestly...not mad at it lol

>However, everything goes to hell once you try to take it apart.

You are not supposed to do that, and if you do - use PVA and epoxy, +metal insert and machine bolts to reassemble

IKEA now publishes disassembly instructions for some of their products. https://www.ikea.com/ie/en/product-guides/sustainable-produc...

Five years is not much in terms of a furnitures lifespan, i own some pieces my grand grandmother already used that got passed down the generations.

I highly doubt this will happen with ikea furniture. But thats the tradeoff for cheaper and affordable stuff i guess.

Moved a pax twice and my kitchen once. You can disassemble them easily. Just reverse the instructions.

> it is unlikely to survive several moves

I have several pieces that have survived 3-4 moves. The trick is when assembling, use wood glue with any dowels. On their own, these dowels only have friction to hold them in place, and over time, the surface of the area where they are inserted compresses, reducing friction. Hence you get that typical side to side sway. The glue mitigates this problem.

I don't see this mentioned enough! Wood glue will improve the stability massively.

Obviously beds and huge bookshelves might need to come apart again, so use your best judgement. But chairs, dressers, end-tables, etc. are completely worth it.

This makes any assembly 1-way, though. Some people (with a very high time:money ratio obviously) might find the collapsible, portable nature of Ikea an advantage.

I'm sure I'm not the only person to have built a wall unit in a bedroom only to learn, later, getting it out the door, and through the hall, and down the stairs turns out to be job for Dirk Gently.

That said, moving some of this flat pack furniture has been a mixed bag. Some move well, some don't.

I did have a wall unit, a $99 hardware store particle board piece assembled with big screws and those interesting, round cam fasteners. It survived three separate moves, including one where it flew out the back of my pickup truck onto asphalt (thankfully in a gas station, vs the freeway I was about to get on). Corner got dinged, door flew off, but it survived!

But I've had other pieces that assemble and are rigid, when torqued around through the moving process start to come undone. The particle board and fasteners are designed for loads only in specific directions and tend to not do well, and fail, outside of those.

I've owned a lot of IKEA furniture, and at no point have I ever considered disassembling them. And I don't think IKEA really even advertises their stuff to be a flatpack-to-furniture-to-flatpack design.

> I've owned a lot of IKEA furniture

same.

> and at no point have I ever considered disassembling them

That is wise. I don't claim disassembling it for move was a good idea, but it compressed my stuff into a compact car.

Consider also that some of their beds don't fit through a doorway built (esp if doorway is not code width) so some level of disassembly may be required for mere room-to-room moving.

I'm only calling out a tradeoff that may or may not apply. Not everyone is you and me.

> I don't think IKEA really even advertises their stuff to be a

The whole point of this thread (this site?) is repurposing outside of creator intent.

I think my GALANT desk with a glass top survived multiple moves, including one that had it travel about 800 km in a trailer. Worked fine until the day I got a standing desk, at which point I put it up online and someone bought it from me. That desk might still be kicking around to this day.

I think really the only IKEA product that has given me issues is the MARKUS chair, and more specifically, the gas spring leaking. Apart from that, I think everything is more or less functional? Even the five-euro LACK coffee table is still fine, even if it has signs of use on it. I've also bought used IKEA shelves and they're still holding up fine.

LACK is a good inflation indicator, it costs 7.99€ now.

Cool website, thanks for the link!

Really liked this garden sink for barbecuing: https://ikeahackers.net/2017/06/outdoor-sink-perfect-summer-...

No many real furniture out there with entire ecosystem of storage/containers sized for it. IKEA sheet/stamped metal stuff that introduced a few years ago will last forever.

I've got the Ikea PLATSA wardrobe and none of their organisers fit properly in the drawers. My wife instead got some of the MUJI organisers and those fit much better because they're made of cloth/canvas thus bendy/squishy.

> If you can afford and have a place for long term. Buy better stuff. Used quality furniture, even antique, can be incredibly cheap.

IKEA is ideal for a certain stage of your life. It's ideal for optimizing vertical space. It's largely function over form. It looks like middle school classroom furniture. And when junior writes on it w/ a sharpie ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

When you have the space for a separate dining room, agreed that used antiques are comparable in price.

I wouldn't touch their couches rich or poor though; they're painful.

I have an IKEA LANDSKRONA (in Gunnared dark grey) and it's a good sofa for like 650 €. I don't think I've really considered sofas to be that markedly better than mine even if they're double or quadruple the cost.

It's very use and location dependent. I'm going to get a good or at least relatively good dining room table. Some cubbyholes/shelves for a closet? IKEA is fine. I also have an IKEA bureau in my bedroom. I occasionally wonder if I should have splurged on a "real" piece of furniture but it saved me thousands of dollars and is perfectly adequate.

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