the state of your ikea furniture

how has your ikea furniture held up since you bought it? any spectacular failures? is it outperforming your vintage authentic oak and mahogany dresser?

The only thing I own from Ikea is a cheese grater and it's a little dented but otherwise a-ok.

we buried our ikea fern the other day R.I.P.

i got that couch - the really famous one. the long one with light wood, and it comes with white cushions?

but i changed the cushions to black. they sell black on their website.

the couch has held up really well.

this thread is like the ikea furniture of ilx threads

omg it IS

my bookshelves are fine, but my friend's giant ikea record shelves recently collapsed spectacularly.

90% of our ikea stuff is totally fine

I used to have tons of IKEA stuff but somehow these days I have none of their furniture anymore? Some wall-mounted shelving, that's it! I guess craigslist happened and now I just buy everything 2nd hand?

an acquaintance I met in the street just told me that the Ikea two-wheeled trolley thing I use at work was "shit" but I have in fact found it to be adequate for the task at hand

/rock'n'roll

what a coincidence! i'm installing ikea wall-unit bookcases today

we have a few of their basic tables and they've held up fine for the past 7 years or so

Oh no wait I lied, I have two of those clear plastic chairs with the metal L-shaped bases, and a Stefan stool that's over 10 years old. Still works fine for sitting and standing on.

almost all our furniture is ikea. ikea table, 8 ikea folding chairs, ikea portable island for the kitchen, 2 billy bookcases, 1 bigger ikea bookcase, ikea wall unit (tv stand, two hermes bookcases and a wall-mounted shelf that suspends between the two bookcases) um, an ikea end table and even ikea bars in the kitchen that stuff hangs off.

:-)

i recently built all the baby stuff and it's not ikea and it's so much nicer tho. better wood, better design, feels more substantial. but so much more expensive than ikea!

Most of it, I've outgrown aesthetically -- so it all is slowly getting moved out the door.

But no structural failures of purchases I've made 10+ years ago.

Some surface damage as a result of cat climbing and the occasional failed cat leap, but otherwise it's all hanging in there.

one decent size bookcase, holding up fine

chairs & shelves: still doing a fine job
cheap, shitty kitchen knives: still cheap & shitty, but really to a greater degree than they were initially

*not really to a greater degree than they were initially

ikea knives are the worst

I've found that Ikea seems to have multiple levels of quality/price, and that for anything involving doors and/or drawers it pays to go above the lowest level (doors and drawers tend to be more solid and hinge/drawer mechanisms tend to be more sturdy) -- otherwise you wind up with something that falls apart quickly.

I'm actually about to build an Effectiv cabinet/multi-purpose storage thingy. Unfortunately one of the like 10 different modular parts I had to buy was missing so I have to go BACK to Ikea to get it, which really blows when one is carless. I also just put together a little coat/hat rack thing that I still need to mount and an in-closet storage thing (sort of a cheapo version of container store elfa).

I take some small, pathetic pride in the fact that, while I cannot actually build anything from scratch, at least I'm not one of those people who thinks Ikea furniture is difficult to build.

Most of our shelving has held up pretty well over the years, some of it going on 8+ years now. My wife's old dresser, however, started to fall apart after about three years. IKEA shit is not meant for heavy, repeated use. Said dresser has been relocated to the garage for storage out there.

I've got an IKEA DVD cabinet that I absolutely love -- it's black and white with six sliding doors. It's held up for a good six or seven years now. I would LOVE to have a second one, but they don't make them anymore and apparently the people who have them really hold on to them.

I bought a Malm bedframe this summer. It was an extremely poor decision. Everything else that I have is great, so far.

The guy who was redoing our flat a couple of years ago reckons that IKEA furniture is by far the best quality in the cheap-to-middling price range. No doubt this is because of (alleged) dodgy business practices keeping prices down, but still.

I'm making a second trip to Home Depot this afternoon to try and jury-rig it back together.

signing petition for everyone to post pictures (at their convenience, of course)

the only thing i've ever bought from them is a couple lamps, $8 each, nice stuff but not really worth conversing about. it's black, yes!!

The guy who was redoing our flat a couple of years ago reckons that IKEA furniture is by far the best quality in the cheap-to-middling price range. No doubt this is because of (alleged) dodgy business practices keeping prices down, but still.

― |III|||II|||I|I||| (Matt #2), Tuesday, November 1, 2011 12:41 PM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Yeah, this. It's not that Ikea is great quality for furniture, but that your other options anywhere near that price range tend to be worse quality and/or much uglier. Plus I doubt whoever makes furniture sold in Target has good business practices either.

When I think about it, I've actually had two Ikea pieces that I thought were terriffically well-built and solid -- an entertainment center and a freestanding kitchen unit. Both I unfortunately had to get rid of, one because it was for a loft without a kitchen and the other because it wouldn't fit where I was moving, but both were really good pieces of furniture.

This is the piece I want a second one of. If anyone ever sees one of these for sale, I will pay good money.

http://www.ikeafans.com/galleries/images/109600/large/1_IMG_2715.JPG.jpeg

one bookcase, one TV stand: both kickin' ass and holding up books and a TV

Two 5x5 Expedit shelves are still going strong after 10 years and as many moves. Two 6x6 Expedits also doing great after 5 years and 3 moves - these hold all the vinyl. Two 2x2 Expedits the same - no troubles. Recently got a CD shelf back from ILXor Mackro - I forget it's name, but it's 12 years old and in great shape. The roll-front stand up computer thing that we've repurposed as a liquor cabinet is still doing great, though the door is tough to roll due to (I suspect) cat hair clogging the tracks. It's 3 years old. Two cheap lamps are holding their own, as is the tv stand. Various Omar configurations (those ubiquitous metal grid shelves) are all over the place in the basement. The kitchen island and cart we put together last year are fantastic.

Things that died and have moved on to the bin: wine rack that was a POS, some kind of cheap pine shelving that was also a POS, dresser that did not survive a move due to a crushing injury, one 5x5 Expedit that collapsed due to being disassembled in the wrong order.

Things that are worrying: dining room chairs - two are super wiggly, but I haven't tried to fix them yet. Favorite drying rack popped a joint and maybe needs welding or duct taped.

i bought a cheap black coffee table there four years ago without realizing it was the same model as in all of my school's student lounges. a few years later, the school redid those lounges and got rid of all of the coffee tables. now half of my friends have at least one in their apartment. so that is the status of my ikea furniture.

unless you buy the cheapest varient of each X item (chair, cheese grater), i am not sure Ikea is even a little bit cheap

i mean it's cheap if you're comparing it to, like, Design Within Reach or Crate and Barrel, but if you're going to Target and Walmart to buy the furniture you're not saving anything

Some DWR stuff, at least the lower end of it, is surprisingly shoddy btw --I've had some bad results with craigslist DWR purchases.

Target shit (and prob WM too, but I do not know from experience) is the ABSOLUTE WORST.

I've had a Mandal dresser and bed since June, they're working out fine.

Yeah I almost bought that Mandal bed (the one with drawers right?) but decided to just stick with the old frame because getting way too spendy lately.

what the hell is DWR?

i mean it's cheap if you're comparing it to, like, Design Within Reach or Crate and Barrel, but if you're going to Target and Walmart to buy the furniture you're not saving anything

protip: check out the returns section in the warehouse part. got a $300 bedframe for $60, only casualty is a drawer that doesn't close right and some parts where the laminated sloughed off and the particle board is showing

okay I have never heard of that store nor seen one of them xp

protip: check out the returns section in the warehouse part. got a $300 bedframe for $60, only casualty is a drawer that doesn't close right and some parts where the laminated sloughed off and the particle board is showing

also it is on fire

Yeah, four drawers on the bottom, a slightly more useful platform bed.

Only flaw is that the only planks that will work for mattress support are the plain ones that come with it, you can't get the fancy engineered supports like you can with other Ikea beds.

Design Within Reach makes these:

http://i-cdn.apartmenttherapy.com/images/uploads/6-13-cubitec.jpg which are fucking awesome, modular and actually a very good deal at used prices (usually you can find them for 1/2 price, and given that they're super-durable plastic, they usually look good as new with a wash).

They also produce a lot of that gucci gucci eames and le corbusier type shit.

We bought an extendable dining table they carry for $300 (originally $900) and one of the two glass tops shattered in transport with pretty light contact. We also got the matching chairs on craigslist, and they're actually fine except they turned out to be much flimsier material than we thought, like Ikea quality with fancier design for a higher price.

good design is not always practical design?

Phil D. - how the hell does that thing work? do those big white doors swing out or something? are they even doors at all? is what you're actually showcasing literally just that squat little bookcase in the midst of it all? PLEASE GOD ENLIGHTEN ME

oh, also forgot i bought a bunch of silverware at ikea. great stuff, doesn't randomly shatter given exposure to heat or ennyofdatstuf. well designed.

and i remember getting the swedish meatballs and fish-paste. lol. i was not relieved.

Four lamps, all in great shape.

It's hard to tell from that picture, which I grabbed off GIS, but the doors slide on tracks, so what you have there is six sliding doors. Each of the six sections can be configured independently, as shown in the picture for CDs, or remove one of the shelves and reposition for DVDs. The whole thing stands about 6' high, and holds a lot of DVDs.

My dad told me all the problems are because people don't know how to assemble furniture. They have good hangers and I used to eat off their woven straw placemats when I still believed in placemats. They also have pretty napkins but the ink on the blue floral pattern transfers to other surfaces.

What the hell, Ikea used forced labor in the '80s:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/17/business/global/ikea-to-report-on-allegations-of-using-forced-labor-during-cold-war.html

had a feeling that was a bump

Casts that SLAV wardrobe I bought in 1986 in a whole new light