IKEA Furniture Assembly
IKEA Furniture Assembly
If you are a first time customer of IKEA, you will quickly find out that assembly is required for most all of their furnishings. In this blog post I will offer a couple helpful tips to assemble your furniture with as little stress as possible.
First unpack everything from the box and display it neatly on the floor before you. Give yourself ample work space to assemble the piece and make sure you are not too far away from the end location for your new furniture. The last thing you want after you have assembled a heavy piece is to have to move it awkwardly to it’s end location.
Once you have everything laid out before you, locate the directions and review what I call the “nuts and bolts” page. This page acts as a “key” to display what the screws, nuts and bolts are going to be called in the directions that follow.
Match up the actual screws, nuts and bolts with the pictures on the page. While this may seem tedious, it will save you having to back-track later after you’ve found out you used the wrong screw, nut or bolt.
Now you are ready to begin assembling. The key to assembling IKEA furniture is to follow each instruction carefully, keeping an eye out for detail. Pay attention to every detail the instructions provide, I cannot stress this enough. If the instructions show a board with dowel holes facing a certain direction, be sure that your board has dowel holes pointed in that same direction.
Being detail oriented in this fashion ensures that you will assemble it right the first time and not have to back-track several steps to correct an error.
Throughout this assembly process there are two helpful hints that will help extend the life of your furniture.
First, if you have any wood glue, I strongly suggest giving each wooden dowel pin a drop of it before pressing it into it’s respective dowel hole. Wood glue will go a long way in keeping that joint firmly in place.
A bit more on dowel pins:
The diameter of wooden dowel pins are manufactured to be a bit larger then the hole it is to be inserted in. This allows for what is called a “press fit”. The ribs on the dowel pin are engineered to crush when inserted into the dowel hole, hence they are called “crush ribs”. Unfortunately through quality control slip ups, this perfect “press fit” is not always achieved. Therefore adding a small bit of wood glue to the dowel, will help safeguard the dowel from failing.
The second tip I’d like to talk about addresses the amount of torque you apply to the screws used to keep the your furniture together.
Most IKEA furniture is constructed from either pine wood, or particle board. These materials (while cheap in cost) are very soft. Therefore when you are screwing anything into them, applying an excessive amount of torque can be counterproductive and end up weakening or cracking the area around the screw.
I hope this blog helps you successfully assemble your IKEA furniture.
If you would like to hire someone to do this service for you, I have extensive experience assembling IKEA’s furnishings. Please give me a call for a free estimate!
K&A Handyman Services
(412)532-8403
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