IKEA furniture really is the best when you want to flex your DIYing skills without literally building new furniture from scratch. IKEA pieces are easy to put together and fairly minimalist in their design, and while you can assemble them and use them straight out of the box as intended, they make for the perfect "blank slate" pieces to work into your home decor projects!
For example, take Sia and Mikael, a couple of Swedish DIYers who recently decided to add a 4-meter-long built-in bench to their cozy farmhouse bedroom. Building a piece like that should have been quite the challenge, but with the help of a simple IKEA furniture flip, this couple made it look easy!
Make no mistake, Sia and Mikael (aka @swedishfarmhouse ) did way more than just make a trip to IKEA and call it a day. This was still an enormous DIY project that the couple clearly invested weeks of work into. However, the IKEA furniture was absolutely essential to the foundation of their built-in storage bench . It gave them a solid, functional base to work off of, and after all was said and done, you'd never believe that their charming, cottagecore built-in started off as a few mass-produced IKEA pieces!
The base of their built-in bench was made from six white BESTÅ storage units. Now, if you try to look up BESTÅ units, you'll find that there are a lot of different options, and unfortunately, the couple didn't give the dimensions for each unit. If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say that they were probably using these $70 BESTÅ shelf units with the Hanviken door fronts, which can be turned into drawers if completed with BESTÅ drawer boxes and drawer runners (sold separately). Take this one with a grain of salt, though!
The couple also created a raised frame to set their BESTÅ drawers into, which they built from scratch using plywood and medium-density fiberboard (MDF) planks. They also had spackle to fill in any of the holes left around their frame, along with primer and paint for decoration (Sia used Zinsser BIN primer and Northern Mystic paint from Jotun, respectively). Finally, the cushioned top was made from chipboard (aka particleboard), a big roll of batting, cut-up pieces from a JYSK memory foam mattress, and fabric to go over the top.
Putting It All Together
First, the BESTÅ drawers were assembled, and everything was measured out. Each unit was around 23.625 inches long (assuming I identified the specific units correctly), and they had to be spaced apart equally to fill the full four-meter stretch of wall. The plywood frame was built into the floor, and the IKEA units were installed into it. The gaps between the units were filled, and MDF planks were installed over the top and on the face of the unit for a seamless, stable finish.
After the bulk of the unit was built, the couple spackled, primed, and painted everything to perfection. The last big challenge was creating the cushion top, which they did by stapling batting over the particleboard, adding the memory foam mattress pieces, and covering that with another layer of fabric. The top, along with the drawer handles, were installed, and voila - the couple was left with a beautiful built-in bench that looked like it came with their farmhouse from the very start. You'd never have guessed that it was mostly made from IKEA storage units!
This was still a very ambitious DIY project, one that took lots of planning and good craftsmanship, but the design itself is pretty straightforward, and it wouldn't be too difficult for other knowledgeable DIYers to replicate. Is there any DIY project that IKEA can't make better?
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