Ikea Build Your Own Closet

Advertisement

Ikea Build Your Own Closet – When I started envisioning what I wanted my closet to look like, I got stuck on this picture of Jenny Wolf’s closet. I absolutely adored the blue custom furniture and decided I was going to figure out a way to get a similar look in my own house on a non-custom budget.

I originally assumed we would be making all the cabinets from scratch, but Cory brought me back to reality with the truths that 1) we had never built a cabinet in our lives, let alone lots of drawers, shelves, and drawers, and 2) the cabinet would take

Ikea Build Your Own Closet

So I was looking for a cabinet system that I could customize and paint to my vision. And in this search, IKEA Pax consistently emerged as the most common, most valued and most affordable cabinet system. I’m not new to the idea of ​​hacking IKEA products, although we’d never actually done it ourselves. In my research, I found that many people have hacked the IKEA Pax or IKEA Billy systems to create a built-in look. But there were some updates that I couldn’t find examples of in the draft, including recessed in-cabinet lighting and adding drawer fronts for recessed, fully custom cabinetry. The drawer fronts were critical to my vision: IKEA Pax drawers look very modular and modern to me, so they stick out like a sore thumb in our 1940s home. Most people would hide the drawers by adding doors to the wardrobe, but we didn’t have the space or desire to add so many unnecessary wardrobe doors to the space.

Kids Closet Organization With Ikea Pax

To achieve the high-end custom look I was going for, we added baseboards, crown molding, shoe molding, recessed disc lights for cabinet lighting, paneled the fronts and sides of the wardrobes with wood strips, added wooden drawer fronts, added plugs to cover unused shelf holes, wallpapered the back of the units, primed and painted everything, then replaced the metal hanging rods to the stained wooden bars and finally added the accessories for the box.

We tried to be as detailed as possible in the steps below, so I’m going to give a disclaimer that this post is huge. Let me know in the comments if anything needs further clarification and I can update the answer to these questions.

Here’s how we did it 1. We planned the size of the wardrobe units and the placement of organizational supplies

This is where the Pax Planning tool on the IKEA website comes in handy. We listed how much space we each needed for our clothes (tall, medium, low) and storage type by clothing category on a spreadsheet, and then I referenced that when creating each side of the closet to make sure we had enough space for our existing closets and storage desires. For example, I fold my jeans, while Cory prefers to hang his, and he wears casual business attire, which means there are a lot of shirts to hang. When choosing accessories, I left out IKEA accessories that are a bit gimmicky, such as trouser hangers, shoe trees, etc., instead of clean, classic cabinet models. That’s not to say they don’t help maximize storage, but it’s very challenging to make them look seamless in a high-end custom closet. This limited our options to hanging rods, drawers and shelves.

Easy Hack To Build In An Ikea Pax Wardrobe

The room is 14.6 inches long and 6.5 inches wide, and we chose deeper IKEA Pax units on one side (23 inches deep) and shallower units on the other wall (13 inches deep), allowing for a wide hallway. between two units.

We only have standard 8″ ceilings so we had to build the units into the room and we also couldn’t build a platform for the wardrobe units to sit on. If we had higher ceilings we would have raised the units on a wooden base to make sure we didn’t lose any storage space when we added the baseboards. We polished under the units to make sure they were perfectly level and we made sure the units were level with each other so when we ran the baseboards to the front of them everything looked level.

We ordered these disc lights from Amazon and plugged them into the electrical box so we can turn them on and off when we enter the room. In order to get to all six of our cabinet units, we had to order extra extension cords. We fed these wires in a chain where for each unit one light branched off and fed into the unit from the very top back. Since we knew we had rattan boxes on the top shelf, we knew the wires would be invisible.

To give the lights a very custom look, we recessed them into the front of each unit’s top shelf. To embed the lights we used a router to trace a pattern we made from scrap wood. If we had more time, we would have used a Kreg Concealed Jig with a Forstner drill bit to get a more perfect round circle, but they look pretty cool. We set a routing depth equal to the thickness of the puck light so that it would be perfectly flush with the bottom surface of the shelf.

Diy Walk In Closet Makeover Reveal! {with Ikea Pax Units}

When we routed the holes for the lights, we drilled the hole straight through to accommodate the puck light wire itself. Then we installed a shelf and put a puck light through it in each unit. We used a small bead of construction glue behind the puck light to attach it to the countersunk hole in the shelf. Once all the lights were installed, we moved on to the next step.

Next, skirting boards were installed on the front of the units. We ran skirting boards around the entire room for a fully built-in look. We used these skirting boards from Metrie, which are part of their Fashion Forward collection and go really well with the applied wood. Since the top of the baseboard profile is flat horizontally, it allows the wood we later applied to the front of the cabinet to flow seamlessly.

We attached the baseboards to the front of the wardrobe units with construction adhesive and added nails where the baseboards lined up with the vertical edges of each individual wardrobe unit. If your floors are not level (problems in an old house), always start from the lowest part of the room and simulate where the top edge of the baseboard falls, so you don’t get into trouble when moving around the room. We installed a laser level (we’ve named it our tool of the year because it’s made our lives SO much easier) to keep our baseboards level. It is important that the baseboards are even on all units as you will need to create square openings for the drawer fronts later.

We installed some additional Pax/Komplement shelves on top of the inner base of the units to bring it up to the base level as we had to attach them to the front of the Pax units themselves. To do this, we used some scrap strips of 1/8 inch hardened hardboard to raise the shelf to a flat level and attached it with screws. This step only applied to wardrobe units without drawers at the bottom.

Diy Closet Makeover With Ikea Trofast Hack

This is where things really start to look custom. We used 1/2 inch poplar boards that we cut with a table saw to form strips to cover where the wardrobe pieces met and filler boards for the sides where the wardrobe pieces didn’t quite extend to the wall. Poplar had to be ordered for home delivery because it was not available in stores. We attached the vertical strips of wood to the Pax units using a nail gun and finishing nails.

We then added horizontal strips of poplar that aligned with the bottom of the crown molding to make the bottom edge of the crown appear properly built into the units and not recessed into it (the photo above shows that there is wood molding behind the crown). We found it was easiest to sand the exposed edges of the poplar strip before installation. We also used an orbital sander to sand all visible surfaces, as this has a huge impact on the final result.

We added some poplar strips to the outer sides of the Pax units to give the sides a more finished look after painting. We attached them with construction glue and held them in place with clamps. We couldn’t use nails here because they didn’t have a solid surface to stick to or they might have been visible inside the units.

Finally, we added smaller horizontal strips. This was something I was very concerned about as the shelves on the Pax units are not flush

Before And After: Ikea Closet Installation

Ikea closet build, build your own closet shelves, build your own wardrobe closet, build your own closet system, build your own custom closet, build your own ikea closet, build my own closet, ikea build your own closet system, build your own closet organizer ikea, how to build your own closet organizer, build your own closet, build your own closet organizer

Advertisement