IKEA Hacks

The IKEA hack as its now known involves buying some standard IKEA furniture and modifying it into something beautiful and unique. Many people ask about fitting our legs to their new piece of furniture so here is a quick guide.

The legs themselves are very strong and able for all IKEA furniture. The key factor to whether this will work is how strong the connection between the leg and the wood is and this depends very much on what kind of wood your IKEA piece is made from.

Solid wood

As you may have guessed, no issues what so ever here as long as long as the thickness of the wood is around 18mm or greater. Standard no. 8 or 10 wood screws by 3/4" long will do just fine. Our standard weight guide applies here.

Chip board or particle board

Chip board is a fair bit weaker than solid wood so you need to consider both the amount of load the leg will see and the way your fix it to the top. Most IKEA particle board is thicker than 22mm and you want to use all of this, so make sure your screws are long enough. Wherever possible try to screw into areas which are thicker (e.g. where a wall of the cabinet meets the base) and use even longer screws.

The shorter the legs, the less amount of load will be applied to the screws as you drag the furniture around. Anything up to 14 inches long and you should have no problem, but longer than this you do need to be careful and make sure the fixing is really secure. A nut and bolt for example would be a great way of doing this. Our legs can take a 5mm / M5 bolt.

Another option would be to use our freestanding table bases, where the fixing will not have to withstand as much pressure.

If you would prefer to use some of our non-freestanding legs, then an excellent way to ensure you get a strong fixing would be to glue a piece of 18mm plywood, cut a bit smaller than your top surface, to the underside using a strong adhesive to then screw the legs into that.

Fibreboard / Particleboard mix

Some of the really cheap and lightweight tables such as the Lack, are made from two thin sheets of fibreboard and a honeycomb structure of cardboard type material in the middle. The middle is hollow and therefore very little for the screws or fixings to bite into. Unless there is a solid piece of wood inside to allow fixing of legs, its very tricky to attach our legs to these type of units. A nut and bolt the whole way through can sometimes work but use with caution.

A good option might be to use our freestanding table bases, where the fixing will not have to withstand as much pressure.

Or if you would prefer to use some of our non-freestanding legs, then an excellent way to ensure you get a strong fixing would be to glue a piece of 18mm plywood, cut a bit smaller than your top surface, to the underside using a strong adhesive to then screw the legs into that.