Wardrobes by their very nature are very heavy, and some are very difficult to move. If you a heavy wardrobe on a carpet and want to move it, you can often do it easily. This technique works very well for Rauch style wardrobes and large 4,5 or 6 door wardrobes such as the Argos New Hallingford and Very Prague range.

To slide the wardrobe around the room very easily, tip it up slightly and slide a single piece of cardboard underneath most of the base and then let the wardrobe sit on it. It does not need to be fully on the cardboard. You can then push the wardrobe easily.

TIP: Never pull a Rauch style wardrobe always push it. This also applies to the Very Prague range.

Once it is almost where you want it, tilt the wardrobe up again and slide out the piece of cardboard. This works because the friction between the cardboard and carpet is very low and it also stops the wardrobe frame sinking into the carpet pile.

NB: If nylon feet have been put on the wardrobe (these are hammered in and should only be put on a wardrobe going on a hard surface, such as a laminate floor), the above technique will not work. I would also advice not trying to move it, as you could rip the side panels where the nylon feet are positioned.

There are websites devoted to Ikea Hacking ie customising their furniture to suit your needs. One of the simplest ways of making any flat pack furniture look a lot better is to buy good quality handles and use these instead.

Today we assembled some items from Ikea’s Hemnes Range.

The Hemnes range is solid wood,  but quite light weight and painted in some basic colours white stain, navy black

All items come with the same black knobs for the drawers and doors. These are functional,  provide a good contrast and comparible with the quality of the furniture.

For this customer she had chosen some good quality knobs from B & Q to replace those on her Hemnes items.  At the time of writing these cost £12 for a pack of 6.

If you look at these two chests side by side you can clearly see the improvement in the finished effect.

As well as a couple of bedside tables the customer also had an 8 drawer Hemnes chest as shown below.

These were the handles used:

Furniture assembly is a cottage industry, but with more and more people entering the business some form of accreditation is required to give the general public confidence that their chosen assembler is bonafide and knows what they are doing.

At present there are no standard qualifications in assembling furniture. So with 15 years experience, I thought I would put one together, you can only pass the tests if you have experience assembling a wide range of furniture regularly.

I’ve also trawled the BSI standards to collate as much of the legalisation as I can. Simple things like where and how slats are fastened on the top bunk of a bunk bed are prescribed by law. Your assembler should know this. So I have written a guide covering the key points and there is a test to pass.

E-Commerce legislation stipulates that everyone and every business advertising online, must provide their full name (or limited company, company number and directors names), telephone number, email address and postal address plus their VAT No (if registered). Only genuine traders will provide all this information on their website. We do not insist on this (because we do not want out of date info) but ask all our registered assemblers to provide an internet link to where the public can find it, ie on their website, Facebook page etc.

We’ll be adding a few more features to help build confidence in future, but for now we are keeping it simple to get as many people on board as possible.

Expanding pins are becoming more popular because they are easier and quicker to fit, however it is worth noting a few things about expanding pins, because without taking a reasonable amount of care they will not work, and you will damage your furniture to the point you cannot build it.

You will find these on BandQ’s Darwin Range, the Holstead Wardrobe from Argos and most of the Next-to-no-time furniture from Next.

The principle of how they work is quite simple, simply push the pin into the hole (instead of screwing it in), and when the minifix cam is turned, it pulls the pin up a little and the base of the pin expands, tightly gripping the hole.

In order for the expanding pin to function properly, the collar must be flush against the panel into which it is inserted, and the two panels must be pushed firmly together whilst the minifix cam is turned to tighten the joint.

So there are two points of failure, if the pin is not fully inserted, then it will not grip the hole properly, damaging the edge slightly. On re-seating the pin correctly in the hole, it will no longer grip the hole with the same strength as the edge is slightly damaged. The damage can be less than a millimetre, yet it is sufficient to render the joint to fail. Similarly if the panels are not flush with each other before the minifix cam is tightened, it can draw the pin out of the hole, repeating the problem above.

Whilst both of these issues are very easy to avoid, it is worth pointing out, that it can be very difficult on wardrobes due to their weight, and on small items such as nests of tables to avoid.

Personally, I do not think these fittings are fit for purpose at all.

Certainly the ones on the Argos Holstead wardrobe is simply not strong enough, and expect over time a lot of these wardrobes will come apart during use from the constant banging of the sliding doors. When I have been building them, I have reinforced the joints with discrete brackets.

I have lost count of the number of Next wardrobes with the Next to no time fittings which customers have failed to build themselves and have called us in to fix them. Next seem rather disinterested in helping their customers when this happens, often telling the customers it is their own fault.

So if you do come across them, please ensure you:

a) fully insert the pins

b) ensure the two panels are firmly pressed together and there are no gaps before you tighten the minifix cams.

Today I came across the Darwin soft close device. I have not seen it for a while, because very few people buy it, but it is quite a nifty adaptation for the Darwin chest of drawers.

Very often when I see Ikea add on ideas, they are very Heath-Robinson type affairs where they don’t really work that well. For example, the original Pax sliding doors released about 15 years ago, had the most convoluted way imaginable of securing the glass panels in the metal frame, which in the long run proved unsatisfactory. The lighting system on the Pax wardrobes is also poorly thought out, as there is no neat or obvious way of hiding the wires, or even getting them outside the frame.

There are many more add ons that make you sigh when you see them, however these Darwin soft close devices are lovely. They simply clip on the bottom of the drawer and find the brackets on the frame with ease. The system is easy to apply and just works.

About 3 years ago, Ikea released the Sondheim wardrobe, I was quite surprised by this as it was very similar n many respects to the Dombas wardrobe. However there are some fundamental differences.

The Dombas wardrobe does not have a good quality finish, and has one cumbersome door that is larger than the rest. Additionally the assembly technique is like a cheap piece of furniture from Argos.

In contrast the Sondheim has a much nicer cleaner white finish, and also has an assembly technique which is up their with the usually good cheap and effective quality you would expect from Ikea.

It seems that earlier this year the Dombas price was dropped from about £180 to £60, so they are clearly getting rid of the stock and intend to withdraw it at some point soon.