A Shrunken FJELLSE Bed !

Well. It had to come. My daughter, not happy that her big brother was having his bedroom redesigned, decided that she would hold her breath until I did hers!

Actually, that's not strictly true, (in fact not at all. Just prone to exaggerating!) I just thought it wasn't fair that I only did his.


Now as you will come to see, I have throwing things out if I can 'upcycle' them!!

Unfortunately due to the small size of her bedroom and the fact that there is a large box over the stairwell, a standard single size bed just will not fit.

Luckily, as we were doing my son's room, he had a small single mattress. So while we were buying the items from Ikea for his room, I also purchased a Fjellse Bed for her room.

MODIFY!!!

After doing some careful measurements, I found I had to cut fifteen cm off the width and     cm's off the length. None of which was a problem, I just had to take 7.5cm of either side of the headboard so that the upright rails remained in the centre.

The rails that run along the length then had to have holes drilled for the locking bars and dowels.

All in all this hack was quite an easy one considering.

Only issue we have now is that both my wife and I keep kicking the bed leg as we are not used to it being there!

The bed in it's place. Watch your feet though!!

It then transpired that we were short of drawers. Luckily the old cabin beds that both children slept in, had a three drawer and two shelf unit underneath. After some more careful modification I used two of the three spare drawers and used one of the shelving spaces. So now she has a five drawer unit with room to put some books on!

The Chest of drawers were 'upcycled' from the old bed

Bedtime the Ikea Hack Way.

Happy New Year to everyone!

Welcome.

After deciding to renovate my son's bedroom, and searching the fantastic Ikea Hackers Website, coming across some fantastic posts within, I thought I'd give it a go.

So before further ado, here's the final (albeit a bit of sanding and painting!!) bed for my son:

It comprises of a MALM chest of drawers, 2 x EXPEDIT, SULTAN LUROY bed base, a SULTAN HUGLO mattress, some 125 x 25 timber and some 25 x 25 spurring.


So first things first, I did a quick dry fit together:

EXPEDIT and MALM drawers

The MALM chest of drawers

Mattress on top.

Bed Construction

Materials:

2 x Expedit units (£20 ea)     £40

1 x Malm 3 drawer                 £30

1x Sultan Luroy bed base     £20

1x Sultan Huglo Mattress      £80   (not essential if you already have a mattress)

125 x 25 Timber 2.4m x 2    £30  

Total                                        £200 (or £120 if you have a mattress)

Construction Time:

3/4 of a day

Tools Required:

Drill, Drill Driver, Circular Saw, Hammer, Chisels, Glue, Filler, Sander, Screws, Hand Saw, Tape measure, Spirit Level, Measuring Square, Quick Clamps.

I needed to do a test fit of the items together with the mattress as seen above. I knew that I really needed to give the bed some stability by fixing the top to at least two walls. With the 2 x 2 Expedits and the Malm set of drawers the overall length of the bed would be too long, so that also needed to be addressed. I will come to that later.

  So as I mentioned, I needed to make sure that the bed was firmly secured against the wall on two sides. I constructed the main frame from 125 x 25mm timber (5 x 1 in olde english!!) and fixed to the wall using frame fixings. (The smae used to fix door frames and windows to walls etc) I did this on two sides and then screwqed and glued the other two sides together.

As you can see from the picture below, I then glued and screwed some 25 x 25mm battens to the base of the frames. These would act as the support for the bed slats. Also in the picture below I have attached one of the Expedit units to the wall. This was again done with frame fixings through the edge of the unit as this is where the internal timber supports are.

You may have noticed from the pictures that the Malm is lower than the overall height of the Expedit, but this was rectified using a thin piece of MDF and a leftover shelf from a LACK coffee table!!








The next task was to fit the slats. As IKEA sell these seperately it was just a simple case of laying them on the battens:

The battens over the MALM drawers were screwed down with 2 50mm screws. This ensured that the screws penetrated the battens, the filler pieces and the drawers themselves.

At this point the Malm drawers and one of the Expedit units were fixed. I had taken the desicion at the beginning of the build to leave the middle Expedit shelving unit free. This enabled easy access to the wasted space behind. Some people have asked me why I didn't put more units underneath, and my simple answer is money!! That and the fact I had a huge toy box to hide!!

I intend to put some white faced hardboard on the backs of both Expedit's. That way it hides a multitude of sins!!

Tidying Up

The gap down the side of the drawers needed filling so I used a piece of white faced chipboard that I got my local wood place to cut for me. This was attached to the drawers from behind and then I used decorators caulk to tidy the gap between wall and timber.

Of course, then came two sticking points. The first was how does my seven year old get in and out of bed??

The answer to that turned out easier than I though. I just cut down the ladders that he had originally from his cabin bed so that they fit, and after a few well chiselled grooves in the bed frame, they slid into place.

The second was that my wife panicked: 

'What if he falls out of bed' says she.
'He'll only do it once' says I
SMACK goes she.......

It was then that I thought I should put a guard of some sort on. I decided to construct a fence style guard. These were made over from some timber that I had left over in my garage.

What about the bed being two long for the mattress? Well after some consideration I decided to turn it into a storage shelf. I had some white faced chipboard left over which I cut to size, screwed down and sealed around the edges. I then made a headboard of sorts in order to stop his pillows falling of the mattress.

Nice little storage area. Not sure how long
it will stay tidy though.

So all in all I am pleased with the result. As I mentioned earlier, there is still a little sanding and painting to do.

At the same time I also built a desk for him and added some VIKA ALEX drawers underneath:

To tidy the cables underneath I used some leftover guttering that I had from an earlier project:

Worked well!! I still have a few projects left to do in his room. I have to add a large EXPEDIT shelving unit above his desk and some lighting for some bling. Some sanding and painting, but for now, enough......