Spring 2021 ORC Customizing IKEA IVAR Cabinets

We are officially past the halfway mark of the Spring 2021 One Room Challenge and it feels gooooood! You can catch up on prior work here – Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4. Our office space got a major upgrade this week when Colin installed our “built-ins.” Built-ins are in quotes because the cabinets are free standing with a built-in look. If you are considering more storage, but don’t like the look of basic bookcases, I am going to show you a great option for customizing IKEA IVAR cabinets! But before we do that, I want to encourage you to check out the featured designers in this season’s ORC. They are designing some amazing rooms and you just cannot miss them! Did you hop over there? Good, okay, let’s get to the details.

I originally wanted a full wall of built-in bookcases in our office, but I got slapped back to reality when I realized how much space they would take up in a small 10 x 10 room. A wall of bookcases would have been too visually heavy. The problem was that we still needed some storage in our office. We sorted, pitched, gave away, and organized our stuff, but we still have things. Sorry Marie Kondo. Enter, the IKEA IVAR cabinet. It has plenty of room to store less visually appealing items and we can display our pretty stuff on top. When we realized we have quite a bit of pretty stuff to display, Colin went to work building shelves that connect the two cabinets! See below for more details on customizing IKEA IVAR cabinets.

The Details

Rejuvenation Brass Knob | Furniture Legs | Benjamin Moore Northern Air

Building Shelves

The shelves were made from standard unfinished 1in x 12in x 8ft pine board, we then cut 2 boards to a length of 57in as needed to fit this space. The width is close to fitting the depth of the IVAR cabinets, but Colin cut them down to 11in wide to make it fit perfectly. The edges were then routed with a 45 degree angle bit to match the routing of the IVAR. The shelf sits on top of two support brackets that are screwed into the IVAR.

The top of the cabinets used the same 1in x 12in x 8ft pine board, if we had a truck we could have used 1 piece but since it had to fit into our car we had to split into two pieces. These boards were then cut to 61in long which was half of the distance we needed for our space; we kept the width and used a router to add a nice edge. We then needed to support the top pieces, so a support rail was added. We then attached some molding to make this piece look like it belonged. This was all caulked to hide the seems.

Fixing IKEA’s Design Flaw

Anyone who has built an IKEA IVAR cabinet has probably had a moment of panic thinking they missed a step. But not so! Don’t you worry. IKEA made a mistake! I’m shocked they have not fixed the issue yet, but there is a major design flaw in the IVAR. When assembled, there is a 1/2 inch gap between the doors. While this may not bother some, I personally think it looks unfinished. Colin did some investigating and found these spacers on Etsy to fix the flaw. The gap kit comes with easy to use instructions and allows the cabinet doors to close correctly. Highly recommend for anyone dealing with this issue!

Additionally the hangers the shelf sit on were too large to fit in the mounting holes, the pins were 3/4″ long and side piece they go into is 3/4″ – not going to work. Even if the hangers did fit, the shelf piece would have to be cut in order to fit within the flanges of the hangers. We went to our local ACE Hardware and found some shelf support pegs with a 5 mm O.D. to hang our shelves on, this width required the pegs to be hit in with ease using a hammer. Its important that these were flat so the shelf did not have to fit over any kind of flange/lip from the hanger.

We love how these not so built-ins turned out! They give us the storage space we need without taking up too much room in our small office. The total cost of the project was about $350 and there wasn’t a single credenza of this size that came close to that price point. I hope this will inspire you to try customizing IKEA IVAR cabinets. If you do, please tag me on Instagram or send me a message here! I love to see your DIY projects! And be sure to come back next week to see us tackle another project in this office. As always, thank you to Linda Weinstein and Better Homes and Gardens for hosting the One Room Challenge! See ya next week!