10 tips for building flat pack furniture

Good Morning!

We have finally fully furnished our flat and now all that’s left to do is to add a few more finishing touches. We spent numerous hours last year building flat pack furniture so I wanted to share our tips for building flat pack furniture on the blog today.

1) Read the reviews before you buy!

It’s already time consuming building flat pack furniture and what I really didn’t want was poor quality products or instructions to make the process even longer.

Previously, I found a desk that I liked but many people complained in the reviews that the instructions were not clear and that the drawers didn’t fit properly. This put me off buying the desk in the end.

We bought flat pack furniture from a variety of stores, such as Made.com, Argos, Dunelm, John Lewis and IKEA.  From our experience, IKEA had the best product quality and the instructions were clear and easy to follow!

2) Keep the equipment and tools in a box.

I found it convenient to have a box of tools for DIY and building furniture as it meant that we just took it to the room that we were building furniture and didn’t have to keep searching for different tools.

3) Ask a friend or family member to help build larger pieces of furniture together.

Some instructions even specify that you need two people to build!  It really makes a difference though, especially with some heavier pieces and it just makes the process quicker if you have two people.

4) Check you have all the pieces before you start.

If the instructions clearly listed all the parts then we checked that we had everything before we started and I also checked that we had the correct number of screws. You don’t want to start building and then find out something is missing!

5) Organise the screws into different piles.

We noticed that sometimes different types of screws were all mixed up in one pack. I found it easier to sort through the screws and group the different types into piles on the floor.  This is particularly handy if there are screw types that are very similar and you need to make sure you have the right one!

6) Lay all the pieces on the floor.

For some pieces of furniture, the pieces arrived in multiple boxes (I’m thinking of those IKEA PAX wardrobes right now), and it’s helpful to lay out all the pieces on the floor so you can find them easily as you build. Just be careful not to trip over them!

7) Use an electric cordless screwdriver if possible.

Pretty much all the tools we had in our box for DIY were from Dad. He also included a battery powered screwdriver like the one in this link and I was super grateful that he did. 

For £27.99, in my opinion, it is so worth it! You can switch between driving and removing screws easily and we used it so much! It’s also much quicker than driving screws in manually. We only had one and Hubby was kind enough to let me use the electric screwdriver and so when we were building furniture together, I was finished with my section before he was done so ended up helping him with his screws too.

Don’t forget to read the instructions to see if you can use an electric screwdriver or not as you don’t want to damage your furniture!

If you do use a battery powered screwdriver, don’t forget to buy some spare batteries.

8) Don’t forget about the hammer.

Prior to buying our flat, we stayed in rented accommodation which was furnished so we didn’t need to buy flat pack furniture. I hadn’t realised how often you need a hammer when building flat pack furniture so definitely make sure you have one to hand!  

If Dad hadn’t already given us an electric screwdriver, drill or hammer, I don’t think we would have thought to buy them until we started reading flat pack furniture instructions!

9) Take breaks!

As keen as I am to start building the flat pack furniture and finish it on the same day, it is helpful to take a break! 

We love the IKEA PAX wardrobes but they took so long to build. We ended up building it over two weekends.  We don’t have a lift and because of COVID-19, our IKEA delivery wasn’t delivered to the front door of our flat! We carried the pieces up three flights of stairs and I was exhausted before we even started building the furniture. It was a particularly large order and included the wardrobe, bed and desk!

We ended up building the wardrobe that weekend and then built the wardrobe doors the following weekend.

It’s also worth investing in some gloves to protect your hands from wood splinters!

10) You can hire someone to build the flat pack furniture.

I remember chatting with a friend about how time consuming it is to build flat pack furniture and then she told me that she would normally just hire someone to build them! If you don’t mind spending a bit more and saving yourself time, this could be a great option!

Thanks for reading!

Jess