Buying An Ikea PAX Wardrobe

That Instagram wardrobe that everyone wants, I finally bought one. It took me 3 months to decide on exactly what I wanted and save up the money. And then 15 hours to actually dismantle the old one, build the new one and fill it back up with all my clothes. Here's what happened:

My old wardrobe was built by my grandad when my mum used to live here about 15 years ago. It was great, served the purpose, but I had things organised differently and the large space in the middle just ended up as more of a dumping ground as I have a separate dressing table. Small things like socks, underwear and pyjamas were in a small set of drawers I bought but a lot of my clothing was just inside a plastic box. Rifling through that every morning was hell so I just avoided it and never wore those clothes!

I went to Ikea with my mum having measured everything in the wardrobe (twice) and ordered the new one. It turned up at roughly 8am on a Saturday and the work began! I took everything out of my old one and put it all either in bags or piled up in my living room. I them preceded to take down the old one with a screwdriver and a few bruises. This, was to be the easy part. The delivery guys were very helpful and brought everything up the stairs to my apartment.

I put all the pieces of the old one in the kitchen out of the way to be taken to the tip later. I then started work on the drawers, as I had made these in a previous Ikea purchase and knew it was something I could do on my own. In a couple of hours, I managed to get the whole old wardrobe down, and build all of the drawers for the new one. I waited for my mum to arrive and at about 11am we started to build the new one. This was not as simple as we first thought.......

True to form, Ikea instructions are a confusing mix of screws and holes and pegs and strange superhuman characters that can hold up wardrobes on their own?! The first one took hours, as with these you have to build the casing and then add in the other things inside. We built it outside of the wardrobe and then put it in after, but we had to put the back on so mummy was inside the wardrobe for a while too. The second wasn't so bad as we had already done it once, but it was still heavy and awkward and pretty stressful! It's 100% not a job for one person. After the initial casing was done it was time to put in the drawers and the rail. We did the first one okay but turns out that some of the screws had fallen out of the rail as the packet was open. So we got as far as we could and jumped in the car to go back to ikea.

We ate dinner and picked up some screws, and I also purchased one of those small fluffy white rugs to go on the floor instead of my icky brown one! So much work went into this wardrobe but I'm so so happy with it. And Voila !

I am so in love with it and the organisation makes it so much easier to get ready each morning and see my clothes! The drawers fit in everything from jeans to shoes and of course the underwear too. I even have a drawers dedicated to gym clothes now. There is so much room in each drawer and the jewellery organiser on the top means I'm wearing necklaces I completely forgot I had! It's just wonderful. However it wasn't cheap. It came to more than I expected and there's still a bookcase and other bits to get for the other side where my heels and bags can go.

Breakdown of cost:

1x Clothes Rail £4.00

1x Glass Shelf £16.00

1x White Divider £25.00

4x White Small Drawers £72.00

1x Large Casing £55.00

2x Glass Front Drawers £56.00

1x Larger Rail £5.00

2x White Large Drawers £40.00

1x Smaller Casing £45.00

1x Tray with Insert (Jewellery) £33.00

TOTAL COST: £351.00