Disassembled bed... it was never the same. My issue with IKEA is most of the furniture is not solid wood but chipboard, screws just don't hold well in it. Some of their products handle repeated putting apart and together fine, some don't. Sometimes people mess up with complex pieces of furniture.

I wouldn't blame IKEA specifically, any chipboard furniture would be prone to this.

I just took my Malm bed on its third move (fourth apartment). It’s still doing great.

Lucky! Mine never really survived the first move. Switched to the standalone box spring with the optional feet attachments and a skirt and they're much better. Solid wood and big bolts; held up through a couple of moves now!

Mine sounds like walking on the floors of a 200 year old house if you shift your weight even an millimeter. That was after three moves. My Ikea couch collapsed recently also after three moves (as in the bottom detached from the back violently and permanently).

>My issue with IKEA is most of the furniture is not solid wood but chipboard

They sell lots of both. If you're buying a $10 coffee table, yes, it's going to be particle board.

I feel like people are missing the core of ikea: it's well priced, stylish furniture that you can move into your condo or apartment easily.

We have a double bed from chipwood that costed +-1000USD with mattress and bed slats. Slats and mattress are fine (which is expected after roughly only 4 years), but bed frame... overpriced for what it is. Will go for solid massive wood which can be found cheaper where we live. At that time there wasn't basically anything in IKEA from solid wood.

So some IKEA stuff is well priced, some isn't. Some is great value for the money, some definitely isn't. Some styles are plain ugly as fk to us, some they nail pretty well for the price. I think its called hit-and-miss situation.

Their kitchens are great value generally - not top notch by any means, but at given price even professionals tend to agree they are the best. If you want something better, prepare 2-3x the price. And since you never move kitchen, most complains mentioned before don't apply.

> most of the furniture is not solid wood but chipboard

Almost all of it is MDF, not chipboard/particleboard.

Technically, Ikea furtinure is usually comprised of composite elements formed by a mix of cardboard, MFD, fiberboards, and plywood.

Perhaps the epitome of Ikea's engineered lumber prowess is either their Kalax line or their Lack tables, which are built from fiberboard blocks held together by a plywood diaphragm and with a celular cardboard core.

I reassembled my IKEA Malm bed after a move and it seemed to be better than before. It completely stopped squeaking or making any noise when moving around on it. (Not that it was particularly bad before, it just got better.)

That was the 4th move, where I had disassembled and reassembled it each time. One of those moves was across the country too.

protip: when reusing wood/plastic/sheet metal screw holes, turn the screw in reverse with your fingers to feel out where the existing threads are, and then screw it back into the same groove.

I can confirm. I do that with every screw ever and I have yet to strip a thread. It’s also very satisfying for me to know I’m in the same groove and it’s usually much easier to screw the screw back in.