Our Home from Scratch

Last week we started discussing our plans for the sitting room immediately attached to our Master Bedroom. Over the weekend we managed to knock a few items off of our to-do list for this space starting with the couch. Lisa’s parents generously bought us a beautiful couch for Christmas from Ikea! We did a walk through of the show room in South Philly a couple weeks before the holiday and picked one out and then just scheduled the delivery in the store. Do I have great in-laws or what? Thanks mom and dad!

Did you know Ikea delivered? I had no idea. I never actually thought about it since I’ve had my Jeep for years and never needed anything from Ikea delivered before. Now that we have our Jetta, I’m going to need darn near EVERYTHING delivered at this point!

Lisa and I picked the EKTORP three seater sofa and got a cover in Svanby Brown. After opening up the box (yes, it comes in a box; yes, assembly is required), I immediately noticed a problem.

There is a long 2×4 board down the length of the couch that has three metal brackets with wood screws. The wood screws had been torn out of the 2x causing some damage. Probably happened during delivery or shipping.

Bummer, right? So, I either send it back, which is a GIANT pain since it was delivered or I can try to fix it. A little while back we did a post on repair screw tear outs on one of our kitchen cabinet doors. This is essentially the same type of repair. All I need to do is get a longer and wider screw and I should be good.

Here’s how to fix a broken Ektorp couch:

Here’s the screws…

The screw on the left is the fastener that came with the couch, the same one that got ripped out. This screw is a size 6 and it’s 1″ long. Wood screws diameters are sized by even numbers up until a 14, which is 1/4″. After that point, they are sized pretty normally (3/8″, 1/2″, etc). So, an 8 is wider than a 6 and so on. The screw in the middle is an 8 and is 1 1/2″ long. The screw on the right is a 10 and is also 1 1/2″ long. My goal here is to use as big and as long a screw as I can. I was able to get away with using a #10 x 1 1/2″. I’m not sure why Ikea didn’t just use a 1 1/2″ long screw to begin with, quite honestly. The board is a 2x, which is 1 1/2″ thick anyway.

At this point I just replaced all the popped screws with the longer, wider size 10s.

All good. The rest of the assembly was a snap.

This particular cover is a little on the coarse side, but still comfortable. We really like it’s casual look.

Underneath the cover is just an underpad. There is no other “couch” underneath the cover, so you DO need some type of cover.

So far, we love it. Great couch. I could’ve done without the repair, but it wasn’t a big deal.

We pulled the permit for the electrical work involved with hanging the flat screen and we’ve been talking a lot about the other furniture we’d like. I’m hoping Lisa lets me build a couple pieces in here instead of buying them. It would be fun.

Show of hands… who else has Ikea sofas? Do you like them?