Do you love assembling them?
We leave it to put S–he has the patience to do origami and is very good at assembling pretty much everything. There are no ikea stores in HI, nor will they ship to HI. You have to pay to have someone ship to you.
I don’t like to do it, but I am pretty good at assembling Ikea furniture. D’s BF loves it … he begged us not to assemble a large bookcase she purchased when they first began dating. He wanted to do it himself! 
What’s not to love? Never a missing part, always a set of easy to follow “instructions for dummies.” Compare that to ready to assemble desks etc. from Fred Meyer or big box office stores… IKEA wins, hands down.
Don’t love it but don’t mind it. We’ve put together a LOT of Ikea furniture since buying our house last year.
I joke with Mr R that all couples should have to put together a piece of Ikea furniture before they get married… just to make sure they can get along with the going gets tough 
My H’s favorite part of Christmas is assembling all the toys. I married the right guy 
I love assembling Ikea furniture! As BB said, never a missing anything, holes in the right places, clear directions. I recently bought a number of pieces for my home office so I have recent experience. I find putting the stuff together kind of zen.
Even my D who is more mechanically challenged than S has been able to assemble IKEA furniture successfully–it isn’t rocket science!
A related side-question. D is moving into off-campus housing and she and her roomies are planning on buying furniture from Ikea. I’m going to buy D a starter toolkit with basic stuff like screwdrivers and wrenches. Is that pretty much all that’s needed for assembling Ikea furniture? I have a bazillion tools myself so of course like any tool-obsessed Dad I tend to overthink these things.
This is a joke, right? Never had to assemble a Fred Meyer.
The wrench for assembling IKEA furniture comes in the kit with the screws, if I recall. A simple multi tool may be helpful to have for general uses, but likely isn’t needed for ikea assembly.
9 - no, not a joke at all. Have a wall full of shelves plus kiddos den full of IKEA furniture. All assembled without any issues.
Forgot that folks outside of the PNW do not know what Fred Meyer is. It is a chain of stores that sell everything - from groceries to diamonds. A notch above Wallmart or Target. They sell a lot of “assembly required furniture”… Should be called “a trip to hardware store required” furniture, because there was always something missing or the holes were not drilled properly. Never had this issue with IKEA stuff.
Go ahead and buy the cheapy tool set from IKEA at the same time.
One of the funniest “Amazing Race” episodes I ever saw was where couples had to assemble a desk from IKEA.
With NO screws or bits or parts left over OR they had to count the items in one of those huge bins they had and get the exact number. Go for the bin! Divorces happen for less.
That said…you get on a roll and it gets easier the more you do.
True that at least with IKEA it is pretty good with directions --IF you read them or can rather interpret the pictures.
This is where we need a female direction despite the male’s insistence that “I know what I’m doing. I don’t need directions.”
I kind of don’t get the IKEA love. For one, its admittedly not my aesthetic. But, I also have issues with what basically seems to be disposable furniture. I’ve read that the older stuff seemed to be decent quality but that newer stuff isn’t. One one of the threads here not too long ago, there were comments that places like the Salvation Army won’t take the stuff. With so much inexpensive yet decent quality furniture for sale second hand, my kids have chosen to go that route for dorm/new apt furnishings. Real wood, solid stuff, either shabby chic or mid-century styling for a fraction of the IKEA cost and no construction diagrams.
It took me 6 hours to put together a dresser. By the time I was done with the dresser, my hand was sore. The only tools we needed was a philip’s head screwdrive and a flat head one. Only one screw was missing. Considering there were thounsand pieces, it’s pretty good. I had to enlarge a couple of holes. Otherwise, it wouldn’t fit. You have to be anal about following directions. Nothing can be left to obvious intuition. That makes it quite tedious. And some of the predrilled holes for screws were not large enough for the screws they supplied. Ever tried to screw a fat nail?
I have Ikea furniture that is over 10 years old and holding up just fine.
The problem with secondhand furniture (which I have zero problem with!) is that often you have to do quite a bit of hunting to find pieces you like. Not everyone has time/money/patience for that. (My personal paranoia with some second-hand furniture is the risk of bedbugs).
Re: tools. I’ve found an electric drill to be my best friend while putting together some furniture.
Yea, @romanigypsyeyes, I wouldn’t buy upholstered or soft furniture second hand for the bed bug reason (among others) but willing to do so with solid wood furniture. Much easier to inspect and treat to insure no issues. I’m just not into composite materials.
Our (early) IKEA stuff has held up better than some of the used “mid-century styling” stuff we picked up along the way. An couch from the first month of its first store in the U.S. is still in use.
We had gone years without buying anything from IKEA, then last year my wife bought a small dresser – yes, the ones getting recalled! – to solve a specific decorating/furnishing problem. It was just like old times! The parts were perfect, the instructions – all 109 steps of them – were perfect, and it only took me four hours and two critical mistakes requiring massive disassembly to get it right. I was so proud of myself!
Solid wood is more challenging to find these days, even at furniture stores, especially at reasonable prices. It is important to do a VERY thorough job, especially looking for termites, wood boring insects, etc.
D bought Ikea furniture in 2012, and the pieces with drawers haven’t held up as well as the ones without. The drawer bottoms have warped. For the price she paid, though, she has gotten her money’s worth. At the time,she could not have afforded anything more expensive, and she was able to get a studio apartment full of furniture that looked put-together, in the time frame in which she needed it.