IKEA PAX Closet | Home With Stefani

Hi it's Stephanie. I'm back with another closet transformation. This time I'm working on my in-laws walk-in closet. We're doing the entire closet in the Ikea pack system. If you're not familiar with Ikea packs, it's a wardrobe system and you can customize the size, color, and style. You can add sliding or hinged doors and even interior organizers. Ikea has a great online packs planner where you can plan and design your own system with your own closet dimensions. They ship everything to you or you can pick it up in the store and you just have to put it all together. We are taking it a step further though. We're adding some base trim, crown molding, and face trim to give it more of a high-end custom look. I'll share the code for this closet design as well as the link to the Ikea packs planner in the description below. Our first step was to put all the packs units together. They're fairly easy to assemble, it's just very time-consuming. We had 11 units and a lot of drawers to assemble so this took us all day. Good thing I had a few great helpers. Devin and I assembled all of the large packs units while his dad assembled the drawers. Next step was to prep the closet. We took everything out and then removed the baseboards where the Ikea packs units will go. To do this, I took a utility knife and scored the caulk along the baseboard. Then I carefully pried the baseboard from the wall. If your baseboards are in good shape, you could always reuse them to trim out the bottom of your Ikea cabinets like we did. Devin's parents like having carpet in the closet so we just installed the cabinets right over the carpeting. If you're planning to replace the flooring in your closet, now is the time to do it. Before we go any further, I want to give a quick shout out to Liquid IV. Liquid IV is a healthy electrolyte drink mix perfect for staying hydrated. You may have seen Liquid IV before but this is their new hydration multiplier plus immune support in the tangerine flavor. Each packet is bursting with fresh natural tangerine flavor. It's so good and it helps to maintain and strengthen your immune system. I work outside a lot in this crazy Florida heat so it's easy for me to get dehydrated. I've always struggled with drinking enough water so it really helps when I add some sort of flavoring. Not only does it taste great, it's a great way to stay hydrated and healthy. If you want to try this new hydration multiplier plus immune support, Liquid IV is offering a free 3-pack sample sent right to your doorstep. Check out the link in the description. You can find Liquid IV at Costco or you can shop directly off their website and you can use my code STEFANIE25 for 25% off. We're installing our first cabinet in the back left corner. It's very important that the cabinets are level and secured to the wall. There are these two legs at the bottom of the unit that can be screwed up or down in order to make the cabinet level. Once everything was level, we used a screwdriver to twist in these drywall anchors. I bought these drywall anchors separately. You can't screw directly into the drywall. There's not enough for the screw to grip onto but if you screw into these drywall anchors your cabinets will be nice and secure. The Pax units came with these screws and washers so you can use these to secure the cabinets to your wall. The Pax units also came with these white caps to hide all of the hardware. We followed the same step for every unit making sure each one was level. The cabinets also came with screws to secure each of the cabinets together so we screwed the cabinets together at the top and at the bottom according to the instructions. past the oasis it's all behind you mirage above the stars of you the creatures days to nocturnal days makes you forget about all types of things you remind me of the arizona make you wonder about the bigger picture in your life for the last unit I had to cut a section out of the baseboard to do that I used my multi-tool to cut a nice clean line those silly rumors life is a chore I'm telling ya just 5, 4, 3, 2 blast off and next you'll see what's behind us shrink and disappear out of view once all the units were installed we installed all the drawers elimination right next we're working on the base trim we reused the base trim that they originally had in the closet but we just ripped it down on the table saw so that it matched the same height as the base of these IKEA cabinets to install the base trim I used my 18 gauge brad nailer and one and a half inch brad nails I cut each end of the base trim at a 45 degree angle so that the corners met up perfectly we had to add some little spacer pieces at the center of the cabinets to fill that gap or else the base trim would have been a little wavy later on I'll be caulking all those gaps so the base trim will end up looking nice and seamless now I'm working on covering all the vertical seams to do this I used primed quarter inch by one and a half inch wood strips I cut them down to size with my miter saw, placed glue along the back side and then used a few brad nails to secure them to the cabinets this step really made a big difference next we're working on the crown molding first we attached 1x4 primed pieces of lumber to the top of the IKEA cabinets with about a quarter inch overhang so that our crown molding has something to attach to we used brad nails to attach the 1x4s to the top of the cabinets as you can see the 1x4 with a quarter inch overhang meets up perfectly with our vertical wood strips now we're working on the in order to cut the crown molding I placed the small angled ledge of the crown molding against the back fence of my miter saw and cut that at a 45 degree angle. These angles are a bit tricky so I recommend practicing on a few scrap pieces first place that small angled ledge against your 1x4 and use brad nails to secure your crown molding for the end pieces it was hard to get the brad nailer back in the corners so we attached the crown molding to the 1x4 first and then attached the 1x4 to the top of the cabinet which was an easier angle to get at with the brad nailer don't worry if your corners don't meet up perfect you can come in with some wood filler or caulking to clean everything up. The crown molding really takes these IKEA cabinets to the next level now that the trim is all finished the guys are working on installing the rest of the organizers like drawers, shoe shelves, closet rods and I'm working on filling the nail holes after the nail holes were filled and the wood filler was dry I took some sandpaper and sanded down all the high spots and any rough corners next it's time to caulk and paint. We used some paintable white caulk to fill every seam and then touched up all the trim and vertical wood strips with some fresh white paint to match the cabinets the paint color that we used was Simply White by Benjamin Moore and there you have it! We turned the simple IKEA PAX units into a beautiful high-end wardrobe. Check out the other closet transformations on my YouTube channel I have a playlist dedicated to closet makeovers, they're my favorite. I hope you guys enjoyed the video and learned some helpful tips and if you're planning on transforming your closet, good luck!