There are countless IKEA PAX closet hack tutorials out there, like this, and this and this – we did our own variation on this project and love the result but we had some struggles and learned some valuable lessons along the way. We thought we might share a few of our pain points in the hope that any other IKEA PAX closet hackers might not run into the same trouble we did.
1 – Uneven Walls
Be aware of lumpy walls and not plumb walls. Maybe it’s just our house, but every time we do a project we find more walls that are uneven. With our bathroom remodel we had our contractor extend a wall to create a pass through and ultimately more closet space. Unfortunately the resulting framing wasn’t exactly square (which we didn’t find out until we started the closet work!), so we had a fairly significant lump in our wall to contend with. We made it work with shims and moulding, but it added a few hours to our project. This is the kind of stuff you don’t see in progress or reveal posts, but helps to be prepared ahead of time in case it happens to you too.
2 – Box Height Clearance
Be careful when standing the boxes up in your space. Our boxes had a few inches of clearance beneath our ceiling, but when standing them up we did gouge our closet ceiling in a few places and had to repair and repaint those areas.
3 – Buy Nice Face Boards for Trim
If you plan on adding face boards to your IKEA PAX boxes and shelves we recommend using select square boards (1″x2″x8′ for the boxes & shelves) rather than common boards. The select boards are a little more expensive but provide a more finished and clean look, plus they tend to be less warped and easier to install. Worth the extra money to us. We used one common board for a face trim piece before we quickly learned this lesson.
4 – Plan Trim Mounting in Advance
Plan out any trim mounting in advance. We had to rip down long pieces of base moulding to custom heights so they would not overhang the bottom of the drawers. We knew coming into our project that because of the height of the boxes compared with the height of the ceiling we wouldn’t be able to raise the boxes high enough to use the same off the shelf 5.5″ base moulding we have throughout the rest of the house, but we wanted to keep the look as similar as possible. We also mounted face boards on the top of the PAX boxes to anchor our crown moulding to – again, we knew this going in and were able to plan it out well in advance.
5 – Really, Really Think Through Storage Needs
We thought we had really thought through all of the design logistics – which shelf we wanted where, how much hanging space we needed, etc. – and we did. BUT there are a few things we would have done differently. We have shelf openings below the clothes hanging portion of the closet, we put large baskets in the openings to store extra shoes, but we wish we would have just planned enough spacing for drawers. We also wish we would have created just a smidge of room for longer hanging dresses.
6 – To Use a Paint Sprayer or Not
If you plan to paint with a sprayer (we used this one) the process is messy if you paint after you install the boxes. If you are like us and your closet is an enclosed interior room there is little airflow and the paint residue ends up everywhere – be sure to tarp and tape off floors, doorways and anything you don’t want painted sufficiently. We wish we would have put the boxes together, then sprayed the box bases prior to installing shelves and drawers – and painted the shelves and drawers by hand after they were installed. Or just not have used the sprayer at all because we ended up having to sand EVERYTHING due to the major overspray and then repaint a final coat by hand anyway. If you plan to spray IKEA PAX boxes and plan to use smaller spacing between any open shelf areas be aware that spraying into the backs of these areas is a challenge due to the size of spray guns – and spraying into the back of these areas will produce a lot of paint blow back like mentioned earlier.
We were met with a few challenges along the way, but we are still so happy with the outcome!
