IVAR Side unit, 11 3/4x70 "
Price $ 20.00
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Since IVAR storage system is so good at what it does, it has faithfully served customers’ needs across the home for over 50 years. Attics, living rooms, pantries and bedrooms – they all love IVAR.
Article Number504.846.51
Product details
Untreated solid pine is a durable natural material that can be painted, oiled or stained according to preference.
Solid pine is a natural material which ages beautifully and gains its own unique character over time.
Designer
IKEA of Sweden
Measurements
- Height: 70 1/4 "
- Depth: 11 3/4 "
Reviews
Draw of IVAR is convenience. This is not convenientDavidAssembling the side unit increases the work of assembling the IVAR shelf by 3 or 4x, and it requires some of the loudest hammering. I’ve already made all my new neighbors in my apartment hate me, and I still haven’t completed one damn side unit. Less than half the work. I would’ve assembled 3 full shelves already with the old design. This is a really, really poor redesign which is clearly prioritizing a 30% increase in storage efficiency in exchange for removing 80-90% of the user experience. Extremely greedy decision
Junk.KatyI purchased a set of IVAR sidebars and cabinets after using the tool to design my own cabinet. I put the item together exactly as instructed, and painted the item as advertised. It broke before I even added anything to the shelves or the cabinets, and IKEA refused to refund me because I painted the item, even though IVAR is designed to be painted. Absolutely terrible experience.
Ugh!SamanthaBought these in August, assembly was awful. Old Ivar was great. Come on Ikea, I've assembled pretty much everything you make over the years, nothing should be this hard. I need more, but the price is now double! At this point, I'm just going to build my own. If they weren't self assembly via torture, I'd still buy them.
Striking example of Ikea not leaving well enough alone…MarkIkea’s switch to having the customer assemble the side units is terrible. I just can’t believe that they now depend on the customer to finish assembly. It used to be you would just buy the side unit, the shelf components and the cross brace and you had a very simple assembly to do. But now you spend what? 30 minutes building each one. And because all of these pieces are simply tension-fit together using pegs, eventually it is going to lead to a rickety and unstable shelf. The original factory-manufactured side units used glue. If you want to use glue now, that’s great, but that just adds time to the assembly. And then there is a quality control issue I have found where pegs don’t always go all the way in so I have to use a flushcut saw to get them to be flush with the rest of the post. I suspect most mainstream consumers can’t even do that. And then you have this cheesy little block of wood to sit between your hammer blows and the pegs. What you really need is a rubber mallet.
IvarNicolaI’ve used ivar shelving for over 20 years and it still looks great I love it
The worst thing Ikea has doneEmilyI have been assembling Ikea furniture for 20 years. This is a hundred times worse than anything I've encountered before. A single sidepiece took a solid hour of hammering. Yes, I timed it. The assembly video is a lie. Nothing can be inserted without hammering. It's difficult, almost impossible, to assemble on your own. The block of wood deforms and becomes useless after the first three or four components that need to be hammered in. The end result is extremely ugly, as the malformed dowels are visible no matter which way it's turned. I'm going to have to spend hundreds on Taskrabbit just to finish the spare room shelving, and at that price point, why not buy actual quality shelving from a different company that doesn't hate its customers?
I can't wait to see what useless response Ikea provides to this comment.
Used to be great- now terribleGretchenWhy did they change this? Literally impossible to build. I've tried 3 different hammers and mallets and still can't get the pegs into the slots. The old design was so much better.
Too difficult to assembleNicoleI have used and recommended Ivar to clients and friends for many years. I work as a designer and have made custom furniture. Despite having a workshop full of appropriate tools (hammers, mallets, etc.), I was unable to hammer the dowels in without a tremendous amount of force, and several would still not fit flush. This new design is flawed, and I hope you reconsider the assembly and/or fasteners to make it more accessible to average shoppers.
I'm exhausted & pretty sure my hearing is impaired nowAlisonWe move every 2-3 years (military) & Ivar shelves have suited us well for adapting to always changing floor plans. Our new house had gross wire racks in the storage areas and pantry, so we converted everything to Ivar with the intent to leave them this time with the house. I am a hobby builder, so this isn't a challenging concept, but the execution is terrible. The holes are poorly routed in the legs and splinters and wood threads made it impossible to seat most of the vertical pieces and none of the dowel holes aligned properly, so it took a LOT of hard hammering to get them assembled, & in a not-yet unpacked home, the sharp echoing of hammering wood on wood endlessly hurt my ears so badly I had to take numerous breaks to recover my sanity & hearing - our garage is full of the boxes I need the shelves to unpack & the weather didn't allow for working outside.These were difficult to assemble in my home, but would be impossible in an apartment situation & wasted a lot of valuable time.
Quality control on the new versions is awfulDavidI don't mind doing more assembly myself but several of the dowel holes were completely mis-drilled. This made assembly of the side-units impossible without re-drilling. Please fix the quality control. Ivar is one of the best products Ikea makes.
And I was having a good day...JosephI was going to end it by putting these together. I enjoyed putting my other IVARs together, but you definitely can't do this one at night anymore. Hammering in dowels? Really. I feel like breaking this thing and returning it because I'm so fucking annoyed. I get it, IKEA wanted to cut production costs, keep prices low, passing labor onto customers. I gotta hammer in 32 dowels at 1AM, yup... nope can't do that! There goes my night of organizing and redoing a room. 32 dowels... why didn't this thing come with earplugs? I should've listened to the reviews, but I thought the dowels would easily slip in with pressure, I mean, that's how I've done it with other stuff in the past, but IVARs, never, used to be so easy to put together. I could've been done already, but decided to write this because I can't put these together at this time of night! THANKS IKEA!!! So tempted to return these...
— I only write reviews if something is exceptionally good or horrible. This is my 1st review for IKEA.
Tricky but the end result seems to be the sameCaitlinI’ve handled the old side units that came assembled and these will be equally sturdy if done correctly but as the other reviews note, it requires some skill. Just ignore the laughably small piece of pine provided to use with a regular hammer, and pick up a 1 lb dead blow hammer on the cheap to knock the tenons in. The holes on the other side will not simply line up, you’ll need to gently force them from the outside in, just tapping a little bit at a time in a 1, 5, 2, 4, 3 pattern. I started with the other half on the floor to use the floor as a “third hand” and I tapped everything in a little to get it started. While you’re holding pressure you might need to tap sideways on the joining part to get it lined up with the opposite mortise. Then I flipped it over and returned to the 1, 5, 2, 4, 3 pattern. Everything comes out fine and straight. I have assembled 7 of these with no duds, and the snug fitting is what makes them sturdy, especially onced anchored to the wall.
Bring back the Old DesignJeffreyLike others. I hate this DIY side unit
Never again till you bring back the old side unitsAnonymous reviewerWorst decision ever to make these DIY. The response that it's normal for customers to assemble IKEA furniture: This is not "assembly" this is "construction." ZERO other IKEA products require this level of construction. And "Hire someone to assemble"?? For that a person can go buy much better stuff.
I don't love IVAR but committed to using it everywhere because it's wood, it's been around so long I trusted IKEA to keep making it, and I can reconfigure it. I have about $2500 of IVAR everywhere, and tell everyone starting out just use IVAR till you can afford something else.
I hated the 2020 shelf change, but this side unit thing is the last straw. It stopped the $800 IVAR purchase I was about to make, which stopped the whole $2500 purchase I planned (which I do every 2 years). I'll buy wood and power tools instead. Without prebuilt sides, corner shelves, other cabinet types, drawers, crates, cute doors, and decent shelves, IVAR is no longer a good value at all.
Bring old IVAR backKatyaThe system was great before IKEA decided to change the side units to be customer-assembled. The price almost doubled while the quality went down the drain
Worst IKEA product of allAnonymous reviewerI’ve put together so many different IKEA products in my life, but this is the first time I was physically unable to build this on my own. Even with a hammer I couldn’t put the side pieces together.
Difficult, Noisy AssemblyRyanLike so many others, I had so much difficulty assembling the side unit. One must hammer in the wooden dowels. It makes a TON of noise in the process, which is not ideal for those who live in apartments. Cutouts are misaligned as well.
Tip for others - I found it much easier to start the dowels with one or two taps of a hammer and then step on them with a leather-soled dress shoe! This process got the dowels flush, while avoiding annoying my neighbors.
Why? Absolute disaster of a revampSharonThe person(s) involved in revamping the IVAR so that you have to assemble a side unit should be forced to sit and assemble a wall-full, daily. I have assembled countless IKEA products in my life. This revamp improves nothing. What used to be a plug-and-play system, with its really simple charm, is now a multi-step process of hammering in dowels that don't fit, and braces pieces that take forever to fit jiggle in cutouts. IVAR has gotten worse and worst over the years (eliminating the corner units, for example), but this by far has to be the biggest middle finger to every loyal IKEA customer. This is not a rhetorical question: Who designed this? How did it make it to production?
I have never left a review of any IKEA product. The only silver lining: I get to take out my frustrations on a half-assembled side unit with a mallet.
IVAR has changed production location and it is NOT the same not in an improved way for customersAnneThe IVAR product line has been dramatically reduced in offering. The side units are no longer put together at the factory in a way that is sturdy. You put them together with a block and a mallet, dramatically increasing the time to put together a unit. So if you value your time, this is no longer a good value. I have a lot invested already in this system so I'm screwed. But I no longer recommend it especially to my customers.
Easy with a 5/16” drill bitBetsyAll the bad reviews re: assembly are spot on. I wouldn’t attempt without access to a drill with a 5/16” bit because literally every hole on the horizontal pieces is at least 1/16” off from the vertical holes and the dowels are nearly impossible to hammer in.
Once I recognized that and just drilled each one out after hammering the horizontal pieces in, it wasn’t all that bad. Still a ton of hammering but was down to 15min per assembly by my fourth one.
The extra work was worth it to me, I’d buy again.
Customer reviews
3Average rating
434Reviews
Material
What is solid wood?
Solid wood is one of our favorite materials and is part of our Scandinavian heritage. It is also a timeless material with many uses. Regardless of the tree species, it is durable, beautiful and renewable. We strive to use this raw material as smartly and efficiently as possible to avoid waste – and we also invest in facilities and logistics so that we can increase the use of recycled wood.