MYDAL bunk bed hack: Added height, shelf and underbed storage

·April 3, 2014·6 Comments

There is no perfect bunk bed for any room. Each room brings its own set of restrictions, and each person has his own requirements.

So did we. We have high ceilings and wanted to take advantage of just that. But space was still restriction.

So the solution was to pick a MYDAL bunk bed, fit four new (and reinforced) feet with increased height, create a shelf beneath it and allow for a MALM underbed storage drawers to be use underneath it.

The original bunk is this IKEA MYDAL.

And after our IKEA MYDAL bunk bed hack with a shelf and underbed storage.

IKEA MYDAL hack with underbed shelf and storage drawers

Raising the MYDAL bunk bed

We got 4 new feet with 2400mm. They were later cut to 2080mm. So an added 320mm were added to the original height of 1700mm

The chosen section was carefully selected to match the old feet width, but with larger depth. So a 44×68 mm was chosen instead of the original 25x68mm.

So here is the first trick: you need to be careful to mark your holes so that each corner is correctly aligned.

I don’t have photos of the drilling itself, but here are some from the assembled structure

So this was the first step result. You can note the “fence”, that is actually a reuse from a SNIGLAR cot.

Adding underbed storage drawers and shelf to the MYDAL

It was always our intention to include a bed-depth shelf and some storage drawers under the bunk bed.

So we created a structure with one 2000x60x21mm (front), one 2000x100x21mm (back), two 2000x25x21 and used four 500x900x15mm boards. We realized that we should have prepared it right from the start. Live and learn.

So the first part was to attach the basis for the shelf:

This picture Detail 4 and Detail 4.1 shows the back stand. You can see that the board stands are 18mm lower than the top edge of the back stand. This will create a perfect fitting, as it can be seen later on. The next picture Detail 5 shows another perspective.

The picture Detail 6 and Detail 6.1 shows the front stand being assembled. The fact that this was a later assembly led us to use a different method to match the screw. I can later add mechanical details on the used screws.