Ikea Leirvik Bed Hack - A Few Small Adventures

After updating our bedroom with a shiplap feature wall, our Leirvik Ikea bed just didn’t look as good as it could. So we decided it was time for a new bed. But after searching online, I started wondering if it was possible to give our bed an update instead. We were thinking of getting rid of it anyway, so it couldn’t hurt.

I love the look of black metal bed frames, they suit the style of our house, which has a slight farmhousey feel. So we decided to run with that. To update our bed we basically just removed the swirls from the bedhead and gave it a coat of black spray paint. I just love the final product and it no longer looks like it came from Ikea.

Here is a before photo, please excuse the mess…

The first step in our bed update was to remove the swirls from the bedhead. My husband used a grinder to detach the swirls from the frame.

Here’s how it looked after the swirls were removed. We could have left it there, but we decided the bedhead was still a little high, so the next step was to drop the height of the bedhead.

To drop the height of the bedhead, we detached the top section of the frame from the bottom section (it pulls apart), and then lowered the section to a height we were happy with, and marked this on the frame.

Using a grinder my husband then cut off the unwanted sections from the frame. He then added a piece of dowel to the middle section so that it could be reattached to the bottom section of the frame using a screw.

He then removed the inserts from the sections he cut off, and reattached them to the bottom of the frame (as seen below), by gently taping them in with a hammer. These inserts slip into the bottom section of the frame to create the full bedhead.

Now that we were happy with how the bed frame looked, it was time to paint our bed. We chose a simple matte black spray paint and applied 2 coats, waiting the specified time for the paint to dry between coats. And hey presto we have a new farmhouse style, metal frame bed. We are so happy with the final product, it looks great!