> their shelves and such you can see what you are buying
no you can't, the outside shell of each shelf completely hides what's inside. I wanted to reconfigure a shelf (turn it on it's side, combine it with another) and turns out the "boards" are hollow. There is something inside at the corner pre-drilled-screw anchor points, but that's the only place you can attach something, the rest of it is potemkin shelf. You get to see this in more detail if you keep a shelf in a mildly humid place like a beachhouse, as the whoe thing delaminates and you see cardboard honeycombs inside a thin veneer of ...veneer
One of the things that complicates this conversation is that people who are huge fans of some specific Ikea furniture model bought it X years ago, and in the meanwhile its construction methods have switched to something cheaper. The "same" product can be both good and bad, depending on the year it was made.
no you can't, the outside shell of each shelf completely hides what's inside. I wanted to reconfigure a shelf (turn it on it's side, combine it with another) and turns out the "boards" are hollow. There is something inside at the corner pre-drilled-screw anchor points, but that's the only place you can attach something, the rest of it is potemkin shelf. You get to see this in more detail if you keep a shelf in a mildly humid place like a beachhouse, as the whoe thing delaminates and you see cardboard honeycombs inside a thin veneer of ...veneer