Epic hack for my teen's IKEA bed: cool LIGHT SWITCH in headboard!

This is an epic IKEA hack for my son's wooden Neiden bed. We fit this really cool illuminated on-off switch INTO the headboard to control the bedside lamp! It's 12V and lights up when the lamp is switched on, or can be set to light up by itself without controlling the lamp.

BUY ILLUMINATED ON-OFF SWITCH HERE!
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https://amzn.to/454B5zN

Wooden double bed: 

https://amzn.to/3ZB2dWc

Clip-on bedside lamp: 

https://amzn.to/3t4cFcD

Epic hack for my teen's IKEA bed: cool LIGHT SWITCH in headboard!



TRANSCRIPT: (CLICK PLAY ON THE VIDEO ABOVE)

THIS IS THE TRANSCRIPT - CLICK PLAY ON THE VIDEO ABOVE!

Does it work? Heh! Okay, hey, oh, that's so cool! Hello, come and have a look at this. We have embedded this really cool light-up switch into this IKEA bed for my teenage son. When you switch it on, it lights up, or if I flip a switch here, you can just light it up by yourself. This is the Dad Delivers Vlog, where we try new things to make your family happy, and the new thing I'm trying today is to fit a cool light switch to my son's bed. This is an Ikea Neiden bed, a wooden bed, but you could probably do this with any old bed. This is how the bed looks before we start drilling into it. It's a classic Ikea clip-on bed lamp, the Navlinge LED clamp spotlight, and this is the wooden headboard that we're drilling into. It's an Ikea Neiden or Neiden bed, I think it's strong enough to take the switch. I've already marked up in pencil where we want the light-up switch to go, but we have a problem. The switch is really deep, but the headboard is too thick to screw the switch from behind and hold it in place. You can see the metal thread on the side doesn't quite make it through, and we need that to put the nut on which holds it steady in place from behind.

Let's just start destroying the bed with my power drill. This flat drill bit is the exact size of the light-up light switch, so hopefully, this will all fit. And then there's no hole there. So can you keep going really gently until I say stop? Okay, we want to drill just up to the point where the drill bit hits the other side, then pull it out, and I'll show you why, because on the other side, there is this pilot hole here that shows the middle for the bigger drill bit. We are going to use a bigger drill bit from behind to clear some wood out so that we can screw the switch to the headboard. And I need this hole to show me where the centre is. None of this will work out properly, unfortunately, but this is what we're trying. You can only centre it with that pin, so if I drilled all the way through, this wouldn't have anything to guide it, so we're just going to do a small about half the depth that you did before. Okay, already I can see here that we've got the drill turning the wrong way around, which doesn't help, but it turns out that's the last of my worries.

Let's just start the hole. I'll hold the bed. Don't let it slip. I'm now losing the pilot hole that was guiding the other side. I probably wouldn't do it this way again, and we're about to hit an even bigger problem. Can you see what it is? Maybe a bit more. Turns out this drill bit isn't big enough for the screw nut anyway, so now we've moved to the other side, we can finish off the hole. That terrible noise you can hear is the drill bit hitting the metal bolt that's holding the headboard and the bed together. You can see it on the side there, plain as day, but it takes me a very long time to work this out. Oh, um, I just wanted... it might be hitting. It's not hitting. It's not hitting the metal. I thought... I thought... I forgot this. This is actually holding it in, isn't it? Yep, but I still have another go to confirm it anyway, even though it's really obvious. We can see it, hear it, and more and more, I can even feel the bolt in there. I think there might be a screw there. I can see it. Oh, God. Yeah, it's the screw, isn't it? Oh, Joe, that's a fail. Oh, that's a big fat fail. I did not even think about that. I'm so sorry. Okay, so we didn't realize that we've hit a screw, and you can actually see the screw there. We didn't realize that it's hit this screw, and this screw is quite an important structural thing. We've now got to remove the screw and see if we can replace the screw with something. It's just taken out. Can actually see it go out. Fantastic. So we'll carry on. Oh, it's held in place, though. Yeah, it might be okay without any screw. So we're gonna... we can continue to drill the hole now. It should go through. The problem here is that we've lost the small pilot hole that was guiding the drill bit through the hole in a very straight line. It's now kind of going all over the place, which really doesn't help. So I'm going to go from the other side now. Let's keep trying, but without that clean pilot hole, I'm sort of making the hole a big wibbly-wobbly line that I hope the front of the switch will be able to cover, that's if I don't make too much of a mess. The other guide hole's gone really wrong, isn't it? Let's just push on through to the other side and see what we've got at the end of it. I can feel the drill is straying and hitting the top part of the headboard there, but I need to clear out this wood to be able to get the barrel of the switch in here.

Okay, so get the switch. Lay the switch in. See if it fits. Yeah, I can put some filler in the side there. Wait. And the nut will hold it in place as well. So what we can do now is put the nut on, hold it in place, and then we can put some filler in that hole where it's slipped... I'm not entirely convinced about this, but I can't undo this hole that we've drilled now anyway. Look at the mess I'm making now, just anything it takes to clear the area around the hole so that the nut can grip the switch on the other side and hold it in place. I'm just clearing some space, but I probably shouldn't be using the drill for this. I should probably be getting the chisel out if I could find it. These drill bits are bigger than the one that's the exact size of the switch, but it isn't really big enough to clear an area for the nut, and without the pilot hole to guide it, look at it. It's just slipping and chipping all over the place. I'll give it one last go and hope that it clears enough wood to hold the back of the switch. What a mess. Is it there now? We can cut into the cord for the IKEA bed lamp. Don't worry. The lead is unplugged, and we've left enough to be able to move the lamp around the headboard once it's all screwed in. That's it.

And yes, I am using my nail clippers to strip the wire and get it ready to screw into the cord grip. Now we're cutting this terminal block of cord grips to wire the switch. We'll need three in a row for all the connections that we'll need to light it up. And now we can screw in the cables. This is running at slow voltage, 12 volts, so if we do muck it up, fingers crossed it won't be too much of a catastrophe. This is how the wiring looks like at the back of the bed. It goes into this blue loom that you can disconnect from the switch, which is really helpful. We've followed the wiring instructions from the Amazon listing. You can wire the switch to light up when it's on or off or for it to be always on or always off. 

And then plug it in. 

Plug it in. 

Moment of truth. 

It's all in. Does it work? Hey, oh, that's so cool! What do you think? I am calling this a Dad Delivers success! 

Yeah, high five!

We are now screwing the terminal block out of the way behind the headboard here. This will keep all the wiring out of sight and nice and tidy so no cables can get pulled out of place. There you go. I think I did slow. And then it will push the thing down. There you go, perfect. That's it. Wow, that looks pretty good. I really like how this is looking, and this switch is still on the cable. We can tuck this behind the headboard too to control the power to the light-up light switch. Just some final taps to hold this in place, and I think we're done. This is how the final thing looks from behind the bed before we push it back against the wall and hide everything forever. And somehow we managed to make all of this work. That's how it looks from behind. This is how it looks now, and my son, I think, really loves this. He loves the flexibility of being able to turn it on and off without having to reach behind the bedpost to try and find the switch each time. If you've made it to this point of the video, thank you for watching and hitting the thumbs up or the subscribe button. It really helps us to keep this channel going. And right here is something that YouTube knows that you're going to love watching next.

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