gretchen says

When I started to look for a new sofa for our living room, one of my friends suggested the IKEA Ektorp sectional. She suggested it because SHE has it, and she knows I love it, but I answered with a “ha ha, right, it needs to fit in the van!” But then I googled, and I found a few posts that mentioned being able to fit the Ektorp into a minivan, (like here and here) but I found NO pictures of how that worked, and unlike just about every other product IKEA sells, the box dimensions are not listed on their website. So, when we went to IKEA today with fingers crossed, I vowed to take pictures and measurements so that other people would have this info if they googled. Here is how we fit the sofa into a 2005 Honda Odyssey, with all seats removed. It took us a couple tries to figure it out, so here’s the guide for those looking to do the same.

I’ll start with the measurements. The Ektorp comes in four boxes. One is the cover, and that’s a small free-floating box, and the other three are shrink wrapped together. Pro tip: when you go to the sofa section of IKEA, you place your order there, but they don’t pull it til you pay. Once we’d paid, we had to wait about half an hour or so to have them fetch the thing, so if I were doing it again, I’d have placed the order, gone right down and paid, and THEN done my other shopping.

Cover: 15″ x 5.5″ X 30″ (this one isn’t a concern. Your passenger could hold this if they had to.)

Corner: 36″x36″x27″

Arm ends: 2 @ 15.5″ x 36.5″ x 59″

How to fit them in:

Bring a box cutter or leatherman (or go back in and buy some sort of sharp object) and cut away all the shrink wrap. Be careful when you do it, because the way ours was loaded, dividing the load made each end go to the pavement. We also parked off to the side of the loading area, and I don’t know if that was cool or not but we were out of the way and no one made us move, and it worked much easier.

Use the side sliding to put the corner piece in so that it’s 27″ side is the width, so set the square on its side.

Load the two arm ends from the hatch, flat, one on top of the other.

And then put the cover wherever. (You can see it on top of the end arms above.)

The hardest fit was behind the seats, because of the grab bars. We adjusted so the driver had more room, but the passenger seat was all the way forward and upright, which in an Ody isn’t terrible, but know that going in. We obviously had removed the center chairs, and hidden the 3rd row, before our trip.

Now I’m going to put in all the search terms I used to try to find this, so that other people can find it. IKEA sectional ektorp minivan odyssey pic sofa couch 2+2 corner sofa size of boxes