I ended up purchasing a Ramberg bed, which was curiously discontinued not too long after I bought it. I was also going to buy the mattress from Ikea but they were out of stock, so I had to go somewhere else for it (and sleep on slats and a foam mattress for a week or so).

When purchasing certain beds from Ikea, they  have to be bought in pieces – the actual bed frame, the mid-beam and the slats. I bought the cheapest slats, called Sultan Lade, which were $50 each (I needed two sets since I had a queen-sized bed). Interestingly these are the only slats not covered by Ikea’s 25 year warranty.

One of the slats broke very soon after purchase and another one broke just recently, prompting me to go out and get all-new slats. I wasn’t sure which ones I could use (there’s quite a range), especially since my bed frame was discontinued, so it was hard to research. Eventually I went out and got some Sultan Lillåker curved slats for $100 (I only needed one set thankfully, as one set contains two ‘rolls’ of slats).

The slats fit into the bed frame without any problems, but within minutes I discovered that the slats would slip off the mid-beam very easily.

I tried stuffing some padding in between the outside of the frame and the slats to force them to stay on the mid-beam. All this accomplished was that the slats fell off the mid-beam instead! I tried getting some twine and tying the slats tightly around the mid beam. This appeared to work for a day but the slats did still eventually fall off the mid beam. I also tried tightening the frame as much as possible.

The only other thing I can think of trying is to get a thin, strong piece of wood to place on top of the mid beam to effectively widen it.  I’m not sure if this will work or not, but I will update this post with the result!

Edit: Due to some strange circumstances, I never got around to trying out the ‘plank of wood’ idea. It turned out that during the construction of the bed frame, we failed to put in the screws as per these instructions:Luckily I found the original screws (from over a year ago)! After pushing and holding the sides in while screwing these screws into the frame to stop it from sagging out, the slats no longer slip off