interior design: Ikea Hacking at its Finest!

We so badly need new furniture!

But like so many, we’re on a budget with the completion of our renovations our priority.

That means that we have to make due with what we have. The thing is, what we have is too large for our wee little house. :-(

Take our TV stand and credenza.

When we lived in our condo we had a long wall to fill, so I opted for 2 boxy and squat cabinets from Ikea. Side-by-side they actually looked pretty good… and their depth was perfect for our old tube TV. They worked just fine in our condo.

Photo taken after new floors were installed… and before we purchased an area rug… oh, and before we refaced that horrible fireplace! In other words, this was the only half-decent photo I could find! HaHa!

In our little house we certainly couldn’t fit both of the cabinets into the living room, let along have them sit side-by-side again!!

One cabinet fit pretty well along the obvious TV wall in our house’s small living room, but it was far from perfect.

Why? Well… as you walk into the room from the kitchen, this is what you see (left – taken when we first moved in [what a mess!]).

Yuck!

Not only that, because the cabinet was squat (the wood legs were 3” high), it couldn’t sit back against the wall… and that meant that all the cords were visible as you walked into the room.

I hated it!!

And there’s more reason to hate it… it’s 26” deep, and that means that it interferes with movement and flow. It creates a real bottleneck through to the rest of the house!

Then we purchased a big screen LCD TV with surround sound (yes… I live with a man!). Can you image how stupid a thin TV looked on a cabinet that’s 26” deep?! Oh… and now we have even more cords and things then ever before. In fact, we now have a power-bar. Because of that power-bar, the cabinet stuck out at least 4” from the wall! So… the 26” cabinet AND 4” = 28” of ugliness! (Oops!! One of our sassy & wonderful readers caught me in an adding mistake so I’m back to correct it. 26 + 4 = 30” of hideousness! You’ll read below how FAB my Brian is… well, I rely on him for adding too! Haha!!) Even more yuck!

One day I was sharing with Brian my dream of a beautiful credenza built specially for the space. The fantasy credenza would be influenced by mid-century modern design – clean lines, beautiful grainy wood, cabinets & drawers to hide away all those remotes that come with his crazy TV, tall legs (just like these ones here) that would sit the credenza above our 6” baseboards. Only this dream credenza would be special… it would have a hidden compartment in the back where all those unsightly cords could be tucked away!

Can you imagine it?!

Well… like I said, we’re on a budget!!

Then the other day – out of the blue – Brian said to me, “I can cut down the cabinet we have.”

“Are you trying to tell me that I’ve been suffering for so long and you have a solution that would mean spending very little money?!” I responded.

Men! I figure he was tired of me moaning every time I looked at that cabinet.

I could totally see his vision and I was excited because I could blog about it!! HaHa! You know how it is… constantly seeking the perfect blog topic!

I was looking forward to tackling the project with him only to get a text message from him the other day saying that he’d cut up the cabinet without me.

Me: “Did you take pictures?!”

Of course he didn’t!! Men!!!

But he wasn’t completely finished. In fact, he needed my help to source out the new legs! WooHoo! I rushed home from work, he picked me up at the train and we dashed to Ikea to buy legs. And we found the perfect ones in the kitchen department. 6 inches tall, stainless steel.

When we got home, he showed me his handiwork.

See this? It’s how he manufactured the false back… this is where all those horrible cables, cords and power-bar would sit! You see… like this… how perfect, hey??!!

And here’s a photo of the new credenza (pre-legs) with 10” gone from its depth!

I got to help put the legs on. Okay… truth… my job was handing them over to Brian AND taking photos!! Those are important jobs, you know!!

To give the centre some much-needed support, Brian glued two of the old stubby legs together and then onto the bottom of the credenza. This is a temporary solution. You see, we didn’t know that we needed 6 legs until we started putting the whole thing back together. We’ll take care of that very soon!

The final part of the reconstruction = Brian cut a hole in the top where the cords would tread down into his secret cord/power-bar compartment!

And now for the reveal photos!

I love it!!

This is what it looks like now when I walk from the kitchen into the living room… flush to the wall and no more cords!

Please ignore our floors… they’re lovely with their walnut inlay, but in need of refinishing!

Now that the new credenza is 16” deep instead of 26” deep, you can see we have much better flow through to the rest of the house!! Fantastic!

So… yes, I can complain that he wanted a 46” TV… and yes, I can complain that he won’t let me spend money on new furniture… and yes, I can complain that he started work on this fun project without me AND that he didn’t take any before and during photos…

But in the end, all I can say is I’m crazy about this fella of mine!

He does wonderful things for me ;-)

I’m sharing this DIY transformation with It’s So Very Cheri’s Blog Hop AND with The DIY Show Off Project Parade over at The DIY Showoff! I hope you’ll drop in to see who else is sharing projects with me!!