Contemporary wooden-top TV bench By: ucn

We moved into a new house, and for a whole year our TV sat on an old Expedit shelf (brought over from this previous hack). Well this was a terrible temporary solution as it was way too tall and just looked plain ugly, but I wanted to take my time designing the right TV console for that space. We definitely needed something custom, as the TV wall is really long, but I didn’t want to build in a tacky “feature wall” either. I wanted to keep the wall free for paintings and stuff in the future.

I was inspired by the many wooden-top tables with steel frames I’ve seen in design shops, and I realised that I could make one myself out of the Vittsjo series. Here’s how:

Materials:

3 x VITTSJO TV console (100x40cm x 33cm ht)

1 x NUMERAR counter top (246x60cm x3.8cm thick)

Step 1:

Assemble 3 VITTSJO consoles, but swop the position of the glass top and the laminate shelf

Step 2:

Cut the NUMERAR counter top into 6 pieces, each 50x40cm. I used a friend’s table saw, and a router to round off the edges. After cutting the 3 pieces I had very little waste left over.

Step 3:

Rearrange them in pairs to fit the top of the VITTSJO frame exactly, at 100x40cm

Step 4:

Position the laminate shelf in the centre of the birch top, with an even margin of birch panels all around. Screw through the laminate shelf to the birch panels. Need 4 screws per panel.

Step 5:

Just flip this birch top+laminate shelf assembly over, and place it back on top of the VITTSJO frame. The laminate shelf should fit back in perfectly, ‘locking’ the birch top in place. It also creates a lovely ‘floating gap’ between the VITTSJO frame and the birch top.

Step 6: Stain or varnish as desired. I like this as-is, but I might want to stain it a Teak colour to match my other furniture.

Step 7:

Wiring up the console: I managed to hide all the cables in the Kvissle cable management box, and with a couple of lengths of black cable management tubing. It turned out surprisingly well, after about an hour of cable wrangling. Look, no cables!

BONUS 1:

The shelf fits DVDs perfectly well upright, but then again it was originally designed as a TV console!

BONUS 2:

Since this is a 3-module console, and only the centre module is ‘wired up’, I am able to move the 2 side modules around as desired as extra bench seating when I have more people over. The frame has a slight sway to it, but with the birch top to distribute the load evenly, it definitely is strong enough to hold 2 people per bench.

via IKEA Hackers http://ift.tt/1mB88pn From ucn