Thankfully a recent visit to my parents (who live 15 minutes from the 3 hour Ikea) proved to be a successful trip, both in family time and purchases. We went with the intent of getting a media unit for under our newly mounted TV. Although spending a little more than originally planned on we know it was a good price and definitely cheaper than anything we'd looked at elsewhere.
After searching through the store, we decided on purchasing piece from the BESTA system. This one to be exact. We then added three drawers at the bottom and cabinets on the two sides opting to leave the middle as open shelving. We added a glass topper to give it a finished look. We chose to forgo hardware since the drawers can be easily pulled out from the bottom (and won't get major use anyways since they are more storage) and added the little door pop (totally technically term) on the cabinets. You just push where the piece is installed and it pops open enough for you to grab it. We grabbed some legs to give the unit a little more height because boy this thing is short.
Boxes, boxes, boxes...
After walking away we realized that the unit we grabbed may not be as wide as our TV (which would look off), so we had to re-think the plan and almost decided to just leave and not pick up the pieces downstairs we had written out. Yes, two engineers went to shop for furniture and didn't measure first. But after look around the store and saying, "Yep our TV is that big or larger" we decided to add another unit (the "half" size) and go grab our purchases. I think the most time spend was wandering around the warehouse looking for exactly what we needed. With 4 color options and NUMEROUS ways to style and accessorize these, there were two rows of items, not even semi chronologically organized. I think I found one piece while my husband searched out the rest.
Mid Mess
Oh and if you're curious, we went with the black-brown color. Definitely more black than brown. But it was perfect for our family room.
It looks oddly brown here but the darker pictures are much more true to the color
Although it looked short in the store, we are pleased with the final height too. It was taller than the media unit the TV sat on before but about a foot below the bottom of the TV on the mount.Do you always have left over pieces from Ikea? Should I be concerned that this thing is going to fall apart?!
As I mentioned previously, the drawers are mostly storage. Boxes for electronics, DVDs, VHS tapes (yes I still have some and a 10" TV I can watch them on), Wii Games, controllers, etc. I just realized the 3rd drawer, currently empty will be perfect for our laptops.
No idea what else is going in the cabinets right now. We decided to put the cable box on the right because it is the most centered in the Family Room. I suck at technology and get easily frustrated when something doesn't work so it needed to easily get the signal. Also, I don't want to be even 30 seconds late in turning the TV on for my favorite shows! We've also got the Wii box and docking station stored in there.
I can't say that Ikea furniture is the easiest to put together, but for the price I can take a small inconvenience. We spent 2 hours the first night getting 80% of it together then did the finishing touches in another hour the next night. Of course we had to do a slight Ikea "hack" when they told us that putting two pieces together resulted in TWO legs at the spot they sit together which would of course look funny. It would have been 1 leg, 2 legs, 1 leg, 1 leg. Silly right? Turns out we didn't purchase enough legs for this option anyways. So while the back at the wall is funny (no one sees that), we used two sided foam tape strips (came with someone else in one of the boxes) to center the last leg we had between the two units. We're confident this is enough support since the back is doubled up and the units are screwed together anyways. So fingers crossed, please!
Have you made any Ikea purchases lately? Do you take trips planned around a visit to Ikea?
No comments:
Post a Comment