Sunday 18 July 2010

entertainment unit hack

Well, apologies its been a while since that first happy post many moons ago, its turned out to be harder to find the time to do this than I first thought... That's not to say that there hasn't been movement at the station! Sorry, that's an Australianism.


Today I'd like to share with you GG's stirling efforts in creating a cable-free entertainment unit.  If you look here at the first photos put up you'll see the less than perfect temporary solution we had to begin with: my Stag desk as a tv stand, and the amp etc on the floor.  Although, they'd been on the floor for the last 3 years so were probably feeling quite at home.


Anyway, the new unit is a 1960's sideboard we bought on ebay for the bargain price of about £120.  It was a wedding gift to the original owners, and you could see from the photos it had been resting in the same place for the next 50 years.  When we got it home it smelled just like my Nanna's house. 


So as GG proceeded to tell me how he would just need to drill here, nail there, and glue down there its no surprise that I got a little panicked that this perfect specimen had been in our house for less than 10 minutes and we were going to 'ruin' it.  Eventually though I got over it, realising that for it to be of any use over the next 50 years it had to leap into the 21st century and help us hide the entrails of our audio-visual equipment. And so I let Graham get on with delivering what turned out to be a very elegant solution to an age old problem.  The photos are a bit deceiving with respect to size, its actually about 2.2m long but it looks a bit stumpy in the photos.



As you can see, no cables in sight!  We removed the concertina door on the right hand side so that the tv remotes would work without having to open it up all the time, which I think it gives it a nice asymmetry.  Sorry for the poor photo quality, should have remembered to do this during the day!

Let me know what you think! 


The 4 brown glass ornaments are tealight candle holders (Ithink).  I bought them for $10 at a flea market in Chelsea, NYC. They are made by Dansk and probably worth $2 but I love the shape of them.  In this photo you can also see the ~1930's lemonade jug that I got for my 30th birthday from my lovely friends, complete with lemons.  It came with 4 glasses as well, but I'll save these for another upcoming post showing off my new entertaining bits.


Partly due to the lighting, but this photo really shows up how badly we need to paint those discoloured cream walls white!


Lots more interesting things to share over the next few weeks including the unveiling of our new Eames DSW dining chairs, a new bedroom blind, a growing collection of mismatched crockery, and the grand designs for our bathroom extension... stay tuned.