Elefant's graveyard

Although is quite true that my veneration for Ikea is bordering dependency, not all my furnitures were made in Sweden.

When I arrived in Belgium I was simply broke so nonetheless that my first furniture was bought ( the couch) for everything else I had to find somewhere else.

In Belgium, as much of the rest of Europe ( except Italy) a solid tradition of flea market and second hand shop is well established. Just as an example almost all I used to have in the kitchen, chairs included, was second hand material and if I did not buy them, the street itself lended me a hand.

How?

Easy, remember the old TV rolling table?

Help yourself

Once I built the new furnitures, the old one was simply useless. Not even parking it in the cellar would have helped.

Here in Matonge you simply put whatever you do not need anymore on the street with a label "Help yourself".

All of my furnitures in the living room arrived like that and the old closet as well. In fact this is the second table I find for my living room.

As such arrived all of my first furnitures and that is because in our society, we get rid of things not because they are broken, but because we do not need or like them anymore.

That said, if I do not like them anymore, it does not mean that someone else could not use them. Thus many put their former belongings on the street this way.

Do not believe that they get wasted though, at worst one hour after everything is gone and someone is placing its new furniture in his or her house.

After all, if you do not need it, why not share it?

Hosodo!

I'm weak, I know.

But it is so goooood ....

Let's clean this up

The arrival of his majesty in my living room has started the workseason for this year.

My old TV furniture was simply not anymore up to the task and something new was needed. Besides my DVD collection was shamefully squatting inside my library and thus a new solution was needed.

Just a furniture?

Just one, easy peasy, maybe two or more elements combined together, but really nothing more.

Childplay.

Coupled with some amplifier for the TV set and some shelves, this is all that will be needed to fill up that room side.

That was the idea till I realized that my bank account will not be able to cover the amplifiers this month and that the Gordian knot of cables was way past being out of hand.

This is why I pushed amplifiers and shelves to next month and modified a little the original project on the furniture.

Nothing too fancy, relax! just a couple of planks, some paint, more metal Ls, couple of screws, steel cab...

Right.

I'm back to being myself again ^_^

Here I go again

Main issue of multiple soket outlets is that they use a lot of space. Main issue of cables is that they never stay put.

As such they have both to disappear.

Only method I could come up with is to hide them behind the furniture, that said leaving them on the floor would have been a terrible solution. So I came up with an "extension" of the furniture.

The structure is made by three Ikea Besta elements ( I'm really going to bill them the commercials I do, I swear) screwed together.

It is a stable and solid solution and the elements are quiet sturdy ( and heavy, as I found out bringing them up the stairs).

The two side elements would have wooden doors and be assigned to DVD storage task. The central element will host the geeky goodnes of DVD player, gaming consoles and so on.

Central element has glass doors, that to allow the remote controls to work even when they are closed.

Let's go to work

Before fixing the three elements together I planned the heights of the inner shelves, since I would have to cut a dent to allow cables to pass through them and since a hole behind would have been necessary for the cables to pass through.

I then screwed the furnitures together and found a fail in my plan.

In fact the router will be inaccessible in the future, so I had to bore a second hole in the left furniture to be able to access with my hand and reset the bugger in case of need ( the wooden doors will hide the uglyness of this solution).

Since everything was working I started the extension.

INT check, failed

A bad mistake I made was to use some plain wood planks instead of MDF wood, so, nonetheless I chose the planks with uttermost care, I found that they were slightly curved.

That will be needed for the TV set cables

This asked for more screws, some bending and a lot of filler.

Once sanded and painted it is far from perfect but quiet acceptable.

Seen that the sockets will be lost once the furniture is in place, might as well exploit them now.

That for, two wide, multiple sockets have been bound to the furniture using steel cable. I agree it is crude, but it works and I could ask for nothing more.

Once all cable were bound together here is the first result.

Work in the living room starts again next month as soon I will be able to afford the audio system and the shelves.



Let's see how I can busy myself till then :)