Friday was an exciting day because the final component of my new room décor arrived -the new tv unit.
I finally settled on getting a piece custom made from Table Lighting Chair in Dublin and it is divine!!!!
But I am getting ahead of myself - let me go right back to the start of the story and how I ended up with the piece I ended up with.
So! As you know I am a big Ikea fan.
The vibe (mid 20th century) design for my front room (see here for pics of my front room - click on the link in the post) stemmed from the Stockholm range in Ikea.
My settee is from the Stockholm range and also one of the very first things I saw and liked, in the Stockholm range was their tv bench:
Unfortunately, the unit was simply never ever in stock. I asked in-store regularly, checked online etc and it just was never there, plus with no indication of a date of when it would be in. Apparently there were supplier problems.
So I started looking around at different options and this is how we arrived at Table Lighting Chair. Initially I was keen on having a vintage sideboard as the tv unit. Something like this or this here:
However, sideboards are not designed as tv units, and technically tv units should be lowish to the ground so in reality sideboards aren't possibly the best.....hmm I am not convinced...I think it would have been fab!
*(Interestingly enough the above sideboard is actually quite low - lower than usual sideboards - so it would actually work as a tv unit in my opinion. It is in Table Lighting Chair at the moment)
Table Lighting Chair (or as I like to call them TLC) source vintage furniture and restore them (lovingly with TLC, as I like to think!) to their former glory. They have fantastic stuff ranging from cool G plan tables to really interesting outdoor wire furniture. They are based in a laneway in Rutledge Terrace, Donore Avenue in Dublin 8. It is a quirky little workshop packed to the rafters with cool stuff, if you are interested in vintage furniture you should check it out.
Once it was decided that the sideboard was not going to work for us :-( Robbie from TLC suggested that instead they could make me a piece exactly to my specifications :-)
This was exciting to hear!!
So taking inspiration from the sleekness of the ikea tv bench but with beautiful wood (russian birch ply finished in American walnut) and with some quirky additions from original pieces (the legs are from a 1960's display cabinet and the handles were salvaged from a vintage Danish sideboard that was sadly beyond repair) this is what I got!
How incredible is this?!
My dad went out to collect it on Friday. Dad who would be into woodwork etc thought it was made lovely.
This photograph does not do it justice at all and you cannot see all the detail - for example the frame around the cabinet part has lovely pale and dark "striped" wood detail.
I will take better pictures soon I hope.
Here are some pics of it in situ.
All in all I am so happy with it.
No disrespect to Ikea but I think you simply cannot compare a mass made tv unit to my one off handmade piece.
And while it ended up costing just under twice the price of the Ikea unit I think that ultimately my TLC one is actually worth so so much more than that - I can really see this piece becoming a kind of family heirloom that is passed to the next generation.
As I said I will post more photos soon (I will add them to this post here).
I also thought that it looks a bit plain in the alcove so I added a wall-hanging above the tv. I am now looking for a statement vase or sculpture to sit on the unit beside the tv.
Links for you to check out:
Soooo, what do you think?!
