Have you ever been swooning over a piece of furniture that you know you'll NEVER be able to afford? I have. Many times. And then you get frustrated because it's so beautiful, and you can't have it, and it would look so perfect in your living room.
Well, when I showed Jason (my DIY master of a boyfriend) the type of mid-century inspired TV stand I would love to have instead of using our poor coffee table, he straight away looked at a couple of websites and realised that there was a very simple (and affordable!) way of doing one yourself.
Today, my friend, I'm going to show you how we did it all!
We took a trip to our local Leroy Merlin and managed to find everything we needed there. We went for the most basic and affordable shelves called Multikaz and thought about how we could customise the whole lot by adding some fancy legs and handles.
If you're not in France, Leroy Merlin is very similar to a B&Q in the UK for example. But I guess you could find this type of basic furniture in various shops, including Ikea probably!
I would just like to add a little note to say that this is not a paid advert whatsoever and we were just lucky to find everything in the same shop!
We started off with the legs. We felt that they would look much better with a darker tint but didn't want to spend too much on wood stain. So Jason found out that we could use acrylic paint and a tiny bit of water to spread on the legs with a piece of sponge.
I already had the paint (and the funny mug thanks to Jason's mum!), so I started playing around with the colours to get a dark brown tint that we were happy with. At the beginning, I put too much water into the mix so the legs were still too light once dry. So I applied another layer, this time using less water, and they were perfect!
A little tip, it was much easier to paint them once the legs were temporarily mounted on the plates ;)
Then we carried on with the doors. We wanted them to be fitted on each side of the shelves and the main thing for us was for them to be painted in a colour that contrasted really well with the white. Introducing: Leftover paint! We already had the dark grey paint from when we were painting our old wooden bed (
more here!) and I applied it on the doors without sanding them down. Two layers was perfect!
And here's another tip for you: make sure to elevate them on some kind of box. Way easier to paint like that!
Jason made sure to drill the holes for the handles beforehand though so that once the paint was dry, we could add the handles without worrying about messing it all up.
Then onto the main bit! These shelves were pretty easy to put together, but I thought I would leave Jason to do it, you know, because I'm not very good with that kind of stuff ;)
To get that mid-century vibe on the TV Stand, we placed the legs towards the centre of the shelves. Jason measured accurately each corner to know exactly where to drill the holes to add the legs later on. The clever thing is that even if the bolt in the centre of each leg was too long by a few millimetres and was sticking out the other side, we didn't care much because they were placed just behind where the doors would be, so completely hidden :)
Now to the final touch: The fancy handles! We weren't too sure what to choose whilst in the shop because there were so many good options. But we knew we would want something that stands out and as we thought about our coffee table with its golden legs, we opted for gold/brass round handles that we could twist on their sides.
You need plenty of patience to fit the doors (they thankfully came with all the parts you need to mount them), but once they're in, you're done! Marvellous.
I couldn't finish this post without a Before/After. Have you seen the difference it makes? We absolutely love it. Jason, being a genius, managed to put all his games consoles, phone, etc. behind the doors, and took ages to make sure that we couldn't see the trillions of cables hanging under the stand. Pretty good right?!
We can now use our coffee table as a real coffee table and the stools as real stools. I also painted parts of the stools' legs to customise them a bit. I liked the effect too much not to include them in the photo ;)
I hope you found this step by step tutorial very handy and let me know if you have any questions! Also, sorry for the rubbish photos, but at least it all looks very real (with the mess and everything) haha.
