Today's ebay bargain...

[ffutures]

was this table:





It's an Ikea Leksvik coffee table, about 4ft long and cost me £7.17 - It appears to be a discontinued model, but I'd be surprised if I've paid more than 10% of the original price judging by what they charge for similar products now. I had to organize collecting it, but fortunately my brother-in-law helped with his car - taken apart it just about fitted in the back, which surprised me considering it's a Porsche and not exactly roomy. And it turned out to be fairly easy to re-assemble, just a couple of screwdrivers and an Allan key. It's VERY strongly built - after I'd assembled it I cautiously tried my weight and it barely creaked. The nice part is the compartments underneath, that look a good size for boxes of DVDs.

There seem to be several of these on ebay at the moment, if you happen to live in an area where one's on offer and want a VERY strong coffee table it may be worth a look.

Oddly, what I was actually looking for when I found this was a table to go under my A3 printer. As it's turned out, the folding table I was using in my sitting room is probably going to end up in this role. Unless I can find something the right sort of size with a couple of shelves underneath at a good price, of course...

And tomorrow I'm going to pick up a stack of Region 1 DVDs that someone is giving away on freecycle - probably most of them will end up passed on to the Oxfam charity shop in Portobello Road, which sells foreign discs, but it's worth checking out.

later - I'm not going to try this, but I think that you could omit the middle shelves - which are held in at the ends by dowels - and the spaces underneath would be a good size for storing LPs or laserdiscs - though it's a bit too narrow to put them on both sides, unfortunately. You'd undoubtedly lose some structural strength, but it might be possible to compensate by putting in a back on each compartment pegged to the uprights, maybe a shelf on the other side to take DVDs or CDs. I leave this as an exercise for the more gifted woodworkers amongst us, which isn't me.

Additional thought - the middle shelves could be cut down slightly and used as the back of LP / Laserdisc compartments if this modification is made. You'd just have to add dowel holes in the vertical boards, and fill some of the existing ones.

Comments

[norwegianne.livejournal.com]

And should you ever tire of the table, give it a couple of layers of white paint/wood whitener, as "shabby chic" and sell it for several times what you paid for it…

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Yes, there's a lot of that about on eBay UK too. But I think it's a very nice bit of furniture so I doubt I'll be doing that

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

That looks really, really useful.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I already store DVDs in boxes that fit in the openings quite well - you can see some in the background.

The only down side so far is that you can't easily move it around - it's heavy enough that I will not be pulling it over to the setee if I want to eat while watching a film, I'll have to use a folding table instead.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

This is the coffee table we have, and its new price was £75. When we sold our old one, for about a fiver, we resolved never to buy anything new at IKEA ever again since you can get stuff for buttons that *someone else has already built*.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I had a feeling the price was about that. The only down side to buying 2nd hand (for me) is not owning a car, which makes it a bit more of a hassle than it should be. Most of this stuff is "customer collects only" and I missed a good set of shelves not long ago because there was no way I could transport them, and they were too big for brother-in-law's car.