Making your own DIY TV unit offers lots of advantages… and it is also fun! Make your TV unit exactly the size you want, in exactly the colour that matches your room and save some money. It is not so difficult to make a TV unit yourself… but it is really cool.
Make your TV unit yourself
There are many reasons why you might want to make a TV unit yourself. Maybe you are looking for a special design but you can’t find anything that you like. Or perhaps you have found something nice, but the price is over your budget.
Or perhaps you simply enjoy making your own furniture and the satisfaction that comes from building something yourself.
If you construct your own TV furniture, you can also choose your own finish. More and more people, especially with small children, choose for natural paint, oil or wax. You can now decide that for yourself.
Everything in your own hands
When you have decided to create your own TV unit, you have a number of extra options: you can adapt the furniture to your own taste; do you want a natural wood colour or a special colour paint?
Another option: it is relatively easy to adjust the dimensions to fit your own situation. In this way you can make your TV furniture precisely the right size for your TV and also for the location that you had in mind. A good example is the extra-large version ArturoXL.
What are the possibilities?
Nowadays, with flat screen TVs, you no longer need a big, deep cabinet. You can mount the TV on a foot or pedestal, for which 20 to 25 cm is deep enough. If you hang your TV on the wall, then you don’t need the foot and the screen is, for a modern TV, only 4 to 8 cm deep.
The sting comes with the apparatus that you usually need to have near the TV. This equipment often has old-fashioned dimensions. Loudspeakers, set-top boxes, satellite receivers or hard-disk recorders all need to be as close as possible to the TV so that you don’t have cables trailing across the room. A good example of a compact and slimline TV unit, in which all cables are neatly hidden, is our model Antonio.
Only deep where necessary
The trick is therefore to think of a clever solution so that the furniture looks elegant, but still offers enough depth for the extra equipment. This approach is reflected in almost all of our designs. The unit itself is very shallow and hardly protrudes into the room. For the apparatus, a clever little space is created with sufficient depth.
In- or out- of sight?
Flat screen televisions offer yet another possibility. You can place the TV in a shallow cabinet and only have it appear when you want to watch. Many people prefer not to have a “big black hole” in the room.
We have developed two models where you don’t have to see the TV if you are not watching it. TV cabinet with lift ‘Astor’ is ideal for the living room. For the bedroom, DIY TV cabinet ‘Javier’ offers extra storage space.
Hydraulic or electric lift system
Let your TV (up to 50 inch!) rise up with the remote control of an electrical lift system. When you have finished watching, the TV gently sinks down back out of sight. A wonderful solution, but again here you need to take account of the apparatus. Such an electric system is not cheap, typically between 400 and 700 Euros. But maybe that is not an insurmountable figure. In our design manuals for units with a TV lift, there is a tip for a supplier that gives our customers a nice discount.
A nimble choice
Progress in TV technology cannot be applauded loudly enough! Modern TVs are not just thin, but they are also becoming lighter and more energy efficient. And above all the light weight offers again new advantages. You can hang up your TV without any problem! Directly on the wall or on a floating unit that itself hangs on the wall. In the latter case you also have a solution for the nuisance of visible dangling cables.
Floating on the wall
We have two DIY designs that are meant to be fixed to the wall: TV cabinet Arturo in which the TV is fixed to the wall above the unit, and floating TV cabinet Penelope where the TV is mounted on the unit.
These designs naturally feature a clever and proven system for hanging on the wall.
And further
Our customers use the instruction manuals and design drawings not just to build exactly as specified! Many think of other possibilities to make the furniture exactly as they want to have it. And that brings other people onto ideas. Someone once began with back-light LED strips. And now have a look at our ‘You made it!’ page… there you will see not just a whole variety of back-lights, but also different doors, flaps, and so on.
What’s stopping you?