Your Decorating Hotline dedicates every Wednesday to you, our Readers - your questions, ideas, opinions and projects. It’s your chance to determine the post content for the day!
Today a narrow space, some unruly speaker wires and a pair of audio speakers pose a problem for a reader…read on! Learn the solution Your Decorating Hotline presents and chime in if you’ve got one too!
Here’s the situation:
Here's the dilemma a Reader presents today!
Dear Your Decorating Hotline:
We have a L shape sofa in the open family room/kitchen. The family room has hardwood floors and our sofa sits in an L shape on the hardwood floor. The TV can be put only on one side of the wall and the long part of the L shape sofa is facing it. Since that distance is not very big, we needed to put our BOSE speakers right behind the sofa and the wiring is in the middle on the wood area showing on the ground with the plug outlet. The space we have is only 11 inches from the back of the sofa to the trim of the wood flooring. The rest is all tiles. We’d like to hide the wiring and also have the speaker stands on either side about to 4-5 feet blend with the room.
Unfortunately this area can be seen when you walk into the family room. When you walk into this area, this space is visible between the kitchen and the family room.
We are not sure what to put there to make this space look nice. Most sofa tables are 15 inches deep. We are looking for some narrow sofa table about 10-11inches deep and may be 4-5 feet long and height to be less than the sofa height by 3 feet and 4 inches. What other solutions do we have ?
Thanks. Shanthini
Your Decorating Hotline’s Solutions
Hi Shanthini:
Thank you for sending the photos – they helped me understand the dilemma you are faced with. As you mention, most sofa tables are wider than what you need and since you see the back of the sofa and the speaker and wires when you enter the room you want to distract the eye from them as much as possible with some decor.
If you want to purchase a ready-made sofa table you will have to do a bit of looking – but it is possible to find a narrow table that works size-wise. I found one that is 29 1/2″ H X 47 3/4″ W X 10″ D. It is shown below.
To learn more about this piece go to http://www.csnstores.com/TAG-025466058914-TFG1063.html?cv= . This site sells it for $309.
Other options you might consider:
1. Buy a second hand piece of wood furniture that is the height and length you want and then cut it down so it is narrower. If the legs are not more than 10 inches apart this would work well as you’d only need to cut down the width of the top, sand and then paint the entire piece. Hide the cords with a potted plant under the table or a long rectangular basket that you can use to hold magazines.
2. Make a custom size piece yourself. An easy way to do this is to have a hardware or big box home improvement store cut a piece of wood the size you want for the top and then buy ready made legs and the plates they screw into. You can paint or stain the the top and the legs and then attach the legs when everything is dry. Then turn to the plant or basket as noted above to hide the cords.
3. Since your other tables are glass, you might consider having a piece of glass cut to the width and length you need. A glass shop can tell you how thick it should be to be used safely for the size you want. Then set the glass on top of two pillar type pieces that are the right height - this time of year you might find concrete garden pillars or even tall plant vases (fill the bottom with a sand bag or rocks for weight) to support the glass.
Hope this gives you some ideas, Shanthini. I’d love to hear what you decide works best for you. Thanks for reading Your Decorating Hotline.
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I would like to suggest building your own. Terrie and Cindy have helped me so much with my decorating dilemma’s. We also have a L-shaped sectional and having that only gives us so many options with the size of the room. I hate that part of our sofa is pushed up against the wall so I asked hubby to build me a custom sofa table because I was unable to find one narrow enough that didn’t push the sofa too far out into the living room. He built it and I painted it, we need to make some adjustments since our sofa reclines so we are in the process of doing that now. It is perfect and didn’t cost us all that much! Just so wood and a small can of paint which I can use on other projects.
Thanks for the input Jessica!