If you are a cash-strapped OCD loser like Mr Salty, you might end up in a tricky situation when renovating your new home. He wanted shelves to store his stuff. Yet he did not have enough cash up front to get his Interior Designer to build customised shelves for him. In fact, most of Mr Salty’s house was empty when he took over from his ID.
Many Interior Designers in Singapore would quote about $250 for a one foot of waist-level shelving unit with doors. If you want something that is about 1.8m tall, that will mean doubling that quote. The cost will be even more when you are building a full height shelving unit. The total cost for lining one side of the wall of a room will end up costing between $1,500 to $3,000, depending on the materials. This is where IKEA’s shelving units came to Mr Salty’s rescue.
Overview
The shelving unit that Mr Salty bought came from VITTSJÖ family of shelving units. The original VITTSJÖ shelving units came in 3 dimensions:
- Low – 100cm (W) x 93cm (H) x 36cm (D)
- Tall – 51cm (W) x 175cm (H) x 36cm (D)
- Double Wide Tall – 100cm (W) x 175cm (H) x 36cm (D)
From these basic units spawned a family of shelving units made up of different combinations.
Aesthetics of VITTSJÖ Shelving Unit
What attracted Mr Salty to this shelving unit was the matt black finish with tempered glass shelf that was could match with many types of interior decorations, while still giving the contemporary look. The black frame and glass shelves also helped give an open and airy feel.
The short shelve unit comes in 3 layers (including the top), while the tall units come in 4 layers (excluding the top, because it would be dangerous to store things on the topmost layer without securing the shelf to the wall).
Mr Salty chose the combination that comes with 2 double wide tall shelving units and 1 low shelving unit. The intention was to cover the length of one wall in his living room.
The VITTSJÖ Combination Shelving Unit That Mr Salty Bought
UNFORTUNATELY, Mr Salty overestimated the size of his living room. After putting 1 double wide tall unit and 1 low unit side by side, he no longer have enough space for the last unit!
However, that tall and short combination made a good visual contrast on his feature wall. Look at how good the shelves looked when the lights are on!
The main use of this shelf was to display the aircraft models that Mr Salty had collected over the years, as well as memento from overseas travel.
The doorless concept and glass shelves also made it an ideal shelf for placing the WiFi router.
Each shelf can take loads of up to 15kg. The top shelf that is not made of glass can take loads of up to 30kg. In a sense, this shelf can serve as a book shelf (well, unless you are packing it full of encyclopedias), or albums from EXO or BTS.
Of course, Mr Salty also bought a few IKEA Knagglig pine box to break the tone of the shelves. The soft wooden texture of the box complemented the hard and cold feel of the shelf. Mr Salty highly recommends using these boxes to create some funk!
Luckily for Mr Salty, the extra double wide tall shelf found a place in one of the bedrooms. It was also used to display all the stuff collected when he was on vacation overseas.
Thoughts on VITTSJÖ Combination Shelving Unit
The best thing about buying a standalone shelving unit from IKEA is that we can afford to postpone the purchase. This means that instead of having to pay the ID for building a shelf during the renovation itself, Mr Salty was able to put off the purchase until he saved up enough money to pay for the additional furniture.
A standalone shelving unit also meant more flexibility in doing up the house. Or perhaps also when Mr Salty wanted to change his surroundings every now and then. Imagine paying $3,000 for an immobile shelf. You can’t shift it when you get tired of it in that position, and it’s too expensive to knock it down and rebuild another one every other year.
Instead, the VITTSJÖ combination cost Mr Salty only $317. If he liked, he could shift them to another side of the living room every few months. He could also shift that extra tall shelving unit out to replace the short one as and when he liked.
The downside of this shelving unit lies in its glass shelves. We all know how glass surfaces are dust magnets. This means that there’s a need to constantly clean the surface of the shelves.
There’s a small space underneath the shelving units, as the bottom shelf was set about 6cm above the floor. This space is good enough for cleaning the space underneath, or good hiding place for insects, depending on how you see it. As far as Mr Salty sees it, current robot vacuum cleaners will not be able to go underneath it, so this is a point for consideration.
Parting Words
The VITTSJÖ combination shelving unit gave Mr Salty’s living room an added feel of variation and ambience. The light frame does not intrude, while serving its purpose of displaying beautiful aircraft models.
At a price that is 1/10 of what Mr Salty would pay an Interior Designer for a customised, immobile shelving unit, this is an investment that made Mr Salty feel very satisfied!
If you find this review useful, Share and Like this post! Mr Salty also reviewed other furniture from IKEA, from IKEA FJÄLLBO TV Bench, to Fejka Artificial Wall Plants and to using IKEA Kitchen Planner. Follow Hello Mr Salty for more of his journey to deck out his HDB 4-room flat!
Remember, salty is life!