Buying a professional media-bench (Unnu, Clic, Plateau etc.) for housing your speakers and stereo-equipment can be quite expensive. Luckily, you can get almost the same result by buying the right stuff from your nearest IKEA-store! You will also have to invest a couple of hours of work-time.

For the bench pictured below, you will need the following equipment:

• 2 * Bestå black/brown, size 120x40x38 cm (2 * £25)
• 4 * Lappviken black/brown, size (4 * £20)
• 4 * Bestå Soft closing/push-open hinge (4 * £10)
• About 3 meters of speaker fabric

So the main parts cost just £170 at IKEA.

Assemble the shelving frames following the instructions. The back-plates can be omitted. Having open backs makes it much easier to run wires between the various components. Visually they aren’t really needed, since the doors/fabric will cover the front completely.

Cut out suitable holes in all the doors. This is for letting sound and infrared remote-signals through. Wrap tightly with speaker fabric, and stable on the rear side. Fit the doors to the frames as instructed.

This system will easily fit your amplifier/receiver and large front- and center-speakers. Adjust the height of the speakers with books and similar to align them with the cut-outs in the doors.

An extra bonus is that the infra-red light from most remote controls will pass through the speaker-fabric, so you can still control your amp from the remote!