One of the spaces that we needed to make work for us is in our dressing area, which is a rather grand name for the space between our bedroom and en-suite which also contains a built in wardrobe. The wardrobe is big, though the dressing area is small but with potential.
So I started to scour the internet for a small piece of functional furniture. I wanted something with a drawer, so that our clutter could be out of sight, and after much internet searching I found a unit that worked with the dimensions I had. It arrived in the summer, flat packed, and the afternoon we had the Red Arrows fly over MOH spent some time putting it together, with just a few swears here and there. We had doubts about it then, and well let’s just say it was in the ‘too good to be true’ category and while it technically should have worked, functionally it didn’t.
Just for clarity the Urbansize floating oak dressing table pictured is our replacement option, and one I wish we’d gone for in the first place. Sigh.
Anyway, after a month or two of not actually using the original piece of furniture for anything like we planned, we agreed enough was enough and we should try again. I’m not naming the company we bought the original piece from here and they have since closed their order book, which speaks volumes.
I remembered that I’d pinned the Urbansize floating oak dressing table when our new house was just a possibility - I’ve no idea why I hadn’t remembered before, and it would have been a lot easier, and less expensive, if I had. What’s more the dimensions worked too. Even better MOH was on board with the replacement.
Urbansize aren’t a company I was familiar with and so after my previous experience I thought I’d do some research and digging. The company was formed in Greenwich, just down the road from our previous house - who would have thought, and their registered office was just off our local parade of shops when we lived in London. The founder Sallie King designed her first piece, the floating bedside table frustrated at not being able to find furniture to fit her urban sized flat.
I’m very glad she did.
We ordered our floating dressing table, and it was despatched quickly and with us within a week - and in fact, much quicker than we expected. It looks great too. It comes with instructions on how to fit, which in fairness could have been more detailed, and optional brackets. We have plasterboard walls, and as I’m keen it stays on the wall, we opted to use these.
The drawers are small, but that’s kind of the point of it. It’s furniture for a smaller space so the drawers were never going to be huge. They’re big enough to hold some toiletries, and deep enough to have a mirror on the top. The mirror is from Ikea and a steal at £19 - it’s one that I saw and liked when we visited the Cotswolds in September.
Before we started using the drawers though I added some paper as a liner to help protect it - my thinking is that it will be much easier to replace the paper, than to try and clean the base of the drawer!
It’s a small addition to a small space that has really added value and made the space functional, rather than just a walkway to the bathroom - and I’m really pleased with how our version 2 worked out. So much so, that I’ve been back on their site to see what else they have. I’ve not made another purchase yet, but I’d definitely use them again.
I’m sure over time we’ll add more to this space, and we definitely need to revamp the inside of our wardrobe so it works makes full use of what is a relatively large space. It currently has a single shelf above the hanging space which is across the full width, which doesn’t work for us, so if you’ve used a company to fit out the interior of your wardrobe that you’ve been impressed by, I’m all ears.