Redoing a room soon and I want something that allows me to store things on the bottom and use the top few shelves to display a collection - but the display part needs to have glass shelves to keep the dust away, and that's the part that's making it tricky. Lots of things I've seen are one or the other - a display cabinet with fully glass doors (no good for storing stuff at the bottom) or open shelves. Ideally in white, or pale wood (not that weird faux-wood MDF that looks really crap over time)
I don't really have room for both in a box-room office, so it ideally would be one piece of furniture. (I don't want to mount a separate display cabinet on the wall as I'm worried it will fall down somehow, leaving me with a very expensive pile of debris.) The desk will take up most of the longest side of the room, so the cabinet will need to go against the wall at the side of it next to the door; anything too deep with doors might be tricky. (Haven't found anything narrow enough to fit on the same side whilst still being wide enough to hold what it needs to - anything bigger than about 65cm won't fit.)
What I've seen so far that comes close:
IKEA Billy, double with Oxberg doors that have a glass panel at the top - this looks ideal in terms of function and size, the adjustable shelves are useful, and it would look right in the space, but I've had Billy bookcases in various houseshares etc that seemed to be quite flimsy. Are they sturdier when attached properly to a wall? The display part is perfect but I do want the storage bit to be reliable.
IKEA Havsta - solid wood, comes as a combination of bottom cupboard and shelves/cupboard/cabinet to go on top. The bottom cabinet is 47cm deep and the top cabinet about 35cm deep, which looks a bit odd? and the bottom part might be too deep for the space. The 35cm cabinet is designed to go on the deep base only rather than sit on the bottom with the 35cm cabinet on top, otherwise this would be ideal. Keep going back to the fact it's solid wood, even if the reviews say the doors are hard to attach.
IKEA Kallax - sturdy, can make a display cabinet with inserts at the top, will store things easily, looks right in an office, but maybe a bit deep and feels like a wall of MDF. Flysta is the narrower version that would work, but no display inserts (or many boxes etc. available)
IKEA Hemnes - looks too much like a kitchen unit.
IKEA Lommarp - reviews say the dark colour scratches easily, the light colour is a weird beige that will clash with the room (make it white, you dïcks), can't deal with paying that much for the same materials as a Kallax
I've looked at other furniture sites but the advantage of the IKEA ones is that they are modular and allow me to customise to my needs to an extent - everything else is either full glass doors or open shelves, or too big for the space.
Any ideas? Do I just go Billy?
NB I can't afford to get something custom-built, and searching for something like that second-hand isn't ideal as a) it might take a while b) I don't have my own transportation