Tuesday, August 12, 2008

TV Wall Mount

Julias family was gracious enough to give me a very nice house warming gift which sat in front of my fire place for about 2 months before my dad came over to help me put up a TV mount over the fire place. I first thought that mounting it 5 feet off the ground might be too high and might put some strain on my neck, but it worked out fine and it doesn't seem to effect my viewing experience.

Since the spot where the TV is suppose to go was too small so we had to figure out a way to mount it in or across the front to make it secure. I looked at buying an arm that extends from the back of the hole but that would have cost me a couple hundred dollars. An idea that my father came up with was bolting a piece of wood across the front. We made sure there were studs on either side to hold the 70 lb. TV. I bought a flat TV wall mount that you could adjust the angle of the TV from Amazon, Peerless is the brand that was rated pretty high in quality.


Step #1 was to do some measuring of the piece of wood we were going to put up to make sure it did not stick out to far on either side and we wanted at least a 6 inch opening at the bottom to fit the wiring. Then we screwed the brackets onto the back of the TV that would be the hooks that would secure it to the mount.



Step #2 positioning the mount
onto the piece of wood making it center as well as wanting it to overhang the space over the fire place so that it would cover up the bottom part of the open TV space.

Step #3 finding the studs and bolting the wood over the TV space. We put one bolt with washers in each corner and added extra drywall screws to each side. I'm pretty sure that it could hold at least my weight.My Dad and I had the hardest time removing the platform that the TV sat on because the screws were tiny and we didn't have a long skinny screwdriver to fetch them out. So we had to take a trip to my now favorite home improvement store Lowe's and pick up another screw driver.

Step #4 securing the TV to the mount and adjusting the angle for the perfect viewing experience.

Tip: Make sure you plug all your expensive electrical gadgets into a quality surge protector when reconnecting cables and wires.

All in all it wasn't too bad mounting the TV, except for taking the stand off the bottom of the TV and having to make an extra trip to Lowe's for a screwdriver. Thank You Dad =)

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