TV Wall Mounting Woes
About 6 months ago I purchased a TV wall mount for our 42″ bedroom TV with the intention to install it the next weekend. As things usually go, that weekend we were busy, then the next, etc. Finally this weekend I thought enough is enough and I took my tools to the bedroom to get it installed.
After cracking open the mounting kit I was surprised that the kit came with it’s own stud finder plus a nice drilling template, +1. I quickly located the wall stud which was conveniently in the center of the room using the cheap stud finder, marked the holes to drill and grabbed my drill.
As I drilled the first hole I noticed that the stud finder was not like my “real” stud finder. This one just has a single light and it is on or off, no middle. So what I thought was the center of the stud was the left edge. No problem I just moved 1/4 inch to the right and drilled the two holes.
The main mounting bracket was easy enough to install at this point, two large bolts. Ah metric, so down to the garage I went to get my metric bits. After finding the right bit, installed the lag screws and the main mount was in place.
The trouble began with the mounting plate that attaches to the TV. Some genus decided to mix metric and imperial screws. Not only that, for the extension arms you have to use two different bolts and nuts, the bolt is imperial, the supplied nuts are metric, WTH?!? After swapping bits the TV mount is in place.
As I am hanging the TV onto the mount I notice that cable went out. (I had the TV on, with my TiVo playing something for background noise). However I was time shifting and playing something 15-20 minutes in the past. So at somepoint I lost cable TV as I was installing things, not when I was hanging the TV.
The prime suspect was when I just missed the stud with the drill bit. I thought to myself that that is pretty unlikely as who in their right mind would string a coax wire up a stud on the upper floor. On top of that the screw hole was about 5 feet up.
So I replaced the coax connectors, no luck. Dang, the drill somehow hit the cable, which was wired completely crazy. As my luck would have it, this is only one of the two rooms that I did not wire, so I had no idea where the cable was running, but again only an idiot would run wires in places where people would likely hang pictures or drill holes. (Of course I did miss the stud, so who is the idiot now).
I was planning on placing a outlet box behind the TV to run wires so I cut a hole in the wall for it. Reaching into the outlet-sized hole I could feel that the exact place the drill bit came out the side of the stud was a wire bracket, with the cable TV wire. The drill bit actually went into the wire bracket. Anyplace else the wire would have moved out of the way and not gotten hit by the drill.
The hole for the future outlet was not big enough for me to remove the wire bracket and fix the wire, so another hole had to be cut. Huzzah, after cutting and splicing the cable everything works.
Almost complete at this point.. The TV is hung, the holes are cut to string the cables, only remaining item is to get long enough cables.. Of course the ones I have are about 2 feet too short.
I love it when a plan, finally, comes together!
