Hey everyone! Merry belated Christmas! I hope you had a great holiday. We spent lots of time baking, spending time with friends, prepping for Christmas, snowboarding, and getting stuff done around the house. Speaking of getting stuff done around the house…
We finally mounted our TV in the living room. It was quite the hot mess last time you saw it:
This is a screen grab from my House Tour video because believe it or not I didn’t have a single photo of the tv propped up on a desk in front of our fireplace. I’m guessing it was subconscious avoidance on my part because I never want to remember that awful setup ever again! It sat like that for FOUR months if you can believe it.
Well whatever the case, we now have a lovely tv hanging above the fireplace.
I enlisted my boys to do all the dirty work, and they did a great job. After removing the 2nd wooden mantle mounted above the brick mantle (??), they debated for awhile how high to mount the tv above the fireplace. We ended up mounting it as low to the brick mantle as possible.
Once they figured out how high to mount the tv, they used the template that came with the mounting kit to mark where to drill the pilot holes.
The TV mount is similar to this one. I do want to note that this kit is for a lightweight TV. Or original plasma TV was too heavy for this kit so we moved it to the basement and brought up our newer much lighter weight LCD TV to mount in the living room.
Initially we were worried about mounting the kit to brick but after lots of research and reading the instructions that came with the mount it ended up being really easy. The bolts that came with the kit are approved for brick and mortar; all we had to do was drill pilot holes in the mortar before bolting the kit to the brick.
After rail was attached to the brick the boys bolted the remaining kit to the back of the TV.
Doesn’t it look great?! So much better than before.
We opted to not run the cables through the wall, mainly for two reasons: 1) It’s a brick wall and would require somehow busting a large hole in the brick to even attempt to run the cable through the wall, and 2) we are going to eventually rip all this out, widen the shelves and make them built-ins, remove the hearth, and beef up the fireplace. It’s a lot of work and hassle to run the cables through a wall that we plan to tear out sooner than later anyway.
Ben did manage to keep the cables to a minimum and really made them look neat and tidy. They are hardly noticeable runnign from the far right side of the tv onto the shelf.
Here’s a side angle so you can see what the tv looks like when you walk past the wall. It’s very minimal looking.
And one more final angle. Finally this room is starting to look a little better.
If you would like to know how to run cables through the wall, check out my previous post: How to mount your tv on the wall and hide the cords.
If only we could mount our giant tube TV to the wall! LOL! My daughter’s friend called our TV “vintage”.
Love your huge room!! Have you thought about painting your brick white? Your white shelves made me think how gorgeous it would be all white!! It would look amazing! Love the wall beside your Christmas tree too. Your house has some cool features! Glad you’re back to blogging! You mr blog and thrifty decor chick were the very first two I ever read! And I’m still
Hanging with both of y’all! You give such great tips and practical advice. Happy new year!!
I am absolutely going to paint the wall, I just was waiting for the holidays to be over! Great minds think alike. It would look so much better white!
I love your brick wall, so gorgeous!
I agree with Niki! I think if you painted the brick it would look beautiful! The texture of the brick would still be there and the built ins would look fantastic. If you plan on tearing the wall down anyway it wouldn’t hurt to at least try it. Might save you a ton of work! You could paint the cable that is exposed the same color and that problem would go away too! Just a thought!
Put a fabric ‘sleeve’ over the wires, the same color as the brick…it will camouflage the wires…for the time being.
Yeah, I totally agree. Painting the brick would be better.
Painting bricks is not a good idea it kills their beauty.
Tv wall mounting like a pro! Highly impressed from what I can see from over here! You’ve properly leveled the TV bracket base at the right hight, congrats! When mounting a TV to the wall, most people either hang it wrong, or level it wrong. I’ve seen broken screens due to unsecure bracket mounting..
Great job done there. Usually brick walls are quite tricky for TV mounting.
Usually it depends on the brick quality, if someone used cheap bricks it can be quite a hassle to mount a TV on it.
Nice job guys it looks very nice 🙂
Nice job and a lovely looking room, it has a very warm and cosy feel to it. If anyone is planning a similar project and would like to hide the cables I’ve found the lid of trunking makes a great tool for sliding behind plasterboards. Tape your cables on once you have passed it behind the boards an voila, wall mounted TV with hidden cables.
I never use whatever Samsung provides in terms of tools to put up the tv bracket . I always use my tools I can trust . The tv looks a bit off level but you should have some security screws at the back to help you leveling .
Overall good job !
It really does make a huge difference having the TV placed on the wall. The amount space you have managed to free up along with the more tidy vibe for the room has made me want to put this in place at my house.
Thank you! Yes, I really prefer the clean lines of having your tv mounted on the wall. It just feels cleaner!
It really does free up so much space by mounting TV’s onto a wall.