Mounting your tv to the wall and hiding all the cords
This weekend Ben and I FINALLY got around to mounting our TV on the wall.
Mounting a TV on a wall (and concealing all the cords) is really not that hard. And it only took us about an hour or so. So, remind me again why it took us year and a half?
Oh rrrright. Because I’m the President of the Procrastinators Club. I even added this project to my to-do list, and I still put it off another 5 months. Shame.
Okay, so here’s the eye sore before we tackled this afternoon project:
If there’s one thing Sarah and I have in common, it’s our general loathing of power cords.
Every time I walk to my bedroom, the laundry room, or the garage, I’m greeted by that horrible disaster of cords. I’ve got permanent hives and a twitch in my left eye just from seeing that monstrosity several times a day for a year and a half.
But check it out NOW! No more cords! All is right in the world.
I’m going to give a quick run-thru on how to hang the tv and run the cords through the wall, but honestly, if you just follow the directions that come with the mounting kit you will be just fine.
First thing you need to do is buy a mounting kit. You can get the exact same one at Amazon for about 70 bucks.
To mount the TV you will need to attach brackets to the back of the TV and a large mounting bracket to the wall.
We laid the TV face down to attach the brackets. AFTER we were totally finished Ben googled whether you are suppose to lay a plasma tv flat on the ground. Apparently you are not. Whoops. Probably should have googled BEFORE we started. Ours still works just fine, but you may want to keep your TV upright when you attach the brackets to the back of it. Just sayin. Don’t sue me if you lay your TV flat on the ground and it explodes or something.
There should be some screws on the back of your TV plugging the holes where the kit goes. Remove them.
Here are the holes after we removed the 4 screws.
Using the hardware that came with the kit, mount the brackets onto the backside of the TV.
(The kit came with 2 sets of brackets – one to mount the TV very close to the wall and one to mount it a little further out, but gives the ability to tilt the TV. We initially used the brackets that make the TV sit closer to the wall, but the cords didn’t fit, so we swapped the brackets out for the 2nd set. All the photos you see are the smaller set, but if you do this yourself please be aware that we ended up using the tilting brackets.)
You are now ready to mount the big daddy bracket to the wall.
Do not be intimidated. This is easy!!
First, locate the studs in the wall. You want the bracket to be bolted directly to the studs. Otherwise it will probably fall out of your wall and break your TV. No worries though! Finding the studs is easy!
If you don’t have a stud finder (I don’t b/c I’m too cheap to spend like 20 bucks on one), all you have to do is nail a small nail into the wall. If it goes in easily, there’s no stud. If it is hard to hammer in, you’ve hit a stud. Pretty easy. So just take your nail and hammer it every inch down your wall until you hit a stud.
Once you’ve located a stud, it’s even easier to find the 2nd one. If your house is built to code, your studs will be exactly 16″ apart from the center of one stud to the center of the next stud. This is called “16 inches on center”. Also, studs are made from 2×4′s, so your studs will all be exactly 1.5″ wide. Make sure you find the center of your stud.
Once your studs are all located and marked with a pencil on the wall, hold up your bracket, use a level to make sure it’s level, and use a pencil to mark all the holes where your bolts will go. Now remove the bracket and drill a pilot hole into the center of each of your bolt markings, like this:
Once your holes are drilled, put your bracket back up and bolt that bad boy to the wall. If you managed to find all 4 studs and bolted directly into the stud, your 4 bolts will be plenty to keep your tv mounted and safe.
Now double check to make sure everything is level.
Oh man, are we good or what?!
Your mounting kit is officially ready to go. Now the real fun begins. Let’s run those cables through the wall!!
To hide your cords, all you have to do is cut two holes in your sheetrock and drop them through the wall. It’s really easy as pie.
Start by cutting your top hole. Cut it inside the bracket area to make sure it’s well hidden once your TV is mounted.
Once the first hole is cut, you will cut your second hole about a foot off the ground directly below the first hole.
Don’t be scared. Sheetrock can totally be patched if you botch it up.
If you are dropping cables through an interior wall (meaning it isn’t a wall that has the outdoors on the other side of it), there will probably be no insulation inside your wall making it even easier to drop the cables. If you are mounting your TV on an exterior wall (the other side of the wall is the great outdoors) you will probably have to push through insulation to get your cables through the wall.
All you need to do now is shove those cords through the wall. But wait! There’s a really easy way to do this. It’s called Steel Fish Tape.
This is Steel Fish Tape:
It’s a thin flexible piece of steel (kind of like a tape measure but more sturdy) that comes on a roll. You unroll a bit of it and “fish” it through your wall. Here, I’ll show you. It’s easier than trying to explain it.
Shove the end of the Fish Tape through the top hole in the wall…
…and then pull the end out through your 2nd hole in the wall.
Use tape or whatever you can find and attach your cables to the end of the Fish Tape.
Now just wind the tape back up and pull the cords right on up through the wall. So easy!
I seriously get giddy when I have a chance to use the Fish Tape. It is fun feeding random stuff through your walls.
Now that you’ve got your cords hidden in your wall, plug them all into the back of your TV. From there, lift the TV up and hook it onto the mounting bracket.
You are done!
No more cords. No more ugly!
Woot Woot!
I’m releived I can finally check off another project from my daunting to-do list.
Do you have your TV mounted on your wall? Did you do it yourself or hire a professional?
xoxo, Allison
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Welcome to House of Hepworths! HoH is primarily a Home Blog that specializes in DIY projects and renovations, crafts, and decorating. My name is Allison. My family and I live in Austin, Texas. I'm married to Ben and have two children, a 10 year old son and an almost-8 year old daughter. To find out more or to contact me click 
Oh Allison, you’re so clever!
LOVE the photo tutorial for the fish tape! We’re gonna have to mount the tv soon, our toddler is climbing on her rocking horse and sticking peanut butter hands all over the LED screen. NICE.
http://www.iheartmygluegun.com
Girl… I LOVE YOU!
Pinning and Facebooking. I’ll be using this info soon.
By the way Happy New Year!
Ooh! Now I want to do this! Looks Great!
So…..you know I’m showing my hubby this as soon as he wakes up, right?!
Looks great!
Ellie
We have sets of wide cords (they look like a few single cords fused together?). Do you know if going through the insulation is hard to do? Our TV is mounted on an outside wall already. Could have used your tutorial back then! Thank you!
Our TV is not mounted on the wall…but we will be doing it so thanks for all the encouragement!! You made it look so easy and clean!!!! Wow!!
Hugs
SueAnn
You make it look so easy, I have always wanted to do that!
Awesome job and what a huge difference!!!!
That’s seriously awesome! It looks so much better and you guys make it seem so easy. Thanks for the detailed tutorial!
Mounting our bedroom TV has been on my to-do list for months! I even bought the mounting kit a month ago and still haven’t done it. Maybe now that I’ve seen how easy it is I’ll stop procrastinating…maybe
Yay! Thanks for posting this – I’ve been wanting to mount my TV on the wall, but was dreading those ugly cords! I had no idea you could run them through the wall – awesome!
I’m stoked about all the other cords I could run through the wall now that I know the secret – mwahahaha!
You did a fabulous job! I wish we could pull this off, but our TV is on the wall above the fireplace. AND, my husband insisted on a mount that we can pull out and turn sided to side. And he was right. It IS awesome, except almost all of the cords feeding to the TV are too short so there’s ugliness ALL OVER the place. It’s sort of horrifying, but once the TV is on, I forget about about it.
You posted this at just the right time for us. The hubs & I were just talking about paying someone to do it for us but now we won’t have too…yay! Thanks for showing how simple it is! I appreciate the time you take to do your tutorials. Smiles~Beth
Whoa, it looks so cleaned up. Even without the cord shots, just from the front, having the tv up and the speakers to the sides looks great.
OMG!!! I’m seriously so jealous! I would love to do this myself but our situation is a little more complicated. Our tv is mounted on our fireplace that is floated away from all the walls. You can walk around the whole thing. (here’s a link so you can see what I’m thing about http://theambitiousprocrastinator.blogspot.com/p/tour-our-home.html )
Btw, who do you call to fish wires through your house anyway?
Nikki @ the ambitious procrastinator
Thanks for reminding me that I still need to do this! Unfortunately, our wall is an exterior one so we will be dealing with insulation. Great tutorial on the fish tape though…should make things much easier.
This is SO good to know! We’ll be buying and mounting a tv when we move into our new house, so I’ll definitely keep this in mind!
Wow, I want to do this tonight. I must call hubby now! This looks great Allison. The cors bug me too.
well now you make that look so easy….and since i am in the process of designing a new ‘man cave’ for the boy i been living with for 40 years i’ll have to give this a try. i’ll let you know how it goes! but thanks for the post. it was quite timely!!!
LOVE your blog!! I’m noticing your sofa in the pictures and wanted to know if it was from Costco this year? If so, how do you like it. They look to have a similar one. If not, can you tell me where you got it…I’m liking the tufted design and the sides.
Looks great! For just a couple of bucks more, you can dress up the hole that comes out behind the cabinet or shelving that houses your DVD, receiver, DVR, and other components with a low-voltage electrical box like this:
http://amzn.com/B000W09PQI
These are available at Home Depot or Lowes and they just pop right in. They’re the same dimensions as standard electrical boxes, so any plate will work equally well here. (These are great for fixing sloppy cable TV installer hack jobs too!)
When I ran our surround speaker wires through the ceiling and wall, I used these to attach RCA stereo speaker wall plates:
http://amzn.com/B003GSLEKS
This might be a little overkill, but it did make my speaker wires look a little neater behind our TV credenza. And should the unforeseeable day come that we sell the place, these will look much cleaner than gaping holes in the sheetrock.
Your ‘before’ pics look like mine does now! Only add a Wii system, a PS2, a DVD player and the cable digital box UGH!! I can’t wait to get started on this, your step by step made this task seem much less daunting!
Oh, glory, I swear I hear angels singing when I look at the cordless pics! Thank you for a great “you can do it – don’t be scared!” tutorial
)
Hi there! Loved this post. Wish I would’ve found it a week ago! Ironically I just did a blog post about taking our tv OFF our wall mount bc of the wires!! Totally could’ve just fished them through the wall! Oh well. Guess I’ll remember this technique when we buy a bigger tv and have no other choice than to put it back up on the wall!
We have cords all over the house and I hate them. This is a great idea. I would like more info on the electrical box though. I don’t really want the holes in the walls open. Not quite sure I understand how the boxes work. Thanks
Fab!!! Love the detailed tutorial!!
I am so jealous! My dern walls are made of plaster! We can’t do this! But thanks for sharing! I can pass it along to my sisters who have good old sheetrock!
This is great the only problem is there are a few fire hazards for instance the extension cord in the wall! You did a great job but I think people are better off just leaving this stuff to professionals because no one wants there house to burn down!!! Also the level in the kits is usually never accurate!
Also one step they forgot make sure there is no fire brake in your wall (horizontal stud) or you will be in a world of fun
Just remember to make sure the cords are fire rated to go behind walls. Not all HDMI cables can be on the interior!
This is giving me the courage to actually put our tv up on the wall! Those cords are driving me crazy and they are going to go now!!
LOVE your clear explanation and pictures on how to do this. I stumbled upon your blog through Pinterest. So happy I did!!!
what about the power cord…did I miss that part?
Thank you so much for the tutorial. When i first started seeing the tvs being hung up on the walls i always was curious as to how this was done. Now it seems to easy. LOL Eventually we will do this when we get a larger tv for the living room. Thanks again.
I’ve been planning to do this in our living room, but have been terrified at the thought of it! Thank you for making it look so easy! Quite a relief.
I saw this on pinterest and could not wait to get started. We bought the necessary equipment last weekend. Just as we started to drill a hole for the cords, we thought “fire hazard”? I googled it and everything we read, said no power cord in the wall, especially if it is insulated. We hung the tv but we have about 3 inches of cord
The solution would be to get an electrician to put a plug behind the t.v.
Even without a stud finder, another way to find a stud without making holes you don’t need is to use a powerful magnet. Run it along the walls until it sticks to the head of a nail in the stud. You can ease the situation by knocking on the walls and listening for a hollow or a more solid sound, and run the magnet on the solid-sounding areas.
I find it humorous that you own fish tape, which isn’t all that common, but not a stud finder! Too funny. Your wall certainly looks nice without all the cords, but I don’t know if I could cut two big holes in my wall because I hate the idea of patching things up later!
LOVE what your tv on the wall! This looks so easy, my hubby might actually be able to do it!!
However, you didn’t show what you did to the hole at the bottom…just leave it the way it was or is it covered with something?
This is so funny! My hubs and I just did this same thing last year. There are kits you can get to put the plug ins at the top and bottom in case there is insulation in there too. We have a hollow wall though too. We use fishing weights and drops the cords down through the wall. Same difference right? I love love love it now though. I know when we move we will either have to sell the tv with the house or patch up the holes. No biggy either way!
To bad that I live in a country where houses are made of bricks and cement, cannot make a hole on the wall that eay
). Anyway, i love your work.
This looks great. Unfortunately it is usually against most building codes (and a fire hazard) to run an electrical power cord inside a wall. You really need to either install a recessed electrical outlet behind your mounting bracket and plug the tv in there or get one of those PowerBridge things they sell at Best Buy for $100. As someone else noted, you also need to make sure that any other cables (primarily HDMI) are in-wall rated.
I love this! I ESPECIALLY LOVE your detailed tutorials. Thanks for sharing
I love this post and know that it will come in handy some day. I am trying to pin it so I can remember it and the source, but for some reason it won’t let me pin any pictures from this post. Are other people having issues with this?