Posts Tagged ‘family room

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?

So. How’s it going?! First off, a huge thanks for all the well-wishes. I’ll keep you posted.

Okay, so I showed you how I moved the sofa table over to the staircase wall…

In it’s previous life it was a headboard. I cut it down, gave it a coat of paint, and turned it into a retro sofa table:

I’m still totally diggin’ the table. Like, A Lot. I like it a lot. You couldn’t really see it very well behind the couch though, so I moved it where my kids art desk use to be:

Which is just fine by me because their desk usually looks like a complete disaster. Don’t believe me?

Um, ya. I just couldn’t take it any longer. So I banished them from the living room and they now have to do projects at the kitchen table, which has actually stayed a lot cleaner…

So now my living room is looking more like this:

…which brings me to the point of the post.

I’m loving my Silhouette Advent Calendar. It has been so much fun!

The only problem is, what the heck do I put in those 25 drawers?? I mean, some are big. Some are small. Some are tall. I hit up Target and Dollar Tree and left empty handed. I was at a total loss.

Until it dawned on me. Why had I never thought of the Mother-Load of all things party-favor?!

That’s right. Party City! (This is NOT a promotional post.) They seriously pulled through for me in a big way.

I shopped around until I had two sets of 25 items (I have two kids – hence the two sets). When I got home I just dumped everything out on the floor and went to work.

I tried to sort most stuff before I began stuffing boxes, and I made sure to put the largest items in the boxes first so that I wouldn’t end up with a big fat toy and no big boxes left.

After some switching around and finagling I managed to get all the little prizes into the boxes.

The kids have LOVED this Advent Calendar. I pretty much threatened them with their life if I caught them peeking in the box before the appropriate day. If I caught them peeking (or their sibling did and told on them) they would have that days prize forfeited. They haven’t cheated once!

Here is just a sampling of the different items they’ve received. I started day 1 with bells. They each got a carabiner bell set to attach to their backpack and a mini-bells ring. I’m sure their teachers have loved me this month with all the jangling going on.

Cards are always fun for my kids – especially when they are mini cards. Kinsey has already added this mini Uno set to her American Girl accessories collection.

Bouncy balls are always great. Until they break a lamp or something…

And who can resist Slinky from Toy Story? Not me!

We’re only half-way through the month, but the mini Mad-Libs have definitely been the hit this season. The kids have gone coo-coo for Mad-Libs! Now if I could only get them to use words other than “fart”.

We are a Peeps-lovin’ family around here, so of course they had to try the chocolate covered peeps trees.

What kid doesn’t love Clackers? They were always one of my favorite toys as a kid. Probably because they are annoying as hell.

I’m excited for them to get these fun mini paint sets. I don’t know what it is about mini stuff, but I.just.love.it.so.much. Mini stuff is adorable!

The kids think the candy-filled ones are lame. Who would have thought? Next year I’ll put less candy and more little trinkets. But we can’t have Christmas Eve without candy canes to add to the tree, so I filled box 24 with mini ones.

I never thought coming up with 25 little treats for the Advent would be such a challenge, but it really took some thought. The kids have loved it so much and I’m sure to make this fun Advent Calendar a Family Tradition from now on.

Oh, and for those of you who complimented me on my CLEAN house in my last post about my Holiday Decor…

Thank You! But I’ll be honest. I clean for pictures. It’s true. Just the night before my family room looked like this:

Oh snap.

I drank a Diet Dr Pepper, put on some Christmas music, and cleaned the heck out the room so I could get it pretty for pictures. That’s one good thing about Blogging – my house gets cleaner faster because I HAVE to clean to take pics.

Have a super very merry Christmas!

One more thing…

The kids are off school now. The boy-toy (hubbs) is off work too. So I’ll be taking some time off to be with the fam. It is Christmas after all. I’ve got posts pre-scheduled for next week, but I just want you to know that I’ll be ignoring my email even more than I already do (which is next to impossible since I’m horrible at following through with email, but you get the idea.)

Hey you guys! I have a little treat for you today! Well, okay, it’s probably not that cool, but it’s a treat for me at least!

I have wanted a floor plan of my house for a year now. I’ve scoured the internet looking for it and it’s nowhere to be found! I tried to draw one using one of those free floor plan services. Ha! It looked worse than a kindergartner’s drawings.

Well, I mentioned to one of my friends down the street that I wanted a floor plan (this house was built almost 6 years ago) and to my complete shock and elation she whipped out a floor plan for me! Turns out she and her husband almost bought this exact house from the builder, but they bought one down the street instead. I’m so glad she saved it!

So, finally! I can now share the floor plan of this house with you. Maybe now when I show you guys rooms you won’t be so confused trying to figure out where they are located.

Here is the official Hepworth House floor plan. Is it anything like you imagined my house would be?!

Do you like looking at floor plans and home layouts as much as I do? I will go to builder sites just to look at floor plan configurations… for fun. I know, I must have a screw loose to find that entertaining. But, seriously. I LOVE it. I even draw out plans when I’m bored… you know, for fun.

Here’s a more zoomed in version of the first floor…

And one of the second floor…

And because I obviously have way too much time on my hands, I even made one with the 2nd floor stacked on top of the 1st so you can get an idea of how it all fits together. Screw loose I’m telling ya.

Are those just some of the most wicked photoshop (gimp actually) skillz you’ve ever seen? I know, I know. I really impress even myself sometimes. (I’m kidding. Look at how awful my lines are!)

I seriously won’t torture you by going through every single room and bathroom in the house, but I do want to highlight some of the rooms I’ve blathered on and on about for a year now.

So {obviously} I just HAVE to start with my most favorite room so far (even though it’s still a work in progress)…

You know this room? The one that where Barney was tragically murdered and I had to clean it up?

Ya, that room. The Barney Room (will it ever outlive that terrible nick-name?) is located here:

Curious about my piano room?

Yup. It’s right across from the dining room. Did you know that?

Our office is actually Bedroom 5. But I think we are about to move it to bedroom 4 upstairs. Maybe. We’ll see. It will involve a LOT of trips up and down stairs so I’m kinda avoiding it.

Our family room is right smack in the middle of everything. It’s definitely the heart of our home and the hardest working room without a doubt.

(the white sofa table project can be found here)

And another view of the family room facing the breakfast room and kitchen.

Remember that part where I said I wasn’t going to do a play-by-play of the entire house?! I think I lied. Because it sure seems like I am, hua?! Okay, I’ll stop soon, I promise.

Shall we walk upstairs? Okay, come on, let’s go!

Bedroom 4 is the guest room, Bedroom 3 is our daughter’s room, and bedroom 2 is our son’s room. Got it? Good!

And last but not least, the game room is smack dab in the middle of the upstairs. In fact, it’s directly over the family room and is the exact same shape and size. So basically we have two family rooms.

I’d show you pictures of the three bedrooms upstairs but then I’d have to kill you.

The guest room is literally SMURF BLUE. I wish I were kidding. If we do the big ol’ office switcharoo then I’ll be painting the blue asap and you will for sure get a good ol’ look at it. Poor Kinsey still lives in a football field. I will be painting her room within the next month, promise. Travis lucked out and has builder beige walls.

If you’d like to see every room in the house, you can read about all the progress we’ve made on the house after a year of living here.

I’m so giddy that I finally have these floor plans! I made up one per room so whenever I’m talking about a room in the future now I can be sure to show you exactly where it’s located. Maybe it’s overkill, but I seriously love floor plans, so I figured you might enjoy looking at it as well. If not, then just let your eyes glaze over them whenever you see one.

Also, I’ve had a TON of new traffic lately, so if you are new here, Welcome to House of Hepworths, where all your wildest dreams come true!

Make sure to stop by each Wednesday evening/Thursday Morning to link up your posts to my Weekly Link Party. It’s THE PLACE to be, so don’t miss out on the fun!

If you got this far, thanks for toughing it out. Now go enter the Silhouette Cameo giveaway if you haven’t already!

And if I may, I’d like to leave you with an inspirational poster:

Bawahahaha. I kill myself sometimes, I swear.

ciao!