Mounting a TV

I got a 32 inch tv from my lovely wife for my birthday. It’s a tv just for my office.

Since the room isn’t that big, my first thought was that I should mount the tv. Now I don’t know anything about mounting anything. I’ve always heard that you should hang things on studs but I’ve never intentionally done anything like that. I’m sure I’ve hit a stud on accident before when hanging a picture or something but I’ve never hung anything very heavy.

I go to Fry’s the first time to get a mount and I have no idea what I should buy. It’s not like LG had a mount there that was exactly compatible to my tv. Most mounts would say up to what screen size it could hold and it would just say fits most brands. I checked one of the packages and it showed this guy using a drill into a stud and it just seemed like a lot of hastle so I said, forget it, and headed home. The mounts were also kind of expensive ranging from 40-100 dollars.

I go home and put the tv on a stand but then imagine how much nicer it would be if it were perched a little higher and mounted. So the next week I go back to Fry’s determined to just figure this out. A lot of things I’ve learned as a home owner over the year seemed mystical in the beginning until I actually tried to do it then it became easy. Some things also stayed hard like painting numbers on my curb.

So I picked a mount that was compatible up to a 32” flat panel.

The first thing I do is use the stud finder to find the stud. Strangely enough,…

… it showed the edges of the stud to only be about 2 inches or less wide. I wondered if I was doing something wrong. I always imagined a stud to be like 4 inches wide. It turns out a stud is turned where the 2 inch side is facing you. That’s weird how that’s never occurred to me.

It seemed strange to drill something into a piece of wood only 2 inches wide and expect it to hold something heavy. Ward tells me he’s drilled a chin up bar into a stud before and had 2 or 3 people hang on it. Interesting. If two or three people could hang on a chin up bar that juts out of a wall surely it could handle a 50 inch tv.

The next step is using a drill to create a “pilot hole.” This is the guide hole you make with a drill bit before you screw the wood screws in. This was the most frustrating part. The instructions told me to use a 1/8 drill bit. If you put the drill bit next to the #14 screw that comes in the package, it is significantly thinner. But I followed the instructions anyway and drill my pilot hole and then I tried to drill the screw in. The screw stops dead in it’s track once I get past dry wall and into the stud. I try turning the screw manually and using the drill and nothing works. At first I think that my drill is too weak.

I go online to WikiHelp to some generic instructions on how to mount a tv and it says for #14 screws to use a much larger 5/16 drill bit. After about a million tries of drilling a hole, trying to put the screw in, taking the screw out, and drilling the hole deeper, I finally get the screws in the wall. I couldn’t use the drill to get the screw in the very deep. I had to use two hands with a regular screw driver to get the screws in the wall flush. Once you do this, you realize just solid mounting into a stud is. I guess when you build a house with all these studs, the wood better be strong and super reinforced.

So all this takes like 2 hours and I haven’t even really made sure that this kit fits my tv. I’m not even sure I can get those screws out at this point. At least it won’t be easy. Thank god the VESA adapter plate that comes with the kit fits my tv. I had no idea that my tv was even VESA compatible.

So as much as I was worried that the screws in the wall would hold the tv, I’m actually more worried that the part where the adapter plate connects to the tv and where the adapter plate connects to the main part of the mount.

My tv comes with four screw holes in its back. They’re not very large or very deep screw holes but they’re made for mounts. The part where the adapter plate connects to the mount uses even shorter screws because it’s only connecting two pieces of not so thick metal. But hell, I’m no engineer so I press forward.

I get all that done and attach the tv to the wall and it feels solid. Now the last step is to tighten the adapter screw on the mount part in the wall. I can’t reach the damn thing because the tv is too firm to the wall. Luckily I bought a tilt adapter that also swivels and I manage to turn the tv almost upside down to reach the final screw.

I actually wish I bought an adapter with an arm because it’s really hard to get to the back of the tv. There’s enough space to put cables in the back but it’s hard to get back there now. I can take the tv off the wall but that’s no easy chore at this point since that final tightener screw is so hard to get to.

One of the positive things about mounting a tv is that it’s really really hard to steal it now. Getting that tv off the wall without damaging it is a task that would take a robber a lot more time than he might want to devote.

Of course there are wires now hanging down. On the WikiHelp video they basically just cut a square out of the drywall and feed it somewhere else where there’s another hole cut out. I don’t think it looks that bad so I may just save that until I get the direct tv guy back to drop some cables.

One of the things I’m happy about in this ordeal is i feel like I can mount anything heavy in my house at any time now.

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