Before: The Beast
We’ve been saying for months that we’d like to get a new television. The idea was purely for upgrade’s sake–our four-year-old JVC 27″ worked just fine. But it weighed in at 40 pounds and measured two feet deep, so abandoning it in favor of a sleeker, thinner model was just too tempting (even though we agreed having an earthquake-proof television isn’t such a bad thing). So July 4th weekend, we headed over to Video Only on Van Ness, then ended up at Best Buy down in the Mission, and came home with Best Buy’s store-brand 32″ LCD TV, the Insignia. We paid barely more for it than we did for the JVC when we bought it, and though the picture isn’t as clear as the CRT TV was, it has all the other amenities we’d hoped for: no digital antenna box necessary, easily hooked up, and best of all, hangable.
After two weeks of experiments, we’re still in progress (we’d like to get something to cover up the tangle of wires at the top) but our home entertainment system has been lifted off the floor, installed into shelves, and will be out of prying hands’ reach for at least another two years. Most important, though, is that we gained a full eight square feet of floor space in one of the more visible areas of the living room! (And our old JVC found a very good home, as well.)
Since the TV mounting arms cost from $80 (Video Only) to $150 (Best Buy, my ass), RocketMan got out his toolbelt and began sifting through the various planks of wood we have laying around the apartment. Wainscoting has been a much-used feature in our apartment—holding candles, clocks, Christmas ornaments, and at one point, an art installation of milk cartons— so he put it to work again. It’s as simple a setup as you can imagine: a plank of wood, strong hooks, and metal straps screwed into the back of the television. And it cost us nothing, as we had all that stuff around (we’re guessing it would cost in the range of $15-20 if you bought everything at the hardware store). And, yes, we performed our usual stress tests: shaking it, swinging it, and pulling on it, and it passed. Don’t know how it’ll fare if a 40-lb person decides to hang like a monkey from it, but I doubt even the factory-produced mounting arms are tested for that.
After: The Beauty
Enter shelving: RM’s new favorite method, the metal spine-and-bracket method, worked brilliantly, and the spine even supports the unit’s power strip out of sight, behind the TV; with all the wires running along the wainscoting and molding, no wires come close to the floor, and most are hidden from sight. FYI, the reason the cords run along the wainscoting into the next room is simple: between our sun room and living room, we have exactly three two-cord outlets. Those outlets power the entertainment system, computer and lighting setup. Don’t worry, I dry my hair in the bathroom’s one outlet. Gotta love prewar buildings!
The entire unit (not counting the television, of course) cost about $50, although I don’t have a full itemized list since so much of the wood and pieces were pirated from other projects. Much better than the $80-plus-$200 installation fee the Video Only guy was trying to charge us. And one of the bonuses of building the stuff yourself? If it breaks, replacement is much cheaper. Especially if you pay for the extended four-year warranty on the TV, as we did.
