TV mounting

A television on a wall looks like a twenty minute job, and sometimes it is. The part people underestimate is the wall. Our trim carpentry crew handles TV mounting as part of the Wright’s Repairs work list. We find the framing before we drill, bolt into solid wood, and run the cable inside the wall so nothing hangs down the front of the room.

Almost every failure we get called to fix started the same way. Somebody found one stud, bolted one side of the plate into it, and put the other two lag bolts into a plastic anchor in half inch drywall. It held for a year. Then somebody pulled the screen sideways to see it from the kitchen. If the rest of the punch list needs handling in the same visit, the Wright’s Repairs division is built for that afternoon.

What actually holds a television on the wall

The mount is almost never what breaks. Steel plate, welded arms and grade eight hardware are far stronger than anything they are screwed to. What breaks is the connection between the plate and the framing, or the framing and the plaster. The whole job is about what sits behind the finished surface, which is why we open by asking what year the house was built.

Bolt patterns and the studs you actually have

Mount plates are drilled on a fixed pattern. Framing sits on sixteen inch centers when the framer was having a good day. The two do not always line up, and a plate reaching only one stud is the most common thing we walk into. The answer is not longer screws. It is a horizontal backer, solid stock let into the wall or fastened across two or three studs, giving the plate wood to bite anywhere along its width.

On a stud wall we use lag bolts long enough to seat a full inch and a half into framing after the finish layer and any backer. We pre drill. Lag screws driven dry into old fir split the stud along the grain, and you never see it, because it happens inside the wall where nothing tells you until the day it lets go.

What the box does not tell you

The hardware bag shipped with a mount is packed for drywall over new framing. It assumes studs sit where the instructions say they do. It holds no fastener appropriate for plaster, none for brick, none for steel framing. When we bring our own hardware, it is because the bag in the box is wrong for your wall, not because we are upselling a screw.

Plaster and lath in an older Ann Arbor bungalow

The nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties bungalows around Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti are lath and plaster, and they behave nothing like drywall. The finish coat is hard and brittle. The brown coat under it is sandy. The lath is thin wood strip nailed across the studs, and the plaster keys that squeeze between those strips are what holds the whole wall up. A drill bit that wanders chips out a hole the size of a fist and takes the keys with it.

We find studs with a pin probe rather than a density scanner, because a scanner reads the lath and lies to you. We drill the plaster slowly with a masonry bit for a clean entry, then switch to a wood bit for the stud. If the plaster at a mounting point is already drummy, we say so before bolting into it. Plaster and drywall patching is the same crew, so that becomes a decision on the spot rather than a second appointment.

Older houses bring one more rule. If the house predates nineteen seventy eight and the work disturbs painted surfaces, federal rules require a certified firm to follow specific lead safe work practices. We will tell you where that applies to your wall. We do not claim that certification ourselves. For houses on the historic side, our Craftsman era restoration work meets the same walls at larger scale.

Drywall and predictable framing in a newer colonial

A nineteen nineties colonial in Canton or Plymouth is an easier wall and a more deceptive one. Framing is regular, drywall is half inch, the stud finder is usually right. Everything feels solid, so people trust toggle anchors far past what toggles are good for. A toggle in drywall can carry a shelf. It cannot carry a screen plus an arm that swings out two feet and gets leaned on.

Newer walls hide more than they let on. Insulation in an interior wall means somebody wanted sound control, and it fights a cable pull. Plumbing vents run up interior walls, often right where the bump out wants a television. A probe and a look in the basement below tells us what is in the cavity. The same check shows up on our kitchen fix list whenever a cabinet comes off a wall.

Brick, stone and the wall above a firebox

Above the fireplace is the most requested location and the one we push back on most. Mounting into brick or stone is straightforward. Sleeve anchors set into solid brick, not into the mortar joint, because mortar is weaker and a joint that looks fine can be soft a half inch in. Masonry dust travels, so we mask and vacuum as we drill.

The real question above a working firebox is heat. Electronics are rated for a narrow ambient range, and the space directly above a fireplace opening can run well past it during a long burn. A mantel with a deep projection helps. A mount that pulls down to eye level when you watch, then sits flat when you do not, helps more. If the answer is that your screen should not live over that firebox at all, we will say so and point at a different wall.

Stone veneer adds a wrinkle. Some of it is thin cultured stone over sheathing, which carries almost nothing. We find the framing behind it and drill through to the stud rather than trusting the face. That distinction also comes up in our exterior siding work, where the finish layer and the structure underneath get confused just as often.

Running the cable inside the wall

The visible bundle of black cable running down to a console is what most people actually called about. We cut a pair of openings, one behind the screen and one behind the console, fish the cables through the cavity, and finish both with a brush plate or a recessed box that keeps the plug from bending against the wall.

Cable choice matters more than people expect. In wall runs should be rated for in wall use, and the run should be long enough to allow the arm to extend fully without a cable coming taut behind the plate. We leave service loops at both ends so a future replacement pulls through instead of requiring another hole. The full version of this, with sources and speakers and a control layer, sits in our smart home installation package, and cameras or door sensors belong with home automation and security rather than with a screen bracket.

Where our work stops and a licensed electrician starts

This boundary is worth stating plainly, because a lot of handyman outfits blur it. Running low voltage cable inside a wall, signal cable and speaker wire, is our work. Adding a receptacle behind the television is not. That is line voltage, a new branch circuit or an extension of one, and it goes to a licensed electrician. We will not fish an extension cord inside a wall to get around it, and anyone who offers to has just built a hazard into your house.

The same line applies to anything that touches a panel, any correction of ungrounded two wire circuits in an older house, and any aluminum branch wiring. We can coordinate with an electrician so the wall opens once instead of twice, then patch and paint behind them. Our fixture swap and replacement service follows the identical rule, and our small plumbing repairs stop at the same kind of line on the water side.

Fire blocking and what stops a cable mid wall

Fish tape that stops dead about waist height usually found a fire block, a horizontal piece of framing installed to slow the spread of flame inside a stud bay. It is doing a job. Drilling through it is sometimes acceptable and sometimes not, depending on the assembly and where the wall sits in the house, and a garage wall or a wall between units is a different question than an interior partition.

We route around it where we can, using an adjacent bay or dropping into a basement ceiling and back up. If the only route means cutting framing, we stop and treat it as a structural question rather than guessing. Old houses hide bracing, pipes and abandoned knob and tube in the same cavity. That is the honest reason a cable run sometimes takes longer than the mounting.

Articulating arms and the load they create

A flat plate mount puts weight straight down against the wall. An articulating arm changes the geometry. Extend it and the screen acts through a lever, so the top lag bolts get pulled straight out of the stud while the bottom ones are pushed in. The force at that top fastener is a multiple of what the screen weighs, and it spikes every time somebody swings the arm with one hand.

That is why an arm mount raises the standard for what it is bolted into. Two studs, full depth bites, and a backer if the pattern will not reach. On plaster we add a plywood mounting field behind the finish surface when the situation calls for it, then blend the patch. If you want the screen to swing toward a desk as well as a couch, that is a layout question, and it belongs in the same conversation as a home office setup visit.

Height, glare and the seat you actually use

People hang televisions too high for the same reason they hang art too high. The wall looks empty above, so the eye wants to fill it. Sit in the seat you watch from, look straight ahead, and the center of the screen belongs near that line. Over a mantel, a tilting or pull down mount recovers most of the angle.

Glare is the other half. A screen opposite a west facing window in a Michigan winter, when the sun sits low by three in the afternoon, is unwatchable no matter how good the panel is. We will point at the other wall before we drill, the same way we do when hanging art and mirrors.

What we leave behind when we go

A clean job means the cardboard is in our truck, the dust is out of the carpet, and old anchor holes are patched rather than hidden behind the screen. The spare brackets, the manual and the leftover fasteners stay with you in one labeled bag, because the next person to take that screen down will want them.

• Framing located and marked, with the plate bolted into solid wood or a backer.
• Cable run inside the wall, terminated at brush plates or recessed boxes at both ends.
• Screen leveled with a torpedo level and checked against the ceiling line as well as the bubble.
• Old anchor holes filled, sanded and ready for touch up paint.
• A written one year workmanship warranty on what we installed.

If the room is also getting painted, the patch work sequences better with our interior repainting service right after us rather than the week before.

How a TV mounting visit runs

You call the office during business hours, Monday through Friday, eight to four. We do not run emergency or same day calls. What we offer instead is a next business day promise on small work, which is a schedule we can actually keep because the Repairs crews are not being pulled off a design build site. You can read the sequence in detail on our project process page.

On site we confirm the wall type, probe for framing, agree on the height with you sitting in the chair, and only then drill. Most single screen jobs finish in a morning. A masonry install with a long cable route takes longer, and we say so before we start rather than after. Pairing it with a punch list is usually the better use of the visit, which is what the move in repair package exists for.

Mounting televisions across Southeast Michigan

Wright’s Renovations works out of Platt Road in Ypsilanti, which puts most of Washtenaw County inside a short drive. In Ann Arbor the wall is usually plaster and the answer usually involves a backer. In Canton and Plymouth the framing is regular enough that the job turns on the cable route instead.

Farther out we cover Novi and Royal Oak, where the older neighborhoods hide the same plaster and the newer subdivisions do not, plus Saline and Monroe. If you are in Washtenaw, Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, Livingston or Monroe county, we come to you. Builder license number 262100679, and our crews carry it on the truck.

Get the screen on the wall the right way

You can see the finish standard we hold ourselves to when you View our Portfolio, which covers everything from a single wall to a whole first floor. When you are ready to get a television bolted into real framing with the cable out of sight, contact us now for a free quote and we will get you on the schedule for the next business day. Contracting done Wright.