I want to do something different than the typical wall mount with a bunch of wires hanging down to a little stand or something with the related TV watching equipment.

I installed Google Sketchup and whipped up a concept. Does anyone have any ideas on improvement? Once I've settled on something, where might I find someone to build it reasonably cheaply in the Wilmington area? (I don't have the tools.)

The concept is I want to mount my TV in my bedroom. Currently the TV is at the foot of my bed on a desk and I want to hang it on the wall that desk sits against and get rid of the desk.

- This would be hung by a french cleat on the back.
- The top shelf has a false back to make a compartment to hide my surge protector, cables, ethernet switch.
- The top shelf would be for my Blu-Ray player and media player.
- The bottom would be for a stereo receiver. (I don't have one now but likely will at some point.)
- The left and right compartments would be for 2 shelf speakers.
- Center speaker could be mounted to the underside.

The TV would either sit on top of this or be mounted to the wall just above it (with a raceway enclosing the cables) depending on how much it weighs. The hole in the top is for running cables. More holes (not shown) would connect the side shelves and the bottom shelf to the concealed cable management region.

9/16/2011 1:57:10 PM

I would consider placing the two vertical pieces of wood on the ends between the bottom and top pieces rather than outside. So that looking strait down from the top you can only see the top piece.

9/16/2011 4:56:30 PM

I'd just leave those pieces out.

9/16/2011 5:28:32 PM

They are there to hide the French cleat. If you omit them completely, it will look like the section view from the side, which looks incomplete.

I would more than likely make the back/French cleat part a little narrower than the top and bottom shelves so that the side walls can be cut to fit between them and still extend to cover the cleat in the back.

This is my first attempt at using Sketchup, so I'm not quite sure how to fix it in the drawing.

I would assume any cabinet maker could build and install this within a day. Does that sound reasonable?

9/16/2011 7:04:57 PM

Why not just screw the whole thing to studs, and ignore the cleat hanging?

9/16/2011 7:53:11 PM

Because then the thing would have several columns of visible screws aligned with the studs. With the cleat the screws are naturally hidden regardless of how the studs align with the geometry of the fixture. If it weren't going to hold much weight I could put wall anchors in hidden locations, but that's not the case. This way I can move it as well without putting more holes in it or even modifying it at all. Just take it down, move the cleat, and hang it back up.

The finished look is a lot cleaner without really any additional effort.

9/16/2011 9:15:37 PM

Just scotch it to the wall.

9/16/2011 10:43:44 PM