DISCLAIMER:
I am not an electrician or a carpenter. These are not complete instructions, but merely a guide to help you do it yourself. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK.
If you know how to use a drill and a tape measure, this is for you. If not, ask your Mommy to hire professionals to do this lol.
1st off, you don't need to buy really expensive stuff, I bought most of my stuff at www.monoprice.com
Things you need to know before you start.
TV Mounts:
Wall-mount for the said TV. A basic slim mount for my 46in Samsung LCD was about $19 from Monoprice, and it's really well built kit.
Make sure that the mount will hold the weight of your TV. Plasmas are usually heavier than the same size LCD TV. I wanted to have my TV as close to the wall as possible so I chose a the slim mount. If you get the slim mount, you may need to get a special cutout box to run your cables through because the tv is going to be so close to the wall.
AV Cables.
This is where you need to plan ahead. The most important part about cables is that they need to be CL2-Rated to be used inside the wall. You don't want your house to go up in flames and then get denied by the insurance company because you broke the electrical code. Don't try to find Fiber Toslink cables CL2 rated, CL2 rating is for low-voltage wiring, and there's no voltage in fiberoptics, it's just light. Also see my note about running power to the TV.
You need to make sure you get the right cables and think about expansion for the future, you really don't want to have to take down your 50-pound tv when you need to add a cable. Most new high-definition devices use HDMI, I only ran 1 HDMI cable to the TV because my AV Receive does HDMI switching, this is much easier then running more cables. Also, cables at monoprice are so cheap that you can actually run every type of cable to the tv just in case, I ran my coax for the antenna, HDMI, Component for SD devices, VGA for my laptop, and Toslink for Dolby Sound for the over-the-air broadcasting.
Powering the TV: RUNNING THE TV'S POWER CORD INSIDE THE WALL IS AGAINST THE CODE!!! Here are 2 ways to power your TV:
1. Call an electrician and have him install a power otlet behind the TV. But this takes away from the DIY part of this, and it's not as easy to surge protect your TV that way.
2. Order a kit from www.powerbridgesolution.com and do it yourself. This way you can plug the TV into a nice power purifier or a beefy surge protector.
Ok, Let's get started.
1. After you figured out where you want your TV to hang, mount the brackets to the back of your TV. This way you can dry fit the TV mount to the back of the TV and measure out how far from the sides and top it will be, that way you can calculate where on the wall you will mount it.
2. Find the studs in the wall, if this was the perfect wall you would have 2 studs perfecly spaced out where the mount goes, but it's not like that lol. Unless you're pushing the weight limits of the TV mount, you can mount it a little off center of the studs for your TV to be where you want it.
3. Predrill the holes in the studs. My mount came with pretty big lag bolts, and they would have split the stud if I didn't predrill them.
4. Loosely tighten the backplate of the mount to the wall. Use a level to make sure that it's level. Mine has slots instead of holes so you could adjust the mount if you didn't predrill perfectly.
5. Tighten the backplate to the wall and test to make sure that it's secure. My mount is rated to 165 pounds I believe, I weigh 145, and I was able to do a pull up by grabbing onto the top of the plate, I wasn't about to hang my expensive TV on it without properly testing it lol
6. Test hang your TV. Remove the TV stand from the bottom of the TV, I actually set the TV edges on 2 dining chairs that were against the wall and then leaned the TV against the back of the chairs. This gave me access to the bottom of the TV to remove the stand without having someone to hold the TV while I remove all the screws. However my chairs are padded on the back and the bottom, so if yours aren't you can scratch the TV. If you have a TV mount that swings out, you could leave the TV on for the rest of the process, but if it doesn't, you'll have to take it down to run the wiring.
7. If you have a slim mount like me and some really thick cables that don't want to bend much, you'll need one of these:
its about $20 from Home Depot. Measure out exaclty where the connector panel is on the back of the TV you want this rouch-in box to go right behind it.
8. Cut the drywall where you want the recessed box to go.
Push the recessed box in, and tighten the screws, yes, it's that simple.
(Yes, in the picture my power outlet is already installed. NO, I didn't skip a step on installing that, I will explain installing power in a later step)
9. Where my cables are going to come out of the wall behind the entertainment cabinet, I used one of these mounted to a low-voltage bracket.
1-Gang Recessed Low Voltage Cable Wall Plate - White If you have a lot of cables you cal also get the 2-gang version.
I had to cut it a little because it didn't give me much clearance when used with the Carlon Low-Voltage brackets:
10. Now that you have the box behind the TV installed and the low-voltage outlet at the bottom, you can run your signal cables.
If you had an electrician install the power, skip to step 14.
11. The powerbridge solution kit comes with 2 OLD WORK electrical boxes, templates, power outlet and inlet, and an extension cord. YOU WILL NEED TO BUY YOUR OWN ROMEX. I got the standard 10-amp romex. Using the templates I cut the holes and installed the electrical boxes. HINT: try to keep some distance between your signal cables and your power cables, and don't cross paths.
12. Run your romex between the 2 electrical boxes.
13. Install the Outlet and Inlet. Remember, the inlet is not powered, it get's power through the provided extension cord that is plugged into an existing power source.
Here you can see the extension cord from the Inlet being plugged into a power strip:
14. Connect the cables and hang the TV, you will need 2 or more people to do this. 1 or 2 people to lift the TV (depending on how heavy it is), and another person to help guide the cables back into the wall so they don't get snagged.
Finished:
I may do another write up on how to run speaker wire in the walls and through the attic.
