First "Big" Project

As everyone knows or can guess, there are plenty of projects that come with buying a house. The trickiest part is deciding where to start. We went with the living room. We imagine that we're going to spend the most time here, so we wanted to make it look the best first. Even though there are still a couple of boxes that still need to be unpacked, we're at a pretty good spot with the room. There's always going to be more to do, but for now, the painting is done and we have a place to relax. Since Meg took care of the painting, I took care the the TV and the electronics. I've always wanted to have the TV mounted on the wall, but when you live in an apartment, that isn't very realistic. Now that we own our house, things can look the way we want. Onto the first project that involved power tools.

We were lucky enough to get an unused TV mount from Meg's dad. He never had a chance to use it and decided it would be better on a wall than in  box. (Thank you!) 

It didn't really involve much or power tools, just a drill and some ratcheting wrenches. A stud finder would have been great, but a few holes in the wall don't look too bad, the mount covers them. That's just one of the tricky parts of plaster walls, it's hard to know when you actually hit the stud. Normally you can bang on the wall and where the sound is the highest pitch, that's where the stud is. Not so much with plaster. I ended up putting a hole in the wall and searching with a hanger. Not the best option, but I was getting tired.

After I finally got the wall mount on, I was able to put the TV up and take off the base. Next came the electronics. We have more video games and systems than a married couple without kids probably should, but it keeps me entertained when Meg has to go away for work. There were wires for the cable box, four different game systems, a surround sound speaker system and I didn't even hook up the computer to the TV yet. (Great for listening to Pandora through the TV) 

A few zip ties later and we were set. I made sure the wires didn't pinch in the mount and everything works pretty well and looks great. Now if I could only hide all the electronics in that closet....