Wires, What Wires?

More progress on the family room.  Let me recap.  First, we got rid of the big, huge TV.  For the past 2 years, the TV wall looked like this.

After hanging the flat screen, it looked like this.  Some lovely wires and a table I put there temporarily to hold the cable box.

And today, it looks like this:

Gosh, my pictures suck!  Anyway, it really looks a ton better.  Really. 

So, here is what we did.  1.  Hid the wires.  2.  Purchased craigslist dresser.  3.  Painted dresser a light gold color.  I still have to add some stuff accessories to the console and we're still working through technical difficulties with the TV but its coming along.

Here is how we did it. 

Hiding the wires.  I read a FABULOUS tutorial on how to hide the flatscreen wires in the wall here.  This tutorial gave me the courage to at least try to do this.  Then I had to convince Alex to help me try.  Anyway.  Here is my version of a tutorial, or at least what we did.

Find a space on the wall between the studs and cut 2 holes with a drywall saw, one behind the TV and one low enough to be covered by the console.

Drop a heavy cord through the top hole and hold the top of the rope while pulling through the bottom hole.  So the rope ends are showing through both the top and bottom holes.

Tie your first wire onto the end of the rope at the bottom hole and pull through.  Untie the cord and drop the rope again to get the next wire.

It wasn't so bad, and looks so much better without 3 heavy black wires hanging out of the TV.  Here are the problems we had:

*  Our 6 foot cable wires weren't long enough to go through both holes and then back up to plug into the cable box.  I ended up cutting a second lower hole that was still low enough to be hidden by the console.  I have to patch the original bottom hole you see in these pictures.  Another option would be buying a longer cable wire.

*  Plugging the power cord in to the rear of the TV after hanging the TV on the wall wasn't easy.  Alex had to hold the TV out while it was partially hanging on the wall mount while I was trying to quickly find the plug with only my hands.

*  Threading the 3rd wire through the small hole was tough because of the first 2 wires taking up most of the room.

Another shot of the wireless flat screen:

I'll talk about the console in a follow-up post.

---Adrienne