There are a number of items in our sitting room that are still up in the air.  We haven’t decided what kind of book shelf we’re going to go with, what kind of decor the room will have, paint colors, etc.  We did decide, however, on the couch and mounting our old flat screen TV.  Now we’ve hanged a flat screen TV before at our neighbor’s house and went through that whole how-to procedure. Back then we used a Powerbridge available from Amazon or Best Buy to hide the HDMI cables.  Both my neighbor and I really like that product, but in this case we’re going to skip it and use another method.  The Powerbridge, in my opinion is probably a little more useful for larger TVs where you have a lot of wall real estate behind the TV to hide it.  If you have a smaller TV (in this case we have a 32″ TV), the Powerbridge may not be ideal.  Plus, the Powerbridge will run you around $80.  This method we’re going to show you will only run you around $30 or so.

Here’s what we started with.

Impressive, no?

We’ll skip the actual TV mounting part since we used the identical mount from our earlier post as we did a step by step there.

Here’s what it looked like on the wall.

Now for the fun part, hiding the cables.  We’re breaking this into at least two posts.  First, we’ll go over how to hide the audio and video cables and in another post we’ll show you how to add an outlet for the TV power.  I had to pull a permit to add the additional receptacle and I need to wait until it’s approved before I can begin that part.  We can still cut some holes in the wall though!

I start by drawing an outline of the electrical boxes behind where the TV will mount.  I draw one box for the cables and one for the power.  I’ll also draw an extra box well below the audio/video box and roughly behind where the console will be located.  By placing it directly below the top box, I won’t have to drill through any studs.  The open box in the photos is a phone jack.  I took the cover off to help locate any studs.

The box I’m using for the HDMI cables looks like this…

I use a handheld drywall saw (see this post) and a box cutter to cut out the holes for the boxes.  With the holes cut, I can pop these orange boxes right into the hole and use the screws to tighten down the tabs that hold them in place.

Once the boxes are in place, I can just fish the HDMI cable into the wall from the top down to the lower box.  The cables will come through a small screen for aesthetics.

Then both boxes will get an outlet cover.

Not too bad, right?  The orange boxes only run a couple bucks and I already owned the HDMI cable.  The decorative screens are around $7 a piece. 

 ***Full disclosure:  Lisa and I are members of Amazon.com associates.  If you purchase a Powerbridge, we get a small kickback.  If you’re interested in joining Amazon Associates, go to Affiliate-Program.Amazon.com ***