TV Mounting, Shelves & Blinds in Durham, NC

The real problem in an old house

Durham has the oldest housing stock on our list, and mounting work there runs into something that never comes up in a new subdivision: there is nowhere obvious to put the screen.

Houses in Trinity Park, Old North Durham, Watts-Hillandale and the mill streets on the east side were laid out in the 1900s to 1930s. A living room from that period typically has a fireplace on one wall, windows on two more and a doorway on the fourth. Every wall is doing something. The blank expanse a modern great room hands you does not exist.

So the first part of the job is choosing the position, and it is worth doing properly rather than defaulting to whichever wall looks emptiest.

Above the fireplace. Often the only candidate, and it comes with two questions. How high does the mantel push the screen — because a television mounted for the wall rather than for the sofa is the single most common thing we get called out to correct. And what heat actually comes off the firebox, if it is still in use.

A chimney breast return. The alcove beside the chimney is frequently overlooked and is sometimes the better answer: lower, out of the heat, and usually with a stud arrangement you can actually fix to.

A corner on an articulating arm. Not elegant, occasionally correct. In a small room with a difficult plan it can be the position that works while everything else is a compromise.

We would rather walk through this with you before drilling than fit a bracket somewhere you regret.

Fixing into plaster

The walls in these houses are frequently plaster over wood lath, and the rule is simple and non-negotiable: the mount goes into studs.

Plaster holds because it squeezed through the lath gaps and formed keys behind. An anchor driven into the plaster field is loading a brittle shell held on by those keys, and a full-motion arm loads it in the worst direction there is. Into framing, the same mount is solid for the life of the house.

Finding the studs is the slow part, because continuous lath confuses an electronic finder. It takes measuring from a known point, careful probing where the plate will cover it, and patience. Twenty minutes that people skip, and the reason some mounts come off walls with a piece of the room attached.

One useful thing about these rooms: original picture rail is usually screwed into framing, which makes it one of the few reliably solid horizontal references in the whole wall.

Cable routing, honestly

This is where older houses differ most from new ones, and where promises get made that cannot be kept.

Fire blocking. Older framing often has horizontal blocking part-way up the stud bays. A fish tape will not pass it. It is not a defect — it is how the house was built — but it means a vertical run that looks trivial from the outside may have no route at all.

Masonry. Nothing can be fished behind a solid chimney breast. That is a physical fact, not a difficulty level.

Balloon-framed sections. Some of these houses have long uninterrupted stud bays between floors, which is occasionally an advantage and occasionally a fire-safety consideration in its own right. Either way it changes the plan.

We check the route before quoting the hidden-cable version. Where there is one, the cable goes inside the wall and comes out at recessed plates. Where there is not, the options are a slim painted channel, a surface raceway, or moving the equipment closer so the run is short and discreet. You get told which one your house gives you before we start, not after.

South Durham and Woodcroft

The newer end of the city is a different service. Modern drywall, regular framing, often structured wiring already run back to a panel in a closet with a blank plate sitting behind the likely television position. Where that exists we use it, and the job is quick and clean.

Blinds and shelving

Blinds in older Durham houses are rarely a stock size and the frames are seldom square, so we measure at three points and decide inside or outside mount per window based on the frame depth you have.

Floating shelves and heavy mirrors go into framing without exception. A floating shelf is a long lever arm and an anchor in plaster will pull out, usually shortly after the shelf gets loaded.

Gallery walls get laid out on the floor and transferred with a template — fewer holes, which matters more in plaster than in drywall.

Rental turnovers

Durham has a lot of let housing and turnover punch lists are straightforward work. Booked as one visit they cost considerably less than a string of separate call-outs. Send the whole list.

Getting a price

Send a photo of the room showing all four walls if you can, the screen size, and tell us whether the walls are plaster or drywall. About thirty-five minutes from us, comparable to the far side of Raleigh, and no travel surcharge.