TV Mounting, Shelves & Blinds in Fuquay-Varina, NC

Two decisions before the drill comes out

Fuquay-Varina spans a wider range of housing than the towns closer to our base — older homes around the two historic centres, newer subdivisions on the edges. For mounting work the range matters less than two decisions people usually make in the wrong order.

How big the screen should be. And how high it should go. Both are settled by the room, and both are frequently settled by the shop instead.

Screen size and the room you actually have

The older in-town houses have living rooms of a size that was normal when they were built. Viewing distances of ten to twelve feet are common.

A useful working rule: a comfortable viewing distance sits somewhere between one and a half and two and a half times the width of the screen. Closer than that and you are moving your eyes across the picture rather than taking it in. In a twelve-foot room, that generally puts people in the sixty-five inch bracket rather than the seventy-five they were about to buy.

We are not going to refuse to mount something. But if you tell us the seating distance before you order, we will give you a straight answer about whether the size you are looking at will be comfortable, and that is worth more than being agreeable after the box is open.

The newer subdivisions on the edges of town have larger rooms and higher ceilings, and the larger sizes make sense there.

Height, and why most remounts are lowerings

A large share of the mounting corrections we do is taking a screen down and putting it back lower.

The centre of the picture wants to sit close to eye level from where you actually sit. The wall does not want that — visually, a screen looks better placed higher on the wall, and above a mantel the pull upward is stronger again because there is an obvious ledge to clear.

The result is a television positioned for the wall rather than for the sofa, and the giveaway is that everybody watching has their chin lifted.

Where a mantel forces the screen up, the answer is usually a tilting mount so the picture aims back down at the seating, or a pull-down bracket that brings it to eye level for viewing and returns it flat afterwards. Neither is an upsell. If the geometry is bad enough that neither works, we will say the fireplace is the wrong wall.

Power, in older houses

This is the practical difference between the two halves of town.

In the newer subdivisions there is usually a socket somewhere near the intended position, and often a low-voltage pass-through as well. Clean and quick.

In the older in-town homes the nearest socket is frequently at skirting level and several feet to one side. Two honest options:

• A recessed outlet behind the screen, fed properly from the existing circuit with cable rated for use inside a wall. Nothing visible at all.
• A slim painted channel down to the existing socket, which costs less and is genuinely discreet once it is the same colour as the wall.

What does not happen is a standard extension lead run inside a wall cavity. It is not rated for it, and it is a real fire risk rather than a technicality.

Cable routing

Where the wall has a usable stud cavity, power and HDMI go inside and come out at recessed plates behind the screen and behind the console. In the older houses that route may be interrupted by fire blocking, and behind masonry there is no cavity at all — we check before promising invisible cables.

Blinds, shelves and the rest

Blinds. Older frames are seldom square and rarely a stock size, so we measure at three points and decide inside versus outside mount per window. The newer subdivisions are simpler but still arrive with no window coverings at all, so the job there is usually the whole house at once.

Floating shelves and mirrors. Into framing, always. A floating shelf is a long lever and hollow-wall anchors give up under load.

Gallery walls. Laid out on the floor first and transferred with a paper template, so the arrangement is decided before anything is drilled.

Bundling at this distance

Fuquay-Varina is about twenty-five minutes from us, which is far enough that a single fifteen-minute job is poor value for you. A television, a couple of shelves, blinds in two rooms and the curtain rod nobody put up is one visit and one price. That is how this works best out here.

Getting a price

Send a photo of the wall, the screen size, the seating distance, and tell us whether the wall is drywall, plaster or masonry. If there is no socket nearby, mention it — that is the detail that most often changes the number.