Karl Champley: Hi! I'm Karl Champley, and welcome to Wasted Spaces.
Male Speaker: On this special online edition of our show, we'll relocate these piles of books, paper and clutter into a beautiful building system with shelves that slide away to reveal a spectacular entertainment center.
This project is not incredibly difficult, but knowing how to operate a chop store and basic carpentry skills are helpful. Allow about 15 to 25 hours to complete this project. In this case, the space we're going to use is a blank wall in this empty living room. It's just screaming for some built-in shelves complete with a sliding track system that will hide the Plasma Television screen and video game console we're putting behind it. While we're at it, we'll mount the TV so that all the cabling is completely concealed behind the wall.
To do that, we'll build two bookshelves out of birch plywood and stain them to match the rest of the wood in the house. Those shelves will be mounted to the wall. Then we'll build two more shelves. These might be as deep, we'll mount them using a sliding track system that will allow them to roll from side to side. This will create a sliding wall of storage.
There are printable instructions to this project available right here on DIYNetwork.com. Our first step is to decide where to mount the television on the wall. Then we can build our shelves around it. All televisions come with mounting hardware instructions. But it's up to us to determine where we want it.
Karl Champley: I've taken this off the back of the television set, and this is mounted to the center of the screen. So you can imagine, wherever this is going to be, that's going to be the center of the screen.
Carol: That's the center.
Male Speaker: Flat Screen TVs are not exactly cheap, and having them crashed to the floor would be a very bad thing. So we'll be sure to mount this bracket into the stud behind the wall.
Karl Champley: Because studs are spaced at 16 inches apart, so there is a stud that runs down here, so I've measured in 16, and almost I've measured in this side as well.
Carol: So you want 16 on both sides?
Karl Champley: Correct.
Carol: Okay.
Karl Champley: So our center is there, but if I've got your approval, I'm going to move it just over this little bit further.
Carol: You've got my approval.
Karl Champley: Okay. Good!
Male Speaker: We determine the height of the TV and use the level to transfer our lowest stud location and mark up.
Karl Champley: Now, this is really important, because I don't want that $2,000 television set falling down.
Carol: No, no, we don't.
Karl Champley: So, that's why it is important that we go and we anchor into the stud.
Carol: Correct.
Karl Champley: If we go into the drywall, it's just not going to be sufficient, okay. So we're going to get through the drywall, through the stud, and that's going to keep it up.
Carol: What kind of anchors do we use?
Karl Champley: In this one, we've got two, but the two are very long ones, so that's going to be sufficient to keep it up there. So, these are the fittings that we've got, and you can see the screws are relatively long. We're going through there, through the drywall, and it will slide up like that.
Carol: Slide in it.
Karl Champley: Yeah. So we actually put the screws in first, keep the bracket over, and then just slide it up.
Carol: Then you tighten up.
Karl Champley: Absolutely.
Male Speaker: With the hanging screws in place, we put the bracket on the TV. Do a dry fit to make sure of the placement. Before we start wiring, we need to bring the cable on in from outside.
Karl Champley: When we come back, I'm going to teach Carol how to put all of Greg's toys and things in one place that they can both live with. Wasted Spaces will be right back.
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