Home Improvement Project - Filling in the TV Nook

One of the things Kevin and I really liked about each other when we first met was our collective apathy for all things TV.  We had both given up cable years ago in favor of a cheaper, less distracting lifestyle.  In our respective homes, we both had just the one TV – the big, old, giant box of a television set that was only good for whatever it could pick up with rabbit ears.  I had found my soul mate.  Together we secretly scoffed at our friends, those suckers who were spending who-knows-what on their utility bill to keep their behemoth sets running and who were slaves to the cable/satellite companies that were charging outrageous premiums for just-like-being-there quality pictures.  We were self-righteous, patting ourselves on the back for choosing to be above the fray.  Then, one day, we wandered into a Best Buy.

I don’t even know why we were there and I’m not exactly sure how it all happened, but before we could say “let’s stimulate the economy with a big ticket item purchase,” we came out of a big box store loaded down with a pretty fabulous flat-panel, 1080i resolution (I have no idea what that even means), LG HD TV (there are waaay too many acronyms here).  We were pretty smitten from the start.  Why had we denied ourselves this luxury for so long?  Turns out, we were the schmucks who had refused to enter the 21^st century.  And the picture quality!  It really is Just Like Being There!

It's just weird.

 However, one of the things we never even had to consider became an issue right away when we brought our new set home – The TV Nook.  The TV Nook is a late 20^th-/early 21^st -century design element that’s found in most of the homes in our neighborhood.  The TV Nook, a one-time selling point, is a deep hole with cable and electrical outlets positioned on the back wall, usually set over the mantle, that’s meant as a tidy home for your big ol’ boxy TV set.  At the time of its advent, it really wasn’t a bad idea:  the developer had kindly eliminated the need for a separate piece of furniture to house your TV and created a functional space over the fireplace in case you were lacking in the “pretty art that could hang over the mantle” department.  But as more people ditch their boxy TVs in favor of flat-panel sets, the TV Nook is becoming obsolete for two reasons:  1.) it restricts the size of your new flat-panel TV purchase, and 2.) if your TV does fit, the space between the back of your set and the back wall just looks weird.

While our TV did fit into the nook, it just didn’t look at home there.  Enter Kevin, the Man Who Knows How To Do Stuff.  He took a good, hard look at the nook and decided he was up for the job of enclosing the space and mounting our new TV on the wall just above the fireplace.  And he was!  And he did!  And thus, the first big project that he tackled in our new house began.



Let's do this.

Kevin dropped the mantle down about six inches...

Frame it up...

Patch it up...

Paint it up...

Whew!  Just in time for 30 Rock!

Voila!


There were four big components here:  1.) Lower the mantle a bit (we had already agreed the TV was positioned too high on the wall - we were straining our necks looking at the blasted thing); 2.) Build out a support frame for hanging the new TV, cover it with drywall, and install a TV bracket (buying the bracket was the first order of business since Kevin needed to know how and where it would be attached to the wall, thus dictating where the framing would be installed); 3.)  Bring the cable and electrical outlets forward to the newly installed wall so they can be accessed easily; and 4.) Sand, prime, paint, finish and clean-up.  Like the staircase project I’ve written about before, this isn’t the kind of thing a novice could tackle; however, it wasn’t nearly as time-consuming.  I think Kevin took about a week to knock this out.

And the big, exciting news?  This li’l project cost just under $50!  If you’re not so DIY inclined, you can certainly call in a contractor for this one.  I know of a few that do a lot of work on Mud Island who’ve added the ol’ Fill in the TV Nook project to their repertoire.  You should expect to pay between $400 and $500 for their services.  Either way you do it, it’s a nice way to update your house a bit.  I’ve seen some creative cover-ups (propping an oversized painting over the hole, using the space for board game storage, shoving an over-sized silk floral arrangement into the nook), but eliminating the problem instead of working around it is the cleanest, most attractive route.

Before

Better!



I guess I do need to offer this disclaimer, too:  With all the components that a TV can require these days (the receiver, the surround sound, the DVD player, the cable/satellite box, the gaming station, etc.) a lot of folks are left wondering where all that is gonna go.  We were pretty lucky in that respect – the previous owner had already fashioned an exterior route for the cables to run from the components to the TV set, so we didn’t have to do the ol’ tuck-and-tape trick with the wiring and were free to set the components in a tower off to the side.  I didn’t ask for quotes, but if you get a contractor to come and help you with this one, it might be worth asking about rigging some behind-the-wall wiring.  The devil’s in the details and future prospective buyers will appreciate those kinds of touches.

Oh, and Kevin and me?  Well, we’re not so self-righteous these days.  We totally fell for the hype and now we subscribe to an HD satellite package with, like, a billion channels; we DVR like it’s a job; and you can catch us most nights staring up, open-mouthed and barely blinking, at our sleek, glossy, flat-panel TV.  And we couldn’t be happier.