Crumbling Bricks

I took a call last week from a gentleman who wanted his 50" LCD screen hung on a chimney breast. Normally this is a very simple job, in fact installing LCD TVs is one of our most common tasks. But in this case the customer had a cantilever style bracket and he lived in Clapham. Both of these facts set alarm bells ringing.

The cantilever style brackets undergo allot more bending and twisting forces than a flat or tilting bracket would ever have to deal with. These forces are transferred to the wall and fixings. Therefore to hang an LCD TV of that size on the bracket he had there would have to be no doubt to the structural integrity of the walls.

It is however our experience of many years of hanging pictures, LCDs and curtain rails that it is often the case that the old brick that holds up our homes simply crumble away when drilled into. This is particularly true for houses in the Clapham area of London and was the case with this customers chimney breast.

Hanging LCD Screens

Our London handymen have mastered the hanging of LCD screens to any wall, plasterboard, masonry or chimney breast. But we get loads of requests to conceal the TV and accessory cables behind the wall. But this part of the job is far more complicated and time consuming than customers often realise.

Plasterboard is put up on vertical timber or metal studs, which block the horizontal route for cables behind the plasterboard. This means the only simple route to follow is vertically between two studs. The most common installation on plasterboard involves cutting a 80mm hole behind the screen and a second hole just above the skirting board. The cables are pushed through the hole behind the screen and exit above the skirting board. They are then routed to the plug socket and accessory along the skirting board.

On disused chimney breasts we cut a 80mm hole into the brickwork behind the screen and an exit hole on the side of the chimney breast where the accessories and power point are. The cables are then pulled through the cavity in the chimney breast and exit on one or the other side.

With solid masonry walls however, the process is allot more time consuming and messy. A channel has to be cut and chiseled into the masonry following the route the cables need to take. A trunking is fitted in the channel and the cables inserted into the trunking. The channel is then filled over and the filler allowed to dry for 24 hours. It is then sanded smooth and painted over. It is essential to ensure that the paint used is an exact match to the original paint.