TV: Mounted
Ages ago I built a DIY-built entertainment centre, wrapped in two K-mart shelves, suitable for housing “all” my game consoles and the associated paraphernalia. It was built specifically to fit a wall in a rental house we lived in at the time (Shirley St), and when we moved out of that house into Pioneer Ct it would no longer fit.
So we modified it slightly, but it became quite the issue. You see, it no longer fit all my consoles (we doubled up some of them, but even then I was out of space), and the original plan was to get an RGB SCART switch so that all the consoles could be connected at all times, just ready to flip the switch and play. The problem with this is that a good quality SCART switch with sufficient inputs is not cheap. I could convert everything to BNC and buy something like an Extron Crosspoint, but even those are expensive in Australia, so in the end I just left the OSSC connected to the TV, and then when I wanted to play something I embraced the ritual of connecting it up.
I actually like this approach, because frankly it’s how a lot of my childhood went. We shifted the NES and the SNES around the house a lot, and some of my best memories are taking it to my cousin’s house or my great aunt’s house, and so a lot of the time connecting it up and flipping the TV to the right channel was just part of the process.
When we moved into this house, this big gloss-black beast didn’t fit the room at all and I was deeply unhappy with it the entire time. Sabriena had grown to dislike it too - I painted it black to make up for the fact I wasn’t confident in my ability to create a nice finish on it, and the black surfaces ended up collecting dust like no one’s business, with the pockets for all the consoles making dusting them difficult too.
So our plan from the get-go was to wall-mount the TV, put some light shelves around it with plants and knick-knacks, put the consoles elsewhere for storage and then I would connect them up when required. This weekend we finally got around to putting part one of that plan in place, using floating shelves (in “Ash Oak”) from Hammer Barn. We put four 900mm shelves around the TV and one 1200mm shelf under it. Everything’s anchored into the brick solidly and I’m reasonably confident it’s not going anywhere, but it remains to be seen whether the 10KG load limit for each of the shelves is going to prove enough, we may rethink this and go with something with an exposed support instead.
I’m absolutely rat-shit after doing this, so it’ll be some time before we move on to phase two. But at this stage, the plan is to remove one brick behind the TV, and knock the mortar off the back of the bricks to make a channel in the roughly-half-inch void between the two layers of brick. We’ll then have Baz the electrician come out and put a power socket back there, along with a brush dustcover so I can send a few long HDMI cables across the ceiling.
We’re going to put the consoles on the shelves on either side of the bar area, because frankly we’re never going to have sufficient people over where a bar becomes necessary and we’re just not sure what else to do with that space. So I’m going to put some HDMI sockets there, and some power (there’s already power on both sides, but not in a convenient place), and then tuck all the consoles away in there. I’ll put the scaler over there, and then I should be able to put things like the PC Engine (which in Japanese fashion has a really short controller cord) on the bar behind the couch and sit comfortably to play, instead of plopped on the floor.
But yes, for now it’s recovery time… drilling 34 holes into brick with a hammer drill took it out of me!
fwagglePublished:
Modified:
Filed under:
Location:
Horsham, VIC, AustraliaNavigation: Older Entry Newer Entry