Just before Christmas we rearranged our living room but when I wrote that post I left out 1 small detail. . . the whole reason we flipped the layout of this room was to move the TV. You see, one day we’re going to rebuild our fireplace and when we do, the TV is going to be mounted above the mantle.  So like logical people we thought, if we’re going to mount the TV on the wall one day, why not mount it now? And if you’re going to flip your living room so you can mount your TV on the wall you might as well hide the cords while you’re at it! And if you give a mouse a cookie he’s going to want something to drink. . . .

There are LOTS of great tutorials around the blogosphere about mounting your TV and hiding the cords like this one from the Harpster Home and this one from House of Hepworths, so we bought a mount and set to work.

We’d lined up a vintage dresser to convert into a media console and since we were eventually going to rip the sheet rock out anyway and in the meantime it was going to be covered up by the TV and media console, we cut nice big holes so it would be easier to thread the cords through. Great idea, right?

So we hung the TV and. . . if you guessed we hung it too high you would be correct! That means that we had to remount the wall bracket, cut another hole in the sheet rock and leave the existing hole somewhat exposed.

Don’t worry, things got much worse after that. Phillip started from the top hole and tried fish a small dowel rod through the wall just to make sure everything was clear and no insulation was in the way. About 2 feet down he hit something that was really hard. No worries we thought, he can probably dislodge whatever is stuck if he comes up through the bottom. He began to fish through from the bottom and about 4 feet up he hit the same something. What could be in our wall that’s really hard and lodged in between 2 studs. . .

I’ll tell you what, a mount for a fireplace mantle that’s what! We actually don’t know that for sure but that’s our best guess. Remember how there used to be a fireplace on this wall? You know, the one we’re going to rebuild with those stones that were in our backyard? Yeah, we determined that when they took the fireplace out they left the mantle mount in case it was ever rebuilt. How thoughtful.

So at this point we had a mounted tv, 3 holes in the wall and no way to hide the cords. (Short of ripping out the sheet rock and removing the mount which we were not about to do!) And then it hit us, what if we built a frame . . .

. . . and covered it in fabric. . . . 

. . . and cut a hole for the TV mount. . . 

. . . and hung it on the wall behind the media console and it turned out to be the most awesome idea we’ve ever had! Pretty great idea right?? So that’s what we did and today things are looking much improved.

My parents delivered this dresser to us over Christmas and it’s in line to get some serious love in the next few months.

Let’s take a trip down memory lane. . . when we first moved in (almost a year ago!) our living room looked like this.

Yeah. . boring. Ugly. Blah! Here’s what it looks like today!

It’s hard to believe how far this room has come in just 11 months! Last fall we got a new-to-us couch, added new legs, made some custom curtains and painted the walls! Then in December we flipped the layout and added the deacons benches all in one fell swoop.

So there you have it, how to hide your TV cables the hard way. . . anybody else had a similar experience? How you ever started a project that went horribly awry?