(upbeat music)

Problem: you rent your apartment

and if you drill a bunch of holes in the wall

to mount your tv, they're gonna take your security deposit.

Solution: build your own wall.

Put it in front of the landlord's wall,

and drill to your heart's content.

Not a hard project, just follow these instructions

and you'll be all set.

(upbeat music)

Alright, step one.

Measure and cut your wood.

Step two, measure your wood again.

(upbeat music)

Alright let's make a sandwich.

First layer, you need some drywall.

Next layer, plywood, for strength.

And now we're gonna make the frame on the back

which is gonna supply the entire structure for this thing.

Two end pieces,

and now we're gonna put in longer pieces

that go in between the two ends.

This is where you find out if you measured right.

You wanna make them exactly 16 inches apart

at the middles of each board.

The reason being, is you want 'em to be the same width apart

as the studs on your wall.

Cause if you're gonna line them up with the wall

you can put one stud into another stud.

It's much stronger than screening the drywall.

Don't do that.

So we're gonna clamp these together

to keep them from moving apart.

But you don't wanna clamp them too hard,

cause you'll dent your drywall

then you have to spackle it.

Now that you've got everything laid out,

time to start screwing it together.

You wanna counter-sync the screws

because you're going to put some spackle over 'em

so you don't wanna de-fluctuate the surface

or else you're not going to get a nice, smooth sand.

Now it's time to spackle,

which means take this putty,

smear it over the holes you made in the board

so that when we paint it, it's smooth.

See how it's pink?

It actually dries white.

Alright, so our spackle is dry,

which means the next step is to sand it.

And basically what you wanna do is you wanna

smooth out any bumps you left with the spackle.

Our next stop is to drill the holes

that we're going to drop the cords through.

So this is the hole saw that came with that grommet kit.

This mark right here represents where the bottom center

of the TV is going to be.

I wanna be just above that.

So there you have a nice, clean hole.

So you've got your hole for your TV,

next step is to make a hole for the audio gear

and video gear to send its cables from one to the other.

(upbeat music)

Same deal as before.

Cut a big hole.

(upbeat music)

And there's some little butterflies that come out on the end

to keep it from falling out.

It's a right, nice finished look,

looks like an actual real install.

So there are almost as many different mounts

as there are kinds of TVs.

I like one by Philips called Simply Straight.

These rollers sit in these tracks

and the TV automatically levels itself.

Between the leveling you did with this,

gravity does the rest.

It always hangs straight, and that's the best.

Hey look at that, it's magic.

16 inches apart.

And that is 4.25 down.

When this screw goes through,

it's gonna go through drywall

and it's gonna go through plywood,

and it's gonna lodge itself into a 2x4.

There is no need for an anchor in there.

So all you need to do is drill out a big enough hole

that this won't split my 2x4

and then drive it directly into the wood.

Because I used math to lay this thing out,

I know that these are both gonna go

directly into solid wood.

There's one.

And there's two.

The next step is to make it look pretty

and to put it on your wall.

That means you paint it and then you line it up

with two studs on your wall

and you take the four inch screws

and you screw directly through the entire assembly

into the wall.

Crown molding.

Don't just leave it behind the wall.

First of all, your fake wall won't sit flushed.

Second of all, it just looks really cool

to have this thing finished and perfect.

The great advantage of this setup

is that you don't have to worry

about the slack in your cables.

There's no making loops and tying them off

and trying to hide them behind something.

All the slack is behind the wall in here.

I've measured it, so I know the TV's bottom

is gonna be right here.

So you're not gonna see any of this.

I got my plugs plugged in, my cables plugged in.

And I'm ready to hang it on the wall.

We put that one there, and that one there,

it just slides onto those rollers and you're good.

And that's it.

A little bit of elbow grease,

some readily available construction materials,

and an afternoon spent playing with power tools,

and you've got a nice, clean, custom install.

And your landlord's not gonna kill you

when she sees what you've done with the place.

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