[magga]

Hi all,

After spending a long time on these forums looking at other people's excellent home cinemas we decided to give it a go.

Whilst it's not as extreme as a lot of others on here, we decided to share it with you all anyway.

All comments and criticism welcome!

So here's where it all started, pretty boring and messy really!

Next step is to throw it all on the sofa and floor.

To clear the space where our new cabinets would go.

We then started building the Ikea cabinets we bought.

After this, we wired it all up and temporarily put the TV on the cabinet as it was getting late!

It wasn't looking too bad after some tidying up but still a lot to do.

Now it was time to install our new toy!

It's a beast of a bracket!

Next we marked up the wall using the included template.

And drilled lots of holes!

Next we had to adjust it to suit our particular model of TV.

Then we connected it up.

And put the TV onto it.

And then connected up the TV (wires looking awful at this stage!).

We then decided to temporarily tidy up the wires until we put them in the wall and put the speakers on top of the cabinets until our new speakers and amp arrived. At this stage we could see some good progress!

Next we started putting the cables in the wall.

Here's a close up of behind the wall mount.

And one behind the cabinets.

Then we put a wall box in ready to screw the brush wall plate to that we still plan to install.

After doing this, things were looking much much better.

[magga]

Shortly after, our new speakers and amp turned up and it was time to put more cables into the wall!

Our new Acoustic Energy Aego T satellite speakers

And HUGE subwoofer

We fitted the front left bracket first and made a hole for the cable to go down to our previous hole made earlier.

All the cables come out here.

We then put the speaker onto the bracket.

And were pretty pleased with the result.

Then we did the front right speaker.

Looking good, shame about the mess below.

Ah, all sorted now.

We decided not to mount the centre speaker on the wall for a couple of reasons. Firstly, there isn't a huge amount of space between the top of the cabinet and the bottom of the TV and we thought it might look a bit cramped. Secondly, the way the brackets work, the speaker would be pointing downwards but if on a flat surface, it would point upwards. Due to the position of the speaker we decided it would be better pointing upwards than downwards.

Next we had to do the rear speakers which was a little trickier. We took off the edging strips covering the gap between the edge of the laminate flooring and the skirting board and ran the cables in the gap. We used really small QED Micro cable so it would fit without any issues.

The only other thing we had to work out was how to get the cable from under the laminate floor edging strips and into the wall upto the speaker so we decided to drill a hole in the top of the skirting and one behind the edging strip and somehow feed it through. After a lot of messing about it did finally work but we had to cut a little bit of the wall out till we found a hollow area to feed the cable into the wall.

We made what we named a "service hole" to make finding the cable in the wall easier so we could get it out of the top smaller hole. This service hole is covered by the speaker bracket anyway so it didn't matter. We also used some nice white cable entry/exit plastic pieces to make it look neater.

Next we hung the rear speakers.

And we were happy with the final result.

We still have a few bits left to do such as filling/sanding/painting the cuts we made in the wall and fitting the brush wall plates where the cables come out behind the cabinets and TV wall mount.

We are also thinking of a way of hiding the sockets that sit just above the cabinets. It's a shame in new houses they put all the sockets so high up! If anyone has any suggestions on this one apart from moving them then please let us know!

Hope you enjoyed this post and let us know what you all think.

[OV3RCLOCK3R]

Excellent job you did there, Coming along nicely!

One question though, Why did you downgrade the speakers? The mordaunt shorts are much better!

[magga]

Cheers. We only had 2 fronts and a centre of the Mordaunt Shorts and because we wanted 5.1 we decided to go for the Acoustic Energy Aego T's. Even though they may look really small, they are pretty powerful speakers and sound really good. Also the Mordaunt Shorts kind of looked a bit strange next to the black/brown cabinets we thought.

[MarkP80]

Hi,

That's a really neat install, what a transformation, you should be very pleased with that. Impressed with your cable feeding skills too, you're obviously an expert with those cable rods. I reckon when you see a before and after of a job like that, it must be a great way to convince the mrs that spending money on av is a good idea!

It is a shame about the sockets, as you say. I have an idea to hide them, rather than moving them. You need to put a floating wall up! Getting the cables in and mounting the tv was the hard part. I reckon it would take you no time to put a frame on the wall and the mdf sheet, down to the top of your units. Then get the LED rope behind it, and Robert's your mother's brother. Easy!

Cheers,
MarkP

(Nice slippers BTW)

[snellfish]

although it sounds a bit obvious, an easier way to hide the plug sockets rather than bild a false wall would be to put legs on the ikea cabinets.
something like this:
http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/catalog/products/80134190

[stephenmelody]

Originally Posted by MarkP80

(Nice slippers BTW)

Those slippers are mine. In fact it's me in the pictures. Magga was taking the photos.

In fact its my house! I finally caved in and let him go cutting holes in the walls.

Bloomin lodgers!

[magga]

Originally Posted by MarkP80

Impressed with your cable feeding skills too, you're obviously an expert with those cable rods.

We had enough practice from getting Sky feeds from the distribution box in the loft down into the living room without going on the outside of the house!

With regards to putting feet on the cabinet, I think if we did that then there would be no room for the centre speaker!

[fasterfords]

Looking good

If I was you, I'd move the silver supports back a bit, as the middle of the shelf is the weakest.

I had to cut in half one of those units, and the middle is almost hollow with a batton running across the front and rear.

[magga]

Cheers for the advice, I had noticed they were quite weak in the middle!

[Sul05]

I'm the process of wallmounting the same wall bracket with a sammy 40m86 but on a chimney breast. Could you post some pics showing how the back looks when it's all connected please. I am thinking of mounting all the av cables ina conduit and plastering ove them to breakout boxes. Cheers
PS Great work

[RichardG]

Originally Posted by fasterfords

Looking good

If I was you, I'd move the silver supports back a bit, as the middle of the shelf is the weakest.

I had to cut in half one of those units, and the middle is almost hollow with a batton running across the front and rear.

No don't do that!

If the middle is hollow, the supports won't actually be supporting anything if you put them there. The reason the support goes under the baton is so the load is transferred from the top of the unit into the the support.

If the top of the unit is just two thin sheets of faced whatever, with a void between them, putting the support where there is nothing to resist any downward force or load introduces what we engineers call "punching shear"

The easiest thing to do is not put anything heavy on the cabinet in the first place.

Top class install btw - very very neat -

[DLPMaybe]

Originally Posted by magga

With regards to putting feet on the cabinet, I think if we did that then there would be no room for the centre speaker!

Just move the TV a little higher

[Lakes_Puma]

Looks very neat, where did you get the cable entry/exit covers from?

[elootos]

Good job, much better than the glass stand at the start.

[snellfish]

Originally Posted by magga

We had enough practice from getting Sky feeds from the distribution box in the loft down into the living room without going on the outside of the house!

With regards to putting feet on the cabinet, I think if we did that then there would be no room for the centre speaker!

put the centre speaker underneath the cabinets once the feet have raised it up or just put the speaker in one of the shelves, i'd rather have them sockets hidden than worry about the center speaker not being on show. imo

[magga]

Originally Posted by Lakes_Puma

Looks very neat, where did you get the cable entry/exit covers from?

I believe they were from here:

http://www.satcure.co.uk/accs/page7.htm

see "Cable Tidy grommet"

[magga]

Originally Posted by snellfish

put the centre speaker underneath the cabinets once the feet have raised it up or just put the speaker in one of the shelves, i'd rather have them sockets hidden than worry about the center speaker not being on show. imo

May well give this a go, thanks.

[magga]

Originally Posted by Sul05

I'm the process of wallmounting the same wall bracket with a sammy 40m86 but on a chimney breast. Could you post some pics showing how the back looks when it's all connected please. I am thinking of mounting all the av cables ina conduit and plastering ove them to breakout boxes. Cheers
PS Great work

Do you mean a pic of the back of the tv or the bracket itself?

[Sul05]

Both i guess as i want an idea how i will be routing the cables to an alcove and want to know how far from the wall the actual TV will be. I should have mine up on saturday hopefully. Pics would be welcome thank you

[philbaldwin]

Hi,

Nice looking project!

Do you mind me asking how you routed the cables form the Tv down the wall? As it doesnt look like you have channeled any of thw alls out? Simple knock in a hole behind the Tv and one lowered, and drop the cables down?

Also how did you run the rear cables for the rear speakers!

Keep up the good work!