[Grangey.]

**pretty much finished on Page 3 post 90**

Right, I've been deliberating and deliberating but I've got to commit to this bugger so here goes nothing!

Right... some background, Im Grangey, 21 years old, made redundant end of last month but paid till the end of jan... so decided I'd best make use of this spare time! I am useless with craftsman ship and my hands etc as Im much more of a desk boy... so if this goes right it will be testiment to how easy these things are!

So just before christmas I decided to treat myself... a brand spanking new Onkyo TXSR806... unfortunatly it suffered from the seemingly problemative "Blue Dot" bug... so thats going back tomorrow... and should be picking up a TXSR 875 on Thursday... so thought maybe I should start work and be ready for it!

So... to start... the equipment which will be included in the build:

Sony KDL40W 1080p LCD TV
Onkyo TXSR875 Av Reciever
Playstation 3
Xbox 360 Premium
Wii
SKY+ HD
& Philips ProScreen 4650

Type of property- Brick through and through
Amount of tools- Limited and basic

So... plans:

Floating wall... with abit of a difference from what everyone elce seems to have done on here... but not saying fully what yet as I keep changing my mind on a few small details... so you'll just have to keep an eye out on the thread which I should be updating everyday. I will litterally be starting this from scratch so hopefully could turn into quite a detailed how to thread... but I wouldnt hold my breath about the quality of work you will see!

So work will start tomorrow at some point (got the plumber comming round in the morning to finish our whole new Boiler & Central Heating install), and I am aiming to litterally take pics etc of each stage... from basic mesurements... to the finished product etc. Nothing has been purchased yet, nothing mesured, nothing ordered..

So this is how I leave things as of 10pm Sunday January 4th 2009...

Watch this space for "Day 1" to start...

PS apologies for all the spelling mistakes both in this thread and as we go along... hopefully they are still understandable

Grangey

[wese007]

look forward to seeing it bud,will be good to see something different from the norm,after i did my floating wall,i saw some in the sette shop,scs. these had cures rather than just retangles,sqaures,

looked pretty cool and totally different,have a look your self,might intrest you,

im taking mine down soon,,making it little bigger,the only regret i did while doing mine was using filler to fill the joins of the two boads, i used car filler p38 after seeing it used on here,which as now craked, a few others on here as cracked as well,

a mate saw my wall and went and did the same at his house,but he sourced a piece of mdf in one whole piece instaed of 3,no joins or filler to rub down,so no fear what so ever of cracks appearing,he got a sheet of 10ftx1.6 m fo 40 odd quid from local timber supplier,food for thought if you are going down that road

good luck,well worth the effort in the end

[Grangey.]

thanks for the support bud , one of my first locations tomorrow is a timbers merchant to see if I can get a sheet of MDF big enough.. then problem 2 starts of how the hell I get it home

Any pictures of yours?

When you say "cures" rather than rectangles or squares.. I assume you meant curves? In which case It would be nice to do something different like that... but I with what Im going to be installing I dont think it would work.

Originally Posted by wese007

look forward to seeing it bud,will be good to see something different from the norm,after i did my floating wall,i saw some in the sette shop,scs. these had cures rather than just retangles,sqaures,

looked pretty cool and totally different,have a look your self,might intrest you,

im taking mine down soon,,making it little bigger,the only regret i did while doing mine was using filler to fill the joins of the two boads, i used car filler p38 after seeing it used on here,which as now craked, a few others on here as cracked as well,

a mate saw my wall and went and did the same at his house,but he sourced a piece of mdf in one whole piece instaed of 3,no joins or filler to rub down,so no fear what so ever of cracks appearing,he got a sheet of 10ftx1.6 m fo 40 odd quid from local timber supplier,food for thought if you are going down that road

good luck,well worth the effort in the end

[wese007]

yea curves lol,timber yard i would of thought will deliver,no pics of mine,will do some one day,missus keeps on telling me to get em on, i keep on changing things ,then have different ideas lol,like my whole wall coming down,just for a extra 10 inches wider lol

[Grangey.]

Ok so...

Day 1

No going back now as far as Im concerned! Packed up the Onkyo 806 and will be refunding it shortly, and started to take apart the old stands.

Iv taken some measurements and made a few phone calls enquiring into who can provide me with a large sheet of MDF (first approximate measurements have come out that I am looking for a sheet which measures 79 inches x 95 inches) so will wait to see who comes back with what at what price and I can start piecing things together.... watch this space!

[webslinger2k]

nice one mate - look forward to seeing this evolve...

[craigoscott]

i would be surprised if someone could supply one piece of MDF that size, if they did i imagine it would be expensive! 'normal' sheet size is 8ft x 4ft, as this fits into most vans easily, and anything over 8mm thick is heavy!!

why do you want it in one piece? what are you going to be covering it with? does it have to be MDF?

[wese007]

can get it that size,but will be in 18mm, im after one large sheet,can get it in 12mm 10ftby 6ft for 35 quid,just waiting for another supplier to get a price which i know should be cheaper,

reason for using one sheet is to save the hassle of sanding down filler on joints on two or three pieces of mdf,

maybe the same reason why grangey_civicsr wants one piece

[Grangey.]

Originally Posted by wese007

reason for using one sheet is to save the hassle of sanding down filler on joints on two or three pieces of mdf,

maybe the same reason why grangey_civicsr wants one piece

Hit the nail on the head there... although unfortunatly it would appear there is nobody around here that does a sheet large enough so filling will be required which will enavatible delay things slightly. Where are you getting yours done?

It Has not been as productive today as I would have liked as I was helping out the plumber on and off, and had to go out to return the 806 which also took longer than expected.

but the tv is now out of the unit and half off of the wall mount for easy re-installation to the wall, I now need to figure out what the best bolts are to hand the mount to the wall... Ill only need 8. Suggestions anyone?

Now that I will definatly be getting all the stuff delivered, tomorrow I intend on picking up some of the frame and getting started on that, although it will only be the shorter slats as they wont fit in my car! And also should be getting the wall mount hung... once I've figured out the right bolts!

[wese007]

im getting my timber from a local timberyard called G Empson & Sons Ltd in scunthorpe where i live,dont think it as more branches like wicks, etc,the other guy is just a small timber yard,but hes sooooooo cheap


theres loads of talk on here bout fixings to use,some say some are over the top,then overs say why take the risk,

well i used i think 10 of these Window Anchor 8 x 100mm Pack of 10 - Screwfix.com, Where the Trade Buys

im happy with em,look at how your radiators are fixed to a wall,nothing ott,but they weigh alot once full of water,i have a rad that is 1.9m x 600mm,held up by two brackets and 4 screws,im i worried that will come down,and that would cause more damage,cost wise if it fell of,and its been there years,

each to there own i guess though,choice is yours what route you go down,if anyone can pull my braket of,by hand of corse then ill pay u a grand lol,


when you put the floating wall up,before you start filling it,put the tele up on the bracket,make sure you can get to your inputs and they will fit in ok,power lead to the tele as well,and any screws for tighting the braket on back of the tele to the one on the wall,

my mate who did his,had all his floating wall in place,hole cut in the mdf for tele to slot in,only to find the hole he had cut was to small,he could not get his hands in to get to his connections,and the power lead would not fit,so its trial and error

imho where your mdf boards joints meet,i would chamver it abit, so they is somewhere to put the filler in,i would not just fill the small join you get when buttin two pieces together,as the lack of thickness will crack for sure,also sand it down with a rough grip sandpaper to give the filler a rough area to stick to

hope thats some help to you,god that was along post lol

[webslinger2k]

coach bolts mate - if its going into brick work, they are sound as you can get really.

[Grangey.]

Thanks for the tips, will definatly go check them out

I decided to using masking tape to outline where the wood will be, as this will give me a more accurate idea of where to place things so can tell the woodshop where to cut things out etc .

Plumbers round tomorrow at 730am and Im aiming to avoid helping him as much as possible to crack on with this!

I am now very tempted to make this project abit more indepth... and rip of the wall paper on the wall at the moment, and have a go at a bit of light plastering (no doubt the plaser behind will not be 100% hense why it was wallpapered origianlly), and paint.... where as intially I was either going to leave it or paint over the wallpaper (which is made to be painted on).


Thanks for the support so far guys

[kumack]

Check out my page for some idea's as its a bit different from the norm, lighting wise anyway.

Also instead of just using mdf I went the whole hog and used mdf then plasterboard, then got it plastered, we'll worth it in the long run I think.

Are you putting the tv on the wall so its flush with the floating wall or on the frame behind the floating wall, or even just on the floating wall.

After I thought about it for a bit, it would be very difficult if not impossible to access the tv afterwords and you would have to be pretty precise in your measurements.

If you put in on the frame it will stick out a bit, but the weight is not on the wall and so wont put pressure on the mdf in any way so no chance of cracking.

Hope this helps, I read through pretty much every floating wall thread on here before I did mine so I'm full of useless knowledge on the subject !

[Grangey.]

Day 2- Balls!!!

Well, not really how I wanted to start the day. I friend of mine who is an ex painter and decorator is going to come round and give me a hand a little later so I thought sod it, lets get this wall paper off and get the wall properly decorated.... took of 1 piece of wallpaper... and although I was expecting one or two hair line cracks... I wasnt expecting this....

The pictures dont really do it justice.... it is literally a spiders web of cracks all the way up and down the wall. I would need to either to some extensive skimming... or get it back to brick and plaster fresh, niether of which I have any knowledge of, and certainly not the budget.
So, Im off to B&Q to buy another roll of wallpaper to replace this piece and I will simply have to paint onto the paper itself.

Bracket should be up later!

[Grangey.]

Christ, what a day that was! spent about 45 minutes in a local timber murchants explaining what I wanted done then having a chat with them about what I was doing etc etc.... only for them to quote be just shy of £200 for the wood I wanted! Hell no!!! So, off to B&Q... where I spent 5 hours... yes FIVE hours trying to get everything sorted... the only guy who could cut the wood couldnt be found for half an hour, then their machines crashed for a while so couldnt put through my delivery info etc... but it looks like Im almost there, all of the cruital wood is ordered, and I have baught some more tools and a load of other odds an ends to get the job done nicely...hopefully... which cost me about £70 (not including any of the wood) which was abit of a surpise but should be worth it. Despite all this I managed to get some work done, I've replaced the wall paper.. wood is ordered and should be arriving tomorrow via next day delivery, and the wall mount is now up on the wall. Now just waiting for the wood to turn up and Iv gotta do some serious sawing as the damn B&Q machines wouldnt do what I needed them to apparently....

Would have updated with pics, but my camera has died, and i think you call get the picture anyway!

but bring on tomorrow... and let the drilling commense! I still have to figure out the colour scheme I want to do!! Argh decisions!

[webslinger2k]

depending on the size of your room, getting that skimmed wouldnt cost that much mate - paint on wallpaper looks all kinds of crap in my opinion - you would be better stripping the wallpaper and putting lining paper up if you do intend on not getting the walls skimmed...

no need to go back to brick at all though so dont worry about that

[peteborota]

Grangey,

I'm following your trials and tribulations mate, as I'm all but certain I'm going to build a floating wall. But it's great sharing some of the pain and learning from others

Best of luck with it mate, you got a least one fan willing you on

[Grangey.]

Originally Posted by webslinger2k

depending on the size of your room, getting that skimmed wouldnt cost that much mate - paint on wallpaper looks all kinds of crap in my opinion - you would be better stripping the wallpaper and putting lining paper up if you do intend on not getting the walls skimmed...

no need to go back to brick at all though so dont worry about that

Thanks, the room is fairly large but I agree with you, i think painting the wall paper will look poor, so I think I'll leave the wall paper as it is (white) and paint the floating wall an appropriate colour, then when I have enough money to get the room reskimmed properly, I'll do a full redecoration. The carpet is in despirate need of replacement as its about 23years old! So it makes little sence doing all of that now without replacing that! But thanks for your input

Originally Posted by peteborota

Grangey,

I'm following your trials and tribulations mate, as I'm all but certain I'm going to build a floating wall. But it's great sharing some of the pain and learning from others

Best of luck with it mate, you got a least one fan willing you on

Thanks for the support bud! The frame is now up and fixed, and although I have not cut the surround of mdf yet, I have placed the sheets either side of the tv and already Im getting a great feeling about where this is going! I have taken some more pics but my camera is screwing up so il have to upload them tomorrow.

Unfortunalty tomorrow is going to be a relativly unproductive day as Im off a hundred miles away to pick up the Onkyo 875.. then hopefully taking it straight to GenSerive for an update so most of my day will be consumed! But still hope to get some ods and ends done and will give me a chance to catch up on this thread!

Oh and on a side note before I forget, the best place I have found in my area for an 8' x 4' sheet of MDF was Wicks, and they actually stocked 9mm thick stuff which nowhere elce seemed to. I however had to go with B&Q to use their cutting service. When its all compleate I will put a full cost breakdown for those looking to do this for themselves in the future

[wese007]

bout your mdf,dont know if you have a homebase round your way,some have a cutting service as well,b and q and homebase will pricematch wicks,which i beleive may be cheaper, more food for thought,save them pennies,

[Grangey.]

Yea i've got most of the big boys round here, problem is that 90% of them are smaller hubs and dont offer the cutting service and some of them couldnt even supply that size of board! So B&Q were my only real option, which is a shame as they charge £20 for delivery!!!!

[Grangey.]

Oh and just to thank websliger2k, I went for the coach bolts in the end... drilled 10 holes, but screwed a few of them up but my tv is hung using 8, and quite honestly I think it would have been fine with 4. They hold a treat, so much so is if I was 4ft tall, I would happily walk accross it and feel confident!

[webslinger2k]

no worries mate, glad to help. look forward for the next pictures...

[Grangey.]

Sorry for the delay in pics guys, it took alot longer picking up my 875 than I initially expected so didnt get it 2 GenServe as I intended to yesterday, so took it this morning instead and didnt return till 4pm so progress has been slow. I am hopefull I should be able post up pics of it looking done (as far as most floating walls are concerned... wait and see) by Sunday... and it all compleate by Wednesday at the absolute latest pending some bits Iv ordered turning up.

[Grangey.]

Just a quick update, christ what I day. Turns out I did some bad measurments somehow... no idea how yet... but none the less it happend and the result was the wall mount being hidden by the wood unless I had the top of the floating wall, touching the skirting around the cieling which would have looked poo. Luckily it was salviagable and got the saw back out and we're almost there. So tomorrow HOPEFULLY I should be most the way there as far as a basic floating wall is concerned... so Il do some proper Day 3, 4, and 5 updates with pics then. Thanks for your patience!

[alz2605]

Looking forward to the updates mate! Hope things are going well for you now!

[Grangey.]

Originally Posted by alz2605

Hope things are going well for you now!

Nope! Still not going as quickly as planned! but gradual progress is being made!

Day 2.5, 3, 4, and 5 in a nutshell:

Day 2.5, managed to replace the wall paper and after a LONG time drilling into the wall, managed to get the wall mount fitted

Day 3 I spend the day fitting the frame to the wall.. which took ages as the brick walls I am drilling into appear to be VERY hard but after about 10 hours I finally managed to do it. Cant seem to find the pictures though for some reason!

Day 4, I went to pick up my new Onkyo TXSR875 which took longer than anticipated due to traffic! But got back and managed to start cutting the recess of where the mount will come through.

Day 5, took the 875 to GenServe down in Swindon for a firmware update which took about 5 hours out of my day. However got home and decided now that the recess was cut I would attach the secondary frame to the edge of each wood, then spent the rest of the day back in B&Q/Homebase getting more screws and fixings.

Day 6, ok now that the recess is cut, lets just hold it up to the wall and see how it looks and fits etc.... ah... it doesnt.... once the tv is mounted the mount on the back of the tv itself rather than the mount that attaches to the wall is considerably longer... so wouldnt fit. Silly me for again not checking this in the firstplace. So spend the rest of the day measuring and remeasuring, and then measuring again, and then again, and then extending the recess appropriatly, also then tieing in with a joint intial problem that due to these mismeasurments, the top of the floating wall would have been almost touching the ceiling which is not what I intended.

Day 7 (today), decided to triple check all measurements and where the tv would sit etc and make sure it wall lined up properly before fixing things together... balls... still not right... the frams arnt meeting as the original frame on the wall was based upon the bad measurements... Down it all comes!

So I decided I was getting to tired to want to have to go through all the hassle of redrilling a crap load of holes in the wall, and with my girlfriend having to get her head down and do her NVQ work, im sure she wouldnt have appreciated the noise it would have made either. So now I knew that in thoeory the positioning of the recess and the floating wall itself was correct... lets fasten it all together to make 100% sure!

Great.. that all fits together perfectly (there is a good reason for the gap down the middle which will all be revieled in due corse), now all I have to do is put the new frame on the wall so I can fix it to it!

Its basically going to be a 2 frame wall due to my knowledge of sooner or later knowing I will be re-plastering this whole room, I wanted something I could remove relativly simply withought doing too much damage, so the two frames will meet on the wall like this:

This also means it gives me the right depth so that my wall bracket should barly be visible when looking down the side, all you should be able to see is the tv itself.

[wese007]

getting there buddy,i was same as you,finding problems as you go along,its all fun and games, main prob for me was getting the hole in mdf right size,so it was easy to mount tele and get access to everthing

you keeping
us in supense now,

[Grangey.]

Day 8,

abit of an update, I had a rethink as to how I was going to get the frame onto the wall without ripping it all apart as the miss measurements and lack of thought meant that the origninall stips of wood I cut were two short... So I cut another couple of pieces of wood to act as legs. What this enables me to do is not only make sure the new frame going on the wall will be correctly lined up with the corrosponding frame on the faceplate, but I can simple change the positions of the legs when it actually comes to fixing it to the frame of the wall and it will still give me access to fix the two frames together. So here is what it will look like when fixed

So after that, time to start drilling new holes in the wall for the frame. However I got seriously fed up of spending over an hour (literally) trying to drill one hole in my wall using every last drill I had around the house.

So I did abit of searching on the net, and discovered the most effective drill for this type of drilling would be an SDS drill. Can I afford/ justify buying one?? Hell no. So I call my dads business partner (My dad runs a fire protection companie ie fitting sprinkler systems etc etc) and ask if he by any chance has an SDS drill he could lend me...

sure enough he did! Result! So he dropped it round about an hour ago and all I can say is

OH MY GOD

If only I had known this before I started this project I would have FLOWN through! I put the drill to the wall and within seconds I am at the required depth! Its awsome!

So, anyway, while I was waiting I picked up some frame fixings from B&Q (when I originally fitted the frame I wasnt overly confident the screws I used were going to hold (very thin and flimsy and not that long)).

Well the look the part... but dont perform it too well as when you get past 3/4s of the way the screws basically start rounding themselves off!! I know what your thinking and I tried numerious different sized screw drivers etc in there and it happened every time. So I now need to wait untill tomorrow to get some different fixings as I dont want to continue drilling with a 10mm piece, if I can find great fixings that are only 8mm for example!

So any advice and recomendations for what screws etc I should use to fix to the wall would be greatly appreciated as I have no idea about fixings....

from a rather frustrated Grangey!

[Shoka]

Been following this thread quite closely, looks great so far! I'm so envious, I neither have the time or the free money to build one, and I don't think my landlord would be too happy either.

When you say you are rounding the screws off, I presume you mean the heads?

Are you using a manual screwdriver or a drill attachment? if you are using a drill, try turning the speed down a little, I was always rounding off screws when putting together furniture etc, until my missus butted in one day and said "why don't you turn the speed down", initially my masculinity was a little damaged but she was right, patience really is a virtue, and I thought it was just something slow people said

[MitsiTurbo]

Looking good mate. I had exactly the same with everything on mine - you set yourself a target but something always goes wrong and you end up being behind time!

Having a decent SDS hammer drill makes it all so easy! I use them at work all the time. The most fun is a 1m long 32mm bit, now that eats through walls!!

Anyway, get yourself some rawl bolts for the fixings. Youll need a socket set for them, but they will definetely be up to the job.

EDIT: These are the rawl bolts:

Rawlplug RawlBolts® M12 x 60mm Pack of 5 - Screwfix.com, Where the Trade Buys

Im assuming youre going into a solid wall rather than pasterboard partition?