Newbie needs help hiding cables in wall

[Nic H]

Hi
I'm a total noob when it comes to DIY so need some guidance.
I'm moving to a new house soon and would like to mount a 50" Plasma and satelite speakers on the walls, with the cabling all hidden in the walls. See attached picture to get an idea of what I want to achieve.
The walls are plastered brick. I'm thinking I would need to make some sort of channels in the walls possibly using a grinder? Then insert metal tubing, plaster over the mess and repaint? I would probably also need some sort of plate to cover the ugly holes in the wall at each end of the tubing?
Would appreciate some suggestions to get me started.
Thanks

[Paul_p1]

I've just done a similar install with the help of my father in law over the last few days, it was no fun I tell you! Are you sure it's not a wood framed house with bricks on the outside, if so, it'll probably just be a cavity wall filled with insulation. We found the interal walls a doddle to feed cables down, but the external facing walls were filled with insulation along with a wooden beam half way up the wall running horizontally, PITA.

[M.D. Klapwijk]

Use pvc tubing that shouldn't expand and shrink as much as metal would do...

[Nic H]

Thanks guys. Any more advice from anyone?

[hamps_w]

if you are chasing into plaster over brick i would be prepared to replaster the whole wall. Old plaster will be prone to lifting off when you start chasing it. Running thin cable with a grinder MAY work...but if you start needing new sockets etc and you want them flush in the wall then you will be looking at chasing into the brick itself....and again a full re-plaster ideally. Have you thought about going down the false/floating wall route instead?

[TenaciousJohnny]

Hi,

I recently made channels in my plaster/brick wall to hold a HDMI cable & speaker cables. I also ran a spur for a new plug high up a wall for a projector. If you look for my posts I got some advice on this topic from this forum.
To summarise, I used a bolster (wide chisel) & hammer to create cuts into the plaster for each side of the channel. I then used a thin chisel to chisel out the plaster in between. The plaster was pretty thick so once i had done that, the channel was deep enough to cover my cables. I didn't have to go into the brickwork. To hold the cables in place I used little plastic cable ties which I attached to the brickwork with little screws & rawlplugs. For the cable exits I attached junction boxes which I did have to drill/chisel out so that they were flush with the plaster. I also bought decorative plates from nexxia to terminate each channel.
I was getting the whole room thin skimmed by the plasterer. He used bonding plaster to fill in the channels before skimming the walls.
If you aren't plastering the whole room I am sure you can get good results with just using bonding plaster for the channels & maybe polyfilla to give it a cleaner finish.
I didn't use ducting in my channels. This means that if I want to change any cabling I would have to rip out cables & replace them, but I can live with that. I won't be changing anything for a long time. If I'd wanted to use ducting, I would have had to run the channels into the brickwork, & that was too much work.
As a DIYer running the channels into plaster was quite hard work but technically not too dificult. I found drilling/chiselling into the bricks to make space for the backboxes to be a completele nightmare. I got it done, but I found it very hard work. If your plaster isn't thick enough to cover your cables, I would get some sort of tool - maybe the grinder you suggest. Like I said I got a plasterer to do all my plastering, but I wouldn't have any fear using bonding plaster myself in the future. It looked pretty easy to use. The finishing plaster is a different matter though. That's why I suggested using polyfilla to get a good final finish.

Johny

[Nic H]

Thanks everyone for the replies. I've found this very helpful. Will try to post some before, during and after pictures.

[JimBobVFR400]

Or how about a floating wall. Looks brilliant and makes it a doddle to hide your cables. Add the obligatory rope lights round the edge and you are away. Plenty of threads on here showing the potential results.

[M.D. Klapwijk]

Originally Posted by JimBobVFR400

Or how about a floating wall. Looks brilliant and makes it a doddle to hide your cables. Add the obligatory rope lights round the edge and you are away. Plenty of threads on here showing the potential results.

No there are not!