I don’t watch a ton of television, so I’ve had a 20″ CRT since college, which has done well by me for that entire time. But when playing Donkey Kong Country earlier this year, I ended up sitting on my coffee table to get close enough to play effectively. That was the push I’d needed to start considering a bigger tv, and then I got a quick freelance job that gave me a bit of “extra” cash to spend. With flat-screen LCDs getting less expensive, I started researching options, and ended up with the LG 42CS570 – not one of the newer smart tvs with internet and all of that, but a good, basic, widescreen tv. You guys, it’s so big. And so shiny. And it weighs less than my previous tv, despite being twice as wide. I’m actually really glad they give you a way to screw it into your tv stand, because I might worry the cats would knock it over.

Anyway, as we know, any new acquisition in my house will somehow become a project – and the tv is no exception; in fact, it’s two projects! Number one: move the antenna into the attic so there are no rabbit ears distracting from my shiny shiny tv. Number two – build a corner tv stand so it looks like it belongs in my living room.

Antenna-moving happened last week – the plan was to stick the antenna in the attic, drop the cable from the attic through the wall, and install a cable connector plate on the wall so all that you see is a nice clean coax connector. Preferably really close to the corner so the tv stand will cover it. This… is actually what happened, but it’s never as simple as it sounds, is it?

First, I knew there was a big coil of coaxial cable in my basement, which presumably used to carry my actual cable signal to… somewhere (possibly the corner the tv’s actually in, though there’s no visible spot for the cord to come up). So I could just use that cord, right? Well, that meant tracing cords all over my basement to ensure they went where I thought they were going, and then venturing outside to the actual cable box to see what was up with it. Spiders are what’s up with it, seriously, I washed my hands for about half an hour after dealing with the webby nest of spideryness that is the interior of my cable connector box. I figured out which cord to disconnect, and got it detached at both ends. I even got a splitter out of the process, since it was part of the cable run I removed. I wanted a splitter so I could send the antenna signal straight to my tv and also to my ancient Tivo that only takes standard definition signals – so I can watch real-time in HD, or Tivo things in standard def, not have to watch everything down-sampled to standard def through the Tivo. ANYWAY.

Yay, cord and splitter achieved, now to the attic with the cord and the antenna to see how to run it through the wall. I now have way more respect for electricians, if only because wedging myself into the angle of my roof while making sure to put weight only on the rafters was significantly harder than it sounds. I managed to mostly figure out where the section of wall I wanted the cord to go down was, and drilled a hole through the top plate to get into the wall. Then I dropped a string with a screw weighting it through the hole until it hit the bottom of the wall – other moment of luck, there aren’t any bracing pieces in this chunk of wall that would stop my cord. Leaving the string hanging in the wall, I went down to the main level to cut a hole and find my string from there.

I figured I’d drilled just to the left of a stud in the attic – I should find that stud on the first floor and make my hole just to the left of it. But there wasn’t a stud where I thought one should be, once I cut that hole. This is when I realized that the studs in the attic and the studs on the first floor aren’t lined up. In fact, the spacing of the studs in the attic bears no relation to the spacing of the studs in the wall underneath, so I actually got lucky that I successfully got into the wall with the hole I drilled from the attic. Of course, the attic hole isn’t visible, whereas the hole in my drywall next to the tv… well. It’s really hard to figure out exactly where in the wall you are from the attic, because the reference points are all different – the edge of the main rafters seems to actually be aligned with the outside wall of the house, because the porch roof drops about a foot lower, and is supported by the porch pillars. I think. So anyway, I jumped to the next stud over and cut a hole there. Still no joy – I was trying to keep the holes in the wall pretty small (2″ x 2″), so I could only really see about six inches left/right inside the wall.

I was pretty frustrated at this point – my string was in the wall, I’d been up to attic at least four times and wedged myself into a really uncomfortable corner to drill the hole, drop the string, confirm the string location, reconfirm where the stud was, and yet I couldn’t find it, and I had two holes to drywall patch already. So I took a break for dinner, and came up with a brilliant idea! Pull on the string, make the screw bounce around, listen for where it is, and that’ll tell me where to drill! Problem – to pull on the string, I would need to be in the attic. To listen for the screw bouncing around, I would need to be on the main level. But! It was a very long piece of string. So I went back to the attic, and I threaded the string across the attic, down the drop-down stairs, around the corner, and across the living room, where I pulled on the string and listened for the screw swinging around in the wall. And of course, it was halfway between the two holes I’d already made. I cut the third hole in the wall, and pulled the string through it. Then went back up to the attic, where I tied my coaxial cord to the string and fed it into the wall. Back the main level, pulled on the string, voila, there’s a cord running from my attic and out through my living room wall. Only took me three hours.

Then it was just a matter of hooking the cable to a connector plate, screwing the plate to the wall, and hooking up the tv – cord to splitter, one cord from splitter to tv, once cord from splitter to Tivo. It worked perfectly, so I patched the two unused holes in the wall, painted the patches, and have been enjoying my big shiny tv without a crazy antenna next to it. Here’s the final result, sorry I failed to take pictures during the process.

Next project is the tv stand, may it please be more straightforward than the antenna-moving!