It's something that I've known was coming for a long time, but that doesn't make it any easier – this weekend, I'm biting the bullet and mounting my TV to the wall for the first time, and I'm honestly slightly bricking it.
Until about six weeks ago, I'd spent my entire working adult life renting the flats I lived in, and that meant a long streak of years when leaving even the slightest mark in a wall would be a deposit-destroying mistake. So, for ages it wasn't even an option to have a TV anywhere other than on a stand.
In my case, I picked up a Lack bench from Ikea literally over a decade ago, and it's never let me down. It's been big enough hold the handful of TVs I've owned, and the shelf underneath its main surface has been perfect for my Sonos Beam (Gen 1). That it's survived this long is honestly impressive, but its days are now numbered.
I'm lucky enough to finally now co-own the flat I live in, and that means rawlplugs and wall hangings are back on the menu. We're on the top floor of a house, and that means sloped ceilings, which has really accelerated the matter – the best place for our TV is under one of those slopes, and needing to have it on a stand has made it annoying and cluttered in a corner.
This weekend, then, I've got one big headline job: mount the TV to the wall, on a hopefully pretty good arm mount that I've bought (OneFor All's WM 6454 Full-Motion TV Wall Bracket, if you're interested). In theory, it's a job that should be straightforward, but there's no way I'm not nervous.
After all, it's one thing if you get a wall hanging wrong and a poster falls down – the worst you'll deal with is broken glass if it's framed. Get your mounting wrong, though, and you're talking about a potentially broken TV, and that's something I can't really countenance from a cost perspective.
I've got a 55-inch LG C2, an OLED TV that I picked up in the Black Friday sales about three years ago, and I love it dearly. I've never had even the slightest inclination to upgrade, let alone the budget to do so, and I intend to keep it for years to come. All of which means that I really do have to get this mount fastened right the first time.
So, tune in next week for one of two pieces; either something like "I mounted my TV for the first time and it went surprisingly well", or a more depressing alternative: "I tried to mount my TV and now I need a new one".
