Over the last few months, we’ve been working on remodeling and furnishing our living room. Our most recent project was to cover those unsightly cords from my big living room compromise – the big flat screen tv. The last several years, we’ve had a mere 32″ flat screen. I loved it, because while functional, it wasn’t noticeable in the space. Friends convinced me that for all my husband does for me and our family, I could hardly keep him from his dream of a large tv. 50″ later, it was hanging over our fireplace, you know, the one we removed the mantel from last year. While it’s now the focal point of our room, I’m doing all I can to minimize it – starting with creating a mantel to hide the cords.
One of the reasons I gravitated to our home to begin with, was all of the beautiful moulding in the living room. I found shelves at Target that mimicked it in white. I thought, why not? We had thought about matching the mantel to the woodwork, going with a rustic mantel, etc, but in the end, decided we didn’t want to place our television as high as a mantel needs to be, because frankly, it would create a neck strain.
Anyways, the crown moulding shelves work because they’re hollow inside, allowing the cords to be strung through them. Oh, and they nicely cover the two random bricks that stick out on our fireplace.
This is a great idea. We are looking at mounting a TV over our fireplace as well and trying to figure out how to hide those cords. Wonderful idea!
Thanks Becky! It was easy and inexpensive – doesn’t get any better than that!
Such a great idea! Well done :).
What a great idea! I would love to do that with ours too, but maybe I am missing something- where do the cords plug in? Are they hidden in the built-ins and they have an outlet in them? I don’t think we have an outlet close enough to our fireplace to make it work 🙁
Whitney, yes, we drilled a couple holes through the built-ins, added an extension cord and ran it over to the outlet on the side wall.
Very smart! It looks great.
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Just curious. Where is the wall socket? It on the wall behind the tv? If that’s the case to be able to hide the cords do you have to install on outlet behind the tv?
Our outlet was actually on the wall. We ran the cords through the mantel/shelves, drilled a hole into the bookcases to carry them over discreetly.
How and where is your TV anchored too? I definitely am going to go with this idea for hiding the cords but I would like to lnow how the tv is set up there?
With a standard wall mount purchased at the electronics store.
Do you have a photo showing how you put the cords through the shelf and then where you plugged them in?
Sorry, no…this is from years ago. We just funneled them through.