I spent four hours hanging a TV on the wall yesterday. Yes, really. I thought I’d simplify the project and save myself a bunch of work by purchasing a wall-mount swivel arm for the TV instead of building what I wanted from scratch.

As soon as I got started, it was clear that the wall-mount was designed to be mounted on a solid wood or brick wall (seriously? how many of those do you find in the USA?), so I started with a trip to the hardware store for a plank and some lag screws. After some careful measuring and a lot of exploratory drilling, I found the right spot and bolted the anchor panel firmly into the studs.

Next, I discovered that the wall-mount was a little bit too small for the TV. What!? I thought I measured it before I ordered it! Well… the wall mount listed a diagonal measurement range which includes the size of my TV, and its mounting bracket style is the same as that of the bracket I formerly used to attach the TV to the entertainment center, but it was designed for TVs with square bolt patterns and it just doesn’t spread out enough.

So… back to the hardware store, for another handful of bolts and some aluminum bars. I cut and drilled until I had a workable pair of adapter brackets.

Finally, I bolted the adapter brackets onto the TV, bolted the swivel-arm brackets onto the adapter brackets, screwed the swivel-arm brackets onto the arm head, bolted the swivel-arm base onto the anchor panel, which I’d previously bolted onto the wall.

Sure saved myself a lot of work there!