Mounting an LCD on a lathe-and-plaster wall

King of Mars

Yes, I'm about to do this. It's an old house, though, so nobody really knows anything about its construction.

Obviously, I don't want to destroy the wall, and stud finders are pretty much useless on this stuff (I know because I tried it already and got all kinds of bizarre, inconsistent results).

Has anyone here ever done this? How, exactly, did you go about finding the wall stud? What sort of problems did you run into, if any? I'm thinking of just taking a drill to the wall until I find one, but if anyone has a better way, I'd love to hear it. Thanks.

minor incident

Honestly, on that shit? A tiny drill bit, some joint compound and some trial and error will work much better than a stud finder. Assuming the wall is just white. Having to touch up a custom paint color could complicate things.

Skoal Cat

Would there not be a stud every 16"? But yea, I wouldn't mount a TV on anything but studs.

minor incident

Depends on the age of the house as well as the particular wall. Studs are usually every 16", but can be as close as 10" or as far apart as 20". Sometimes shorter walls have different stud configurations, for example.

vonPoonBurGer

They could be even further than 20", my house has some sections of plaster and lathe wall with studs as far apart as 24" (most likely not load-bearing). I had some fun finding studs in our walls while renovating. My stud finder reported some false positives, but I felt it was still worth using compared to blind trial and error.

In some places we were able to find the studs when we removed the baseboards as part of the reno, since the plaster doesn't go all the way to the floor. I wouldn't recommend that method if you have vintage baseboards though. I was hoping to put my baseboards back on afterwards (they were really nice 10" tall solid wood baseboards), but wood that old is very prone to splitting and splintering. At least mine were anyway.

If you know someone with a metal detector, that could work too. The lathe strips are nailed to the studs, so you'll know you've found a stud (and not a metal pipe or wire) when you've got a vertical section where the detector goes on and off as you move it up and down the wall.

There are TV mounts for widely spaced studs (e.g. http://www.toptvmounts.com/collections/tv-mounts-for-24-studs), which would probably be the best solution as far as the mounting bracket goes. If you've already got a 16" mount, you'll probably want to make a mounting plate of some kind that spans your studs, e.g. a 20-26" wide piece of heavy (5/8" or 3/4") plywood. Mount the plywood to the studs, mount your bracket to the plywood. A bit ghetto, but you might be able to get away with it as long as the TV covers it up sufficiently.

King of Mars

Yeah, usually, they're 16". And ceilings are usually 9', but in here they're 8.5', so who knows. The house was built in the 1920s, so there weren't really any standards yet. I'll try the metal detector method, since that seems to be the least destructive way to do it. Failing that, plain old trial and error, plus some wall repair and touching up the paint (which is also not normal, but that's my own doing).

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone. 8-)

Joe K

King of Mars wrote:

Yeah, usually, they're 16". And ceilings are usually 9', but in here they're 8.5', so who knows. The house was built in the 1920s, so there weren't really any standards yet. I'll try the metal detector method, since that seems to be the least destructive way to do it. Failing that, plain old trial and error, plus some wall repair and touching up the paint (which is also not normal, but that's my own doing).

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone. 8-)

16" centers between studs. Built before WWI, you'll have 9' ceilings, after, 8' (until the recent boom, where we went back to 9's...)

You should be able to knock the plaster and find the studs. Its a little tougher to know if you got the stud, because you'll get the same feeling drilling and attaching thru the lathe as you would a stud.

and lathe is not sturdy. Lost a $1500 antique to the jackass before me who missed the stud and only got lathe.

DiannaoChong

I dont have advice for the actual mounting process, sorry.
But!
Protip if you do not have your mount yet, get it from monoprice.com unless you know of a cheaper spot(please share). They generally do everything in super bulk to businesses and such so their prices are really low to the public. If you dont know about them they have every type of A/V cord you would ever want at 1-5% of what it costs at retail usually. If your cord doesnt see alot of sales or usages, the pickers will generally just grab a handfull and shove them in a box for you too. We ordered 2 zune charging cables for extras/backups, and they shipped us like 8.

God I sound like a shill, but this is just one of those standards around here everyone preaches, I promise haha.

Esh

DiannaoChong wrote:

I dont have advice for the actual mounting process, sorry.
But!
Protip if you do not have your mount yet, get it from monoprice.com unless you know of a cheaper spot(please share). They generally do everything in super bulk to businesses and such so their prices are really low to the public. If you dont know about them they have every type of A/V cord you would ever want at 1-5% of what it costs at retail usually. If your cord doesnt see alot of sales or usages, the pickers will generally just grab a handfull and shove them in a box for you too. We ordered 2 zune charging cables for extras/backups, and they shipped us like 8.

God I sound like a shill, but this is just one of those standards around here everyone preaches, I promise haha.

I wouldn't worry. Everyone here shills for Monoprice. It's where most people here buy their cabling.

Skoal Cat

They should make a donation to Child's Play what with all of the business they get from us.

minor incident

I'd like to say I've spent thousands of dollars there over the course of 5 years and many A/V installs, but I honestly don't think it's possible to spend thousands of dollars there.

That'd be like, their whole warehouse.