so how's the new room coming well you know people like to
share those stories like social media versus reality this is mine
they say you get what you pay for well that's the phrase that's been swirling around in my head for
the better part of two weeks while i have done everything in my power to keep my sanity while
building out the feature wall in our new living room but before i get into all the drama let me
first walk you through the design and i've been working on the design of this wall for
months going all the way back to when we still lived in austin it was it's been inspired by
faux fireplace walls that i keep seeing on social media and i envisioned a design that
kind of like those walls would allow us to review both tvs and projectors without me always having
to swap one out for the other which i'm not gonna lie doing that gets old fast but the real problem
with simply just mounting a tv to the wall is that despite tvs being flat they don't sit flush so if
you want to employ a dual setup you know one that has both a tv and a projection screen there just
really aren't a lot of options and initially we thought about doing a drop down screen and we we
may still do that someday but we are bleeding money right now and in an attempt to save the
patient i.e our bank account we've decided to go a little bit different direction here's why
a drop down screen in our room would require a custom screen and a custom installation
because we have a sloped ceiling and the amount of drop needed for the screen to be
at the proper viewing height is not standard and would have run us upwards of about four to seven
thousand dollars just for the screen now we could go with one of these new floor rising screens
however that would require me to have the case visible in the room which i don't want to do or
i will have to build a box to house the case and potentially even raise it up off the floor so that
it could ascend to the proper viewing height oh and those floor rising screens they aren't exactly
cheap either which brings me to our faux wall now by building a bump out in order to make our tv
appear recessed we now have the necessary space on the front wall to mount a projection screen
in front of the tv and when we do that everything's still going to look completely normal
so how are we doing this well the kanto wall mount that we use will support tvs up to 100 inches
diagonally and at weights up to 200 pounds it is a fully articulating mount so any tv we mount to it
is able to be pushed back into an opening without a problem that said even when fully pushed back
our sony tv has a mounted depth of nearly 6 inches actually once you start adding cables and such
the depth is closer to seven to seven and a half inches so this is now the depth of the bump out
that i will build around the tv now the design of this wall is actually pretty simple and you
can frame one out yourself using standard two by fours available at just about any hardware store
now i intended to build it out in the simplest and cheapest way possible because i knew
that the wall didn't have to be load bearing i mean the tv wasn't actually mounted to it i was
simply going to build two long columns and connect them using some horizontal supports that was my
plan anyway because moving has just taken up so much of our time i went ahead and i made the call
to hire a local handyman to carry out the build and i thought i was being smart going this route i
was wrong despite this person having built similar feature walls in the area as well as having very
detailed drawings and measurements from me he proceeded to build the structure in his own way
long story short we parted ways and it was awkward and i ultimately i was left with kind of a
half-ish finished wall and now i was even further behind schedule so in sheer desperation we reached
out to a neighbor to ask if they knew of anyone who did framing and drywall because at this point
what i had on my wall was in such disarray that i i didn't even know if it could be
salvaged thankfully a skilled crew was available to step in and well rebuild just about everything
seriously as the three of us stood there and went over the project i felt like ed harris in
the film apollo 13 looking over the wreckage of what the previous guy had done review our
status here sorry let's look at this thing from a uh from a standpoint of status what have we
got on a spacecraft that's good after going over what needed fixing what still needed to be done
they got to work and promptly erected a plastic barrier completely shutting me
out while i appreciated the care staring at the plastic tent in my living room for nearly a week
didn't fill me with a great deal of excitement let alone really exciting content for you guys
but after two days of construction and drywall and a whole weekend
waiting for the mud and texture to dry the wall the wall was finished
or so i thought now initially the direction was to have the bump out match the rest of the walls in
the home this meant applying a knock down texture that i would then paint but the morning that i
was geared up to paint christy took one look at the wall and said i think it needs to be smooth
throughout this process the one thing i've kept saying to myself is never again never again will i
not trust myself enough to do the tasks that i know how to do and while i know how to hang in mud
drywall i've never removed texture from the stuff a few quick tutorial videos and a lot of spackling
and sanding on my part we finally arrived at a perfectly smooth wall now one of the looks
christie and i like is a technique known as lime washing and while some of you may look at this
and think it's just a faux finish it's actually quite different in that it requires a special
type of primer not to mention paint to create a truly organic plaster-like effect on surfaces
like drywall there's only a handful of companies who make this type of paint product and it's just
not something that you can go down to your local hardware store and get we went with the company
color atlea and ordered everything we needed to lime wash the bump out from their website and paid
through the nose to have all of it overnighted in order to avoid further delays remember
this project was originally supposed to take three days by this point in our story we're approaching
week three thankfully the process of lime watching your wall it's not difficult actually
it's pretty fun here's the deal if you want a more noticeable dramatic effect with this type of paint
you're going to want to go a little darker than i think you may have originally thought you needed
this paint dries pretty light and but we knew we wanted a super subtle texture one that kind of
revealed itself throughout the changing light of the day so we went light we went with the color
bone along with old white for a more layered effect but the old white actually turned out
to be too light so we just stuck with bone for the entire process but i have to stress this if drama
is what you're after try going for a shade or two darker than what you're originally planning and
do paint do paint a swatch before making your final decision oh one more note you have to stir
the living piss out of this paint rest in peace little kitchenaid hand mixer you're all we had
with everything finally framed drywall smoothed out and now painted it was time to mount the tv
i have never been more nervous when mounting a tv than i was putting our sony
back on the mount and sliding it back into its new home
thankfully thankfully the tv fit and it fit damn near perfectly you want to see it
but i know you guys i can already hear two big questions number one what happens if we
get a different tv and number two how much did it cost after taking the measurements of a lot
of different tvs between about 75 and 85 inches diagonally i arrived at the hole that you see
here which should work for most tvs around these sizes but since our mount is flexible we can mount
an even larger tv by pulling the mount away from the wall allowing a larger tv to sit flush against
the bump out covering the opening for a more traditional look as for cost well there is what
the project should cost and then there is what it ultimately did cost my original budget was based
on me doing all of the work and had i just done that from the beginning i would have been able to
come in around 1500 bucks actually had i hired the more pro team to do the work skipping over
the original guy it would have cost me about the same but because i'm an impatient dumb dumb after
everything was said and done to get the wall to this exact point we spent just under 3 200
yeah yeah we did that i wish i could say that we could stop there but there's still more to do
because the bump out this is just phase one phase two is a whole other animal that we're going to be
tackling in an upcoming video because now now we have to address the acoustics in this room
that is the story of what i thought would be a simple build that turned into a nearly three week
ordeal all right it was a nightmare but i have to say now that it's finished i am i'm
so happy with the way that it looks and i am excited to be just one step closer to this room's
full reveal but i wonder if christy has anything to add before we sign off
i am so proud of you i think you did an amazing job and i know that despite our being together
in what like five years at this point i haven't really seen andrew the handyman uh yet until now
um frankly i i okay look to be honest he has hired out everything like back when we lived in austin
um you know like from lawn mowing to simple tasks it's kind of like you've you've you've delegated
yeah and i i totally get it but i'm not going to lie the back of my mind all the times you've told
me about all these things you've built in the past i was like sure jan insert insert clip here but
you really surprised me and i think you did such a good job i think the wall looks amazing
yes the the lime wash looks a little bit like like paint but that's probably maybe our
technique and application and the choice of paint colors it's more the choice of paint color i
think but i still think it looks really pretty oh it's a super kind of very subtle leathery finish
it's never going to come through on camera and that's that's what i'm afraid of it's like it's
it's never going to fully come through for you guys and so it's just one of those things where
you're gonna have to kind of take our word for it it's like it's stunning but it's subtle it's
it's subtle af i think if we had chosen maybe the bone plus one of the other like
colors in the same shade of family but maybe on the darker side and started there
because i think with the application process they advise you to start with the darker color
and then use the if you're doing a lighter technique or you know using two different colors
you want to start with the darker shade then put your lighter shade on top but you guys we were in
we were in major time crunch like like andrew was saying this took this whole project has just been
you know like waiting for christmas to come when you're a child yeah it took forever absolutely but
i think it looks really pretty the tv looks fantastic in this in the little recess i have to
say i was not prepared for the call it subjective but perceivable increases and supposed quality
the tv looks more contrasty kind of back because the bump out really does shield it from
side reflections from the windows because it's actually just a little bit back and then at night
the bump out creates this like black hole around it and so the image really
does appear to just sort of float so while i wouldn't call this project a beginner build
can you build it simply absolutely absolutely and you can pause on the screen when i show you
my original design and totally just modify that to fit your needs um but if you have
the patience and you're gonna be you can be pretty exacting with your measurements um
this is a great great way to kind of elevate the um i'll call it the presence of any tv you don't
even have to have an 85 you could do this with like a 65 inch and say your bedroom or something
but it is it's just a fantastic way to sort of just elevate the the presence of a television
oh yeah it definitely feels more expensive um it it to me i think it looks purposeful yeah um
it kind of gives off like a projection vibe like a little bit a little bit like just more so maybe
in as the day turns more into evening because there's it gives you a sort of a shadow frame
around the edge but um i think this is going to make it way easier and i'm really excited to about
i'm really excited to be able to do the projection screen like right over it yeah because like you
said what a just huge pain in the rear yeah every single time because you're talking about creating
holes and having to take the mount off the tv mount that is off the wall in order to accommodate
the screen which it's so time consuming and that is part of the reason why we haven't reviewed
a ton of projectors yeah so hopefully this opens up more opportunity for us to bring that side of
home theater to you the audience oh absolutely i i and i hope so because we haven't been like
purposely not doing it we did that one uh we did the lg cinebeem i think it was last year
and that was a great experience very eye-opening one and we've been meaning to do
more it's just um we also are one of the few channels that we get these larger tvs
and you guys really really like those types of videos and so we we haven't backed off showing
you a larger experience but when you get these larger tvs they're just so much harder to move
uh with two people or by yourself sometimes that it it just becomes kind of a time uh
physical capability sort of equation as to can we really do another projector review right now
um but this this should allow us to kind of rapid fire so i'm very very hopeful that
there aren't any more delays with respect to projector reviews in fact we have one
that we that just came in so i'm really looking forward to that yeah i'm so excited i absolutely
love this space this house i love this house so much yeah and i'm so excited for everybody to see
ultimately what it's all going to look like and sound like anyway we're we're getting
close we're getting closer and we appreciate everybody's patience yeah all right well that is
our story time thank you for coming on the journey with us as we unpacked this odyssey
that is the wall that's just what we're calling we're calling it the wall anyway what do you
guys think you know what what do you guys think tell us now that you've seen it worth it crazy
inspired i want to know let me know nice comments only my comments only please i'm very fragile uh
anyway if you like this video please do give it a thumbs up like and subscribe and go ahead
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that christy left for you down below know that that is a great way that you have continued to
show your support for this channel and the work that we do here and we just we cannot thank you
guys enough um follow me on instagram you're definitely going to want to do that if you're
at all into some of these home projects because i leave teasers like breadcrumbs on instagram
almost daily so follow me on instagram recovering audio file and that is it for us today so remember
the only person who has to like the sound of your system is you so happy listening everybody thank
you so much for watching and for bearing with us and we're going to see on the next video bye