TV mounting and wall shelving in Los Angeles

What the wall is made of. Roughly half the housing in the City of LA predates 1960, and a lot of that stock is plaster and lath instead of drywall. Plaster is brittle. It cracks if you rush it, and the lath behind it holds nothing on its own. Studs in old homes sit at odd spacings too, and old full-dimension lumber reads badly on a cheap stud finder. So we find the real studs before drilling, and will often use a longer plate so the bracket spans two of them.

Concrete, brick and steel. Plenty of LA buildings have masonry walls or steel studs. Post-war apartments, converted lofts, newer condos. Each one takes a different anchor, and the wrong anchor in a steel stud is one of the more common reasons a mount works loose later. Tell us if that is your building. It changes the tools and the time.

Where the weight ends up. A 65-inch TV on a full-motion arm puts far more leverage on the wall than the same TV on a flat bracket. A long shelf full of books does the same thing. The bracket has to be rated for the load, and the wall behind it has to take that load too.

Hiding the cables is usually the part people care about most. Dropping an HDMI cable inside the wall from the TV to a console below is normally straightforward, and we can do it.

Power is a different matter. A new outlet behind the TV, so no cord shows at all, is electrical work and belongs to a licensed electrician. Some people will run an extension cord inside the wall instead. That is not safe and it is not allowed. The usual middle path is an in-wall rated pass-through kit, which lets the existing cord run behind the wall down to a lower outlet without breaking any rules.

Shelving is the same skill set and the same questions about the wall. Floating shelves are the fussiest. The whole load hangs off a hidden rod with no bracket under it, and in plaster they almost always have to hit a stud. Bracketed shelving is more forgiving and usually cheaper. Sometimes the look you want is fighting the wall you have, and we’ll tell you that before the holes go in.

California has a narrow exemption that lets some minor work be done without a CSLB contractor license. It sits in Business and Professions Code section 7048, and every part of it has to hold. The job has to be casual, minor or inconsequential. Labor, materials and everything else added together have to come to less than $1,000. No building permit can be required. And the work can’t be part of a larger project, or one job split into smaller contracts. The exemption also drops away for anyone who hires help on the work, or who advertises in a way that might suggest to the public they’re a contractor. So there’s no clean price line here, whatever you read elsewhere.

Most TV mounting and shelving comes in well under $1,000. But price is only one of those conditions, and the rest depend on the job and on who’s doing it. It’s a fair thing to ask us straight out. A full media wall with framing and new circuits is a bigger job than this. That one needs a licensed contractor or electrician, and we’ll tell you so before anything gets booked.

• The TV and the bracket, if you’ve already bought them.
• A rough idea of the height you want. Sitting eye level is lower than most people expect.
• Clear access to the wall, and somewhere to set the TV down.
• If you rent or you’re in a condo, any permission your landlord or HOA needs to give.

• Screen size, and flat mount or full-motion arm.
• What the wall is made of. Drywall, plaster, brick, concrete, or not sure.
• Whether you want the cables hidden, and where the nearest outlet sits.
• Any shelving going up at the same time, and your neighborhood.

That’s usually enough to price the job without guessing. If there’s shelving going up as well, or a couple of other small jobs that have been sitting on the list, send those too. One visit is almost always cheaper than three separate trips.