Plinth

After putting the Beau Travail installation in the hall, I decided to try something I’ve been thinking about off and on for a while — what about having a ton of pictures on one wall? Gertrude style? Does the above look nice?

I don’t know, but it’s obvious that that… hole… over the TV is an eyesore. I could move all the pictures down, but then there’s be a lot of re-hanging going on.

And the TV is resting on the floor. So… perhaps it would be nice to have a… plinth? Like… 10cm high? That’s also a practical advantage, because it makes it easier to clean the floors without being careful with the TV.

So…

It turns out that I was a genius when I left that too-big space over the TV, because now I can put some wood beneath the TV!

Here’s some wood. It’s 48x148mm big. 148mm is good for the depth — the TV needs to lean towards the wall, and 15cm is the right depth at the bottom. And I could mill a trough near the outer edge that the TV could rest in, so that it doesn’t slip? And I could take two of these and join them together, and then paint them nicely?

I think that’s worth a shot!

Or… this one: It’s just 7cm high, but that’s fine. Yeah, that’s less work. And then some moulding to stop the plank and the TV from sliding. Yeah, that’s the ticket!

And to fasten it to the floor (I don’t want it to slide out — that’d be ouchey), use more moulding at the front? Er… I shouldn’t do this kind of thing, because I have zero patience when doing carpentry, which is weird — I can spend hours and weeks on getting some program “just right”, but not when it comes to wood.

But I got some anyway! It’s a massive plank, but it’s not as heavy as it looks — it’s spruce or something.

Japanese sawing time.

Hm… Well, I had an idea that I can fasten it to the floor on the sides instead…

So drill, and…

No, that’s a stupid idea: I need to screw in from two sides (to the plank and to the floor), but since it’s a 45 degree angle, that means that I’d have to drill far down into the triangle, and … then there just isn’t much to screw into. So ditch that idea.

But I can still follow the original idea with the top “lip” — I can screw the screw in at an angle.

It works!

And to fasten it to the floor (it’s a wooden floor (from the 90s), but painted, so it’s not sacrilege to screw something into it), I can drill 80% into the plinthy plank, and the screw it the rest of the way.

I think that’s a better plan than the triangle thing anyway.

And then it’s spacklin’ time. (Or “sparkling time” as we say here, because we don’t know the word “spackle”.)

… and sanding.

And then there’s priming…

Behold my brush.

So after two coats of priming, and then two coats of black paint, and then a week to “cure” or whatever (I don’t want the edge of the TV to bond with the paint)…