TV Mounting in Five Points, NC

Which decade built your wall?

Before choosing an anchor, Yaroslav wants a rough build year, because Five Points went up in layers. Landscape architect Earle Sumner Draper laid out Hayes Barton in 1920, and about half its houses date from the mid-to-late 1920s. Those homes, like the Roanoke Park bungalows sold to first-time buyers, mostly carry plaster on wood lath, which cracks if rushed, so we drill slowly with the bit sized to each anchor. How we find studs behind plaster.

From the late 1930s on, gypsum rock lath replaced wood lath in most new houses, as the National Park Service notes. It drills cleaner and holds a test hole, so an in-wall cable run is more often possible. The infill houses built since 2010 are wood studs under drywall, the quickest wall here, about 50 minutes for one TV.

Plastered chimney breasts and the heat test

In many Five Points living rooms the chimney breast is plastered smooth, so nobody can see what holds the TV until we look. Yaroslav drills small test holes inside the plate's footprint, finds solid brick and sets anchors in the brick faces, which adds about 30 minutes. Every fireplace job then starts with a heat test: 20 minutes of gas logs at full output, or a real fire in a wood-burning firebox, with a surface reading where the TV's bottom edge will sit. A hot reading moves the screen higher on a tilting mount ($49) or beside the fireplace. Check sightlines with our height tool and see the fireplace TV service.

Yaroslav also covers Oakwood and the rest of inside the Beltline, so a morning request often becomes an afternoon visit. A 65- or 75-inch screen is a flat $129. Send a request.