Flat-Screen Vertical Cable Duct

• 1). Mount your flat screen to the wall in the location that looks best to you.
  
  
• 2). Place all of your home theater components, amplifiers, cable TV, satellite boxes, DVR's and so on into your home theater cabinet or enclosure. Cable everything together including the flat screen and test everything to ensure that is fully operational.
  
  
• 3). Locate your home theater cabinet in its permanent location, for example, sitting on the floor directly under the flat screen mounted on the wall.
  
  
• 4). Stand back and look at the completed home theater installation to clearly identify what cables need to be hidden. Most likely you will end up with two or more exposed cables traveling up from the home theater cabinet to the rear of the flat screen mounted on the wall.
  
  
• 5). Measure the vertical distance from the baseboard to the bottom of the flat screen. You want the cable duct's top end to be hidden behind the flat screen and the bottom end to be hidden behind the home theater unit.
  
  
• 6). Purchase an appropriate length of vertical cable duct to hide these exposed cables. If you have four cables to hide, purchase duct that can handle six cables to allow for future additions. Choose the color that you want or make sure that the cable duct can be painted.
  
  
• 7). Install the cable duct using a level to make sure it is vertical. There are varieties of ducts available such as a simple two-cable duct that covers both cables and screws to the wall, or a multi-cable, low profile, two-piece raceway which has the back plate screwed to the wall and a cover which snaps into place covering the cables.
  
  
• 8). Test your home theater system for full operation, before you paint the molding, in case you need to disassemble anything due to problems.
  
  

Crown Molding and Baseboards

• 1). Determine the need for crown molding or baseboards specifically built to hide cables by planning out the proposed cable route. Hardwood floors make it difficult to route cables around the room or through the house because there is no carpet to hide the cables. If you determine that your only choice for routing the cable is to end up with exposed cable, then crown molding or baseboards offer a solution.
  
  
• 2). Measure the proposed route so you will know how many feet of molding will be required. Don't overlook the corners as you will want to purchase corner pieces that match the molding. Consider running molding the entire length of the wall where you want to hide some cables, even if the cables are only exposed for part of the wall. Cosmetically, you do not want to end up with a small section of new molding integrated with existing molding on one wall. It is worth the expense to place molding the entire length of the wall and just use the portion that you need for the cables.
  
  
• 3). Plan on how the cables will enter and exit the molding itself. You want to avoid placing expensive molding to hide the cables and then spoil it all by having the cables just pop out somewhere along the run. There are molding components available to fix this problem.
  
  
• 4). Install the molding by either placing the molding over the cables and screwing it to the wall or with two-piece molding, first screwing the back plate against the wall and then snapping the cover over the cables into the back plate.
  
  
• 5). Test the systems which depend on these cables, before you paint, in case you need to make changes.