How to hide hole in wall with cables coming out of it?

boots_babe

Hi,

I'm hoping someone has some ideas that could help us. We have a wall mounted TV in one room, and to keep it nice and neat and tidy with no cables on show, we drilled through the wall to the other side, put the cables through the wall, and plugged them in on the other side.

We are now finally about to start decorating the room on the 'other side'. So we need to hide the hole the cables come through, and also the cables themselves. We had thought of something like this:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/CABLE-TRUNKING-50MM-25MM-MAGNOLIA/dp/B001DN57OC/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1320000858&sr=8-4

However we will be wallpapering the room, and even though the item above is in colour magnolia, it'll still be fairly obvious on top of the wallpapered wall. I'd hoped to:

1. wallpaper the wall, without the trunking on it, then
2. wallpaper around the trunking unit itself, then
3. stick the trunking unit on the wall.

With the idea that it would all be covered in the same wallpaper and so look fairly well hidden. But I'm not sure that wallpaper would stick very well to plastic?

Plus although the trunking would hide the cables, we still have the problem that I'm not 100% sure how we will hide the actual hole. The cables need to be accessible in case of issues in future, so I don't want anything permanently blocking things up.

I've taken a photo of the hole and the cables so you can see what I mean, and hopefully there is a photo of it on the link below:



Does anyone have any good suggestions as to what we should do?

Many thanks.

zax47

In the AV Installation game we use Brush Plates;

http://cpc.farnell.com/jsp/displayProduct.jsp?sku=AV1909294&CMP=aballbrochure

martyn05

How about fixing a white electrical socket box over the hole with a blanking plate on, then cut out a hole in the side of it and run trunking up into it. All of this is available from B&Q, Wickes etc, pretty cheap too. You could then take the blanking plate off when you need to access the cables.

http://www.wickes.co.uk/invt/195115

http://www.wickes.co.uk/invt/710192

http://www.wickes.co.uk/self-adhesive-mini-trunking/invt/712947/

27col

Probably not a bad idea martyn.

boots_babe

Thanks for the replies - I've never seen that brush plate type thing before.

No one has suggested anything better than the trunking, so looks like I may be stuck with that. I just hope we can somehow get the wallpaper to stick to it.

har0ld

Brush plate is the way to go and so easy to live with - as you can still easily add or remove cables. Not expensive and available from places like screwfix.

grizzly1911

har0ld wrote: »

Brush plate is the way to go and so easy to live with - as you can still easily add or remove cables. Not expensive and available from places like screwfix.

+1

Would it be possible to "hide" the cable within a furniture unit (s) of some description?

OR

Depending on the type of wall thread the cable through it or cut into it and then make good over the top?

Why do you need to access the cables themselves? Why not recess the cable and have a recessed junction box at top and bottom of run? Unless you are planning on moving in the short term.

Demonslayer

grizzly1911 wrote: »

+1

Would it be possible to "hide" the cable within a furniture unit (s) of some description?

Haha, what I was going to recommend.

jivebunny

How about something like this?

[remove the spaces from .co.uk as I can't post links]

http://www.satcure .co. uk/accs/images/cabletidy.jpg

decsdad

Hi,
At the bottom of the pic, is that where the boxes are, sky, dvd, etc ?
If so, why not just bring the cables out the wall further down behind the boxes(or unit they are in), I had a couple of similar issues, with one I brought them out the wall via a recessed spotlight chrome surround(circular), with the other I put a new socket in the wall void(dont know if this is allowed, await a row from an electrician), no boxes for this tv.

As you are going to wall paper, you could just make a channel in the wall, push cables in, secure at bottom with a cable clip, and paper over. Using a spotlight surround(i had a spare one) or that brush box posted earlier.
Interested to see what you do.

boots_babe

decsdad wrote: »

Hi,
At the bottom of the pic, is that where the boxes are, sky, dvd, etc ?
If so, why not just bring the cables out the wall further down behind the boxes(or unit they are in), I had a couple of similar issues, with one I brought them out the wall via a recessed spotlight chrome surround(circular), with the other I put a new socket in the wall void(dont know if this is allowed, await a row from an electrician), no boxes for this tv.

As you are going to wall paper, you could just make a channel in the wall, push cables in, secure at bottom with a cable clip, and paper over. Using a spotlight surround(i had a spare one) or that brush box posted earlier.
Interested to see what you do.

On the TV side of the wall, we needed the hole to go straight back, otherwise we'd have the cables and hole showing on that side. Unfortunately the wall in question was originally an external wall so is very thick and solid, so I can't see how we could have put the hole partway through the wall thickness, then gone down inside the wall and out at a different point - it took ages to make the hole that we have now which just goes straight through

Yes the Sky+ box, amp, etc is all going to be on a shelving unit which tucks in the corner of the room, the one that you see in the pic.

The channel in the wall idea would be ok, until any point when we need access to the cables in the future (I'm only thinking for fault maintenance etc, as there is no other reason we'd need to get in there). If we've just channelled a gap to put the cables in, then papered straight over, we won't be able to get in without peeling off and no doubt spoiling the paper.

I think we'll have to go with the trunking and hope we can get wallpaper to stick to it so as to camouflage a little!

Quite like the thing that jivebunny posted, to plug into the actual hole. No idea what that might be called though so not sure what to search for!