Surely you have seen colorful photos in a magazine more than once, where a TV and speakers for it are neatly inscribed in drywall niches. Do you want to have the same wall? Then move from dreaming to action. A structure with niches can be easily built with your own hands, with a little imagination and diligence.
Drawing of a niche made of drywall
First of all, right on the wall you need to draw a drawing of the future niche. The main place, of course, is given to the TV.
Drywall TV niches can be of various shapes: rectangular, semicircular, polygonal, with winding lines. Choose any, focusing on your experience. Naturally, it will be somewhat more difficult for a beginner to make niches with roundings with his own hands.
- We draw a rectangle / square according to the size of the TV, plus 10 cm on all sides. This will be a distance for ventilation and easier maintenance of the device.
Note! All niche drawing lines must be strictly aligned horizontally and vertically. Otherwise, items placed on the shelves will roll. Yes, and the overall appearance will be sloppy.
- Further, starting from the instructions for the TV, we mark the location of the niches for the home theater speakers.
- If, according to the project, drywall niches are provided over the entire wall area (for additional design elements or other digital equipment), we draw them in accordance with the plan.
- We mark the places where the drywall is attached to the floor and ceiling, retreating from the base surface to the width of the TV with a small margin.
Organization of niche lighting
Having finished marking the niches on the wall, estimate the location of communications - electrical wires and antenna cables. Mark the places where you will have easy access to sockets. If necessary, prepare strobes in advance. If additional lighting is expected, mark the mounting points for the bulbs.
Frame assembly
For the assembly of the supporting structure, use metal profiles.
- Wall profiles are mounted along the drawn lines of the "windows" using self-tapping screws.
- Ceiling profiles are attached to the ceiling and floor.
- Once again, the horizontal and vertical elements, the stability of the structure are checked.
- Inside the frame, in accordance with the plan, electrical wiring and an antenna cable are laid. For safety reasons, it is better to lay the wires in the corrugation, fixing it with clamps at the nodal points.
Important! A hollow plasterboard false wall can distort the sound of installed audio equipment. To avoid this problem, noise absorbers (PSHI membrane, ecover) are glued to the base wall under the frame. The work is not difficult, it is quite possible to do it yourself.
Working with drywall
The front part of the wall can be sewn up with gypsum board 12 mm thick. But the parts that will serve as a shelf are made of thicker or reinforced drywall. It makes sense to use more durable OSB sheets with their subsequent puttying.
To decorate the front of the wall, there are two ways to cut drywall sheets:
- First way. The whole sheet is fixed on the frame, grabbing it with self-tapping screws in several places. Then cut the openings with a hacksaw along the contour. Customize with a knife to the desired shape. Further fasten with self-tapping screws thoroughly.
- The second way. Each piece is cut out separately. They remove the chamfer from the edge, so that later it would be more convenient to putty the joints, and then they are attached to the appropriate place.
In the first case, the work is hard, but more accurate. In the second, cutting must be carried out very carefully, because mistakes will lead to material overruns or the niches in the drywall wall will look sloppy.Masking installation errors is a very time-consuming and not always do-it-yourself task.
To attach pieces of drywall to curved surfaces, you can use one ofGKL bending methods. For example, sheets can be pre-moistened with water and rolled with a needle roller in several steps. After that, the drywall takes the desired shape without cracking.
Next steps:
- Drywall is attached to the frame with screws with a pitch of no more than 25 cm. To avoid cracking the material along the edge, a hole for the self-tapping screw is drilled in advance. Countersink it to drown the hat flush.
- All joints and screw heads are rubbed with putty, dried and sanded with sandpaper. From above they are reinforced with reinforcing tape. All corner joints are glued with the same tape.
- The procedure for creating the base of the wall with niches is completed by priming the entire surface. The primer will provide a strong adhesion of drywall to finishing materials. In addition, it will prevent paint or glue from soaking into the base.
Wall decoration with niches
The final stage of work is wall decoration. Drywall is a versatile material. It's easy on him paint is applied, wallpaper is pasted or decorative panels are mounted.
By connecting your imagination, you can create a unique niche design for a drywall TV with your own hands. The device itself can be placed on a mounted shelf (if it is strong enough) or hung with a bracket on the wall.
The color scheme of the design should fit into the overall design of the room. But it should be noted that if the niches made of plasterboard are painted in a darker color in relation to the facade, then they may look like holes or passages to the next room.
Not the last place in the design of a plasterboard wall with niches is an additional lighting. It is placed above, below or on the sides. It favorably highlights the decorative elements placed in the niche.
For illumination, "cold" lamps are used: diode lamps or tapes. Incandescent lamps get very hot, which can cause a fire. In addition, diode tapes can be easily moved with your own hands for more successful niche illumination.
Drywall wall sometimes erected across the room when zoning or to enclose a small space. In this case, it is also possible to make a niche for a drywall TV in it. The installation technology is similar to that described above, with the difference that the frame is not attached to the wall, as for a niche, but is fixed at a distance between the floor and the ceiling with additional stiffeners. The lower part of the niche is reinforced with additional jumpers in the frame, with the expectation of a rather large weight of the device.
Outcome
Here, perhaps, are all the secrets of creating niches in a drywall wall. A person who has made such beauty with his own hands has the right to be proud of the work done, after which you can comfortably sit in your favorite chair, actively rooting for a football match on a sports channel.
