If you’re thinking of creating one in your home, then keep reading and we’ll tell you how to build a media wall with an ethanol fireplace…
Hole in wall or stud wall?
Before you start grabbing your tools or hiring a builder, you first have a choice to make.
Do you want to create a hole in the wall for your fireplace, or do you want to build a stud wall?
This choice is often determined by the current setup of your living room.
If you have an existing chimney breast, then it’s usually straight forward to fit an ethanol fireplace and then install a television above it.
Think of a chimney breast as being a pre-made media wall.
On the other hand, if you live in a newer property then you’ll more than likely have to build a media wall from scratch – this is called the stud wall option.
Choosing a location for your media wall
Whether you’re building your media wall yourself or using a builder, you’ll need to choose a location for it.
As the media wall is going to be the main focus of your room – with it hosting both the bioethanol fireplace and the television – most people will want to place it in a central location e.g. in the middle of the main wall of the living room.
You can tailer your TV wall with support of inno-living to make you a 3D design and foreseen how your TV looks before you actually start your project.
Once you’ve established that, you should also check if the wall you’ve chosen has enough plug sockets and how close they are to the media wall. You’re going to need at least two – one for the fire, and one for the TV.
But first of all , you need to provide a picture of the wall where you plan to install your ethanol fireplace and with detailed measurements .
The main thing to consider at this point is the size of the ethanol fireplace and the television. The wall is going to have to provide sufficient support for both of these, so you’ll need to ensure that the wall is wide enough to safely accommodate them.
Building the stud wall
Once you’ve measured everything up, it’ll be time to start building the stud wall.
A stud wall is a wall which is built from a wooden frame. The vertical lengths of wood are the ‘studs’.
It’s important that you carefully measure the depth of these cavities. You want to ensure that once the TV and ethanol fireplace have been mounted in the cavities that they are flush with the outer surface of the media wall.
It’s advised that these recesses are built in the same way as the rest of the wall, with studs and supporting cross beams. This is because, depending on the model of TV or ethanol fireplace, you’ll need to install brackets within the recesses to support and mount the appliances.
Installing the TV and fireplace (embedded)
Once the basic frame and outline of your stud wall has been completed, the next stage is to mount the TV and ethanol fireplace (if you’re going to be embedding them in the wall).
In most cases, you’ll need to fit mounting brackets to support the appliances. This is usually a straightforward job and involves drilling into the studs in the recesses.
With the brackets in place, you simply need to hang the fireplace and TV off them.
If you’ve measured correctly, the TV and fireplace should now be flush with the outside surface of the media wall.