Giffnock, East Renfrewshire
Media walls in Giffnock
Giffnock's inter-war villas and bungalows come with something most new builds do not: an existing chimney breast with an alcove either side of it. That is the starting point for the best media walls we build, because the depth is already there and nothing has to project into the room.
Use the alcoves you already have
In a 1930s villa the chimney breast usually gives you 300mm or so of depth and two ready-made recesses. Fitting the television onto the breast and building storage into the alcoves gives you the whole effect of a media wall without losing a single millimetre of floor. It is cheaper than a full stud wall as well.
Check the flue before closing anything up
If the chimney is still open, boarding straight over it traps moisture and you get damp staining coming back through the new work within a year or two. Capping and ventilating it properly first is a small job at the right moment and an expensive one afterwards. We check this before quoting rather than after.
Matching the room it sits in
These houses often still have deep skirtings, picture rails and cornice. A media wall that ignores all of it looks like furniture someone left against the wall. Running the existing skirting profile across the base and stopping the unit cleanly below the picture rail costs very little and is the difference between built-in and bolted-on.
Lighting the recesses
Warm white, recessed into the top edge of each niche so the strip itself is never visible, on a dimmable circuit with the rest. Cool white makes plaster look grey and turns a sitting room into a showroom, which is rarely what anyone is after in a house of this period.
Before & after
Building a Media Wall With Lit Display Niches
A blank living room wall became a full-height media wall with eight lit niches, a recessed TV and an inset fire, with every cable buried before the plasterboard went on.