One of my hobbies is home theater. Is that a strange hobby? Is it even a real hobby rather than simply a project? I don’t know. I just enjoy listening to my home theater – music, movies, or games. As the budget allows and our interests change, I also enjoy upgrading it from time to time. My latest upgrade combines sound and minor construction. To raise my surround speakers off the ground (or the CD stand and a dining chair, as it were) and prevent people from tripping over or playing with the speaker cables, I finally bought some wall mounts for them. As usual I researched them extensively before finally finding some on Amazon.

I finally installed them today. They are rated up to 55lbs. I don’t know why on earth you would mount a 55lb speaker with these, but they are plenty strong for my 16-pounders. Unfortunately I had to drill holes in the wall, which I HATE doing. And not just a couple, but four holes each, followed by drywall anchors and mounting screws to make sure they are secure. After that I slid the speakers in and clamped them down. They actually look pretty good to me, and Jenny doesn’t mind too much, either. I married well.

Now all I need to do is fix the speaker cables, and I’ll be back in business. Both my cables ended up too short after the mounting (poor planning on my part), so I had to splice in some extra cable for one speaker, and I haven’t decided what to do for the second. Either way I’ll have the cables out of the walkways, which was my primary goal. When I hooked up the first speaker, I was a bit surprised to find that it actually sounded better when mounted on the wall. Perhaps it’s because more of the sound gets to move throughout the room instead of getting blocked by the couch and carpet like before. I am very pleased and feel like I’ve accomplished something, but you know what this means – time to find another home theater project. =)