TV mounting looks like one of the simplest jobs a handyman does — find a stud, drill, done. In a lot of Bay Area homes, especially anything built before the 1960s, it's not that simple. Here's what actually complicates it, and why a mount that looks perfectly level on day one can be a real problem by month three if it's done wrong.
Plaster-and-lath walls behave differently than drywall
A huge share of San Francisco's housing stock — especially Victorians, Edwardians, and prewar buildings in the Sunset, Richmond, and Noe Valley — has plaster-and-lath walls instead of drywall. Plaster is harder and more brittle than drywall, which means two things: standard drywall anchors are the wrong hardware, and a mounting mistake is more likely to crack a visible chunk of plaster instead of leaving a small clean hole.
Studs also aren't always on a tidy 16-inch grid in older construction. We locate studs with a combination of a stud finder and manual verification (a small pilot hole in an inconspicuous spot) rather than trusting the first reading, because a false positive on plaster is common and costly to get wrong with a heavy TV.
What's actually inside the wall
Older homes sometimes still have knob-and-tube wiring, older plumbing runs, or unexpected blocking inside walls where you'd expect open cavity. Drilling into a wall without checking for this first risks hitting something you really don't want to hit. Part of a proper mounting job is a quick visual and tactile check before committing to the final drill points — not just eyeballing it and going.
Cable management matters more than people expect
A mounted TV with cables hanging loose down the wall looks unfinished and is honestly avoidable in most rooms. A few approaches, in order of how invasive they are:
- In-wall cable channel/cord kit — cables run inside the wall cavity between the TV and a low-profile outlet plate below. Clean look, works well on both plaster and drywall when done correctly.
- Surface raceway/cable cover — a paintable channel mounted on the wall surface. Less invasive than in-wall routing, good option on plaster where opening the wall isn't ideal, or in rentals.
- Floating shelf or console below the TV — hides a power strip and source components without touching the wall cavity at all. We've mounted several of these alongside TVs specifically to solve the "where do the cables go" problem without any wall cutting.
Weight and mount type actually matter
Not every mount is rated for every TV, and this is a common corner-cutting spot on DIY installs. A full-motion articulating mount holding a 65"+ TV needs its own weight rating checked against the specific TV model — and needs to be anchored into studs, not just anchors, for anything beyond the smallest screens. A tilting or fixed mount for a lighter TV has more flexibility, but the stud location still determines where it can safely go, not where you'd ideally want it centered on the wall.
None of this makes TV mounting a huge job — most installs take under an hour once the wall type and stud locations are confirmed. It's just a job where the invisible part (what's actually inside the wall) matters more than the visible part, and that's exactly the kind of thing that's harder to judge from a YouTube tutorial filmed in someone else's drywall house.