Problem Solving

I installed a television set in my kitchen yesterday.   I wanted to have one in there so that when I’m cooking, or sitting at the bar, or whatever, there will be television available.   I guess this speaks to how addicted to television I am.   Oh well, it is actually the process that I want to talk about, not the result.

There is a place in my kitchen that lends itself to a television.   It’s a little cubbyhole in the center of the west wall.  It’s exactly 18.5 inches wide and about 21 inches tall.   I know the exact width measurement because I measured it before heading out to buy a TV.   I didn’t measure the height because I didn’t think it would matter.   Televisions these days are all wider than they are tall, so my critical measurement would be width.   When I got to the store though, I began looking at mounting brackets.   I found one that would allow me to move the television outward and side to side, but also allowed me to rotate the entire television 360 degrees.    This mean that I could actually buy a TV that was wider than 18 inches because I could rotate it 90 degrees and push it back into its cubbyhole, then was I was ready to use it, pull it out and rotate it back.   The only problem now was that I didn’t know my critical measurement again.   “Oh well”, I thought, “the space is pretty tall.”

I bought a 22” LG television.   It wasn’t very expensive and would do well in my kitchen.   I took it home and pulled it out to make sure it would fit in the space.   It did, barely!   There was less than 1/8 inch on the top and bottom when the television was rotated.   This meant that I had to mount my bracket in exactly the right position.   I had a problem.   I would need to assemble the entire mounting arm and mount the television on it in order to be able to hold the rig in place to ensure that all my movements would work.   I would need to, while holding the arm, work it into every position that I might want move it to ensure that everything would move without restriction.   I would also have to make sure that I marked my bolt holes at exactly the right height so that I could fit within my 1/8 inch tolerances.   This was a problem because the whole thing fully assembled was quite heavy, and this cubbyhole is pretty high on the wall.

How did solve this seemingly impossible problem?   Well, sometimes the simplest solutions are the best.   It sounds simple now, but only because I already thought of it.   At the time, I had to think through all of my options.   I solved the problem by laying the television face down on a piece of cardboard.   I then outlined it with a pencil and cut out a piece the exact size of my television.   Then I mounted the cardboard to the mounting arm and was able to hold everything in place while I tested my movements.  Pretty simple, pretty smart.   The whole thing works perfectly, although I think I might have drilled my bolts through the side of my refrigerator.