TV and DVD Player Camouflage

I recently joined the modern age and did something I’ve been claiming I would get around to for about three years: I bought a TV and DVD player. I’m happy with my purchases, but they did look out of place with everything else, and it meant that I had to take down some fabric art that I really liked in order to fit them on the wall.

To solve both those issues, I decided to hide the TV behind the fabric art, and put the DVD player on a folding shelf. Now, when I'm just hanging out in the living room, I don't have to look at the boring black boxes. This is custom, and will depend on the clearances and ceiling height that you have, but I hope it provides some ideas!

There are some restrictions that I had to take into account:

• There’s a house rabbit running loose in this room. He likes chewing anything rubbery that’s less than 24” high (such as wires).
• Any sort of furniture against this wall will inevitably get a knee bashed into it, and could also block the upstairs cold air return.
• There’s a thermostat on the wall that I don’t want to move or cover.
• The couch and work table in the room determine what viewing angles the TV needs to be capable of.
• The furnace chimney runs behind the wall, so a recessed cubby isn’t an option.

Which lead me to the following arrangement:

• TV is mounted to the wall on an extendable arm (purchased with the TV).
• Fabric art is on a two-hinge and slider contraption to allow it to cover the TV or rest back against the wall. This way, I never have to find a place to put the art that's safe from the rabbit.
• DVD player is inside fold-down shelf attached to the wall.
• All power cables and the DVD's HDMI cable are inside paintable wall-mounted conduits.
• Surge protector is on the wall behind the TV.

Future improvements:

• Attach a magnet to the fabric art frame, and hide one inside the drywall so that the art is less likely to fall forward
• Optimize the conduit arrangement for the cables
• Get around to painting things, and put a nicer fabric on the back of the red flowers
• Come up with a method that shorter people can use