Everybody I've spoken to tells me that the best way of mounting a flatscreen TV on a sheetrock wall is to "use plywood backing." Okay, fine and dandy. But for me, the Devil's in the details: How, exactly, do I do so?
I assume that I have to cut out a section of sheetrock and mount the plywood in its place on the studs behind it? But is this plywood a replacement for the sheetrock that's been cut out (and I dispose of the sheetrock cutout)? And isn't this rather ugly if the flatscreen TV gets later moved (there's now a large rectangular bit obviously made of a different material even if I do paint it a matching color as the sheetrock wall surrounding it; because unlike just attaching it to the sheetrock with multiple toggle bolts where I can merely spackle over the remaining holes, I'd have to remove the plywood and reattach the sheetrock cutout to restore the wall to its original state)? Or is there some other technique that I'm not seeing here where the plywood backing is attached somehow and the sheetrock cutout is remounted on top of it? And what happens if where you want to mount the flatscreen (and thus the plywood) *DOESN'T* have any wall studs behind it? What then?
The flatscreen mounting bracket is rectangular (36.5 inches X 20.3 inches) and has six default points for mounting it to a wall but it has secondary mount points (up to a total of fourteen) if the default six are "insufficient for the material of the wall to bear" (that's as far as the "instructions" go--they don't go into detail as to how to attach it to any surface). If I used M6 toggle/butterfly bolts at all fourteen mount points, would this be sufficient to secure the mounting bracket and flatscreen (total 70lbs) to a wall of half-inch thick sheetrock without the plywood backing? Or is that just asking for trouble?
I assume that I have to cut out a section of sheetrock and mount the plywood in its place on the studs behind it? But is this plywood a replacement for the sheetrock that's been cut out (and I dispose of the sheetrock cutout)? And isn't this rather ugly if the flatscreen TV gets later moved (there's now a large rectangular bit obviously made of a different material even if I do paint it a matching color as the sheetrock wall surrounding it; because unlike just attaching it to the sheetrock with multiple toggle bolts where I can merely spackle over the remaining holes, I'd have to remove the plywood and reattach the sheetrock cutout to restore the wall to its original state)? Or is there some other technique that I'm not seeing here where the plywood backing is attached somehow and the sheetrock cutout is remounted on top of it? And what happens if where you want to mount the flatscreen (and thus the plywood) *DOESN'T* have any wall studs behind it? What then?
The flatscreen mounting bracket is rectangular (36.5 inches X 20.3 inches) and has six default points for mounting it to a wall but it has secondary mount points (up to a total of fourteen) if the default six are "insufficient for the material of the wall to bear" (that's as far as the "instructions" go--they don't go into detail as to how to attach it to any surface). If I used M6 toggle/butterfly bolts at all fourteen mount points, would this be sufficient to secure the mounting bracket and flatscreen (total 70lbs) to a wall of half-inch thick sheetrock without the plywood backing? Or is that just asking for trouble?
