Football on the wall this season?  I hope so.  We have finally decided to get a wall mount high definition television (HDTV).  The price points are amazing right now.  We stopped by Sears with some idea of the dimensions over our fire place mantle.  Even with written down measurements, we still had a hard time visualizing how the various available flat panel HDTV sizes would look in our home.  So we wrote down some of the actual box measurements for several screen sizes and taped sheets of paper to the wall, just like shingles.  The smaller units did look good, but the paper models helped us rule out smaller sized.  Here it is…

Consumer Reports mentioned many HDTV purchasers wished they had bought a size or two larger.  We took that advice with the resulting blue rectangle showcasing a 42 x 30 inch unit with a screen size of 42 inch diagonal.  Yes, it is a bit large, but does not quite dominate the fireplace.

So hopefully this fall we will move the Green Bay Packers, Redskins and/or Cowboys to the big show above the toasty fire.  As this project progresses I will share my progress on things like heat from the fire, wiring the HDTV cables through the wall, etc.  By the way, we have never purchased an HDTV before.  We tend to have good luck with our Sears televisions; I bought the 19 inch television in the picture in 1987 and it is finally starting to ghost and dim after 20 full years of hard family service.  It sure beat Wal-Mart TVs with their couple year lifespan.