How To Hide Your TV When Not In Use

Perhaps you are looking to create a cozier atmosphere or you want to know how to hide your tv when not in use. Regardless of why you may be looking into an electric fireplace or TV lift, we hope the update on our experience after 5 months on the road can help lead you in the right direction.

How to Hide Your TV When Not In Use

Back before Katie and I started the renovation of our RV we wanted a TV Lift built-in where our dinette booth had been. We also loved the idea of having an electric fireplace but were unsure if it would work with the space we had. Well, that was until we teamed up with Touchstone.

If you’ve seen our previous posts on our media cabinet and DIY space saving pull out table then you know we went ahead with both the electric fireplace and the TV lift. The question we are going to touch on today is, how are the tv lift and electric fireplace holding up?

Update on our TV Lift and Electric Fireplace

If you are more into videos than words you can check out our update in video form below:

The area where we built our media cabinet was small, however, once we began talking with Touchstone we realized we had just enough room to fit the electric fireplace and TV lift.

Below is a picture of the media cabinet right when we finished it up.

This picture was taken right after we installed the fireplace and tv lift with the tv. Since then we’ve traveled over 2,500 miles and lived in the RV for 5 months, so how is it all holding up?

Let’s start with the fireplace.

The fireplace we have installed: The Sideline36™ Touchstone’s 36 inch Recessed Electric Fireplace with Heat in Black

As I mentioned before we were unsure if we would have enough room in the media cabinet to fit a fireplace. The main reason was due to the room needed behind the fireplace. You see electric fireplaces can sometimes put off heat toward the back, and the last thing you want is for your TV to soak up all of that heat. It turns out that we needed 15″ behind the fireplace, and we had exactly that. We also built protective interior walls between the fireplace and tv for extra safety, you can see more on that over at our post about installing our TV Lift and Fireplace. Boy, are we glad we were wrong and were able to put the fireplace in.

We use it all the time. Not always with the heat component on but regardless you will almost always see a cozy fire burning in our RV. The atmosphere and feeling it puts off makes a great addition to the rustic modern vibe we are going for.

On top of looking great, it also puts off a good amount of heat. As you may know, Katie and I just spent a few months up in Wisconsin to spend time with my family, and get accustomed to living in the RV.

Wisconsin also taught us some valuable lessons about RVing in the winter.

A lesson we don’t touch on in the link above revolves around our electric fireplace. You see while we were in Wisconsin we had about 3 weeks’ worth of weather in the ’30s to ’40s and about two weeks that remained below 20 degrees. It was really cold, there were even 4 days with the lows well below -10 degrees including the windchill.

What we learned during that time was the fireplace was able to heat the RV up pretty much by itself when the temperature remained above 30 degrees. When it was above 30 we’d run the fireplace during the day and use a small space heater in the bedroom during the night which worked perfectly.

Once the temperature began to drop below freezing we had to add the gas heater into the equation to supplement some much needed extra heat. At this point though the electric fireplace was still adding good heat value.

When the daily highs consistently stayed in the single digits it was a different story. You could still feel the heat coming out of the electric fireplace, but it wasn’t able to produce enough to keep the room temperature up. We’re still extremely happy with the way it has worked and didn’t expect it to keep the RV warm during such extreme cold. However, I do feel if we were in a standard sticks in bricks home with better insulation it could’ve kept any room nice and cozy regardless of the outside temperature.

Onto the TV Lift:

TV Lift we have installed: The Whisper Lift™ II PRO – Touchstone’s Advanced TV Lift Mechanism

We know that we’ve been extremely happy with our electric fireplace, but what about the TV Lift?

We’re extremely pleased with our TV lift, it gives us the ability to watch tv when we want but also clear up some much-needed space in our tiny home when needed. Not to mention it’s extremely quiet and quick when needed, and the memory button on the remote is great for having the TV raise to the exact right location every time. If you’re looking to hide your tv this is the way to go for sure.

Not gonna lie, when we were installing the TV lift I was concerned with how it would hold up with us being in a home on wheels.  I mean we were going to be driving down the road hitting all sorts of bumps. As it turns out that thought was unwarranted. By having the lift securely attached to the slide-out and the cabinet, it has become a part of the RV as a whole and flows with the bumps.

We have driven over 2,500 miles and the TV hasn’t budged in the slightest bit.

The only concern we’ve had with our media cabinet revolves around a portion I built. When in Wisconsin and the temps dropped well below freezing which led to us creating more humidity, in turn, the lid I created for the TV to come through expanded and semi-sealed itself shut. It wasn’t too difficult to get up, but if you are building your own media cabinet I would consider making the lid small enough to allow for extreme expansion.

As the temperatures rose, this auto-corrected itself, and we don’t plan to be in freezing temperatures that often, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

Overall we are very pleased with our set-up and wouldn’t have it any other way. If you’re looking for a creative solution for how to hide your TV when not in use, then we highly recommend checking out Touchstone products, it’s a splurge well worth it.

Have you installed a TV Lift to hide your tv or Electric Fireplace to add a cozier vibe in your rig? If so we would love to hear about your experience, let us know in the comments below.

Updated Image as of February 2017:

 

Be sure to check out the posts below for additional information on our custom RV media cabinet:

• DIY Space-Saving Hidden Table
• Rustic Modern Media Cabinet with TV lift
• How to install a TV Lift inside an RV (and an electric fireplace!)