Another mounting a tv over a fireplace thread :) So my wife wants to rearrange our living room and place our tv (48" LED) on the brick wall above the fireplace. The fireplace contains a pellet stove insert (near blurry thumb) and pending any natural disasters or lifestyle changes I don't plan on going wood burning again. While I still need to check the temperature in the planned tv's location, I don't imagine any issue as the top of the pellet stove is relatively cool while burning and the fans shoot the heat out a ways before drifting up. But on to the main question (again, a fan-favorite) which is regarding cable management. The current plan is to sit the tv on the mantle without using a tv mount and place all of the other components in the cabinet to the right. I would like to avoid drilling any mount holes in the brick wall if possible, although this will seem irrelevant given what I will describe in a little bit. The mantle is about 9 inches deep and two inches tall with a couple of inches between the end and the trim of the wall/in-wall cabinet to the right. I am thinking of, about an inch in from the end of the mantle, routing out an inch tall, inch deep grove in the back of the mantle facing the brick. Towards the center of the mantle I will come up through the top of the mantle and therefore have a concealed run for my cables. So that gets my cables from the tv to an inch before the end of the mantle on the right. Now I have two thoughts. The wall meets the brick at a slight angle and behind the layer of brick there is a jagged cinderblock structure but plenty of space between it and the cabinet wall. The brick directly between the end of the mantle (under the whitish half brick) is the one I will be referring to. My first thought as this won't be a 'structural' brick is to find a way to remove the brick from the cement so that it easily slides in and out but isn't noticeable to the unknowing. With it out, I would chop part of its back away and its front where it mates to the grove I made in the mantle. So in essence the brick would be my raceway cover. My second thought is very similar except that without removing the brick I would drill a fairly large hole (to accommodate an hdmi end) at an angle accomplishing the same thing. I've never worked with brick so I don't know the complications of either or if the brick can even be reused in the first thought. Thoughts? Update: not that it really matters but the mantle is unfixed and sits on three reverse-stepped bricks (difficult to see in the picture) [ATTACH]38754[/ATTACH]

I'm trying to install some electric cable just behind the baseboards so I cut out a small section behind the baseboards (which the baseboards will eventually hide) and I drilled through some studds with 5/8 for the electric cable. There is one part of the wall where it seems to have 3 studs together, I'm not sure if that is a supporting wall or not but the drill piece I have is not long enough to drilla hole through all 3 studs. So, I cut a small notch just at the front of the studs to feed the wire through. Afterwards though I thought that might weaken it a bit if it was supporting so was wondering if I should fit a small piece of shim/wood block back into the notch?