Mount TV to Drywall on Concrete without Furring strips?

Question

I have a wall in my bedroom, it is drywall, on top of furring strips spaced 24 inches apart, on top of concrete. I have a small blue arrow below the center furring strip on the picture below which marks the exact center of the room. The TV in the picture is NOT the TV I will be putting on this wall; I'm just using it temporarily.

The problem I am having is with my TV mount, which will be a Sanus BLF213. The mount is really only long enough to go through one of the furring strips if I want to mount it anywhere near the center of the room; which I do.

I plan on drilling through the drywall, through the furring strip, and then into the concrete behind it, with some concrete anchors. But since I can only go through one of the furring strips, that means the other half of the TV mount will be going through an inch of open air.

Is this going to be a problem?

Answer 1

Get a piece of 1/2" plywood.

Cut it in one dimension to be a little less than the height of the TV.

For the other dimension, cut it to either ~ 52" (wide enough to go across all 3 furring strips) or wide enough to mount to 2 furring strips + whatever distance is needed in the other direction to properly hold the TV mount.

Paint the wood white to match the wall. Assuming it will be basically blocked by the TV, it doesn't need to be an exact match. But based on the picture, any stock white paint should look fine.

Attach the plywood into 2 or 3 (depending on the width) furring strips with concrete anchors.

Attach the mount to the plywood using wood screws. An inch long would be fine - 1/2" of plywood plus into the drywall. The drywall won't provide any support, but longer screws will do better than shorter screws. If you can arrange the mount so that you can get screws through the mount into one of the furring strips then use screws just short of the concrete - i.e., something like 1-3/4" - 1/2" plywood + 1/2" drywall + 3/4" furring strip.

Answer 2

Your selected mount appears to be a metal rectangle attached to the wall. If you're really worried about the weight of the TV and can't abide drywall anchors only on one side of the mount, I would do this:

Get a large piece of paper and tape it to the wall. Place your bracket on the wall in the proposed location. Trace the inside and outside of the bracket on the paper, remove the bracket. Use a straight edge and trace a line about halfway between your inside and outside tracings, i.e. draw a rectangle that would be covered by the bracket. Cut the drywall out along this line.

Determine where your non-stud mounting holes will need to be. Get a block of wood the same thickness as your furring, and cut it so that it's a couple inches longer than the vertical spacing between the bracket mounting holes. Anchor the wood block to the concrete wall, using your concrete anchor of choice. (You can tilt the block diagonally, then rotate it to get the ends under the drywall.)

Take the cut out drywall and stick it back in the hole, covering up your new mounting block. Use a little bit of tape to keep the drywall from falling out, if the cut edges don't automatically hold it in place.

Mount your bracket to the stud and the new mounting block. The cut drywall edge should be covered by the bracket.

Answer 3

these will hold 280 lbs. in drywall. Unless you have an extraordinary heavy TV these will work fine, especially with one side anchored in firring and concrete.