How long does media wall installation take?

Plenty of UK media wall pages quote three to five days, and some print a schedule that skims the plaster on day three and paints it on day four. That sequence does not work. Fresh skim over plasterboard wants three to seven days before it will take a mist coat, and nearer the top of that range over a bonding coat or in a cold room. Paint it sooner and the finish flashes, bubbles and takes unevenly, which shows within months as patchy sheen on the flattest wall in the room.

So a three-day media wall is one of three things, and none of them get stated. It was painted over green plaster. It has no wet plaster in it at all, because the frame was clad in paint-ready MDF and the joints taped rather than skimmed. Or three days counts the days a van was outside, not the days you spent living with a wall that was not finished. We paint on day seven or eight, and the gap is deliberate.

The first two days are the framework and everything buried inside it. Studwork is fixed to wall and floor, plywood goes in behind the television position so the mount lands on solid timber, and sockets, the fused spur for the fire and the low-voltage LED runs are set out and inspected before boarding hides them. That side of the job is wired and tested to BS 7671 by our NICEIC-approved electrician, which is what satisfies Part P, and the certificate comes to you at handover. The old surround and hearth come out first, and where the flue above is still in use we leave the ventilation gap Part J asks for.

Boarding, taping and skimming run through the middle of the week, the dusty and loud part of the job. Then the plaster is left alone while we get on with what does not touch it: the fire lifted into its recess, the mount bolted through into the ply, the joinery brought from the Anerley workshop and put together in situ. Painting, lighting commissioning and second-fix cable dressing come last, by which point the skim has had several days of the room's own heat on it. Library cabinetry, porcelain cladding or a second wall in the same reception adds time at the finishing end, not the framing end.

The build is only the back half of the clock. We survey within three to five working days of your enquiry, the fixed-price quote follows forty-eight hours after the visit, and the earliest slot in the diary is usually two to three weeks out. Add the build and four to six weeks is the honest figure from first call to a room you can sit in, which is the number to plan around when the wall has to be done before Christmas or a new tenancy.

Three things extend it, and each has its own queue. A live gas supply must be capped by a Gas Safe registered engineer before we can frame across the old fireplace, which is £150–£250 on a registration that is not ours and needs booking ahead of day one. A leasehold flat needs the freeholder's written consent, and most managing agents come back inside two to four weeks. A statutorily listed property needs Listed Building Consent at £200–£400, and Southwark works to its own timetable of eight to twelve weeks.

Specification drives the duration, not postcode. A single wall with light joinery is a seven to nine day job: an Abbeville Village loft build in flush walnut veneer finished in seven days at £4,100, a converted flat on Anerley Road with wall-to-wall slatted oak in eight at £4,200. Twin coordinating walls across a double reception are a different job entirely, and the twin build in a Dulwich Village Edwardian took fourteen days at £10,800 combined, with a Belvedere Road pair at thirteen days and £8,400 combined.

Room size shifts it as well. Bromley living rooms run four metres and wider, usually with no chimney breast to build into, so the feature comes forward off a flat wall and the joinery run is longer. That borough carries our longest average of anywhere we work.