Process
The order matters more than it looks. Most of what goes wrong in this trade goes wrong because somebody specified a mechanism before anyone measured the opening it had to fit.
Sequence
A conversation about the room, the screen, and what the client wants to be looking at when nothing is playing. Most of it is about the wall, not the mechanism. This is also where I say if the thing being asked for is a bad idea — which happens often enough to be worth mentioning here.
What I need
Roughly what you want to hide, and where.
What you get
An honest read on whether it is straightforward, awkward, or not possible.
Field dimensions, not plan dimensions. Ceiling depth, joist direction and spacing, stud bays, floor build-up, existing wiring, and how far out of square the opening actually is. On a retrofit I will open a small inspection hole rather than guess, and patch it before I leave.
What I need
Access, and about an hour.
What you get
A dimensioned record of the real conditions, which is yours whether or not you go ahead.
The mechanism gets chosen against the measured numbers rather than the brochure. You get the model number, the reason, and the option I did not pick with its price — so the decision stays visible instead of disappearing into a line item called "TV lift".
What I need
The screen model, or its weight and diagonal.
What you get
A written specification, a price, and a second option. Quote holds 30 days.
Cabinet, leaf or ceiling closure built in the shop in Ephrata. The mechanism is mounted and cycled several hundred times on the bench, loaded, before it goes anywhere near a house. Mechanisms that are going to fail early mostly do it here, which is exactly where they should.
What I need
Approval on the drawing and the finish.
What you get
Bench photographs, and a firm install date once the mechanism has passed its cycles.
Set, shimmed, wired, terminated and adjusted until the reveal is even along its whole length rather than just at the corners. Drywall is cut, patched and finished by the same hands. Floors and finishes get protected before anything comes through the door.
What I need
Site access and power. Not much else.
What you get
A working mechanism, a finished wall, and the site left clean.
Cycle the mechanism with whoever will actually use it. Label the control paths. Leave the manual override procedure, the spare fasteners and the mechanism documentation on site. Then a return visit after the first heating season, because the house will have moved and the reveal will want a quarter turn.
What I need
Ten minutes of whoever uses it.
What you get
Documentation, a booked adjustment visit, and one phone number for the next ten years.
Step four, expanded
A mechanism that is going to bind, drift out of level, develop a noise or lose its limits will usually start doing it inside the first few hundred cycles. In a house, that is two years of ordinary use and a service call in a finished room.
On the bench, loaded to the real screen weight, it is an afternoon. So every build gets cycled under load before it is installed, and anything that misbehaves goes back to the supplier rather than into a wall.
Questions
Before framing closes, ideally. A lift or a hidden door has rough-in requirements — blocking, a framed opening at a specific dimension, conduit — and those are cheap before the drywall and expensive after. If the house is already finished, that is fine too; it just changes what is possible.
Then the plan changes, and you hear about it in step two rather than on install day. That is the entire reason the measurement is a separate step with its own visit instead of a box ticked during the sales conversation.
Yes, regularly. Retrofit work in a lived-in house is a large part of this trade. It means dust control, protection, and doing the noisy part in one block rather than spread across a week.
Reveal, alignment, latch engagement, travel limits and control paths, plus anything that has started to sound different. It is included in the price of a build. If nothing needs doing, that is a good visit, not a wasted one.
Next step
No showroom, no presentation, no mechanism named until something has been measured. Bring the room and the problem.
spec@invisiblefunction.com · (717) 555-0142 · Ephrata, PA
