Could you by any chance run it down through the bottom of the upper cabinet?

three daisies, ask you cable people where the hole would need to be, have your tile guy come out, remove the couple tiles, and then the tile guy could come back and re-tile...? The cable poeple should be able to drop the cable line, it shouldn't be too hard to accomplish?

Hmm, maybe! I know nothing about cable installation so those sound like good ideas to me. I'm sure my really nice tile guy would come back for a small fee. I should probably give him a call and see what he recommends also.

I bet you can just drill through the tile without taking it out - the only problem may be fishing the line. I had to move the cable from an adjoining bedroom to the upstairs entrance hall and the cable guy told me just to make a hole the size of the cable in the adjoining wall opposite. You don't need a junction box for cable so you don't need a big hole - just one the size of the cable being run. The cable plates are designed to put the cable through and then add the end joiner that screws in your tv (sorry for all the made up words - can you tell I am not an electrician!)

At any rate, I would see if they could just drill through the existing tile? If it didn't crack , you would be good to go, and if it did you could just replace the one tile.

Good luck!

Ours is through the bottom of the upper cabinet, coming through the adjacent wall. Being in a corner, this part of the cabinet is fairly useless anyway.

I am an electrician....and I can tell you that this can be accomplished without too much of a hassle. Ceramic tiles can be drilled and cut without removing them. I have done it many times. You just need to be careful.

Now, fishing the line is another story. It's not too bad, but it also depends if there is insulation in the wall. That just makes it a bit harder.

Most cable or satellite install guys aren't really experienced in fishing walls...they just wanna run everything as fast and easily as they can. You might be better off finding an experienced electrician to do the cutting and fishing instead of the cable guy.

Ours is also in an upper cabinet with the cable run through the bottom of the cabinet. The height of the TV hides the cable. The cable/satellite box also sits in that corner (it couldn't be put inside a cabinet b/c of the remote needed to change channels, etc.

One additional advantage of putting it inside the cabinet is that if you later decide you don't want a TV there or decide to move it elsewhere, you won't have an unused cable outlet sitting on/breaking up your backsplash.

One warning though...it does reduce the usable depth of that area by a little b/c the cable hook up sticks out an inch or two b/f dropping down to the floor of the cabinet. We store bowls there so it's really not a problem for us, but it might for you if you utilize the entire depth of the bottom of the cabinet.

Cable Connection inside 23"x12" Cabinet

Here's a view of the area (We have since moved the cable/satellite box to the other side of the TV...flush against the oven cabinet...so it's even less noticeable.)

No need to tear up that tile if you don't want to. I have 2 diff spots I can plug in TV, one is under the cab in the corner (you cannot see this unless you duck under and intentionally look for it)

{{!gwi}}

And the spot, near the penninsula, the outlet / cable jack is in the wall in the cab under the granite. I only have a phone hooked up there now but you get the idea.
{{!gwi}}

If I remember right both were added towards the end of the kitchen build (though they had the wires in the wall in advance) but in general I was really amazed at how much an electrician can do behind the scenes when you think it would be impossible. They can almost get you power / TV anywhere with minimal impact.

Ok wow, those pictures were helpful, thanks. Actually a cabinet outlet install might be great. There's a upper corner cabinet that runs deep on one angle (and I don't use that space as I can't really see back there. That might totally work. I'll talk to an electrician about that. I like the idea of not disturbing the tile in case I change my mind about having the outlet or TV in that spot one day.

DH actually has been threatening to drop the satellite TV to save $ (we don't watch much) but finally being able to watch the news or weather or listen to XM radio on TV in the kitchen while cooking and preparing endless meals would be really nice.