TV mounting, smart home and Wi-Fi in Fort Lee, NJ

Fort Lee is best known for its high-rise co-ops and condos along the Palisades cliffs, many with wide windows looking across the Hudson toward Manhattan and the George Washington Bridge. Behind the towers there are also older apartment buildings, townhouses and single-family homes on quieter streets. Most of what people ask for here happens inside apartments, where the building's rules matter as much as the walls.

Concrete is the main construction challenge in the towers. Ceilings and many walls are poured concrete, so in-ceiling speakers and hidden wiring are often limited. We work around it with low-profile surface raceway painted to match, soundbars and wireless speakers, and TV mounts anchored properly into concrete or framed partitions. Most boards and managers also require a certificate of insurance, a scheduled freight elevator and work within set hours, and some restrict drilling on certain walls, so we confirm all of this before the visit.

The views that make these apartments special also bring strong afternoon glare and heat. Motorized shades with solar or blackout fabrics make it possible to watch TV during the day, protect floors and furniture, and give privacy at night when the room is lit. Dual shades, with a light-filtering layer and a blackout layer on the same window, let you keep the view during the day and darken a bedroom completely at night. Battery-powered shade motors are a good option when there is no power near the window and the building does not allow new wiring.

Wi-Fi in a high-rise faces interference from dozens of neighboring networks. A properly configured system with ceiling or wall-mounted access points in the right rooms usually performs far better than a consumer router. Running a cable to the TV and the home office desk, even along a baseboard raceway, frees up wireless capacity for everything else. For townhouses and homes off Main Street in Fort Lee, the options open up: hidden wiring through basements, outdoor cameras and doorbells, and whole-home audio. Second-home owners in the towers can also add smart locks and cameras to keep an eye on the apartment while away.