so i f'ed up my condo tonight.....

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posol

RETIRED
yup, i'm officially a moron.

The kicker is I knew i shouldn't do this, but I said F it and tried it anyway.....



So i mounted my surround sound speakers on the wall last week, and the exposed wire running up the wall was driving me nuts. So, i figured i'd drill a little hole, run the wire behind the sheet rock, and pull it out the bottom above the trim.

the insulation stopped that from working.... so i broke out the coat hanger..... try to fish it down.

yeah that didn't work.

so i figured i could drill a couple holes every couple inches and kinda pull it down, then patch it.

well, that turned into my dumb ass using a 3/8" drill bit, and running the height of the wall down to the floor.....

i got it patched back up with some smack.... but now i realize that it is about 3" from the end of a stud, meaning theres 14-ish inches of sheetrock with no screws on it. One minor press with a pinky finger, and the whole wall moves.

one lean, and that person is going to end up through the wall.


so, here's what it looks like.....






coming soon, a whole new wall. it needs to be re- sheet rocked, cuz i'm a fucktard.

flame away.
 

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b, you should know better. Geeks and home improvement dont get along...geeks and cars...thats perfectly fine.
 
That blows. With money like yours, I'm surprised you didn't go purchase yourself a snake.

They're cheap too. Rediculously cheap. Then buy some thread. Run the snake with the thread where you want it. Then tie the end of the thread to your speaker wire. Pull the thread until speaker wire comes out the whole. Voila. It's done.




My dad has one of those bose stereo's so this was a must. It worked great. Kind of a bitch though. Well complete bitch for those 5 hours, but 2 years later. It was worth it.. But we did it in the house, so we used the crawler so we didn't have to remove the molding, but just drill holes between the studs we ran the wire.
 
That blows. With money like yours, I'm surprised you didn't go purchase yourself a snake.

They're cheap too. Rediculously cheap. Then buy some thread. Run the snake with the thread where you want it. Then tie the end of the thread to your speaker wire. Pull the thread until speaker wire comes out the whole. Voila. It's done.

i didn't know a snake existed, save for the toilet snake, until mike came over to laugh at me. lol

ohh well live and learn.

better to F up the condo then the house i'm designing :ph34r:


ya shoulda left it alone....

probably, but that wire was driving me nuts.


so, now that the wall is coming down,
i'm going to re-do the studs to build a perfect holder for the speakers, and drill through the studs to run the wire across to the other side of the room instead of just running it on the floor behind the couch.

oh, and i'm hiring a contractor. i'm done doing shit myself.
its easier to make a phone call and pay some one to do it then to deal with this shit.

if it doesn't have a keyboard or a mouse on it, i don't want to touch it anymore.
 
easy way to fix it cut a 6" strip down it and screw in a backer board then patch then mesh tape and filler sand and paint A little under 2 hrs work ( use proset 30 )
 
yeah, i thought about that too. i'm going to have one of my contractor buddies come over and take a look and get me a price...
 
house youre designing eh? heh, your gonna have to send me the plans for that. i assume your doing it in autocad?
 
The real problem here is Condominium construction. Is this on a wall that divides your place from the roach motel next door ?
 
hahaha dude... next time you do that, get a fish tape.

I do that on a daily basis with phone wires.

Fishtape + tape = that working.
 
its not even a straight line... were you drunk?

and thats a bit close to an outlet to go sawing through sheetrock with a drill bit...
 
I've done this stuff for a living, and I've seen some pretty messed up home improvement jobs. Yours is certainly not the worst I have seen. But you shoulda at least done some research on this, lol. It's like trying to do a headgasket job yourself, having no prior car experience and having no repair manual. My work specialized in home A/V and Telecom, basically all low voltage wiring. You can do a LOT of bad stuff to your systems if you don't know what you are doing.

My suggestions:
Since you'll be pulling off that entire wall anyway, use banana plugs and separate your system from the in-wall wiring. This way, you'll have a clean installation for when you want to sell the condo, and the permanent audio wiring will make your home worth a little bit more, or at least make a bit more of a selling point. A wall plate with banana plugs will also make it a cleaner setup behind your components if you are a neat freak, like I am. Don't forget to wire in a subwoofer. All the highend subs we wired in for clients used coax, but some just use a mono RCA. I'd wire a coax just for flexibility, and use a coax to RCA adapter if your setup uses RCA.

When you have the audio wires run, don't run them near any normal electrical wires; leave at least 1.5 feet of space between the power and audio lines. If you must cross any power lines to get the audio outlet where you want it, cross over the power line at a 90 degree angle. This will minimize any electrical noise from the AC voltage.

It's not rocket science, but a lot of electricians and GCs don't know these things, so make sure to either get a contractor who knows low voltage, or give explicit instructions on what you want if you hire a normal electrician or GC.
 
I don't believe "RF bleed" came into Brian's equation. Home installers have a huge assortment of equipment to test wall wiring for fields and magnetic troubles.
 
I bought a set of the nice plugs (round-top screws) to go on the wall, but i need to get a junction box up there to mount it into. plus, it sticks out too far (my speaksers sit pretty much right on the wall... little clearance) So i don't know what im' going to do with that.

The main wires run up tucked in the rug kinda deal by the trim. I'm not having that wall to hide those any more than they are. they are out of the way.
the sub is also on the other wall next to the tv... nothing needs to be run. just these 2 wires up the wall to the 2 surrounds.

the speaker wire i'm using is shielded and designed for in-wall use.. there should be little RF on it.
 
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