Today I made the split decision to begin my wiring, primarily because it’s cold and rainy out and having a day where the attic can be cool(er) is something that must be exploited. Today I received my spool of CAT5 cable, so there wasn’t anything holding me back. Previously, I had received my wiring tool kit, and still to come are extra keystone jacks and wall plates. But the wiring can be done in advance and the wire is here.
Like I’ve said, it’s been a year since I’ve been in the attic, and I do remember what a bunch of bullshit it was. I’m not young anymore and I don’t have the flexibility I used to. So climbing around like a monkey between joists is not a fun project. But I consoled myself saying there was no rush and I could take months to complete the project if I wanted to. The more important thing was to do it well and not give up part way through like every other time, saying “Fuck this! Good enough!”
One of the goals of the wiring project was to clean up the bullshit. First of all, all the phone lines except one are coming out. Second, what cable runs that are there are going to be cleaned up. The network wire is just laying on the joists and I want to have it elevated, suspended from the rafters. I bought a bag of cable clips that nail to wood beams to accommodate this.
The first thing I chose to do was to pull the new line from the guest bedroom. That room already had 3 wires run already, but they were too short after the switch relocation. I tied my new cable to one of the old cables, went in the attic and pulled myself a fresh line of cable. Now to drop it.
My network jacks are mounted in the ceiling and to support my expanded configuration, the hole needs to be bigger. So that was the next thing I did: cut a bigger hole and installed the mounting plate.
With the bigger hole, I was able to put my whole hand in there, so fishing cables out was going to be a breeze. And for the new drop, it absolutely was. Now that the cable was run and dropped, I had to neaten it up.
I don’t have a small hammer to bring up with me, so I took my small sledge hammer.. I don’t know the name of the tool, but it is like a hand-size sledge hammer. It turned out to be a terrible decision. Too heavy and the head was sort of rounded, so the nails kept bending. I went back down and got my real hammer. Although big, it did a much better job. I just want to comment that the trivial statement “going down” is anything but. It’s almost 5 minutes of stretching and squatting.
With the network cables secured to the rafters, I wanted to clean up the coax cable as well. I only needed one wire right now, for the internet, so I disconnected everything else from the splitter and started organizing.
Holy shit. Two runs that were shot far down the house probably had 30 feet of slack each! So now, my project grows a little bit because I want to trim and re-terminate these excessive cable to the proper length. More tools. What sucks is I had all the tools to do that and threw them out when I cleared out the shed thinking I’d never need them again. Lesson learned. Hoarding begins. And the coax wasn’t the only thing excessive. The phone line, which didn’t seem to go anywhere, was probably 50 feet itself. Just piles of slack cable.
I’m going to be sore AF tomorrow, but my goal for that day is to see if I can pull a network cable up using one of the existing phone cables. And tonight I’m going to terminate my new cable run and try out my cable tester in my new tool kit.