I made the decision to attempt this myself and ordered what tools I figured I’d need: An endoscope to see what I was doing before I actually did it. A mega long drill bit to do it. And fiberglass fishing poles to push the wire up and catch it in the attic.
The scope came first and I immediately attempted to get a look up in the wall. While the camera is advertised as semi-rigid, and it is, it’s still not rigid enough to climb more than a couple feet without bending out of direction. So I have to wait for the poles to come in so I have something firm to attach the camera to.
The next thing to come in was the drill bit. And what an impressive piece of tool this is.
Like the camera, I immediately tried stuffing it up the wall. Unfortunately, I was unsuccessful getting the drill head up the wall. I might have overestimated the amount of depth available to me between the sheetrock and cinder block.
As a sanity check, I flipped the drill over and fished the back end up. Initially, i hit a snag right at the connection of the extension, making me think the extension couldn’t fit between the wall either. I got out the endoscope and had a closer look. No, there’s enough clearance. I just determined the end of the bit was hitting a staple holding the former phone lines. A bit of wiggling and the bit was free. I pushed onward and upward.
Finally, I hit something solid. Form the countless videos I’d watched, I learned to mark the bit to make sure you don’t drill too far and go through the roof. So I taped the bit and pulled back out. Measuring the bit showed I made it probably 4 inches past the ceiling. What the hell? I can’t take the chance of drilling if I don’t know exactly where the bit is, so I have to wait for the poles so I can run the scope up the wall and see exactly how far we go.
As it’s been told to me by two people, there should be a horizontal furring strip where the drywall is secured to at the ceiling. The bit, as I’ve inserted it, is going past the ceiling. Maybe I got super lucky and hit the hole where the phone lines came down. If so, then with the scope, I should be able to find that hole again and no drill needed (for this run anyway)..