Over July 15-17 weekend I started working on the upstairs wiring. I continued working on it during the week as well. I started by cleaning up all the extraneous phone wires all over the house. I also removed the really old wiring coming in from one of the two phone NID's. I switched over to newer wiring. On the older wiring I found an interesting tag. The company on the tag is The Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company. As far as I can tell C&P became Bell Atlantic after the breakup of AT&T on Jan 1, 1984. This tag is at least 20 years old and I am willing to bet it is more than 40.
After cleaning up the phone mess I wasted 2-3 hours trying to figure out how to get wires to the outer wall of the living room above the fireplace. I gave up and at this point on July 29th I still haven't figured out how to get wires there. I am probably going to have to call in reinforcements.
I then decided to work on the three bedrooms. I would measure in the upstairs and then in the basement to try and line up where I wanted to fish the wires. I then drilled up through the ceiling, sub floor and stud wall base. This is about 6" of solid wood which takes a long time to do. Then I drill a small test whole in the upstairs and shine a light in. I check from the basement to ensure I can see the light, this tells me that I have nothing blocking. Then I cut a hole for a low voltage plate mount.
This worked perfectly for the first two rooms. In the third room I miscalculated by about 6" and was on the wrong side of a stud upstairs. I will have to patch my test hole which is about the size of a pen.
I haven't terminated either end yet, but I plan to probably this weekend. I want to make sure to test all the lines prior to sealing everything up.
Leave a comment