Home Networking (2009)

Did some minor remodeling this weekend, and was surprised it went as well as it did. I’m not what you would call a “handy man” so this was a bit of an adventure. The job itself was fairly minor, I bought some Cat6 from Your Cable Hookup (dumb name, really cheap prices & fast shipping) to run in one section of the basement. I wanted to get my XBox hooked up to the internet and prep for a media server or new TV, whatever.

I decided to go with pass-through keystone jacks, since I don’t have the tools to do the push-down stuff properly (and test it) and they cost more than everything else combined. The one downside to the pass-throughs is they add at least an inch of addtl depth to the faceplate so you have to sort of cram the faceplate in to get it flush with the wall. I also had to buy pre-booted cables; needed about 30 ft, but it was 25 or 35 so ended up with an extra 5ft of cable to stuff behind the wall.

I ran 3 cables, 2 would have been easier but I think I’ll happier in the long run with 3. To run the cables, I stripped off the baseboards, then run about a half-inch of drywall off at the floor. The 3rd cable presented a challenge in some spots, getting it tucked under but think I accomplished that. I’ll know more once we do the new baseboards in early August.