Since I had some spare time this weekend and still don’t have anyone to pull my cable, I went ahead and started tackling the project. First off, I installed a light switch (not really part of the audio system, but part of moving our family room) which only took 3 hours; it shouldn’t have taken that long, but getting the old single gang box out took far longer than it should have and getting all the wires back in was a royal pain. Next up, I decided to run a few runs of cable. This turned out to be an interesting task. I knew there was some access to our walls from the garage and had been told by the previous owner that the owner before him had a darkroom in the back of a storage area; this got drywalled in some time ago. I chopped out some drywall and discovered the “hidden” room. Running the wires was relatively easy, but extremely time consuming. 2 runs down, 26 more to go.
Putting in the first speaker control turned out to be challenging. I cut in the low voltage box, wired up the Cat 5 and tried to put the control in the low voltage box. Unfortunately the company that makes the low voltage box (Carlson) must never have talked to the company that made the control box (Russound) as the low voltage box was a few millimeters too small! The volume control box is huge because it contains an amplifier (it’s an A-BUS control); after a little modification of the low voltage box, I managed to get it installed.
More pictures are in the gallery. Hopefully this week I’ll be able to run some more cable.