Moving speaker wires

I forgot to mention that with all the shower work, sanding and painting in the living room, that last month I moved my home theater speaker wires.

As you can see when I installed the wires last December my only real option was to drill a hole in the ceiling to run the wires into the attic.  I had hidden the wires behind the curtain.  However with the living room re-do the curtains are gone and will not be replaced.   Not a good look to have wires dangling from the ceiling.

Because I can't get the wires down from the attic inside the wall, I took off the outside wall panel and ran the wires between the panel and the sheet of insulation (after I carved a channel in the insulation).

Of course, as usual, nothing was easy.  I wanted to enter the wall halfway between where I removed the panel and the antenna pole as that is where my theater system is located.  However it is not easy to remove the panels.  To ensure the panels stay in place back when I installed the sheets of insulation I used many long ribbed nails to reach the wood behind the 2 inch insulation.  It was difficult to remove the nails in the small panel I did remove.  It would have been a nightmare to remove the nails in a full 4 ft by 8 ft panel without a lot of damage to the panel.  The next panel goes a little beyond the window.


So I was limited to the small panel I had removed at the corner of the house.  This was not ideal.  When initially installing the wires I didn't leave a lot of slack, which was a mistake.  Now I had to move the wires from near the window to the corner.  The speaker wires along the left side of the house will now have a shorter distance to the theater system.  The speakers on the right side now have a longer distance to travel to the corner then back to the theater system.  Adding to my trouble was that one of the right side speakers absolutely had no slack.

When I initially installed the wires I attached them to the roof's rafters.  So I had to now crawl back into the attic and move the speaker wires.  Not fun.  I hate working around insulation.

I removed the wires from the roof rafter's and moved them around the attic and I got a little more wire to play with.

Once I moved the wires in the attic, I then had to borrow a really long drill bit from Wyatt to drill a hole through the house wall a short distance above the floor.

I got the wires moved.  All the wires reached the theater system except the short wire with no slack. It went through the wall but was just a little short of the theater system.  I had a spool of left over speaker wire but I couldn't find it.  Bob and Jan had some old speaker wires running in a bedroom from when they bought the house.  They didn't use or want the wire so I pulled it up from under the carpet.  The wire was a lighter gauge wire but usable.   However, before I finished painting the walls and moving the theater system back in place I found a heavier gauge speaker wire in the ditch when I was out on a bicycle ride.  A bunch of brand new looking wire all wrapped up.  It was a strange find but a welcome one.  The wire covering color is a beautiful blue.  All the wires now reach the theater system. 


Oh yeah... now that I have cable TV I took down my antenna and pole seen in the earlier photo.