A while back, I noted my sloppy clean-up job when I ran my CAT6 cable under my house.

I was able to address that, and, finally mount my surround speakers as well as my center audio speaker.

It has been far too long since I packed away those read surround speakers. Sometimes you move around and shuffle your stuff from place to place long enough, you forget what you have in storage. Once it dawned on me that I not only can make the required destructive changes to my home to set them up, supplies were cheap and easy to acquire.

Off to monoprice! I picked up:

• 12AWG CL2 Rated 2-Conductor Speaker Wire, 100ft
• High Quality Banana Binding Post Two-Piece Inset Wall Plate for 1 Speaker - Coupler Type
• High Quality Banana Binding Post Two-Piece Inset Wall Plate for 2 Speakers - Coupler Type
• 5 PAIRS OF High-Quality Gold Plated Speaker Banana Plugs, Open Screw Type

The rest, like the electrical gang-box, I picked up locally. Monoprice is cool, but free shipping is not part of those price savings.

But hold on there cowboy!

When my box of goodies arrived, drill recklessly in hand, Michele weighed in on the project and pumped the brakes. She asked how I was planning on doing this, and laid down the ultimatum “If you are not going to do it right, and clean up the TV cable, don’t bother putting more holes in the wall…”

Well, she was right. We have this pesky RG-6 cable running across the floor. It happens to be the internet, thus a requirement to live, so it wasn’t getting touched.

My urge to watch Blade Runner 2049 and play Bloodborne with full 5.0 surround sound was overriding my urge to crawl under the house. So, I agreed to less holes in the walls and just run the wires along side the cable.

Here it is:

At some point during this project, I got a puppy:

This is where part two comes in. Enter Rey, or anyone of the acceptable nick-names:

• Reyoletta
• Rey Liotta
• Rey Bradbury
• Rabies

So far, she has been great about not eating everything. Actually she has been great in general, cuddly and smart.

However, do you see that black and white bundle of cables behind her?

The temptation was too great one sunny afternoon. Perhaps she was left all by her lonesome for 10 minutes, or she got the taste of soft vulcanized rubber and wanted more.

Motives unclear, she did chew through a speaker wire. I quickly cut it clean and later re-soldered it together and brought up the plans to run it under the house again.

The New Deal was that I also make the RG-6 cable go away, and that was do-able. Michele and I took a quick trip to the hardware store and picked two more gang boxes, and about 25 or RG-6/CATV cable ready to go.

Michele did the patchwork and painting, most household projects involve a bit of teamwork. I even made Caralyne get involved, she went under the house with me and held stuff. Then she let Levi down there, and took pictures of him exploring.

With everything buttoned up, we now have working speakers, hidden wiring, and a fireplace free of critical data cables