If there’s a silver lining to a furlough, it’s that the combination of time off and no income makes it convenient to work on small home improvement projects. It’s a bad time to start an expensive project, but good for checking off all those little honey-do projects that take more time than money to complete — things like hanging pictures and setting up bookshelves.
One of the projects I’ve been wanting to tackle since purchasing our new home was running ethernet (network) cables down through the walls to all (or most) of the rooms. The people who originally planned to buy this home (but backed out for whatever reason) paid $750 for a “network package” that, as I inherited it, was unfinished. The package included wall jacks in four rooms (the master bedroom, the movie room, Mason’s bedroom, and the living room) with unterminated cables culminating in a utility closet. The problem this presented was two-fold: first, those four cables needed ends attached to them in the closet; and two, what I really needed was a network jack added to my office, and the one in the living room moved to where we had placed the television.
You might be asking why I don’t just use wireless, and we do. Morgan uses the WiFi for her Chromebook, Susan uses the WiFi for her laptop, Mason was using the WiFi for his computer, I was using the WiFi for all my computers and Raspberry Pis, and all of us were using the WiFi for all our phones and tablets and televisions. Our wireless router was straining to keep up with all the traffic, and when Mason would play online games while Susan and Morgan were watching Netflix and I was trying to download something, the whole network would come to a standstill.
The first thing I needed to do was terminate the cables that had already been run, and for that I called my old buddy Jeff. Jeff has been making network cables for half his life now, and is better at it than I’ll ever be. One day after he got off work, Jeff stopped by and the two of us made a trip to Home Depot to pick up supplies. I already had most of the required tools (like crimpers) so all we really needed was a small box of network ends. I picked up a cable tester too, just to make tracking down which cables went where easier (since none of them were labeled).
There’s an art to making network cables. Inside each cable are eight tiny wires. First, you have to strip off the outer shielding of the main cable. Then you have to arrange those eight tiny wires in the right order. Then you have to trim them, slide a connector over the end, and crimp it down without anything moving out of place. When I was good — and it’s been a while — I could probably do one in a minute or two. Five minutes had passed since Jeff had started working on the ends, and for a moment I began to wonder if he had lost his touch. I shouldn’t have. A moment later, he informed me that not just one, but all of the cables were done!
The next part of the project involved running around the house with the cable tester, since the builder/installer hadn’t labelled any of the wires or connections. It took us a few minutes walking around with the tester to figure out which cable went to which wall connection, but eventually we tracked them all down. Each time we found one, I made a label so I’d know in the future which cable went to which room. Part one was a complete success! Thanks, Jeff!
Part two of the project was a bit more tricky, because it involved running new cable across the attic and down through the walls. My buddy Tim volunteered to squirrel his way around our new attic, and so back to Home Depot it was. On Amazon you can buy 1,000′ of network cable for around $40 (which is why we all scoffed at that initial $750 charge), but we needed cable that day, and Home Depot had 100′ for $20. I also picked up a couple of wall terminators and face plates.
Tim only had a couple of hours to work on the project, so we split the work up over two days. For the network drop in the living room, we were able to move the existing one (installed over the fireplace) and reroute it back down behind the television. In the process, we accidentally drilled into the coax cable. Fortunately there was enough slack in the wall to pull a bit more down, and replacement ends were $1 at Home Depot. Getting a cable run to my office took a bit more work, but we were finally able to get it done. Thanks, Tim!
After Tim left, the only part left was to crimp an end on the new cable we ran, and attach the other ends to new wall jacks. I had just watched Jeff do four cables in five minutes — surely I could do one, right?
And I did (after three tries). The wall terminals were easy, but crimping new ends on… let’s just say it took me a couple of tries before it came back to me. I’ve made hundreds of network cables in my time, but I haven’t made any in at least ten years. Maybe fifteen.
Once everything was in place and pushed back into the wall, I tested everything one last time with the cable tester I bought before wiring everything up. I plugged my computer into the jack, heard the cable click, and saw the green light indicating a gigabit connection. Aw, yeah…
After a bit more wiring, all of my computers (my workstation, laptops, server, and Raspberry Pis), Mason’s computer, the living room television, the movie room television, and the master bedroom television are all now connected to the network over gigabit ethernet. Not only is that significantly faster than wireless, but removing all that traffic from the wireless router has sped it up, too.
The last part of this project that needs to be completed is to tuck, wrap, and clean up the wiring in the hall closet. I had planned on doing that on Monday, but then the furlough ended. You can always use one more day off!
All together I spent around $40 on this project (not including the cable tester). It was something I’ve been wanting to do since buying the house, and the furlough gave me enough time to finish it.
Thanks again to Jeff, Tim, and Home Depot!