I took photos as I went. Figured y'all might get a kick out of them.
Before Fireplace
Before Closet
Our house was built in 2010. It had 110v and coax/ethernet run down the chase between the fireplace flue pipe and the masonry. That made life a LOT easier. Also making life easy was my attic. It's got plenty of room and where I was working even happened to be decked. The plan was to put the components in a closet adjacent to the fireplace. All the coax and cat cables from all over the house terminate here. Well, they are all run here; none are terminated. I planned to get the picture via HDMI and control everything with an IR extender using our Harmony 650 remote.
I had to pull new cables down to the tv (more on that below) so I opened up the coax box and drilled through it. Behind that box, I found another box mounted to the stud wall behind the rock facade. I (gently)drilled through that box too until I could see to the chase. It's ragged but it worked.
Next I cut out for the new low voltage boxes in the closet. I needed a double gang for all the surround speaker connections and an additional single for all the misc. other connections. The existing single gang had coax and ethernet terminated in it.
I mounted a simple tilting mount using Tapcon masonry screws (that work great btw). The mount was purchased on Amazon. I originally bought everything on Monoprice, but I misread the description of the mount I bought and it wouldn't work for my old plasma. The mount I ended up with is actually really nice. It tilts up and down 15 degrees. The ability to tilt up made making the connections MUCH easier. I pulled all the wires down the fireplace. I ended up pulling:
1 HDMI
2 3.5 mm audio cables (1 for the IR extender and 1 for a Bluetooth audio receiver)
1 speaker wire for the center speaker
1 coax (already there)
1 cat 5 (already there)
1 optical cable
Closet progress
Closet mostly done
TV and center speaker hung
The only problem I really ran into was caused by my own stupidity. I mounted an antenna on the roof and ran the coax all the way down inside the closet, terminations done and everything, before I realized it had to go to the TV. The tuner is in the TV... I'm just learning as I go. So, I redid the attic wiring so the antenna coax goes to the TV. Then I had to pull the optical back from the TV to the media closet so our over the air stuff will go through the surround receiver. That means I have 7 cables and only 6 keystone spaces. I really wanted everything terminated so it looked professional but I guess I'm just going to remove 1 of the keystone jacks and run 2 cables through it loose. Sucks, but I'm not going to get a double gang box in that rock.
Essay finished!
Before Fireplace
Before Closet
Our house was built in 2010. It had 110v and coax/ethernet run down the chase between the fireplace flue pipe and the masonry. That made life a LOT easier. Also making life easy was my attic. It's got plenty of room and where I was working even happened to be decked. The plan was to put the components in a closet adjacent to the fireplace. All the coax and cat cables from all over the house terminate here. Well, they are all run here; none are terminated. I planned to get the picture via HDMI and control everything with an IR extender using our Harmony 650 remote.
I had to pull new cables down to the tv (more on that below) so I opened up the coax box and drilled through it. Behind that box, I found another box mounted to the stud wall behind the rock facade. I (gently)drilled through that box too until I could see to the chase. It's ragged but it worked.
Next I cut out for the new low voltage boxes in the closet. I needed a double gang for all the surround speaker connections and an additional single for all the misc. other connections. The existing single gang had coax and ethernet terminated in it.
I mounted a simple tilting mount using Tapcon masonry screws (that work great btw). The mount was purchased on Amazon. I originally bought everything on Monoprice, but I misread the description of the mount I bought and it wouldn't work for my old plasma. The mount I ended up with is actually really nice. It tilts up and down 15 degrees. The ability to tilt up made making the connections MUCH easier. I pulled all the wires down the fireplace. I ended up pulling:
1 HDMI
2 3.5 mm audio cables (1 for the IR extender and 1 for a Bluetooth audio receiver)
1 speaker wire for the center speaker
1 coax (already there)
1 cat 5 (already there)
1 optical cable
Closet progress
Closet mostly done
TV and center speaker hung
The only problem I really ran into was caused by my own stupidity. I mounted an antenna on the roof and ran the coax all the way down inside the closet, terminations done and everything, before I realized it had to go to the TV. The tuner is in the TV... I'm just learning as I go. So, I redid the attic wiring so the antenna coax goes to the TV. Then I had to pull the optical back from the TV to the media closet so our over the air stuff will go through the surround receiver. That means I have 7 cables and only 6 keystone spaces. I really wanted everything terminated so it looked professional but I guess I'm just going to remove 1 of the keystone jacks and run 2 cables through it loose. Sucks, but I'm not going to get a double gang box in that rock.
Essay finished!