A Saturday spent running Cat 5

We have been doing remodeling on the house since we moved in (a year ago).  Installing hardwoods on the entire first floor, remodeling the kitchen, moving walls, finishing drywall, etc.  It's a lot of work for a do-it yourselfer that works 50-60 hours a week at his day job, but I'm getting close to done!

Today was the day to solve the "I'm tired of tripping over the damn network cables when I walk into the office!" day.  I have never created my own network cables, but have had some experience with running cables through the walls.  So, I headed to Home Depot and picked up some Cat 5 cabling, RJ45 jacks, and wall plates.

I spent some time in the basement (thank god for the basement, it made the job much easier being able to run the cables through the open ceiling).  I decided on the location of the wall plates, cut holes in the drywall for each plate and went to the basement to drill some holes.  After guestimating on the location of the wall plate hole above me, I drilled the holes and fished the wire through them.  Back upstairs to find the wires in the wall.  I had to do this a couple of times. :(  But, finally succeeded!  I read the instructions for the wiring diagram for the RJ45 plates and connectors (a few times), set the wires, crimped and it worked!

I screwed the wall plates into the walls, cleaned up the mess, and marked another item off the really long "honey-do" list!

Not a bad Saturday...  Now it's time to grill some chicken and sip some well deserved Crown Royal!  Tomorrow, I'll be back in the basement organizing, and setting up the weight room.